That’s a heavy thought. That we’re just the souls of stars in exile, as Plato says. Or that some girl might be alone on a night seven hundred years from now, waiting for a sign from the universe. And all she’s got is starlight from tonight.
Overwhelmed suddenly by my smallness, I sit down on the driveway. It’s damp from the rain we had earlier, but still warm. Bumpy asphalt rises under my fingers, and I remember the many times my dad would stand out here, slopping driveway sealer on the stones, making a mess that always somehow came out tidy and better looking by the end.
I lean back, resting the takeout container on my stomach, and stare at the stars. They blur together in my vision as I let my eyes go out of focus. As I lie there, I’m still half in the arena, my ears full of the crowd’s shouting. Almost like a long road trip—where you drive all day, and then when you close your eyes to sleep it’s more of the same: road and highway all the way through your dreams. Suddenly, I’m back on my horse, and the lance sits heavily in my hand. Resting the takeout container on the ground, I hop to my feet.
I can’t help it. I grab a stick from the ground, like a seven-year-old fighting imaginary dragons—and yes, I was that kid; I even made a scabbard for my imaginary dragon stick—and brandish it like a sword.
The moves come to me like music rising. Back, forward, and into the other Knight’s guard. It’s a dance, and each step must be placed just so.
I’ve sword fought my way nearly to the mailbox at the end of the driveway when an Audi station wagon drives past the house, music blaring.
“Freak show!” a girl yells as the car races past. She throws a bottle out the window. I leap out of the way as a green long-neck shatters against the mailbox.
I flip them off, but their headlights are just red smears—a Balrog’s whip, my inner nerd chimes in unhelpfully—in the night. I drop the stick, grab the mail and my takeout container, and stomp up the stairs to the front door.
When I’m inside, I fumble around in the dark for a moment, then flick the switch closest to the door.
Nothing.
Shit.
Did our power get shut off again?
I shine my cell phone down the split-level stairs. Chris’s basement bedroom is dark, none of the telltale lights of his thrift store electronics shine.
Heading up the stairs, I try every light in the living room and kitchen. Nothing. And the stove clock is out. We had power this afternoon before my shift, so that means that the food in the fridge might still be okay. I drop the mail on the kitchen table and put my phone on the counter, so its light makes a column in the dark kitchen. Good grief, I hope no one calls the cops because they think I’m breaking into my own house. I light a few candles using the lighter my mom left on the counter. Then I pull out the cooler we keep under the table for occasions like this and start stuffing all the food from the freezer into it, hoping to make a cool bottom layer. Fridge stuff—a half-eaten pack of bologna, a bag of apples, and some leftover gas station burritos—goes on top, layered like a portrait-of-poverty lasagna. I empty two ice trays over the food for good measure and slam the cooler shut.
My stomach grumbles, and I take a candle to the table with my takeout container. Inside are two turkey legs, roasted potatoes, a pile of garlic bread, and some lemon cake. Layla, bless her, must’ve filled the box for me and then handed it off to Chris. For one selfish moment I don’t want to save my mom any of it, but I can’t do that. She never takes time to eat when she works a double shift. And this is far, far more appetizing than the other stuff in the cooler. Or the expired cans from the food bank in the pantry. One of them is silver—no paper label—and it just says BEEF underneath the silhouette of a cow. None of us have been brave enough to open that one yet.
No one’s watching, so I tear into the turkey leg, licking my fingers and nibbling on the bone like a puppy. I don’t slow down until I’ve devoured my turkey leg and started in on the potatoes.
I almost choke on a laugh when it occurs to me that despite my job, eating a turkey leg in the flickering light of a guttering candle is probably the most medieval thing I’ve done all day.
Except most people back then didn’t eat meat and most of them didn’t have candles. It’s easy to forget such little details about the Middle Ages when the pageantry of it all sweeps me away, but they really were the Dark Ages in the sense that the world was pitch-black when the sun went down. Maybe you had a fire in your castle or hut, maybe not. Candles, torches, and lanterns would’ve kept the darkness at bay a bit, but just beyond the circle of your light lurked beasts, real or imagined.
And the meat thing? Forget ninety-nine-cent burgers from McDonalds to feed poor kids like me. Meat was mostly the privilege of the upper classes. Regular eating of it was such a class-based thing that some churchmen saw eating too much roasted meat as a gateway to hell. I read a book once where there’s this great exchange between a friar and a noblewoman on her deathbed.
To paraphrase liberally, he says to her, “So, you’re pretty much dead, do you think you’re going to heaven?”
She replies, “You better believe I’m headed there.”
Then, he—big jerkwad—says, “Yeah, probably not. Let’s face it. You’ve lived in castles and eaten roasted meats every day of your life. Don’t you think that’s going to count against you?”
Wherein (in my mind) she gives him a withering look, like the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey, and says through clenched teeth: “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but my husband is a terrible asshole. I don’t care how much roasted meat I’ve eaten. I’m going to heaven for putting up with him for all these years.”
History doesn’t tell us the clergyman’s response, but roasted meats were definitely up there with fornication, witchcraft, and dancing too much.
It was a different time.
My mom’s headlights illuminate the kitchen windows as she pulls in. I jump up from the table. I’m still in my fighting clothes. She’s been sewing these fighting outfits for Chris for years, so she’ll know immediately that something has happened if she sees me in them.
I shove the takeout container into the cooler and head to the bathroom. There’s nothing left on the toilet paper roll, but by the sink, Mom’s left a pile of napkins she swiped from a fast food restaurant. I’ll be lucky if there’s any hot water at all, but at least I get to bathe.
I shove aside the army of medieval-themed rubber duckies that line the tub’s edge (a present from Jett last Christmas) and twist the faucet. As hot water pours out the tap, I say a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of hygiene and public health. One thing I’m always forgetting about the Middle Ages is how badly everyone must’ve smelled. Sure, it was no match for a few hundred years later when the Industrial Revolution turned cities and countryside alike into cesspools and cholera-breeding grounds, but it was close. The medieval church undid centuries of Roman bathing habits and convinced people that baths were immoral and basically one-way tickets to all sorts of sins. Washing your face was thought to weaken eyesight, and kings and queens were applauded for the claim that they’d only ever bathed twice in their lives.
Twice! In their lives!
Imagining the stench of a crowded medieval royal court on any given summer day boggles my modern-plumbing and four-different-types-of-body-wash (thank you, Layla for the birthday set) self.