Forklift and Firelight

I park the truck at the far end of the dirt lot and sit there a minute, watching myself in the mirror. Kristin Greenwood, forty-two years old, forklift operator, wife of fourteen years, sitting in a truck wearing a mask.

Well, not the mask yet. The mask is in my bag, along with the bodice I haven't had the guts to change into.

Alexander is already inside. That was the deal. We go in separately, we meet as strangers, we spend the whole evening pretending we've never seen each other before. It was his anniversary idea, four years ago, and it worked well enough that we tried it again this year. This year I'm doing it right.

I open the bag and pull out the bodice I bought off a costume site last month. It's got a lacing front and it pushes everything up in a way my work shirts absolutely do not. I check the lot, see nobody, and swap it over my bra in the driver's seat like I'm nineteen at a rest stop, which I have not been in twenty-three years.

The mask is red leather, half-face, with little painted swirls at the corners. I tie it and look in the mirror again. Red leather on dark brown skin, my braids pinned up off my neck, gold hoops I never wear on the dock.

"Oh, shut up," I tell myself, because I'm grinning like an idiot. "You look ridiculous."

I look great. That's the problem. I haven't looked great on purpose in a long time.

The faire is sprawled out in the pines the way it always is, canvas tents and woodsmoke and the smell of roasted meat coming from somewhere near the gate. There's a lute player set up just inside, some guy with a hat full of dollar bills, and the late sun comes slanting through the trees in gold stripes. First Saturday, so the whole place is packed.

I walk in alone and the crowd does what crowds do, which is part around the confident-looking ones. I hold my chin up. I am not Kristin from the warehouse. I am a traveler from somewhere far away, and I don't know a single soul here.

I scan the crowd for Alexander, and I don't see him, and that's fine, that's part of it. He's got a plan. He always has a plan. I buy a cider from a vendor because my mouth is dry and stand at the edge of the jousting field where the lute drifts over from the other path.

Ethel is down that way, I know, her candle stall by the woodworking row. I should say hi to my mother-in-law, except I can't, because I don't know her today. That's going to be the hard part, walking past Ethel's stall all afternoon like a stranger. She would love it, actually. She'd play along harder than either of us.

"So," I say to my cider, "who are you?"

I decide on the walk over. I'm a merchant. A traveling merchant from a rival kingdom, which is funny because Alexander and I live in a condo. A merchant with goods nobody here has seen, spices, silks, something. I'll figure out the goods as I go.

I find a spot near the lute player and listen. He's not bad. He's actually pretty good. A couple of kids in cloaks are stomping along, and their mom is filming them on her phone, which breaks the illusion a little, so I turn my back on it.

That's when somebody clears his throat behind me.

I turn around and there's a man in a black doublet with a wooden sword on his hip and a feathered hat he clearly borrowed from somebody with a smaller head. He's got his hair pushed back and he's standing there like he rehearsed this, and I know those shoulders. Fourteen years, I know those shoulders. His face is mostly hidden by the hat brim and he's pretending to look past me at the field.

"Pardon me, lady," he says, "but I seem to have lost my way to the jousting field, and the signposts around here all point to you."

I nearly lose the cider. That is the corniest thing I have ever heard, and I've worked warehouses for twenty years.

"The signposts," I say, "all point to me."

"Every one of them." He spreads his hands. "I followed the biggest one and it led straight to this spot, and here you are. I'm as surprised as you are. Signs don't lie, though."

"You walked past three people to get here."

"Small signs," he says. "Bent, probably. Warped by the weather. The big clear sign was you."

I press my lips together so I don't laugh and blow the whole thing in the first ninety seconds. He steps a little closer, and now the hat tips back and I get a real look at him, and it's strange. It's my husband's face and it isn't. He's looking at me the way he hasn't looked at me in years, like I'm a problem he wants to solve.

"Well, ser," I say, and I let the accent come in from nowhere, some blend of everything I've ever seen on TV, "you are in luck. I know these woods. Though I should tell you, I am no lady of this realm."

"No?" He looks me up and down, slow, and I feel it in my ribs. "Where are you from, then? Somewhere with a lot of secrets, judging by the mask."

"Far from here." I take a sip of cider to buy a second. "A kingdom to the south. My family are merchants. We deal in goods you've never seen, in your... in your fair realm."

"Goods I've never seen," he repeats. "Now you have my whole attention. What kind of goods?"

"Spices." I have no idea. "Silks. Certain... remedies."

"Remedies," he says, and grins under the hat. "Dangerous trade."

"Very profitable trade." I lift my chin. "Which is why I travel with guards and speak to no one. And yet here I am, speaking to you."

"Here you are." He sketches a bow, actually a decent one, he's done the ren faire circuit enough years. "Sir Alexander of... nowhere in particular. Knight errant. Which means I have no lands, no lord, and no money, but an excellent sword arm and a great deal of free time."

"A knight with no lands."

"The lands were lost in a card game," he says, "by my father, who was terrible at cards. It's a family tragedy. We don't speak of it."

I can't help it, I laugh, one short bark, and he looks delighted with himself. Somewhere behind him a herald calls something about the joust, and he doesn't even glance over.

"You came for the joust," I say.

"I came for the signposts," he says. "The joust is a bonus."

