The answering silence spiraled. Everyone was looking at each other, waiting for someone—anyone—to speak up. Up on the stage, Zale was deflating like a sad balloon. I felt like a kid in class, watching the teacher practically beg for interaction. I’d always been the kid to take pity on the teacher and raise my hand, just to see the hope spring back into their eyes.
I was still that kid. My hand shot up.
“Yes! Thank you, Wren!” Zale sang, the relief palpable on his face.
“Uh…” I swallowed hard, not enjoying the sensation of all the eyes that had now turned to stare at me, and knowing most of them would probably roll when they heard what I had to say. “Sorry, I’m sure everyone else already knows everything about this pageant, but since this is my first summer here in a long time, could you… refresh my memory?” I tried to ignore the sniggering.
“She doesn’t even know the story of Litha?” someone muttered.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing about it either,” said another voice from behind me. I turned to see Luca propping his feet up, like he was getting ready for story time.
“Why would you care?” Sergei asked. He was looking at Luca with a decidedly ugly expression. I was taken aback to see him glare that way, but Luca simply shrugged with an easy smile.
“I don’t usually make it up for the summer until 4th of July weekend. I’ve never seen the pageant before,” he said.
But Zale didn’t seem to mind. His eyes lit up like they had that night at the bonfire, when he’d taken it upon himself to tell us all the Sedgwick Cove origin story, and I knew he loved any opportunity to geek out about this town.
“Why don’t I just give a quick recap for Wren and Luca, and everyone else, start getting your creative juices flowing!”
“Ew,” Petra muttered.
Zale cleared his throat theatrically, and the story began.
7
“Litha goes by many names. Midsommar, midsummer, the summer solstice. It’s the longest day of the year, marking the start of the shortening of days until Yule, which of course, is the shortest day of the year. It’s a time to celebrate fertility and harvest and light and growth. There are lots of ways to celebrate Litha—you’ll find not a single coven in Sedgwick Cove celebrates it exactly the same way. But one thing we all do is come together for the pageant.
“The story of the pageant is always the same, the battle of the Oak King and the Holly King. The Oak King represents the sun, the warmth, the time of the year when daylight has the upper hand, and rules over all. The Holly King, on the other hand, represents the darkness—oh, uh… not that Darkness. I just mean like, nighttime,” Zale said quickly, perhaps noticing the way I stiffened in my seat, the way my heart had begun to pound. I could feel everyone staring at me again. I tried to ignore them, keeping my attention on Zale, and trying to appear the rapt audience he craved.
Zale went on, “The Holly King rules over the second part of the year, when the darkness rules over the day until Yule, or the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year; and the poweris returned once again to the Oak King. At dusk on Litha, the Holly King challenges the Oak King to a mighty battle for control of the earth. That’s what the pageant acts out—the battle for domination! When it ends, we position the Wheel of the Year at the top of the cliff above the beach, light it on fire, and roll it down to the sea.”
Zale looked around at us all expectantly, as though to say, “Is that the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?” Sergei launched into a sarcastic slow clap. Eva silenced him with a look.
“Why are you even here if you’re just going to be an asshole?” Eva asked him.
Sergei shrugged, coloring. “Because if I don’t help with the pageant my mother will disown me.”
“Oh, so you’re here because Mommy said you had to come?” another boy sneered.
Eva rounded on him, too. “Yeah, and so am I. And so are you. Every single person in this room is here because their mother or their grandmother or their auntie said they would hex them otherwise. Now shut up and let us get on with it, Ethan.”
The boy named Ethan muttered something under his breath, but no one else argued. Evidently, there was enough truth in what Eva said that no one wanted to contradict her.
“Uh, thanks, Zale,” I said into the awkward silence. “That, uh… clears that up. My next question is, what’s the usual pageant like?”
Zale cleared his throat, but it was Eva who answered. “Oh, anyone in this room could probably recite the whole thing from memory by the time they were five years old,” she said, chuckling. “It’s only the cheesiest thing anyone’s ever heard. Although, to be fair, when I was little, I thought it was awesome.”
A girl stood up suddenly in the row behind me, grinning. “Come forth, oh harbinger of night! I knowst thou art here. Show thyself!” she called in a deep, melodramatic voice.
Three other kids jumped to their feet. “I am no harbinger! I am King of The Darkness, and thou wilt bend the knee or feel my wrath!”
The entire group of kids then shouted at the top of their lungs, “I kneel to no one. Thy shadow crown is naught to me!”
A few tried to keep going, but they’d mostly broken off into raucous laughter, along with some truly terrible fight choreography. Zale seemed to be deflating like a balloon up on the stage, watching his meeting devolve into chaos.
I ignored the full-scale anarchy now breaking out in the seats, and hopped up onto the stage. “What about the props and costumes and stuff? What are we working with?”
Zale drooped even more. “Right here.” He popped the top from one of the plastic bins, and lifted out a crown and a robe. The robe was faded purple velvet, with a moth-eaten faux-fur collar and frayed ribbons dangling from the cuffs. The crown had crumbling Styrofoam horns glued to it, and several blank spots where plastic gemstones had fallen off.
