The Mercutio Problem Read online

  Beth hoped she would have a part in a play this semester: a good part-and not in a play by Shakespeare.

  THAT NIGHT HER MOTHER served warmed-over pasta.

  “I’m sorry that’s all there is for dinner,” her mother said. “I have to keep working on the first few lectures for my American History class. I’m not satisfied with them.” Her mother, a single mother who was a professor at Eleanor Roosevelt State College, never yelled and hardly ever complained. But Beth sometimes wished that her mother was less focused on her. That was the burden of being an only child. When time travel wore Beth down, her mother had wanted her to stop taking her special studies Shakespeare class with Ms. Capulet. Well, she didn’t try to explain what she was really doing.

  “It’s a fine dinner, Mom. No problem. I need to start studying this evening.”

  Afterwards, Beth sat down at her computer and opened a file where she wrote the names of her classes. Then she stared around her room. Wasn’t that quilt with what seemed like magical symbols looking a little old? Maybe she should ask for one with flowers. She didn’t want to be reminded of magic.

  Before she had experienced magic, she had thought of it as shimmering lights, ever-changing colors, and the ability to fly—and maybe to disappear at will. She hadn’t known that it involved dealing with real characters, some of whom were vicious. Only occasionally did it feel enchanting.

  A familiar voice sounded behind her back. “You are just pretending to study. You have not moved to another screen in ages.”

  Belt felt her hackles rise, like an animal’s. She turned.

  There was Merlin, dressed in the gown and ruff of a wealthy Elizabethan gentleman. A plumed hat sat on his head and his white beard streamed over the ruff. She could never predict what clothes he might wear. For a one thousand-year-old immortal, he was looking good despite his white hair and wrinkles.

  Beth frowned at him. “I told you it was all over,” she said. “I don’t want to time travel for you anymore.”

  “But now you are taking a class on Renaissance England,” the wizard said, stroking his beard. “That is your destiny.”

  “That’s my class schedule, not my destiny.” She didn’t try to keep the anger out of her voice.

  “You need to return to Shakespeare’s time.”

  That was so Merlin. Not asking, but telling her.

  “No, I don’t need to. And I won’t.”

  “You could save Mercutio.”

  Beth winced. She remembered seeing Mercutio laughing and teasing her. She remembered his blood-stained body. She rubbed her eyes, as if that would erase the memory. “He’s dead. It’s cruel to try to use him to persuade me.”

  “If I am cruel, so be it.” Merlin shrugged. “Mercutio is a character, not a human being. He will live again. You have seen him appear to you on the stage.”

  “Just on the stage.” After Beth’s last visit to Shakespeare’s world, Ms. Capulet had taken her to see Romeo and Juliet, and she had seen Mercutio, not the actor who was playing his part. Of course, Beth had had to leave before he was killed in the play. “That was like a miracle, but it wasn’t the same as being with him.”

  “He will live as he has before,” the wizard declared. “Now he is only a character on a page. The question is whether he will live in your time and be able to move among Shakespeare’s worlds.” Merlin scrutinized her. “I believe that you can bring him back, if you choose.”

  “Why do you care?” Beth felt her body tense with suspicion. “You didn’t care that he died.” She glared at the wizard. “You wouldn’t be interested unless there was something in it for you.”

  “Your modern usages of language are most unattractive.” Merlin frowned, which altered his always-stern features only a little. “My concerns go far beyond my own welfare.”

  “That’s news to me.” She deliberately used another expression that he wouldn’t much like.

  “You have a limited understanding. But listen to me, as well as you can,” he said, implying that her best still wasn’t very good. He pointed his finger at her. “You are correct that Mercutio is only one of my concerns. I must speak to you about Richard III.”

  “Please don’t.” Beth put her hands up to protect herself.

