The Ren Faire, pt. 4: Burn Them
“We shall proceed with the execution!”
Tyler’s note: There is now a table of contents in case you’re lost!
Previously: Deshawn’s mother is put to trial. It’s interrupted by a strange interlude from the jester, St Lenny. But then it is determined that both she and her son are witches.
“Don’t you worry, honey. We’re gonna get out of this,” his mom said from the other side of the wooden stake.
Deshawn didn’t see how. The knots that the sheriff’s henchmen had tied were pretty firm.
Deshawn glanced around. The sun was setting, so it was harder to make out his surroundings. But his surroundings were not subtle: They were enveloped by trees and sneering actors and attendees, all dressed in festival-wear. The queen was nowhere to be seen. (In this role-system, the queen was probably above stake-burnings.) But her jester was there. Or, whoever the guy was.
Deshawn remembered his name: St Lenny. Again, he was wearing different clothing. This time: a black leather cuirass with a bow and quiver strapped to his back. He leaned against the shoulder of the Sheriff, smiling broadly. It seemed that now the former jester was role-playing Guy of Gisborne, evil knight and lefthand man of the Sheriff of Nottingham. He squinted at Deshawn as if Deshawn were one of those optical illusions that you could only make out by staring the right way.
St Lenny walked forward to the makeshift platform where the stake was mounted. He looked up at Deshawn. He shifted his chin sideways. “Do I not know thee?”
Deshawn shook his head.
“What dost thou inside thy noggin, young lad?” he pointed. “All thy ceaseless sorting of things. Yes, I do sense it in thee. Dost this endeavor serve thee any purpose? Save for keeping thee aloof from our world?” he asked, gesturing outwards.
“Leave my son the fuck alone!” called Deshawn’s mom.
“Shh, you.” St Lenny snapped his hand together and Deshawn’s mom went quiet. He peered back at Deshawn. “Hmm. Yes. I feel that in some manner I do know thee.”
Deshawn tried to push back as St Lenny flooded into him. He erected dams, but Lenny simply cascaded under, over, and around them.
“I see…. Yea, thou hast been in pursuit of us, hast thou not? Yea, I suspect I hath noticed thy snooping spirit, thou seeker.”
Oh crap. Deshawn suddenly realized who he was dealing with. St Lenny was the one that his Discord had been investigating for weeks. The one who’d been causing crazy psychic contagions across New York. He was the Instigator.
“That’s right,” St Lenny smirked, literally reading Deshawn’s mind. He broke from ye olde English and spoke in a low tone, “You should know something, friend: You can’t actually discover people like us without being discovered in return. Especially these days. So. Did you come here on purpose? You must have sensed that the Ren Faire is one of our favorite recruiting grounds, no? On some level? Ah, no – you had no idea! Ha!” He clapped. “That’s rich. What a lovely coincidence.”
Deshawn looked away, towards the tops of the trees.
“So unyielding! Just like your mom! And yet so unlike your mom. She loves her dogma, doesn’t she? ‘Grr! Don’t tread on me!’ Boring. But you, you’re beyond dogma. You’re beyond…everything! Or at least you’d like to be. It’s beautiful, actually. I could see it all the way from the Queen’s gallery. I have an eye for these things. I suspect it’s why we were meant to meet. Did you like my speech? No, forget it, just tell me this: Am I right? About who you are? You’re the Mapmaker. I know I’m right.”
Deshawn squeezed his eyes closed.
“Hehe! Look at you! You’re tied as tight as the knots on your wrists. Well, if you’re the one I think you are, then you’ll survive this. Probably. It might take some cracking of that egg you’ve built around yourself,” St Lenny said, knocking with his fist on an imaginary shell, “And how glorious it would be to see it crack.” St Lenny rubbed his hands together. “Well then. Good luck!”
St Lenny stepped back and whispered something in the sheriff’s ear.
“We shall proceed with the execution!” announced the Sheriff.
Deshawn’s dad reach reached the edge of the clearing, panting from wheeling his Adventurer 3000 through the woods. He looked like someone who didn’t know what to do.
Maybe some attendees broke off during the anomaly and called the cops, some desperate part of Deshawn hoped. Once more, he fingered the ropes binding his hands. But he knew that historical reenactment – as a subculture – overlapped heavily with the the demographic of kinksters. And kinksters knew their knots.
A man entered the clearing with a blazing torch. Deshawn’s dad gaped as the man strode past. Deshawn wondered how the man had managed to light his torch without breaking genre. Flint and steel? Deshawn wondered lots of things to keep his sense of mortal panic at bay.
It didn’t work. His mom felt it: “Dehuan, wht iff utt?” she said.
