The Indian Boy

          I never knew my mother. Titania, of course, told me about her. A votress, a woman vowed to her service, her intimate and favorite, she died giving birth to me. Children cannot understand the concept of death. When I was old enough to understand it a little better, I wanted to know about my father as well.

          “We don’t know who your father was,” Titania said. “Your mother never said anything about him.”

          This, of course, brought in the question of how children came about and of relationships between women and men. She asked Oberon to instruct me on the “facts of life.” I already knew most of what he would tell me (you cannot live among supernatural creatures such as fairies and not see things). Oberon is a man of few words and a man of action. I came to know the secrets of the intimate relationships between men and women through first-hand experience. I was sixteen at the time.

          As I said, Oberon is practical.

          He gave me a basic talk and then called, “Peaseblossom!”

          Peaseblossom, a girl sprite I had known all my life, came into the bedroom, her wings wrapped around her, long green hair falling over her shoulders. He made a gesture to her and left the room. She let her wings drop away so I could see the beauty of her form: her strong but gentle shoulders, her small breasts with their black nipples and the downward curve of her firm stomach to the tuft of hair and beauty of her opening. Nature took its course. She wrapped her wings around me, enfolding us in a soft cocoon of silky gossamer as we rolled, gasped, and grunted in bed.

          Peaseblossom became my regular lover. Soon two other younger sprites, Mustardseed and Cobweb, found their way to me.

          Titania learned of it. Oberon’s direct approach annoyed her a bit, but she did nothing to censure him or me or the young women who had become my delight. Tension arose only when the three of them quarreled over me and dissent marred the harmonious economy of Fairyland. My foster parents argued. I lay in my bower and listened to them.

          “Can’t you keep your own servants in line?” Oberon sneered.

          “I can’t when you use them like common whores,” she snapped.

          He laughed. “What I had them do is something every servant girl ends up doing at one time or another. And I don’t hear them complaining about it.”

          “They are my servant girls.”

          And on it went. They parted, angry, sullen, jaws tight and eyes full of malice.

          I think most peoples’ parents fight, but when the people who raise you are the King and Queen of Fairyland, the arguments exhibit a little more velocity than what a typical family feud might show. One of their quarrels, though, led me to discover my origins and sent me into my true majority.

          Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Mustardseed made peace, which placated Titania. They agreed on a rotation and came to me alternately.

          I loved their different appearances and the different charms they brought with them. Peaseblossom, with her bright green skin and round head, flourished wings and had fingers like tendrils. She surrounded me with her wings and her pliable digits grew out to encircle my body in a wrap of gentle warmth. Cobweb, pale and ephemeral, possessed softer skin than any fairy or mortal I had touched. Her phantasmal beauty enchanted me. Mustardseed was bright yellow and had yellow hair. She could shape-shift. When we embraced, she would change her form into something exotic—a mermaid, a harpy, a sphinx. After we had finished, she would revert to her true shape and we would laugh about it.

          I am blue—light blue with black eyes and hair. I always assumed my coloration came from the blending of my mother’s blood (she was a mortal with fair skin, Titania told me) and a green or blue fairy. In fact, I always suspected Oberon might be my father. He is a dim green color and I know he has many lovers. So does Titania.

          Oberon particularly loved Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen. I found this out when I began to train as a warrior.

          Oberon and the Amazon Queen had been lovers a few years before I appeared. When we arrived in her kingdom, we moved right into the palace. I could hear the two of them moaning and shouting the first night and their bed creaking—and every night after that for the entire time we stayed there.

          Oberon had brought me there so the Amazons could teach me to fight the way they fight, not depending on strength to prevail in battle but depending on speed and agility. I trained hard through long days in the Thracian sun. After I had been there a week or so, some of the younger girls began to steal into my chamber. Contrary to what the bards may have told you, most of the Amazons love men and are married. In their nation, things are reversed so the men cook, clean, sew, and raise children, and women hunt and fight.