  “I must.” Merlin’s tone was grim. “You saw Lady Macbeth kill Richard because he pretended he loved her as Macbeth had, and your friends showed her scenes from the Scottish play reminding her of Macbeth’s intense but misguided love. But Richard is far stronger than any other Shakespearean character. He was based on Mordred, and carries Mordred’s ancient power as well as that vested in him by Shakespeare.” Merlin clenched his fists, because Mordred was his nemesis, and had been from the time of King Arthur. Mordred had killed Arthur, whom Merlin had loved like a father.

  Beth shivered. “That’s a good reason for me to stay out of your business, not to get involved,” she said.

  “You won’t convince me that you are a coward. I know better than that.” Even though he gave one of his rare compliments, Merlin did not smile at her. He never did. “Mordred,” he repeated. “Mordred survives.” He shuddered. “Mordred seems to be immortal.”

  Beth put her hands over her ears, but she could still hear Merlin’s words: “When Richard was killed, he apparently lost his hold on you,” the wizard continued. He began pacing the room. “He now is trying another strategy. He is attempting to take over Shakespeare’s other plays, one by one, apparently in the hope of forcing Shakespeare to write the play he desires, a play in which Mordred defeats King Arthur instead of dying with him.”

  “Is that new?” Beth asked. “Months ago, I saw Richard trying to persuade Oberon to join him in an alliance. Oberon just laughed at him.”

  “Oh, he has been pursuing these ends for a long time, then.” Merlin drew a lengthy breath. “Every word you say makes it clearer that though you are a mere mortal, your help is needed.”

  “I doubt it.” Beth wanted to escape to her homework, even geometry.

  “Mercutio foolishly worked for Richard, but became disillusioned with that vile king.”

  “Richard had him killed.” Beth couldn’t keep the agony out of her voice.

  “Precisely.” Merlin nodded. “So Mercutio would help me fight Richard. And you could bring Mercutio back.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” Beth was afraid to listen, but she did. She didn’t want to be involved in any more magic. But Merlin’s words made her hope that she could see her friend again. “How?”

  The wizard’s gray eyes stared into hers. “By being him. You must pretend to be Mercutio. If you do, I believe that ultimately your charade will call to him and bring him back to life.”

  Beth gasped. “You want me to pretend I am Mercutio?” She stared at the wizard. “That’s crazy. I’m nothing like him.” She recalled Mercutio’s frequent bawdy remarks and his eagerness to fight at the slightest opportunity.

  “Oh, I think you could imitate him very well. I could make you look like him, and I am certain that your memory of him is acute. How he spoke, how he gestured.”

  “I remember him.” Tears started to form in her eyes. She could hear him calling her “Moonface” because he saw her as a dreamer. He had flirted with her, but had he meant it? She had refused to kiss him. Now she was sorry she hadn’t. She remembered his tales about the fairy Queen Mab bringing people dreams. She could see him showing her the beauties of Verona. And, fatally, pulling out his sword when Richard insulted her. “But remembering people doesn’t bring them back.”

  “Not humans. But it can bring characters back.” Merlin looked at her as if she were a fish on a hook. “If you care enough to try.”

  Beth choked back her tears. “I have to remember that this is all one of your plots. It has to do with Shakespeare, not Mercutio.”

  “Mercutio has no existence apart from Shakespeare.”

  “T
hat’s not what Mercutio said. When I saw him, he could make up his own lines.”

  “He tries to run away. They all do. But ultimately they are tied to their playmaker. If Richard succeeds in hurting Shakespeare, that would hurt Mercutio. That would hurt all the characters.”

  Beth believed Merlin. She remembered the vision he had shown her of how Richard wanted to imprison the women characters and do worse to the men. She saw Juliet, Portia, and Rosalind herded into a prison cell. “I’ll think about what you’ve said,” she told Merlin.

  “Yes, think. With your limited mind.” Though he was not tall, the wizard seemed to tower above her. “Where do dead characters go? Do they wander in pain like Hamlet’s father? Is that Mercutio’s life now? I don’t know. Do you?”

  Beth reeled, as if from a blow. She grabbed the arms of her chair to steady herself. “That was unfair,” she protested.