“What?”
“Ugh! That asshole did something to my mouth. What’s going on?” She could feel Deshawn’s panic but she couldn’t see the source of it. She couldn’t see the crowd parting. She couldn’t see the torchbearer striding solemnly toward them, the flaming branch casting shadows across the surrounding trees. Deshawn’s cheeks twitched in and out of a wince.
“Burn the witches!” yelled the crowd. “Send them to hell!”
Deshawn now felt his mom’s panic in return. She strained painfully around the edge of the stake to catch a glimpse. “No. You can’t be serious. There’s no way–– Baby, don’t you worry, your dad’s gonna figure something out. We’re gonna be laughing about this to your aunties at next Christmas.” She didn’t mean anything she was saying. “I’m so sorry, honey. You warned us and I didn’t listen.” She did meant that.
The torchbearer was now standing directly beside them. Nausea swept over the Deshawn. He watched it infect a few of the closest people in the crowd; one began to wretch. “Mercy!” another cried.
“There will be no mercy!” the sheriff cried in return. But then St Lenny whispered something else in the sheriff’s ear. “But we will give these heathens a final chance to repent!” the sheriff announced.
The crowd looked surprised.
“While we cannot save their souls in this world, mayhaps the Lord shall take pity upon their twisted souls for the next!” the sheriff explained.
“Hear, hear!” someone shouted. It was the freckled woman from earlier.
Now several in the crowd nodded. And others seconded: “Hear, hear!” They were Good Christians after all.
The sheriff approached the stake where Deshawn and his mother were tied. “Any last words, heathens?” asked the sheriff.
St Lenny and freckled woman giggled at this word: heathens.
Where had Deshawn heard that term? He had bookmarked it before. It was the name of a group that should be on his maps. It had been posted on some forum. Wait a minute: forum. Forums. The Psi-tings forum. Genre possession. Catastrophic anomalies! Deshawn knew what he needed to do.
But how should he do it? What words were so entrancingly modern that they could snap at least a few people here out of trance? He wasn’t sure if he knew any words like this.
But he didn’t need to know them because his Columbia professor mom did.
“Mom,” he whispered. “I know how to get out of this. I need you to trust me. I need to do exactly what I say.”
“Tell me, baby. I promise I’ll listen. Tell me what to do.”
“Postmodern discourse.”
“What?”
“Or ‘critical theory.’ To be honest, I don’t really know what either of those phrases mean.”
The sheriff scowled. “Torchbearer, what are they saying?”
The torchbearer looked baffled.
Deshawn turned his head back towards his mom. “You said you’d trust me this time. You promised.”
“I did.”
“Then shout about about all that stuff you talk about at the university. Like, uh, about feminism and postcolonialism and things like that.”
The torchbearer furrowed his brow at the mention of feminism.
Deshawn’s mom sighed in frustration. “What good will that do?”
“Remember that lecture where you said ‘everything is text?’ Edit the text.”
Finally, he felt understanding wash over her.
“All right, Deshawn. We’ve got this.”
“Speak up, heathens! Pronounce thy final words for us all to hear!”
And so, his mom cleared her throat and bellowed her first spell:
The Renaissance Faire is a performative space where predominantly white attendees engage in the costumed reenactment of a highly idealized and anachronistic version of precolonial European history!
Everyone went silent. The torchbearer took a step back.
“Did it work?” she asked Deshawn.
Deshawn forced himself to stare at the faces in the crowd.
“Keep going, I think it’s working!” he said.
And so she continued:
This event serves as a cultural simulacrum, reconstructing a sanitized, romanticized narrative that often glosses over the complex socio-political realities of the actual historical era!
The Faire becomes a site for the indulgence of nostalgic feudal fantasies, conspicuously omitting the era's inherent class stratifications, gender dynamics, and pervasive bigotry!
Such indulgence reflects a selective historical engagement, one that privileges certain narratives while eliding the more problematic aspects of medieval society, thus perpetuating a Eurocentric perspective that can be critiqued for its implicit reinforcement of contemporary hegemonic structures!
She spoke and the audience stumbled. They squeezed their faces open and closed as if they were seeing ghosts and couldn’t believe their eyes.
One woman in a corset jumped forward to yell, “Listen not to yon traitor! She doth defied the Queen!”
Deshawn’s mother stretched her head around the stake to catch a glimpse of the corsetted woman. Then she spoke:
The corset functions as a corporeal instrument of patriarchal exploitation, designed to contort and constrict the female form in accordance with a fetishistic, phallocentric aesthetic ideal!
The woman looked stunned.
