The light is changing. She peers up beneath a shading hand as she steps off a number fifteen bus at the corner, there. The sun, having past its zenith, begins its inexorable descent toward a monstrous wall of rain-heavy cloud already stretched across one whole side of the sky, bulwarks that swell from stoney blues and greys up and up through warming browns to hazy, shredded palisades and parapets of ivory, and already the towers of downtown have been overwhelmed. The bus unkneels with sigh behind her, pulls away with a snort, on up the hill.

Across the street and down, a couple of similar brick buildings shoulder up three or four storeys together, the one at this corner higher than the one at the next as the street slopes before them. Above her, the skeletal frame of what had once been a grand awning to cover the sidewalk, though the wide windows of the storefront are newly, clearly clean. Inside, wide sheets of graffiti’d plywood neatly stacked to one side of the space, lengths of cyclone fencing laid upright against the other wall, and plastic signs lapped one atop another that say Wilson Properties, Sutherlin Bank, Anaphenics. Tools neatly racked against a bar back there, shovels, bolt-cutters, pry bars, and a fading mural on the back wall, of a leaning, red-roofed tower over sketches of olive trees. Lido, the letters cursive above. The next and lower storefront, windows similarly sparkling, and the letters on them freshly painted, red that’s lined and edged with black, Monte Carlo, they say. Pizza. Steaks.

“Two Italian restaurants,” says Ellen Oh.

A truck climbing the hill catches its breath with a gear-change, and in its wake the strikingly sharp pop of an actual drum being actually hit, the wash and murmur of a crowd. The side street by the Monte Carlo has been blocked with sawhorses painted orange and white, and a sign that says NO THRU TRAFFIC in officious sans-serif. Past them, the brick at the head of that block gives way to looming warehouse. The long windows of it, high above, stretched between concrete pillars, have been painted over with a mural of enormously exaggerated wildflowers, fiddlenecks and pimpernels, yarrow and verbena, angelica, camas, columbine and dogbane, sea thrift and manzanita, windflowers, all manner of thistles and lupines, hawksbeard, willowherb, brassbuttons and bog orchids, creamcups, gooseberry, stonecrop, redclaws and milkvetch, asters, nodding onions, each and all subject to the ministrations of busily stylized bees that seem to thrum in the light on the painted glass to gather and dust and throng in regulated streams to and from an abstract hive painted there, a honeycombed boteh above an overhead door. The street itself’s been set about with picnic tables and wheeled carts here and there loaded with bottles of water and soda, kombucha, tea, beer and cider, with burritos and samosas, calzones, sandwiches and onigiri, and a thinly scattered crowd is sat or stood about, or mills along the loading dock down the length of the warehouse, where smaller overhead doors have been cranked open on stalls hung about with photographs, with drawings or paintings, shelves of sculpture, trinkets, knick-knacked figurines.

“This is a new one,” says a woman into a microphone. She’s stood under the overhead door, in a slinkily tight dress that can’t decide in the light if it’s purple or green or blue. “Well, an old one, but it’s new to us.” A simple drum kit’s been set up behind her, but the drummer ruddily bald has taken up the keyboard of a melodica, fitting the mouthpiece to his lips. The kid beside her’s started a licking strum from his big-bellied guitar, his head hung low, face obscured by a lone long lock dyed blue. “But we had to add it,” says the woman into the microphone, “for our backup girls today, what did you go with,” looking to her side, “the Triplettes?” Three women beside her, the same straight yellow hair, the same brief black dresses, the same knowing smiles from the same red-painted lips, “Stevie, Star, and Tina!” Politely smattered applause. The drummer’s blowing a simple repeating phrase through the melodica, three notes, four, and like that the song’s begun, she’s my evil twin, she knows what trouble I’m in.

Ellen sidles in among empty tables on the verges of that crowd, toward a man stood there, quite short, a paper boat of nachos in one hand, licking cheese from his thumb. His jacket, his vest, his trousers all of soberly different plaids. We’re a miracle, the backup singers leaning close to their one mike, genetic miracle. Ellen steps closer, putting on an ingratiating smile, “Abby Tinker?” she says.