  “What does fairness have to do with life and death? Either for characters or for humans?” Merlin’s lip curled with scorn. “Why do you count your wishes as more important than your friend’s life? If I give you a chance to help Mercutio, you should be glad. If I give you a chance to help Will Shakespeare, you should rejoice.”

  “That would sound better if I didn’t know that you bullied Shakespeare the same way,” Beth retorted.

  “I, as you call it, bullied him. And what did he achieve as a result?” Merlin asked.

  “A hit, a very palpable hit,” Beth said.

  “Ha!” The wizard smiled. “A Shakespearean answer. You will act his part.”

  “I will.” The words burst out of her even though she was afraid.

  Merlin almost smiled at his success. “Of course you will. Remember that you must stop carrying your mechanical devices, as you did last year. You can’t take a chance that they might be carried to old London.”

  Beth sighed. She would have to tell her friends again, as she had before, that her mother wouldn’t let her use her smartphone. And find an excuse to give her mother, who wanted her to carry it.

  Merlin disappeared, and Beth burst into tears. She flung herself onto her bed. Mercutio. She had been trying not to think of how much she wanted to see his face, look into his dark brown eyes, and hear his laughter. She tried to erase from her mind the sight of him lying dead, covered with blood.

  She had been angry at Richard before, but now when she remembered Mercutio’s death she felt consumed by rage. She wanted to attack Richard like an avenging Fury.

  Mercutio. Was it possible that she could hear him laugh again? She felt that she would do anything to be near him again, even if he was in one of his obnoxious moods where he bragged about being the cousin of the Prince of Verona and belittled anyone who wasn’t an aristocrat.

  Mercutio was grotesquely old-fashioned about women. He scoffed at the idea of education for girls. He couldn’t imagine any man wanting to marry a woman in her mid-twenties. He scorned people who acted on a stage. But, after all, he was from a different time, long before Shakespeare lived. Mercutio kept getting in trouble visiting England because he couldn’t conceive of a time when the Catholic Church wasn’t the only Christian Church in Western Europe. English Protestants saw him as one of the hated Spanish, not as an Italian. Sword and dagger jumped too readily into his hands.

  But Mercutio could be tender. He made her laugh until her belly hurt. She would do anything for him. She must be crazy, but she didn’t care. Most people couldn’t bring back someone they loved. But she could, because Mercutio was a character, not a living being. She couldn’t pass up the chance.

  I’m ready, Beth thought. Let me be something like Mercutio, if that will bring him back.

  Chapter 2

  SHE SPUN THROUGH FRIGID air. The wind forced her to close her eyes. She landed with a thunk, but upright.

  Beth stood on a heath. Fog swirled around her. She could see thorny plants at her feet, but most of the heath was covered in a veil of gray. She smelled the foul aroma of a familiar cauldron. She gagged and remembered that she had never wanted to ask the witches whether the contents of the cauldron were really those that Shakespeare had enumerated, like a Turk’s nose and the finger of a birth-strangled babe. She saw the cauldron’s muddy liquid bubble and thought she would rather die than taste it.

  “All hail Beth!” three voices cried. And three beings she had come to know appeared to her. Their bodies were green, they were blue, they were gray. They were neither female nor male, but neither were they intersex. They were their own strange lumps of almost flesh, with almost hair and eyes that were not eyes but could see far too much.

  Beth had learned not to fear the witches—too much. They seemed to mean well by her. But they knew too much about everyone and everything.

  “Hail,” she said in reply, hoping that was the right thing to say.

  “All hail Mercutio!” they chanted.

  Beth flinched. “You’re right, of course. Merlin wants me to pretend to be Mercutio.”

  “Not pretend,” the first witch said.

  “To be Mercutio,” chanted the second.

  “You will be Mercutio,” the third told her.

  “That will be hard for a girl,” Beth said.

  “Not a girl,” the first said.

  “Mercutio,” the second said.

  “Truly Mercutio,” said the third.

