The scene was perfect. Music, games, performers. Everywhere you looked brightly coloured costumes and feats meant to amaze and entertain with clever use of technology, magic or raw skill gathered crowds. Many cheered and clapped, many laughed. Rides and booths filled the fairground and spilled out into the surrounding streets and people from all over the region flooded into the village to watch the performers or try their luck and coins against the games slanted against their favor.
One performers, a shapely woman balanced on top of a pole on one hand, the pole moving under her as she constantly adjusted her balance. Her other hand held a flute to her lips playing a slow tune, the unusual mouth piece allowing her to play with only one hand. But it was no ordinary performer.... it was me behind the harlequins' mast and inside the gaudy costume that make me look of the opposite gender, and as the crowd watched me I watched them. What better disguise than someone who wants to be looked at?
My arm begins to tire to placing the flute on my belt I band my body and place a foot next to my hand on the pole adjusting my weight a stand still balanced and use the height to look over the crowd before I notice a familiar silhouette. Closing my eyes I once again begin to play, a faster tune this time, two hands allowing me to play normally with all the holes available to me.
I watch them approach the fair ground, I had been worried they wouldn't come and I;d have t go looking for them, but luck it seemed was my ally today. Placing my other foot on my roost I curl my body and somersault to the ground landing low to the ground as the pole I had been standing on falls to the ground. Staying low I place my left foot out in front of me keeping it strait as I rise in as exaggerated step that flows into a cartwheel none of my flexibility lost in my disguise. The cartwheel is followed by another, then a forwards somersault the brings me right in front of the princess my head bowed, and the tips on my gloved fingers on the rough paving my right leg bent under me and my left strait out to the side.
"Fair morrow." I say my voice changed to match my disguise. "Welcome child, you look like you might be interested in a song.. more than a song a story of a brave hero and a vile murderer who tried to do away with his at the behest of an evil queen."
I flip backwards landing on my feet the flute once again raised in an introductory solo fitting of the braves hero who walked this earth.. though the one in the song was far from it.
Not long ago in the land of Vykendria,
A tale unfolded, the cause of hysteria.
A man lived by the name of Dystan,
If you wish to know what happened you'd better listen.
It was delivered fast like a limerick and I smile under my mask as the man who wrongly thinks his name to be same as the one in the song is right next to the child I sing it to, the song is accompanied with a bar of two of music between each verse.
There was an order whose number was seven,
Whose role was to protect those mandated by heaven.
To rule the land with a fair and just hand,
But all was not well in the palace so grand.
Dystan himself was a man with a mission,
The seventh of L'Sette, a job to be done without commission.
But the queen's eyes saw all and word was given,
To her finest assassins, her face was liven.
And so a price was accepted with glee,
Another day Dystan was never to see.
Two men stole out to end his life,
And so happened the worst of strife.
In a square under a tree one waited,
His thirst for blood and fame could not be sated.
So before his brother came to arrive,
He attacked Dystan.......
I pause not finishing the sentence except in my head... 'who failed to survive'.... I smile under my mask as this time there is no music and as I enter the final verse my eyes meet the child's.
So when the brother can up so see,
There was nothing left for but to flee.
The life of the seventh of L'Sette was through,
But no witness nor word was delivered to you.
I dance past her impeccably pressing a spot on the flute and a barb, barely a skin's thickness long and invisible in the spinning movement finds the princess' arm and her ever to her it would be nothing more than an accidental bump with the flute and I stop my spin facing her.
"Apologizes... I'm clumsy.. which is why I will never play for royalty."
I flip away from her in contrast to my claim of clumsiness and turn once more plowing into the crowd.