He cocks his brow, looks about at no one else close enough, shrugs, shakes his head. “I’m afraid you have me mistaken,” he says, but she’s already turning away. She’s my best friend, she’s my girl, she’s my girl’s best friend. A stoop-shouldered man in a red apron clears empty wrappers from a table, pushing a little pot of cornflowers back to the middle of it. Applause breaks out, the backup singers bow, the drummer’s already kicking a lumbering beat to life, as the kid swings his guitar aside, clapping along with the singers as they start up a shuffling, side-to-side dance, Imetun ímewoi ohuhan dem, they’re chanting, imetun ímewoi ohuhan dem. A woman in a red-dappled sundress and a clinking motorcycle jacket dances unselfconsciously with a great long two-handed sword, the tip of the scabbard of it planted on the pavement. Ellen slips past, around another table, headed toward a barefoot woman perfectly still, necklaces of wildly colored beads layered over her brown breast. “Abby Tinker,” says Ellen.

“Zeina,” says the woman. “The Mooncalfe, of Northeast.” Turning her head just enough to look Ellen up and down, grey racerback tank and the dark ink stitched across her shoulders, up her throat, loose blue yoga pants, bright orange running shoes. “You’re not of the court, are you.”

Ellen shakes her head. Rudan híókan eye, eye, belts the singer, as the shimmying triplets and the rest of the band clap and chant ímehú úlúhúge eyegerava, ímehú úlúhúge eyegerava. The clapping scatters, syncopating, as the kid swings his guitar back into place. Rudan híókan eye! The changing light has finally begun to dim as it has threatened, yellowing as the clouds green over the sky. A few fat drops of rain plop, darkening the street, glossing the painted tables, but the crowd such as it is seems unconcerned, still milling about, clapping as the kid launches a churning riff, and the drummer lifts his sticks, waiting, waiting, the singers all suddenly pressing close as out from under the overhead door behind them lines of men and women hasten, awkward in their arms great furled umbrellas that they hustle into place over carts and tables, this knot of audience or that, shoving them open, ribs and shafts of them strung with tiny lights of white and amber, already lit. The backup singers cluster close about their mike, oohing into it, as the singer lifts hers, give me your mascara and your phosphorous, holding out her free hand, not quite pointing to a woman there in the audience, sat beneath one of the freshly opened bumbershoots, the focus of one of the larger swirls of crowd, black curls brushed back, white gown plain and simple, beautiful queen, sings the band, with your beautiful gene, and here come the drums.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The sun struggles to return, gusts of light sweeping the street, flaring the dull brown hair of a woman across the crowd to russet and gold, and her white blouse too bright for a moment, fading as the sun relents. Beside her, a second woman unchanged by the changing light, her cloud of loose white hair still brightly, whitely gold, even as the drizzle resumes. Ellen makes her way toward them, past a portly man in peppermint seersucker, an older woman in various khakis, a pompadour’d boy in a brown bomber jacket. A woman all in black approaches the other two, heavy camera about her neck, and the brown-haired woman takes her proffered hand. They head together, the two of them, toward the warehouse, and when the thunder calls, it trembles in your belly, but Ellen doesn’t swerve to follow, she keeps on, between a couple of carts, out to the edge of the crowd, “Abby Tinker!” she calls, as she approaches.

Marfisa turns with a jerk, a scowl, a step too close, too quick, “What do you want with her,” she says, too tensely quiet.

“Nothing,” says Ellen Oh, undaunted. “Not a thing. I’m fairly certain it’s you I’m supposed to meet.”

•

The only light seeps rain-soaked through mullioned windows over those six tables of a length and width pushed together, their tops of differing colors of formica. Gloria’s slumped at the one end of it, elbows on lavender and earthy brown. She sighs, heavily, at the sound of a footfall behind her. “Is it over?”

“One oughtn’t walk out on a queen like that,” says Anna. She flips a naked light switch. Nothing happens.

“We interrupted them,” says Gloria. “They never had a chance to finish. Was an illegal street fair really the smartest idea?”

“Her majesty,” says Anna, stepping tock-clock toward the table, “did you a great honor today.”

“Her majesty,” says Gloria, sitting up, “tried to give me my own goddamn house. That’s gonna make anybody a little testy. And if she’s gonna,” turning about as tick-clack Anna cross behind her, “if she’s gonna honor anybody, with a title, or an office, or whatever, why isn’t it, why didn’t she,” rattle of wheels as Anna drags over a chair, “it should’ve been,” says Gloria, “you.”

“I’ve slept in a filing cabinet,” says Anna Nirdlinger, sitting down.

“I, ah,” says Gloria, “what?”