The body is a site of political discourse; the way in which we choose to adorn it symbolizes our implicit support or subversion of the colonization of the body by sociopolitical forces.
Thus, the adorning of the body in archaic, Eurocentric costumes constitutes an implicit endorsement of racism, sexism, classism, and systemic violence!
The crowd looked down at their costumes. The woman in the corset froze. Deshawn could feel the signature feeling of ideological conflict ripple across her mindspace. It echoed out to the people around her.
Dewhsawn knew that, while historical reenactment typically attracted a conservative demographic, the Ren Faire in particular attracted a much more liberal crowd of cosplayers, artists, former theater kids and queer-identifying people, such as – most likely, by the vibe of her – this woman. He watched her retreat into the crowd in embarrassment.
The Queen’s minstrel, struggling against himself, made one final, desperate attempt: “She casts spells! Silence the witch!”
“Witch, huh?” said Deshawn’s mom, her voice now strong and confident. “Let us examine that term:”
Our understanding of reality is mediated by language, thus we must interrogate its role in perpetuating oppressive power structures!
In particular, let us critically deconstruct the term “witch” as a linguistic tool wielded to subjugate and vilify through a systemic process of othering!
The word “witch” asserts itself as means by which the patriarchy reestablishes control when threatened by feminine power!
The minstrel glanced around at the rest of the crowd. “I didn’t mean it that way!” he claimed. “I’m not a sexist!”
“What strange words dost thou speaketh?” said a woman dressed as a peasant next to him.
“Uh, I don’t know! I mean: I know not!” said the minstrel as he moved back toward the edge of the crowd.
As his mom continued, St Lenny stared up the two of them in awe. He nodded to Deshawn as if to say well played. Then he whispered again in the sheriff’s ear. The sheriff frowned and looked at St Lenny. St Lenny nodded and tugged the sheriff toward the platform. The sheriff took out a dagger.
Deshawn watched his dad try to wheel his way through the crowd. But the freckled woman took hold of the wheelchair’s frame and steered him off into the woods, cackling.
“Dad!”
Now the sheriff passed the dagger to the torchbearer. For a moment the torchbearer stood over them, turning the blade in a somersault across his palm. Deshawn smelled his sweat, felt his hesitation.
“Mom!” Deshawn nudged her with his elbow. “Stop! Mom, stop!”
“Yes, enough!” cried the sheriff over his mom’s words. “I’ve heard enough! Everyone!” He called out to the crowd. “Hear my words and heed them fast: we must bow!”
Deshawn’s mom paused. “What did he say?” she muttered to Deshawn.
“Our sheriff commands you all to bow!” yelled the freckled woman.
Members of the audience, desperate for something to do, began to bow.
The torchbearer approached with the knife. He cut Deshawn and his mom from the stake. They stood on the platform uncertainly while the sheriff began a speech.
“May the Lord forgive us, for we have made a grievous error! These two are no witches. Nay! They are…prophets!”
The audience gasped.
“They are prophets of the Lord! Brought here to shame us into Christian humility! Indeed, did all of us not just wonder: ‘What strange words she speaks. And yet it is as if these words somehow rule my heart! It is as if she speaks the truth!’ Yea! Indeed! For they are holy truths! Divine edicts! Prophecies from the world to come!” The sheriff climbed atop the platform, pushing the torchbearer out of the way. “It is we who must repent!”
“We must repent!” called St Lenny.
The crowd took up the phrase: “We repent!” “We must repent!”
A maiden wept and covered her face. The minstrel groveled in the dirt. The falconer put his hands together and entreated the sky for mercy.
Meanwhile St Lenny had danced around the edge of the clearing, shedding his costume. He circled to a region behind Deshawn where someone new stood, cloaked by the shadows of the trees. Multiple someones.
Deshawn strained his eyes. He recognized one of them. It was bearded man in the pointy wide-brimmed hat, the one who had run off earlier during the trial. And, somehow, Deshawn also recognized the younger man next to the bearded one, who St Lenny was passing a bow and arrow. This man wore tights and an archer’s cap with a feather in it. The outfit was bright green – which Deshawn realized was a Psi hallucination, since it was too dark to make out color. It was––
“Robinhood!” growled the sheriff. “You dare show your face in these––”
All eyes went from Robinhood to the sheriff. The actor playing the Sheriff of Nottingham now had an arrow shaft sticking out of his chest. The man gurgled and then collapsed. Everyone froze.
Deshawn’s mom grabbed his hand. “Baby. It’s time to go.”
They hopped off the platform as Robin Hood’s Merry Men stormed the clearing.
