Karen felt conspicuously nerdish in her Renfest dress. Her mom had found the pattern on Etsy—a gown for a medieval lady-in-waiting—and got a great deal on blue brocade threaded through with gold. But Karen drew the line at wearing the tall, coned hat with the trailing veil that her mother spent hours AND HOURS making. The dress felt too tight around her pudgy middle, but Grandma came up with the perfect solution—a wide, stiff, vintage belt that laced up in front, spray-painted gold. Karen guessed she looked all right…compared to some of the other losers in this group. One girl had to be wearing a prom dress from the 90s—pink, puffy sleeves and all. Karen would much rather be wearing dark tights and a long, plain tunic like most of the guys wore.
Behind the rustic podium of gray weathered logs, their musical director Mr. Fenimore was attempting to organize copies of the sheet music that had fallen from his briefcase. Luckily for him it wasn’t too windy, and the students managed to gather up nearly all the pages. The choir had already memorized every word of the songs beforehand, even the canzonetta in Italian (or close enough anyway), but the diminutive teacher was a control freak and needed the reassurance of hard copies.
“Has anyone heard from Brenna?” he asked, peering over his glasses at the half circle of teens on the rickety wooden stage. They were eleven in number, fidgeting, whispering to each other. Most of the kids looked bored or sleepy (what a waste of a Saturday morning!). There should have been twelve.
“Stacy? Karen?” Both girls shook their heads.
The boy next to Karen muttered, “And how would you know if she did text? No cell phones allowed. Dumbass Fenimore!”
It wouldn’t have mattered. She and Brenna had never exchanged numbers. Karen wasn’t cool enough to be on direct contact-level with someone like her.
It was show time. On the Queen Jane Seymour stage, the Southwest HS Madrigal Singers started with an English part song to entertain the small crowd in the outdoor amphitheater. The trees shading the stage still had their leaves, which were shed in a yellow and orange flutter whenever a breeze stirred. The weather was perfect this October day.
Karen was deeply disappointed. Although she knew she looked like a complete fool and she didn’t want any popular kids at school to see her like this, she desperately wanted to see Brenna, to see what a real princess could look like. If Brenna showed up, dressed medieval style, then the whole performance wouldn’t be such a debacle. The only thing that made the choir practices bearable was the fact that she could stand next to, and sing with, a near-goddess. Karen’s lower alto voice harmonized perfectly with the clear, mezzo soprano of her secret crush.
The group finished up the song to light applause from a mostly distracted crowd. Mr. Fenimore looked agitated. The Madrigal Singers were just not complete without the lead soprano. Karen wished for Brenna to appear, to step up beside her and tower over her like a graceful willow. After two songs, the chorale singers linked arms and gently swayed back and forth for a French part song. It would have been the perfect opportunity to touch Brenna, if only cloth on cloth. Karen audibly sighed.
She never allowed her fantasies to become graphic. It would be hard to stand next to Brenna if she delved too deeply into this “forbidden love,” which was something that would kill her parents and Grandma if they found out. Karen’s mom and dad often talked about “the gays” and the trouble they had created for their church which resulted in a split—part of the congregation following the new young minister and his husband to a new church, and their group, who stayed put and found a more “respectable” pastor to lead the services. The scenes that played in Karen’s head took place in her bed, but on top of the covers—Brenna and she would lie side-by-side, sometimes facing each other, sometimes spooning. Her daydreams consisted of discovery by innocents, as Karen lifted a sheaf of Brenna’s straight, streaked blond hair and pressed her lips against the back of a swan’s neck that smelled like J’Adore.
Brenna stepped out of B-Doc’s car, catching the hem of the green velvet gown on the pointed toe of her jeweled shoe. She almost pitched forward into the pounded-flat grass but managed to steady herself. The lace on the hem was torn, about a six-inch length hung down to the ground.
“Shit!” she snapped.
Her boyfriend grinned, a lopsided smirk with his upper lip curling to one side, the same expression he made whenever he dis-repected someone. Her boyfriend, a big sports star in school (B-Doc, short for Basketball Doctor) was close to 6-foot-5 and nearly always had an entourage trailing him. She was glad it was too early in the morning for his buddies—she only had to deal with his attitude.
“Damn, girl, you look lame-o! Ree-DICK-u-luss!”
It was the last thing she had wanted to hear. As always, he managed to make her feel stupid. She thought she looked authentic in the expensive dress her mother let her rent from a theatrical costume company in the city. Brenna went by herself to the downtown shop, trying on several outfits, assessing herself from the angled mirrors. She depended on the advice of the college kids who worked there—maybe they had steered her wrong. At last, she thought she had the ultimate dress, and waited at the register while her lawyer mother, working on a litigation case several states away, authorized the charge with her cell phone.
As she made her way toward the front gate, several people pointed to her, and she tried her best to avoid their stares. However, she quickly realized that little kids were actually looking up at her in awe. She probably looked the part of the princess to them, so maybe it was okay after all. Brenna lifted her heavy velvet skirts and petticoats and broke into a jog. She was starting to sweat. She had a long way to go, across the field where cars were parked, to the main gate. B-Doc had dropped her at the back gate, which was locked.
