Page 8 of The Claiming of the Shrew
He wondered if it was possible to just casually remark on that.When I said you weren’t my mate, I actually meant you WERE my mate. Which she probably knew anyway—probably?possibly?—because there was every chance she had an inner animal telling her the same thing ...
Leah darted away again, whipping along on her crutches with absolute lack of concern for roots and other obstacles. As Fawkes hurried to catch up, she started talking over her shoulder. “Okay, so the reason why we went withPeter Panfor our production is because we thought it would be an absolutely amazing one to do in the woods. Have you ever been to an outdoor Shakespeare play? That’s our model for what we’re doing here, and in fact we did kick around the idea of doingAMidsummer Night’s Dream, but outdoor Pan effects and a pirate ship battle just seemed so fun. It really gets your inner kid excited, you know?”
“It does,” Fawkes said, captivated by the vivid kinetic energy of her body language when she was excited. Her enthusiasm flowed through her whole body. He’d never seen anything like it.
“So here’s the Darling house.” She gestured, and Fawkes was puzzled: it was just trees, with something that looked like fat white cords dangling from their tops, and some tarp-covered lumps. “Uh, there’s not much to see yet, sorry. So we’re hanging up these sheets, they’re rolled up now so they don’t get tattered or soggy with the weather, to make the space feel enclosed and indoors, in contrast to the wide-open spaces of Neverland which are using the natural woods. That was my idea, and I’m super proud of it.” She sparkled at him, and Fawkes stumbled on a tree root. “But you can’t really get the full effect without unrolling the sheets, which I think we won’t do tonight.”
She pointed up at ropes dangling from the trees. “The sheet walls have scenery painted on them, even the windows, except the window that Pan comes through, which is obviously open. And then when they fly off to Neverland, the ropes are rigged so we can drop the walls all at once, and suddenly you’re outdoors and the set is all around you. Neat, huh?”
“It really is,” Fawkes said, looking up at the treetops framed by fairy lights. “I’ve never been much of a guy for live theater, but I’m looking forward to watching it.” And he was—not least because he looked forward to seeing Leah’s energy and enthusiasm in her onstage presence. “What part are you playing?”
Unexpectedly, her energy deflated and she seemed to close down on herself. “Oh—well, I’m not going to be in the actual play, at least unless Gloria, that is, Peter Pan, literally breaks a leg or something. I’m strictly a behind-the-scenes gal. But!” she went on, as if visibly bolstering herself. “I’m going to be running around like a—uh—like a critter on a mission during the play anyway, so it’s probably just as well that I won’t also be onstage at the same time. Come here and see our pirate ship!”
With that, she was off across the edge of the Darling set, while Fawkes followed and tried to tamp down on his instinctive reaction to immediately tear off to the theater company director and get her a part. It was her play, she was presumably happy enough with the outcome, and it was definitely clear that she was invested in the production, onstage part or not.
The pirate ship was eerie in the half-dark, a half-glimpsed framework of scaffolding and ropes, framed against the evocative twinkle of the fairy lights. It did actually feel like Neverland, Fawkes thought.
His animal was delighted with the darkness and all the crevices; it wanted to shift and run off to explore immediately. Fawkes kept a firm mental grip on it.
“The Lost Boys’ hideout is over here—there’s not much to that part of the set, it’s basically just cardboard props and trees,” Leah was saying. “The pirate ship is what we’ve really poured a lot of work into because there’s going to be quite a lot going on around it special-effects-wise. People will be flying, so there’s ascaffolding for that, which is part of the ship’s rigging, and we’ll have explosions, well, smoke and firecrackers, and a crocodile.”
“How are you doing the crocodile?”
“Oh, that’s just Stacey,” Leah said offhandedly. “She’s also playing various Lost Boys, but she spends most of her time in her crocodile form. She’ll be lurking around in the woods and occasionally snapping at people. She’s got the best role in the play, honestly. She’s already bitten two people during rehearsals.”
That’s right,Fawkes thought,they’re shifters. As an urban shifter who generally tried to hide his shifting, it was a strange feeling to be around people who shifted openly.
“Are all of your theater troupe shifters?” he asked.
“Not every single person, but the handful of humans in the Menagerie all know about us, of course. And the audience will be shifters as well for the first few performances. We’re even using it in some of the scenes, like having some of the Lost Boys shift and run around in their shifted forms.”
“But you’ll have a human audience later?”
“Yeah, right now the lodge is officially ‘closed’ ...” Leah made air quotes with her fingers. “But actually, Hester keeps it open for shifter guests during the off season. Until Memorial Day, we’ll perform for a shifter crowd, and then afterwards we’re going to open to a general audience. We’ll have to modify the performance, of course. Stacey will be using an articulated crocodile puppet, much less authentic than the real thing, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“I’m sure,” Fawkes said. He tried to keep his smile from bursting out, and failed, but Leah grinned back.
They had continued wandering through the woods as they talked, and had entered a better lit area that Fawkes realized was the campground where the cast and crew were staying. He couldsee lanterns back in the woods, the lights of a couple of RVs, and the flickering glow of a bonfire. Woodsmoke tickled his nose.
“Leah!” Someone at the bonfire had just risen to their feet. From here, all Fawkes could see was a vague shape against the fire. “Is that you? Come join us!”
Leah waved back, then gave Fawkes’s arm a tug before sliding her hand back to her crutch. “Come meet the cast. This is a full service backstage tour.”
“Uh,” Fawkes said. This was not the way to keep a low profile.
But it was also an unmatched opportunity, not to mention a chance to hang out with Leah a bit more, so he came willingly.
There were about a dozen people around the bonfire, sitting on a mix of camp chairs and improvised seats such as overturned buckets. One person had brought a beanbag chair.
“Who’s your friend, Leah?” asked one of the women.
“This is Fawkes. He’s a guest at the hotel. Fawkes, this is Gloria, our star.”
Was there a hint of resentment in Leah’s tone? Fawkes pondered that as he shook hands with a pretty blonde in an oversized university hoodie.
“And this is our Captain Hook, Halstadt.”
Fawkes had no idea if Halstadt was a first or last name, but considering his own name, he had no business throwing stones from his glass house. He shook hands. Halstadt was a tall, angular man with an eye patch and a slight shadow of tragedy to his crooked smile. Fawkes guessed immediately that half the women in the company were probably crushing on Halstadt, and had an equally strong sense just by the way Halstadt smiled at him that none of the women were his type, period.