          The girl—she was my age—was from Africa. Her name was Selena and her parents had brought her to train for war among the Amazon women. She had ebony skin and, like all girls training under the regimen of Hippolyta, her body was strong, lithe, and beautiful.

          “Your father shares the couch with Queen Hippolyta,” she said to me one night as we sat by the shore and looked out at the moon and stars reflecting in the sea.

          “I know.” I did not bother to tell her my uncertainly as to whether Oberon was my father.

          “But his wife, Titania, loves Theseus, who is also Hippolyta’s companion.”

          It did not surprise me. Titania is beautiful and her eyes rove as much as Oberon’s.

          I spent three months there and returned. By then I had been training a year and knew the basics of warfare and defense. Titania admired me for how strong I had grown from training. Though she was pleased with my strength and growth, she was highly displeased when Oberon announced, a few months later, what the next phase of my apprenticeship would be.

          When he gave her the details, she became angrier than I have ever seen her. She turned about and told all the entourage of sprites who serve her to clear the room. They scurried outside in a rush of fear. Titania and Oberon began to fight. I watched it all from a hidden vantage point.

          “You rash, wanton woman,” Oberon said, “Am I not I your lord?

          “Lord? You come waltzing back from that short-skirted warrior woman you love so much. I knew you’d want a last shot to her since she and Theseus are getting married.”

          “And all of the sudden you’re the image of virtue? You want to bring up Hippolyta? How about you and Theseus?”

          She did not reply.

          “All I want,” he continued, “is our changeling boy to be my valet.”

          “You can’t have him. I promised his mother I would raise him up. He is like a child to me and I will not let you take him away to be your squire for three years. Three years without seeing him? That’s unthinkable.”

          “Custom dictates it.”

          “I promised her I would raise her boy, and for her sake I will not part with him.”

          Oberon looked sullen. They stood there, in the silent misery of people who love each other and get in a fight. Finally Oberon spoke.

          “Are you staying around then?” he asked.

          “I’ll probably stay for the wedding. If you want to stop this fight, you can come along with me. Otherwise, keep away.”

          “Give me the boy, and I’ll be glad to go to the wedding with you.”

          “Not for your whole kingdom.” She stomped out the door. I heard her shout, “Fairies, away!” as she left. Her rage made rain pour down, lightning roil across the sky, and rocks split.

          Oberon stood there a minute and then said, “We’ll see about this.”

          He stalked off. I went outside and found Mustardseed. She and I went off in the woods. My sadness showed. She amused me by turning into a bird and then a lynx. Then she took her true form and sat down beside me.

          “Did you parents ever fight?” I asked.

          “I never knew my parents. My mother was a tree spirit who died when the forest where the tree that held her soul grew burned down. My father was a spirit of the earth—of gold, that is why I am the color I am. Mother comes to me in my dreams. She is a pure spirit now and does not have a body, so she can’t talk to me.”

          “My mother was mortal. She died and now her spirit is in the underworld. I never knew my father. Maybe he was mortal too.”

          “He wasn’t mortal.”

          “How do you know that?”

          “You’re blue. No humans are blue.”

          “I wonder if Oberon is my father.”

          “Oberon isn’t blue, he’s green, you silly. He doesn’t have dark hair like yours. And your mother was blonde. I saw her once. I was very small, just a newborn fairy—just a year old. Of course, we’re not like mortals. We can see and understand right when we’re born. Titania took me to India with her. Your mother had you in womb then. Oberon was nowhere near them for a whole year. He couldn’t have been your father.”

          This made me quiet.

          “She was pretty,” Mustardseed said. “I remember that about her. Titania loved her. She made the mistress laugh. She would go to the human marketplace and come back every day with a gift. When she died, Titania wept more than I have ever seen her weep.”

          I sat there, contemplating. Many of Titania’s servant girls are flighty and vain. They make up stories to get in peoples’ good graces. Mustardseed did not act so. Levelheaded and wise, she always spoke thoughtfully. I liked her for this.

          “I just want to find out who my father was.”