"Tell me, Sir Alexander of Nowhere. What does a knight errant do all day, with no lands and no money?"

"Wanders." He shrugs. "Rescues people who don't need rescuing. Gets thrown out of taverns. Occasionally, if the signs are right, meets somebody interesting."

"And is that what this is? A rescue?"

"I hadn't planned on it." He looks me over again, and this time I let him, and I stand straighter so there's more to look at, because this bodice did not lace itself for nothing. "But a woman in a mask, traveling alone, selling remedies no one's ever heard of? That sounds like someone who might need an escort. These woods are full of ruffians."

"Are they."

"Terrible ones. Terrible, poorly armed ruffians who mostly work the turkey leg stalls."

"You are not a real knight," I say, "are you."

"Not even slightly."

"Good." I finish the cider and set the cup down on a rail. "Because I am not a real merchant either. My goods are feathers and river stones and I have been making up the rest since I walked in that gate."

He goes still for a second. Then the grin comes back, wider.

"Feathers and river stones," he says. "You are the worst merchant I have ever met."

"And you are the worst knight." I hold out my hand, palm down, like I've seen in movies. "Since we are both frauds, Sir Alexander, perhaps we should walk together. Two liars are safer than one."

He takes my hand and turns it over and kisses the knuckles, right there in the dirt by the lute player, and the lute guy actually changes what he's playing, something slow, and I want to throw money at him for the timing.

"Kristin," I say, before I can stop myself, my real name, out loud, into the open air.

"What?"

"Nothing. My name is..." I scan the stall banners across the path and grab one. "Eva. Of the southern kingdom. Of the feathers and stones."

"Eva." He tries it out. "That's a good name. That's a much better name than the signpost lady."

"Walk," I say, "before I remember I'm a married woman with a forklift back home."

"Married," he says, falling in beside me, matching my steps, "with a forklift. See, this is why you wear a mask. Full of secrets."

We head down the path toward the jousting field, and the sun is going gold behind the pines, and my husband walks next to me like a stranger with his hat too small, and I have not felt this in years. My heart is loud. My hands are steady. The evening has a long way to go and I plan on every minute of it.

We don't get far. Three stalls down, between a guy selling wooden spoons and a woman selling leather pouches, there's a table covered in candles. Handmade ones, fat pillars and skinny tapers, all in colors that don't exist in nature. And behind the table, in a shawl and a wimple she clearly tied herself, is Ethel.

Oh no, I think. Oh no.

Ethel spots us at the same time. I watch her eyes go from Alexander's hat to my mask to our hands, which are still linked, and I watch the exact moment she figures it out. Her mouth does a thing. She is sixty-five years old and she has been doing that mouth at me for fourteen years.

"Well," she says, loud enough for the whole row. "Sir Alexander. And his... companion."

"Madam merchant," Alexander says, playing it completely straight, "your candles glow like captured starlight."

"Flatterer." She's already reaching for two candles, one amber and one dark red, and holding them up. "This one's cinnamon. This one's called Fireside. I call it that because I made it while my son was visiting and he kept complaining it was cold."

"Fireside," Alexander repeats. "How much?"

"For you? Eight dollars."

"Madam," he says, "I am a knight errant with no lands."

"Then your lady can pay. Merchants carry coin, everyone knows that."

I dig money out of the little pouch on my belt, because Eva the merchant absolutely carries coin, and because I am not going to be the fraud who breaks character over eight dollars in front of my mother-in-law. I slap it in her palm. She takes her time counting it.

"Keep the change, Sir Alexander," she says. "You look like a man who needs the luck more than I need the money." Then she leans over the candles, drops her voice, and says to me, "Nice mask, dear. Very becoming. Alexander, tell your wife I said hello."

I can feel the heat all the way up my neck and into the mask. "I will be sure to mention it," I say, and my voice comes out about half a step lower than Eva's, "to her."

"Oh, she's good," Ethel says to Alexander, delighted. "She's much better at this than you are. You did the card game bit last year at your cousin's party, you know. The lands lost at cards. Word for word."

"That was a different knight," Alexander says.

"It was you in a different hat. Go on, go on, before I start telling her about the time you..."

"We're going," he says, and pulls me down the row by the hand.

Behind us Ethel calls out, "Buy more candles! They last longer than marriage advice!" and I hear her cackle at her own joke as we go. I have to bite the inside of my cheek. My mother-in-law has known me since I was twenty-eight and she has never once called me dear without some kind of freight attached to it.

"Your mother is a menace," I say.

"She sold us both candles."

"She winked at me."

"She knows exactly what tonight is," he says. "Which means by Sunday the whole family will know we came to the faire and role-played strangers, and she'll tell it better than it happened."

"Fourteen years," I say. "She's known me fourteen years and she still calls me dear like I'm going to owe her money."

"She likes you better than me."

"She should. I operate a forklift. You write code."

"Excellent point." He lifts the red candle and sniffs it. "This smells like a fireplace in a house we don't own."

"It smells like my grandmother's apartment."

"Then we're buying it and lighting it and ruining it for you forever."

We're still laughing about that when somebody says my name. My real one. Loud, from behind, with a laugh already in it.

"No way. No way in hell. Greenwood?"

I know before I turn around. I know from the voice. Will Clements has run the day shift at the warehouse for