Blood & Flowers Read Online Free Page B

her mind wasn’t really on her response. She was off in creativity land. Getting her out of there was even harder than getting her to talk about Faerie.

IV
“Total chaos and incredulity.”
    W e all pretended that Lucia hadn’t said anything about venues, and we moved ahead with plans for The Bastard and the Beauty . We worked like devils. We worked like crazy. Sometimes, when Floss was particularly amazed at the amount of work being accomplished, she said we worked like brownies.
    â€œBrownies,” Nicholas would echo, “or beginning law students.” He only said this because he was stuck on a case involving a plastic surgeon and a previously wrinkled old man. When anyone asked how it was progressing, he just sighed and then said, “Please let me be the evil villain. I just want topummel someone. Or something.”
    This always made Tonio laugh until Nicholas glared little shooting stars at him, so Tonio finally gave in. Nicholas was now spending every free minute rehearsing the part of the Bastard.
    I was completely on Nicholas’s side because I’d been picked to play the Beauty. Don’t get excited here, even though I was. I wasn’t picked because I was so stunning. I was picked because I was the least stage-inhibited female around.
    Lucia would work any puppet in the world or be in any kind of costume as long as she didn’t have to be very verbal.
    Floss preferred, and was needed, to adjust costumes and make trees walk and fish fly. People who came to our shows as Outlaw virgins were consistently amazed by Floss’s artistry, and rightly so, because although she used magic to bring things to the peak of their goodness, without the artistry all the magic in the world wouldn’t have made a difference.
    PUPPETS THAT MAY MAKE AN APPEARANCE AT AN OUTLAW SHOW
    Walking mountains
    Floating planets
    Suns the size of marbles
    Sparrows big enough to be ridden across a stage
    Frog heads as large as supersize helium balloons
    And, of course, fish that breathe
    Think of all this visual overload happening at once and you’ve got an idea, if you haven’t seen us yet, of the scope of an Outlaw production. It all made something that was wonderful, magical, and, more often than not, highly political and rude. Previous Outlaw shows include Rape and Ruin, Flirting with Foster, Quotes They Say They’ve Never Said, and now, The Bastard and the Beauty.
    Once Nicholas became Bastard, I became even more committed to my part than normal. We got an onstage kiss, too. I worked toward that, and then worked it for all I was worth, even though it wasobvious that the kiss would end in certain death.
    So what was The Bastard and the Beauty about? Tonio started a lot of our plays with fairy tales, those stories couched in hidden messages about the proper way for people, especially young ladies, to behave. Moralistic little tales about people who don’t do what they’re “supposed to do” and how they pay for the fact that they ignore consequences. For this particular production, he gave magic free rein. Viewers would watch the Beauty try to make the Bastard do the right thing, watch him ignore her, watch people turn into animals, and watch everyone pay for the mistakes of others.
    Tonio’s imagination, perspective, and worldview constantly amaze me.
    And the giant chicken? Well, in a tale with this many turns and detours, who better to have for your narrator?
    Remember, though, Lucia was in that costume, and Lucia, gifted as anyone I’ve ever seen with comic timing and pratfalls, didn’t like to talk onstage. So Tonio played the voice and Lucia acted out the narration.
    Total chaos and incredulity.
    I love the Outlaws.
    C OMPLETE E XPLICATION I NTERLUDE
    The Bastard and the Beauty, a Cautionary Tale
    He’s a lawn boy at a golf course located in an exclusive country club, the one with the chicken mascot. His job is to spray noxious chemicals on everything.