The minstrel watched her with amusement as she spoke of her beliefs. “Well” he drawled in countryside wisdom, “I try not to expect anything, your Majesty. Takes too much of the surprise out of life, you see. Life’s too short to not have surprises.”

He leaned against the frame of the stable doors and crossed his arms as he looked at her with an impudent and mischievous gaze. She truly looked beautiful. Standing there in her dark costume, the shadows of the building made her wings look all the larger and more impressive until he easily could imagine them being real, the loose straws of hay and dust stirred about she flexed them in her might. What a queen she would make, came the unbidden notion. Suddenly, Tambernanny felt a pity for her. She could be so much more than she was… if only she let herself.

“But you speak of freedoms!” he dramatically cried in delight. “That nothing might bind or imprison you, not even the clothes you wear? Now that would be a sight to see, your Majesty! The Black Swan, Queen of the Dark and the Night, devoid of her feathers to shine like silver under the moon, proud and free and unashamed in her nakedness for all to fear and to obey… and to love.” The minstrel chuckled sadly and removed his hat to run fine fingers through his bronze locks, smoothing the hair away from his face and back across his head. Even were it not the festival of the Devil Himself, Tambernanny would not have reigned in his mouth to express his admiration for her body.

When he spoke again, his voice was softer; it came across as more sincere even as he fiddled with his hat in his hands. “Is that why you chose the costume you wear now?” he asked knowingly. A hand gestured to her glorious outfit. “That’s why we dress up on Cuckoo’s Eve, you know. Or at least why people used to. It was to be something other than what we are, to be what we always dreamed of being but never dared to become. A scullery maid becomes a wanton. A Baron becomes a hunter. A high born maiden becomes the Queen of the Night. A minstrel becomes the Devil… or a forgotten God.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, anyway,” he suddenly laughed as if at his own pomposity. “Or perhaps it’s the reverse! Perhaps in donning the costumes and masks, of allowing ourselves the freedoms of Cuckoo’s Eve, we become who we truly are! Perhaps both reasons are equally true!”

A sudden thought seemed to come to the traveling musician, his brown furrowing even as his face screwed up in contemplation. “I wonder what that says about the Seneschal, then, who wears no costume or mask and at best adds a little ornamentation to his robes of office. Is he himself completely, then? Or is it simply that he’s never dared to dream at all? Either way, what a dreary life!”

Tambernanny lolled himself off the doorway and into the courtyard immediately outside of the stables, still chuckling as he pointed to the far gate. The portcullis was raised against all protocol. Beyond it, the winding road was light by the moon to highlight its curves and swells as it spun past the nearby town and into the woods beyond. The forest looked different in the night, as though it were wearing a costume of its own. “He’s waiting for you, you know,” he grinned as he raised his voice for her to hear. “Out there. It’s one of the oldest tales, the Black Swan seeking the Cuckoo in the forest, looking for the one creature in the lands that would not bow to her. In some versions of the tale, she demands that he bow to her, that the Cuckoo acknowledge her beauty and power and to so love her. When he refuses, she bends him to her will and makes him a lesser creature to serve her. In other versions, he enslaves her! The Night is chained and he is free to torment mortals to his own delight until the other beasts of the world come to ransom her freedom.”

He walked back into the stables to stand before her, his face unsmiling but still kind. “But none of that happened in the oldest version of the story, your Majesty.”

Walking past her then, saying nothing more of stories as he plopped back into his haystack. “Strange thing, I know, that I find the haystack preferable to the glorious suites his lordship has bestowed upon me, but it is more comfortable. More familiar. But should you have a willing handmaiden with little to do, your Majesty, might you send her my way? Because the familiar life is often a lonely one.”