“When I first started out, I slept in a roll-top desk with a dozen other girls. We each had a pigeonhole of our own. I’ve slept in a banker’s box: spacious, and comfortable, but there’s no cachet to it. Cardboard, you know. At Welund Rhythidd?” she takes off her glasses, “most of the paralegals sleep in the big bottom drawer of their desks.” Wiping a bit of dust from a narrow lens. “I preferred the kneehole. It was considered,” she sighs, “odd.” Puts the glasses back on.

“But,” says Gloria. “You, aren’t a domestic.”

“I was an amanuensis, for a time,” says Anna. “That first night, after I first saw to her majesty, Duenna, that night when I slept in a bed, for the very first time?” looking away, in that underwater light. Gloria shifts a hand, reaching toward her, across the lavender. “Her majesty,” says Anna, “would never deign to honor such as me.”

“But that’s not okay,” says Gloria.

“Yet here,” says Anna, and she smiles, “I sleep in a bed.”

“We could,” says Gloria, sitting back, “maybe,” she shrugs, “see about getting you, a better one,” hands up, a shrug.

•

Quick fingers, a needle, thin black thread, a delicate scrap of lingerie pinned to a padded board on tailor-folded knees, Aigulha bent over deftly seals a rip, seamlessly matching net-wise warp and weft of lace. “I liked the music,” she’s saying. “I liked the dancing.” Gently tugging, fitting, pulling. Away over there through the darkness a shift, a sigh, a muttering, muffled moan.

“I,” Costurere’s saying, “liked the food,” crinkily smoothing a paper pattern over a stretch of black pleather that shines in the glare of the trouble light hung above them. “Empanadas,” she says, pushing a pin, “potatoes and cheese,” and another, “ancho peppers,” wincing at the sound of a slap. Someone laughs.

“You liked the beer,” says Aigulha, smoothing fretwork with a fingertip.

“I did like the beer,” says Costurere, reaching for a pair of pinking shears.

Away across the otherwise darkness between and among the blocky columns, fresh candles have been set before the empty bed, about the layered rugs and cushions, and two figures tightly curled about each other in that pillowy nest, one atop the other, curl of gold-streaked back, knees jackknifed about gold-smeared arms wrapped about hips, ankles crossed toe-flexing feet locked above and bracing below heads tucked between gold-spattered thighs, soaked yellow severe splayed over buttocks, shoulders, rugs and cushions, sip and slurp-smack shivering undulations, an effortful grunt.

“I wanted,” says Aigulha, precisely trimming a leftover bit of thread with tiny silver scissors. “Would you want to go dancing? Again? Sometime?”

“Put up your work, girls,” says the Queen, warmly magnanimous behind them. “You might have music and dancing, beer and pies, sweet cakes and kisses whenever you wish.” Swish and sway of her gown stepped from the shadows, a hand against the glare of the trouble light. “They got started without us, I see.”

“Ma’am,” says Aigulha, and “Majesty,” Costurere, as they scramble to their feet, laying shears and scissors aside. The Queen spreads wide her arms, tips back her head, as fingers cleverly undo this knot, that hook, and her plain white simple gown collapses to the floor. She catches their hands in hers, and tugs them after, “Come,” she says.

“But, my lady,” says Costurere, looking back.

“The mending, ma’am,” says Aigulha.

“We’ve said,” the Queen pulls them both close. “Now’s not the time for work.” Lifting Costurere’s hand in hers, her knuckle clotted with a curd of gold she presses to Costurere’s lips. Smiling as Aigulha leans in for a taste. “Let’s go,” says the Queen, “and see what play they do inspire.”

Behind them, as they head away toward the candles, someone steps just close enough to the trouble light to reveal black spike-heeled pumps, bare knees, a brief black skirt. Tick-click, tack-click away from the light, not toward the candles, but the darkness. Scrape of a chair. Snap of switch, lights blaze about the mirror over the dressing table. She sets down a stack of red plastic cups, a bottle half-filled with amber wine. Oremus Tokaji Aszú, says the label. Öt Puttonyos.

Sitting herself in the chair, she tucks a long and yellow lock behind her ear, but it twists as her fingers slip through it, coiling in darkening curls. When she reaches for the bottle her eyes are green, not blue. She pours a slug in a plastic cup, and another, then sits back, lifting the cup in something of a toast. In the mirror, up behind her, a bright wild knot of candlelight, the rugs and cushions, the Queen reclining, and Aigulha and Costurere laid with her, mob-capped heads in her lap, on her hip, watching intent that ouroboric knot of pleasure, something like it there before them, striving for, straining for, gasping, and a groan.