          At that moment, Peaseblossom came flitting through the air in the form of a luna moth. She lit on the ground and transformed into her full size.

          “Have you heard?” Her eyes were round with wonder and fear. “The Mistress has foresworn the Master’s bed and company.”

          They both looked at me. I returned their gaze. The ground shook. A cold wind blew through the trees. Thunder rumbled. Titania’s voice called through it, ordering Peaseblossom and Mustardseed to come to her. They disappeared instantly, leaving me alone.

          I closed my eyes. A strange current, like a river of fire, but of fire in its life-giving aspect of warmth and protection, ran through the core of my body, from the base of my spine to my mouth. The fire blazed and I felt carried away and transported. To where? I could not tell. I went, in my spirit, to a place unlike any place I had been. In fact, I only call it a place because that is the only frame I know to describe it. Light, energy, and thought bounded me—as well as power and benevolence. I experienced them not as intangible entities, but as concrete realities. They enclosed me as the walls of a room enclose the person dwelling inside them. But though I felt enclosure, I simultaneously felt myself in unlimited space.

          A sensation of descending came upon me. The fire now took on its dangerous aspect. I felt pain and the destructiveness of flames, the fear of their spreading, their deadly unstoppable nature. Darkness and terror gripped me.

          Then I was sitting on the log once more, in the forest, the vision past.

          I stood. I felt stronger, bolder, and more certain—of what I was not sure.

          As I walked out of the wood, a lashing thunderstorm still engulfed the area around Titania’s bower. The human mortals were in for trouble. My guardians expressed their emotions in weather. As attendant spirits, they gave harmony to the seasons and fertility to land. Now that they were at war, chaos would set in. The regularity of weather mortals depended upon would be erased. Their crops would rot in the fields. Famine and pestilence would descend upon them. By the time I got to her bower, I noticed all of Titania’s considerable entourage packing their belongings.

          “Are we going somewhere?” I asked.

          “After Theseus’ wedding,” a hag who had served my foster mother countless years replied, “we will go from here. The mistress will bless their wedding bed, and then we will depart far from Oberon’s kingdom and we will never return.”

          Their disharmony would do more to bring a curse than a blessing, I reasoned, but by evening we had gathered all and begun our journey.  

          The city of Athens was a hundred leagues from the thick wood where we lived. We would fly to get there. Usually Peaseblossom and Cobweb have to carry me in a sling they balance on their backs, since I cannot fly, but when I stepped out of our house to get away from the tension clouding the place, I found myself there. Once more, the sensation of benevolent fire burned through my body. I looked around. I could see, off in the distance, the white buildings of the city, the Acropolis, the Parthenon. I could not understand how I got to Athens and I was worried over how Titania and the others would react to see I had (apparently) disappeared. It would take them only ten minute to arrive here, but my absence would frighten them all and disrupt the journey.

          Then I was with Cobweb.

          “Where did you go?” she asked.

          “I’m in Athens. Tell Titania. In the wood outside Athens. I am where she intends to go, and she will find me there.”

          I touched her on her forehead above the bridge of her nose, evenly between her eyes. She nodded and vanished.

          Another mystery had engulfed me. I did not know how I had talked to Cobweb. I could not say if it was a dream or vision or if dreams and visions and the tangible world of touch, sight, taste, and sound were the same. It seemed like the world we enter when we fall asleep, yet it had been real. I thought of Cobweb in her sheer garment of spider-woven silk, her beautiful body showing through it, her silver hair and eyes. I had really touched her. The tips of my fingers carried her warmth. Yet where and how had I encountered her?

          My speculations broke off when the fairies swirled into the grove. They appeared as varicolored points of light and then assumed their corporeal forms.

          Titania asked where I had been and how I learned to fly. I said I did not know. (I had not flown. One minute I was at her bower and the next moment I was in Athens.) Worried about running into Oberon, she said we would talk about it later.

          The events of the last hour had drained me of strength. I went to a sheltered placed and lay down amid the heather and moss. Cobweb joined me.