Earlier that morning, with her favorite music blasting, she had fixed her own hair and make-up as she always did, with no one around to criticize or give approval. She plaited her long blond hair, supplemented with extensions, in a fancy hairstyle she had learned from a YouTube video. She wore a circlet of white flowers around the top of her head like a crown and wove a thin garland of tiny white flowers with plastic green ivy through her braid.
A kind of cute but still dorky-looking court jester was stationed at the front gate. Upon closer inspection, Brenna saw that he was older, a college guy maybe. She could tell her feet had already developed blisters—she limped toward him, holding up her Performer pass.
“Where is the Queen, uh, Anne? Jane? Oh crap, I can’t remember the name. The stage for madrigal singers?”
“That show commenced nigh on twenty minutes ago!” the jester exclaimed in a fake English accent.
“I know. I’m really late,” she said as she pulled off a shoe and winced at the large fluid-filled blister on the side of her foot. The jester grabbed a map, opened it up and pointed to a green and gray circle. Brenna groaned. The stage was more than halfway across the enclosed area which consisted of several acres.
The jester pulled off his hat with the jingling of bells and bowed to her. “Prithee, fair maiden, a wyrd if I may…thou art hobbled because of how thee is shod. Kick off thy meddlesome shoes and fly to thy destination, Fairy Fae.”
Brenna rolled her eyes with a snort, then threw back her head and laughed. He was cute. She did just that, grabbed her shoes in one hand, skirts in the other and ran in her bare feet down the dirt-packed trails.
Mr. Fenimore held his baton aloft, directing the singers to hold the last note of a Florentine carnival song. A polite burst of applause erupted while the kids shuffled places for the next piece. Without Brenna’s clear, strong mezzo soprano, the group lacked depth. The music teacher shook his head with frustration. There was only one more song in their scheduled appearance, and the lead singer was nowhere to be found. The teacher whispered to the second soprano Milly, a short, freckled girl dressed like a peasant, who nodded her head and stepped forward reluctantly to stand beside Karen. Karen had practiced a duet that now would apparently take place with a stand-in instead of an angel.
As Mr. Fenimore tapped his baton on the podium, Karen looked up, her eyes drawn beyond his upraised arms, above the audience, to a makeshift parapet in the distance. Brenna had climbed the platform, festooned with brightly colored pennants, to gain a better perspective. To Karen, she seemed spotlighted by the brilliant morning sun. Several strands of her hair had escaped from her braid and caught the light, framing her face like a halo. Brenna met Karen’s eyes and waved frantically. Karen gave a rapid wave, then quickly pressed her fingers to her throat, as if to quell the lump rising there.
She would never again see anything so beautiful, so heartbreaking, in all her life. It was just like in a silly old movie, shot in a field of wildflowers where a man and woman ran toward each other in slow motion while a cheesy soundtrack played—only this was real life and Brenna was the only one running and the soundtrack came from the Madrigal Singers:
My young love said to me, my mother won’t mind,
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kind,
She went away from me, and this she did say,
“It will not be long, love, ’til our wedding day.”
She stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair…”
Brenna reached the half circle and tossed her shoes in front of the stage, almost tripping over one boy’s huge feet as she assumed her spot. Karen had scooted over as Milly gratefully receded to the cluster of backup singers. Even though Brenna was out of breath, she tightened her diaphragm and reached deep into her core (as she had been taught) to bring forth her amazingly powerful voice, to finish the stanza.
Now the choir was complete, and the small group became energized with the addition of the star singer. The audience grew quiet, and passersby stopped to listen to the duet. Brenna and Karen were on.
Karen always felt the same sick-shaky, butterfly feeling in her stomach whenever they took center stage. The air seemed almost painful as she filled her lungs to sing harmony. But Brenna’s vocals were so incredibly perfect, surely no one heard or cared what anyone else sang and the rest of the choir’s voices were reduced to a hum. Karen could almost see the sound of her own voice, a pale gray mist, rise up in front of her and twist around the stream of Brenna’s golden star-shiny notes:
…So softly she entered, her feet made no din.
She came close beside me, And this she did say,
“It will not be long, love… ’til our wedding day.”
Mr. Fenimore indicated he wanted them to repeat the song, since the audience was now enraptured. Karen could feel a buzz through her body, as she realized that she alone was paired with perfection. Then, with the wave of Mr. Fenimore’s baton, it was over. The audience signaled their approval with enthusiastic applause, even whistles. Karen was elated—they had done it!
“That worked out okay,” Breanna said.
“Yes, I thought…” Karen began with a quiver in her voice.
“Glad it’s over!” Brenna muttered as she fumbled in one of her dresses’ voluminous pockets for her cell phone to summon an Uber as she reached down to grab her shoes. Scampering off the stage in her bare feet, she headed for the exit. Karen noticed that her blond braid was coming undone and a string of little white flowers and greenery trailed down her back.
“Oh, honey, that was wonderful!” Grandma said. Karen hadn’t even noticed that her grandmother and mom were standing at the edge of the stage. Grandma held up a water bottle which the girl took gratefully.
“Yes, dear, it was,” her mother agreed. “But it would have been perfect if you had been wearing your hat and veil.”
Karen opened the bottle and took a big gulp. As she swallowed, she stood still for a moment, watching until the last trace of green velvet disappeared into the crowd.