  Beth felt as if she had fallen into a pit. She touched her chin. There was stubble.

  Her body was a couple of inches taller than it had been and she had shoulder-length hair instead of her usual short light brown locks. She examined the ends of her hair and could see that it was dark. She wore a green doublet and hose that she had last seen on Mercutio, which was extra creepy. She even wore the boots she remembered seeing on him. And his rings were on her fingers, which looked like a man’s fingers on a man’s hands. One ring was emerald, another was topaz, and one was gold with the design of a falcon on it. She could hardly bear to look at the hands, which would have been fine if they weren’t hers. She had calluses, probably from sword practice, on her right hand. She could feel Mercutio’s sword hanging on her back. Her chest felt flat and hairy.

  She thought that maybe—did she feel different down there? No, not that. She felt the same, but she intended to put her hand down there as soon as she was alone, just to make sure. But otherwise she was too much like a guy.

  Beth gagged, and not just because of the cauldron’s vapors. “Merlin turned me into Mercutio. Or almost.” Her voice sounded like Mercutio’s. Like a man’s voice. “Merlin made me a guy. I have stubble. Too gross. I’ll kill Merlin.”

  “Kill him? You sound like Mercutio already. But Merlin is immortal,” the first witch said.

  “But I don’t want to be a guy! I’m Beth Owens! I’m not a boy in a girl’s body. I’m a girl. How can I get back to being myself?”

  “In your world, you are Beth,” the second witch said.

  “In this world, you will be Mercutio,” said the third.

  Beth stared at her hairy hands. “I want to be with him, not to be him. Is it true that my being him can bring him back?”

  “Bring him back,” the witches chorused.

  “But how, if I’m Mercutio, can he come back?”

  The witches cackled. “You don’t guess?”

  “No. How can he come back?”

  “When you die,” chanted the first witch.

  “You die,” chanted the second.

  “He will come back when you die,” chanted the third.

  “Die?” Beth gasped. She fell backwards, tearing her velvet sleeve on a gorse bush. “No, that’s too much.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to die.”

  “In this world,” the first witch said.

  “Die in this world? But not in mine?” Beth asked. She tried to stand up even though her legs felt weak.

  “Die as Mercutio, not as B
eth,” the second witch said.

  So, probably not in her own world. But it would be scary enough to die in this world. “I don’t want to.”

  “He died for you,” the third witch reminded her.

  “Oh.” Beth stood there in shock. Yes, Mercutio had died trying to defend her from Richard. But Mercutio was a character, and could live again. She was human, and could die only once. Maybe.

  Beth shook her head. “It’s too much.”

  “Too much,” the witches echoed. “Too much.”

  “Tell Merlin,” the first witch said.

  “That you won’t save Mercutio,” the second witch said.

  “Let Mercutio stay dead,” the third witch chanted.

  “No!” Beth exclaimed. “I’ll do it.”

  “Beth will do it,” the witches chanted. “Beth will die. In this world.”

  The witches vanished. Even though she saw no one else on the foggy heath, Beth went behind a large gorse bush. She pulled down her breeches. Even though the rest of her looked male… What a relief! She didn’t want to be that much like Mercutio. She pulled her breeches up again. She imagined being Mercutio even when she had her period. That thought made her smile.

  Beth spun away, choking in the fog. She landed on her bed.

  I’m crazy, she thought. She leapt up and looked in her mirror. Her face was Beth’s face. Her hands were Beth’s hands. She was herself. She had never thought of herself as super-feminine, but she combed her hair and changed her slacks to a skirt just to reassure herself that in her own world she was a girl. But if she was mostly male in another world, did that make her intersex or transsexual in this one? Should she put on lipstick? Maybe lipstick was unnecessary, because she wouldn’t put it on if she hadn’t been worrying. Maybe it was best just to be herself.

  Would Mercutio still be attracted to her if she managed to bring him back to life? Or would he be grossed out that she had lived in most of his body? Her head felt heavy with the many questions that occurred to her.