Chris Adrian: The Great Night

“I would sooner put out the sun,” she said, her usual response, and it sounded to all but the most discerning ears the same as it did on any other night, but Puck and her three closest courtiers heard overtones of resignation in her voice. The three courtiers reacted by stroking and kissing her more frantically, whispering to her that she shouldn’t listen, and calling on Puck to be silent.

Puck said, “Maybe someone should put it out.” The thought had actually occurred to her, when she was in her deepest troughs, that there would be a certain satisfaction in putting out the sun or banishing the moon or pulling down the sky, taking away from the world something commensurate with what had been taken from her. But these indulgent fantasies always passed in a moment; she cried them out along with all the resurgent bitter anger she felt toward her husband, and when her nightly tears were done she only ever felt a deep sadness that had a small quality of peace to it. She tried to weep herself down there now, because she was more bitter and angry and hopeless than ever, all because of the bull, prancing outrageously down Twenty-fourth Street, and now through her mind’s eye, wagging its ass, teasing and mocking her for having been stupid enough to drive him away in the first place and for being too weak now to call him back. She took her hands away from her courtiers — two of them were rubbing her palms — and covered her face and wept harder, so the circle of the host widened even more, because it was bad enough for the Queen to be languid and depressive on the festival night, but to indulge in histrionics was frankly poor taste. Even the cats, who had formerly been licking at her arms and breasts and face, slunk off the litter and disappeared over the edge of the hill with another dozen faeries. Titania took no notice of them. She was on her way down to the saddest place in her memory, Oberon’s leave-taking, when she had made her awful mistake. It had seemed like the only thing to say at the time, the only sensible response to the horrible new world she had woken into after the long dreamlike demise of their Boy. Grieving furiously, she had set about destroying everything left to her.

“You do not love me anymore?” her husband had asked her.

“I do not,” she had said.

“You do not love me?”

“I do not love you. All my feelings have been false.”

“Then I am undone. Behold, I never was Oberon, nor you Titania, and never was the boy our Boy. I undo it all with a word, no , and pass away.” And then he walked away, from this very spot where she lay every night on her bier, down the hill and out of the park and into the mortal world. In memory she watched him, and instead of turning her face away from his receding back (as she actually had done), she propelled herself after him. Even in her imagination she could not capture him, but this exercise usually sent her into the deeper and more peaceful sadness that she sought. Tonight it eluded her, and seeking it she had a thought, terrible and surprising. Puck was staring at her when she looked up, wearing Oberon’s face, sad but disdainful, looking at her just the way she most feared he might look at her.

“Milady,” said Lyon, “best not to look into his eyes!” He tried to cover her eyes with a fan, but she batted it away.

“Maybe someone should put it out,” she said to Puck. “What does it illuminate for me, except everywhere my love is not? And does it see him and not tell me where he is? Shouldn’t it be punished?”

“I have always hated the sun,“said Puck.

“The sun is our friend, “said Fell nervously, sensing the direction in which the conversation was turning and not liking it at all. “It makes the green things grow.”

“What worth is the world with him not in it?” It wasn’t the first time she had considered destruction as a remedy for her ills. Before she had become confined to the hill, she had made a study of mortal suicides. No faerie had ever done such a thing, or even died at all, though in remote legend some great grief had turned one to stone, or caused a sleep of ages. Mortals’ deaths always only reminded her of how different she was from them. She was ageless and immortal, and the only creature ever to threaten her life or those of her subjects had been overcome a whole age before, his wild magic contained by a bond that was as frail as it was strong, so that anyone might break it with a single word, though only Titania and Oberon knew the word, which changed from year to year. The magic in the chain prevented any accidental utterance, so that lately Puck, in the city in the service of his Queen or his own constrained appetites, might hear someone forget the breed of their beloved dog when asked, or might hear someone say, “What a lovely dog. What is it? Of course I know … it’s on the tip of my tongue! The lovely fur like hair, the distinctive hairdo. Hypoallergenic!” A person might work themselves into a fit trying to speak the word, but Oberon’s magic would strike them dead before they ever uttered the first syllable.

“Do you think it would draw him out, Adversary, if I set you free?”

“Oh, most certainly,” Puck said, visibly trembling.

“Milady!” said Fell.

“You can’t be thinking of it!” said Lyon.

“He is my friend,” said Oak, “but you would make him nobody’s friend!”

“You are not that sad,” said Fell. “No one is that sad!”

But I am , she thought, standing up and shaking them off. And though she told herself it was a reasoned choice, that freeing this monster would call her husband back more swiftly and certainly than her entreaties of love and remorse ever could, duty to his subjects, and care for all those Puck would threaten being more important to him than her happiness, death was in her heart when she spoke the word. Her courtiers, liegemen first even though they had been her closest companions in the past year, tried to stop her. They leaped upon her with spells and claws and whirling bits of wire-sharp string. Oak came at her bottom first, his rabbit’s tail exuding soporifics strong enough to put an elephant to sleep for a week. But she was their Queen for a reason. She brushed them aside in a moment. It was over so quickly that the rest of the host had barely marked the commotion before she leaned down and spoke the word to Puck.

“Poodle,” she said, and the chain around Puck’s neck shattered into countless pieces. She said the word very quietly, but it was heard loud as a klaxon all over the hill, and then a little softer all over San Francisco, so husbands turned to wives in countless living rooms and bedrooms and said, “Did you just call me a poodle?” and plays and movies and a single opera were briefly spoiled by the incongruous word, spoken softly but very clearly. Every faerie knew immediately what it signified, and they all ran screaming toward the edge of the hill as soon as they heard it, aiming for Tunisia or Ireland or Samoa, anyplace but here where the monster was. In a few seconds, only Puck and the Queen were left on top of the hill. He was rubbing gently at his neck and looked no different than before, except that he stood much straighter, as if a weight had been lifted from him. She no longer looked sad or droopy but had gathered all her power to herself, ready to fight the Beast she had freed and make a noise that her husband must hear. Her subjects, had any been around to see her, would have been proud. But Puck only bowed to her again.

“Milady,” he said, “I am in your debt, and so I will eat you last.”

I t took them both a long time to understand that the boy was sick, though she would point out that she was the first to notice he was unhappy, and had sought to remedy his discontent with sweeter treats and more delightful distractions. She thought it was evidence that she loved him more, how she noticed first that something was wrong, and she said as much to her husband, when they were still trying to outdo each other in love for the child, before he became sick enough to demonstrate to them that they both loved him equally and immeasurably.