          Of the three young women who were my lovers, Cobweb was the brashest. Peaseblossom and Mustardseed behaved conventionally and were respectful to Titania, obedient to Oberon, and deferent to the other gods and goddesses they encountered. Cobweb frequently defied those in authority. We lay under the bright moon, her arms about my neck.

          “You touched me,” she said.

          I smiled. “I do all the time.”

          “Don’t forget me when you go on.”

          “Go on to what? I’m not planning to go anywhere.”

          She leaned her head even closer to me. The moonlight made her hair shine. We slept.
I dreamed—or, I should say, I entered a dream. Somehow, I knew I had come into a dream Oberon was having. I saw light and mist stream from a luminous source some distance away. I walked toward it. I saw a massive gate of horn and, standing in the midst of it, a man. As I knew I dwelt in Oberon’s dream, I also knew the man. He was my father.

          He stood there, tall, strong, blue in color, though much deeper blue than me. He wore a white loincloth and carried a trident. His matted hair flowed past his shoulders to the small of his back. Magnificence and kingliness radiated from him. I knelt and bowed my face to the ground.

          “Arise,” he said.

          I stood. It seemed the power—but also the grace and splendor—of all creation rested in him, Benevolence—the essence of it, not the derivative emotion we encounter in our earthly bounds—shone from his face.

          “I am your father. But you know that.”

          “I know this, but I don’t know your name.”

          “I have many names and you will learn them as you grow older.”

          “I have met you. Can I meet my mother too?”

          “Soma, the God of the Moon, has taken a fancy to her and her to him, so she is not near-by at present, but you will see her soon. Eventually you will live with me, and she will be near to you, but for now you must live where Fate has placed you. It is wisest to bow to your karma.”  He paused then continued to speak. “I have constructed this dream to teach Oberon how he should behave toward Titania. They quarrel over you, but the dream will mend their difference. Explore the dream and see.”

          I walked back into the dream. I saw Theseus and Hippolyta and four Athenian youths and maidens caught in the intricacies of love. At the same time, I saw Titania and Oberon, Titania enchanted so she loved a mortal with a donkey’s head, the four young humans enchanted in various ways, Theseus and Hippolyta estranged over his harsh judgment on one of the Athenian maidens.

          Somehow, I knew (my father’s silent voice in my soul) the dream meant reality for the humans and the things happening in it did happen to them in the facts of history. Their dream came through the horn gate. Oberon’s dream came through the gate of ivory, the gate of false dreams. None of the things he saw Titania do happened to her. In the dream, a sprite called Puck served him, and Oberon has no such servant. Oberon succeeded in humiliating Titania but saw, in the crudity of what he did to her in the dream, his own pigheadedness—or assheadedness. Dreaming, he resolved not to be harsh, as he had seen Theseus’ harshness with the mortal girl, Hermia.  

          I turned and walked out of the dream into the wood. I ran into Cobweb.

          “Is Titania asleep?” I asked.

          “She is. Peaseblossom and Mustardseed are sleeping with her to keep her warm. She doesn’t have Oberon to do that for her anymore.”

          She giggled. I kissed her.

          “What has changed about you?” she asked.

          “Has something changed?”

          “I want to worship you,” she said.

          All turned out just as my father had said. Oberon relinquished his intention to take me away for three years. Titania let me go into training on the condition she could see me from time to time. Both gave ground and were reconciled and able to bless the marriage bed of Theseus and Hippolyta and the Athenian youths and maidens. They restored the seasons and sent fair weather to bless the fields and barns of the mortals.

          Cobweb and I grow closer. Since I touched the chakra at her brow, where the third eye rests, she grows in wisdom, though she still possesses her delightful contrariness. As I train for war and grow stronger, she grows more beautiful and more irascible.

          Irascibility is a good trait if someday you may be living in a place as boring as Paradise.









David W. Landrum lives and writes in Western Michigan. His stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in such journals as New Myths, The Edge of Propinquity, Sinister Tales, and Absent Willow Review.