A Star Shall Fall

If this was a deception, it wasn’t Carline’s usual style. Irrith frowned, paid, and went inside. There she found herself a seat on one of the backless benches that covered the floor. The theatre, being crowded, she had to fight for a place, but being in London made her remember the use of her elbows. Soon she had a patch of green cushion large enough for her rump, just in time for the play to begin.

She’d been to the theatre before, though not this particular one. It amused her to watch mortals invent and play out stories that never happened. With their studied gestures and bombastic delivery of lines, they almost became something other than humanity, strange beasts in a ritual pageant.

She’d never seen anything like this before.

It was as if real people were on the stage, unaware of the audience observing them. They laughed and shouted and wept, for all the world as if these things were happening to them in truth. If their words were more eloquent and their lives more strange than any real person’s would have been, it only heightened the effect, like a polishing cloth bringing out the fine grain of wood.

It was magic. The charms and enchantments of faerie-kind were nothing to this. During one of the pauses for applause, Irrith realised she’d even seen this play before; it was an old one, The City Heiress, written by a woman last century. But this new style of acting made it all seem fresh. They wove an illusion with nothing more than the tools of ordinary life, until the audience vanished and there was nothing but the story on the stage. Here was a rich heiress, and here, the two men who would woo her, and Irrith had to struggle to remember they were simply mortals playing a part.

Mortals—and one faerie.

Irrith’s jaw fell slack when Carline walked onto the stage. That it was the elf-lady, she had no doubt; Carline looked almost exactly like herself, the glamour only serving to remove the faerie cast from her features. But she was dressed in sumptuous clothes befitting a wealthy man’s mistress, for that was the role she was playing: Diana, mistress to the younger of the two would-be suitors.

It broke the magic, and for that, Irrith resented her. In the scenes that didn’t include Diana, she could briefly lose herself once more, but every time the faerie actress reappeared Irrith was back in a noisy and boisterous theatre, watching people in costumes pretend to be something they were not. And Carline was no good at it: she could not counterfeit emotion, not as the humans could. For fae, there was little distance between pretence and feeling, and without the latter it was hard to manage the former.

When the play ended, Irrith turned to the drunken young gentleman at her side. “What was that woman doing up there?” she demanded.

“Mrs. Pritchard?” He seemed to have forgotten Irrith’s use of her elbows, for he peered at her in a friendly enough manner, albeit an unsteady one. “Too old for the role of Charlot, but she’s so splendid that—”

“Not the heiress,” Irrith said impatiently. “The other one. The mistress. Diana.”

“Oh, her.” The gentleman blinked, then turned to his companion. Her occupation was obvious enough, for he seemed to have forgotten her name. The woman, painted an inch thick, merely shrugged. He echoed the shrug back at Irrith. “She plays here on occasion. Don’t know why Garrick lets her; she isn’t any good.”

Irrith could guess. Further application of her elbows got her through the crowd and out the lobby once more, and then she followed two gentlemen around to the back of the theatre.

They had come to see Mrs. Pritchard, but were turned away at the door. Irrith loitered a little distance off until Carline emerged, dressed once more in plain clothing.

The sprite shook her head in disbelief as Carline came toward her. “All right, so you’ve charmed the manager into letting you make a public display of yourself. Why did I have to see this?”

Carline looked hurt—genuinely so. “Mr. Garrick knows my worth. Some of the best people in London have come to see me perform. Did you not enjoy the play?”

She sounded like she truly believed it: that the rich gentlemen and their ladies came to see her, rather than the splendid Mrs. Pritchard. “I enjoyed it,” Irrith said grudgingly. “But what did this have to do with anything?”

She jumped back when Carline tried to grab her arm. “Stop that,” the lady said through her teeth. “We’ve drawn attention, Irrith, and unless you want to make new friends, you’ll come with me, quickly.”