Friar Tuck landed a sandaled foot into the gut of one henchman. Little John walloped a second with his quarterstaff. Robinhood and Will Scarlett together climbed the platform, driving their shoulders into the torchbearer. The torchbearer teetered on the edge of the platform before plummeting to the ground with a dull thud. His torch rolled across the dirt, lighting leaves and twigs with fire.
The rest of the crowd ran into all directions, screaming.
Deshawn and his mom dodged as Little John tried to scoop them into his bearlike arms. “Wizards, we hath come to deliver thee from peril!”
“No thank you!” his mom yelled back.
But the Merry Men were trapped in their roles as heroes: They could not allow Deshawn and his mom to leave without saving them first.
Maid Marion leapt through the flames to box a thug along the jaw. Then she grabbed the tail of Deshawn’s shirt. “Little sorcerer! Come with me!”
“Hands off my son, lady!” Deshawn’s mom slapped her to the ground.
“Wow, mom,” Deshawn said, astonished.
“Come on!” she took his hand again.
But now the sheriff’s men were trying to save them too. They were prophets after all. A man in black doublet and breeches vaulted into their path. The fire glinted in his eyes. “Seers! I shall guard thee!”
“Guard this,” said Little John, nonsensically, as he swung with his quarterstaff. The sheriff’s man parried with his sword, cutting the quarterstaff in half.
“Methinks thou wouldst name yon stick an eigthstaff now, wouldst thou not!” taunted the man in black, stroking his goatee.
Good one, Deshawn thought, against all reason.
Little John was staring at the splintered tip of his staff in bewilderment when the arrow pierced his neck.
The sheriff’s man stumbled back, attempting to trace the arrow’s path. He glanced toward its likely source. It was Robinhood. He had misfired from the platform. Robin Hood stood in shock.
“Little John, I…John, I meant to strike yon villain, not thee. Little John! Someone help him!”
The sheriff’s man shifted, uncertain what his role dictated as blood spurted out of the actor playing Little John.
“Oh my god.” Deshawn was unable to look away. Was this more Psi-hallucination or were people really getting hurt?
“Don’t look.” His mom pulled him to the ground. “This way.”
They ducked into the woods.
Deshawn pressed himself against a tree. He covered his ears against the clanging of swords and the crackling of the fire consuming the clearing behind them.
“Deshawn, we need to go.”
“Just one minute,” said Deshawn, panting.
His mother hugged him. For a moment, hidden behind the tree, they caught their breath together.
His mom gulped one last breath then said, “OK, come on, we need to find your dad.”
They stayed low, zig-zagging through the trees.
But now the clangs of battle gave way to the clopping of hooves. A trumpet sounded. It was the queen’s reinforcements galloping straight towards them.
“Hold!” shouts one of the three men on horseback. The horses skidded to a stop in front of Deshawn and his mother. A horse snorted in their faces. “God’s teeth! It’s them!”
“Who goeth there? Thee pair, reveal thy names.”
“Captain, it’s the sorcerers. The sorcerers have escaped.”
Clearly these men had not yet learned that they were prophets.
“By the saints, you’re right, it’s the two sorcerers!”
“Three,” said a voice from behind.
Deshawn turned.
It was the man with the pointy hat. The man activated the LED orb on top of his staff. It glowed with blue-white light. “Three sorcerers,” he clarified.
The horsemen laughed.
“Step aside, old man,” said the captain. “We havecCome hither on behalf of Her Majesty, the Queen.”
The bearded man stayed planted. “These two are under my protection. And this one,” he said, pointing his staff at Deshawn, “Has yet to receive his quest. You would not get in the way of a wizard granting the chosen one his quest, would you?” The top of his staff now seemed to glow brighter. It cast a unearthly glow across the wrinkles of his face.
The captain glanced to his companions. All three slid from their horses and drew their swords. Their blades and armor gleamed in the shine of the LED orb and the fire beyond.
“Tis your final warning, greybeard. Step aside.”
The light of the orb now engulfed the scene. But Deshawn noticed that the shadows on the trees hadn’t changed. The light was hallucinatory. Some part of Deshawn’s mind – still clinging to genre – wanted to accept that this man was in fact a wizard wielding a magical staff. He wondered how bright the light must be for the queen’s knights, who advanced while shielding their eyes.
Deshawn and his mother backed away.
“Thine companions here appear not keen for battle,” said the captain, his sword pointed at the wizard. “You wouldst thou contend with us alone?”
“No,” said the wizard. “Not alone.” The man’s staff suddenly flashed, blinding them. “Azurigon! I summon thee!”
Next release: Dragons were a valid fear.
I laughed when Deshawn’s mother's began casting her "spell" and when everyone tried to rescue them haha. The Ren Faire is a great setting for these concepts!