01. Festival

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Grassy fields rolled on to the horizon. The emerald hills rustled in the summer breeze, sweeping the lowing of cows and birdcall through dividing thorned hedges. Cutting through that patchwork of green lay a narrow earthen strip, a dirt road between drystone walls, each cragging yet standing over the weathered years by the sheer balanced placement of its individual stones and the binding vines that yielded ripe blackberries to cattle and passersby. And on those identical walls and eating those blackberries sat two identical girls, clad in identical green minidresses, perfect reflections of each other from their idly swinging boots and white frilled stockings to the pair of oversized top hats tilted askew upon their heads.

When the throttle of an incoming pickup built to the bang of an overworked engine, they looked up in unison and drew in their legs, standing in fluid symmetry as their ride slowed to a stop between them, its wing mirrors barely an inch from scraping both sides. The driver unbuckled and rose to greet them through the sunroof, a blonde tousle whipping across his face, mouth half open in greeting before a small eclipse pulled his attention skyward.

“Hey, gals, how’s it…whoa!”

Blotting the sun was a hot air balloon, colored and shaped like a giant peach and flying low enough it seemed they could reach out to touch it. The illusion fizzled when both girls tried, tiptoeing and stretching out their fingertips without brushing its underside as it sailed on by towards town and into a growing mass of more balloons. They amassed over the sea of rooftops like gathering storm of rainbow stripes.

“Look,” Amber said, “they have a leprechaun!”

Loreen drew her camera out. “Where?”

“There, bright green! It’s holding a pint of Guinness!”

She snapped a picture before it disappeared and Amber, half in-shot, posed with a peace sign.

“Uh, so good morning?” Jake said, this time getting a reply.

“Morning, handsome,” Amber said.

Loreen’s eyes narrowed behind the camera before widening into a return smile at Jake. “Hey, good morning. Uh, how do we get in?”

In the bottleneck wide enough for an average tractor, the car’s doors weren’t an option. Jake tilted his head down. “Drop on in?”

The twins stepped onto his roof and Amber took hold of Loreen’s windmilling hands as a patch of rust red coat crunched under her heels, more rust than red coating. A few flakes fell into the cab and Jake brushed them off, flashing her an apologetic lopsided grin through the hole as he buckled up.

Loreen held tight onto Amber’s hands as she lowered a leg through the roof hole, flashing a thigh Jake pretended not to see. When she moved aside to give her sister room to squeeze in between them, Amber instead hopped in the rear and only stuck her head through to tease.

“I’ll stand in the back here and give you two a little private time. Be gentle with her, stud. She ain’t as worldly as she seems.”

“Huh?” Jake said, but the face had already retreated.

Loreen’s turned redder than the car. “Wait, what? Hey, that’s… what—!”

But Amber had already pulled out, theatrically securing her hat like a helmet before gripping the inner edge of the sunroof. Loreen protested through indignant squeaks and reddened cheeks as Jake eased his truck out from between the rock walls and gently picked up speed.

“So why are you two dressed like leprechauns?” He eyed them both through the rear-view. “Was I supposed to wear something?”

“We’re working,” Loreen said, tugging her hat off and stuffing it into a plastic crock. “Amber’s friend got us a gig.”

“What as, pole dancers?”

“Concierges. We’re working at the festival.”

“The gay one?”

“LGBTQ…plus, and please don’t ask me what it stands for. I have no idea.”

Amber’s head slid down through the sunroof again, turning slowly to eye Loreen. “Did you seriously accept the job without reading the introduction sheet? Orna’s raising funds for an inclusive bar. It’s called The Safe Space, for anyone who, well, needs a safe space. By the by, Jake, do you ever clean this rust bucket? I got red hands up here.”

Jake shrugged. “Sorry, she belongs to my cousin. Your friend sounds cool, though. I always say everyone needs a place to belong.”

He brushed a blonde lock from his brow and slowed at a corner, pulling his wing mirror in to let a bus scrape by. As he idled halfway into the roadside hedge, Amber leaned away from the leaves and spines spilling over the roof. When the bus passed, Jake leaned out to check the road was clear again before trundling on.

“I thought you said the buses weren’t running today,” he said, steering around a sharp bend.

Loreen almost missed he was talking to her. “I never said anything about buses.”

“On the phone this morning. When you asked for a ride.”

“Oh. That was Amber. I didn’t even know you were picking us up ‘til after we left the house.”

They crested a hill and rounded a roundabout before the rugged, empty country fell away to canyons of brickwork and traffic. The traffic grew denser barely a quarter mile in.

“She said she was you,” Jake sighed and slowed the car to a crawl. “Great, looks like we’re gonna be stuck here a while. Every space in town’s probably taken.”

Loreen tugged at her sister’s fingers curled through the cab roof. “Amber, why did you tell Jake you were me?”

“For the same reason you’ll do it for me when I find a boy worth phoning? I’m gonna go ahead and save us a space,” she said, spinning down from the truck bed before either could object. “Jake take care of my sister for me, okay? I’m sure she wants to take care of you in return. I’ll text you when I find one!”

She vaulted the hood of the adjacent car before her slack jawed sister figured out her window needed manual rolling down, and distanced herself fast before she got chewed out. Amber wove through the morning shoppers on the way to town center, reaching the road two blocks away in a minute flat. As she crossed it, the blast of a horn made her double back, still jogging on the spot, and she waved to her friend, Orna, who arched a confused brow from behind her steering wheel. Amber held a pinkie to her mouth before taking off again.

“Call me!”

Orna gave her a thumbs up as she danced through the morning crowd, skipping the low chain fence of the town square, boots smacking tarmac before she bounced onto the lawn and continued her waltz between tents and the crews erecting them. She stopped only once to read a poster depicting a parodied Jane Austen cover, Pride Vs Prejudice, their theme of the day, and then took a too deep breath of something sweetly cinnamon before running on.

“Ugh, I need to work on my cardio.”

By the time she emerged on the opposite side, her waistcoat was cutting into her ribs and each breath stung, but when a van beeped, pulling out of a spot across the street, she took another lungful and kept on jogging. The driver waited until a family pushing a baby made it across before backing out slowly. Amber skipped sideways to avoid a pair of men carrying a large speaker between them, glancing back to mouth an “Ooh” at a third guy with long hair carrying one on his own. Once he passed, she cut between two more sets of muscled arms unloading crates of cider, almost stopping again to leer, but duty won through and in wheezing, short bursts, she clutched her hat with one hand, pushed her skirt down with the other and gulped back the rising bile.

“Don’t trip… don’t get distracted… gyargh! And I gotta get a…gym membership!”

With the van pulled out, Amber broke into a final sprint, arms spread and hacking spit as she launched herself into the empty space. She planted herself in the middle of the spot just as the screech of brakes marked the arrival of a stubby yellow Capri.

“No… ugh, there’s no… I’m gonna be sick… no parking!”

A tall man crammed in the front leaned out through his window and eyed her stockings with distaste. “Move it, lass.”

Amber bent over, one hand on her knee, and held up a palm. “Staff… parking… only… sorry.”

“What staff?”

“Staff of… uh, there.” She pointed vaguely at the festival on the green. “Sorry, man. Keep driving. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The driver’s brows wrinkled. “Don’t get smart with me, girl, I—”

But Amber wasn’t listening. A bright patch of color broke across the roofline behind him and over it came a new hot air balloon. Red and yellow stripes rose impossibly slow and smoothly, followed then by another one, rounder and blue and white with the handle and spout of a teapot.

“Are you gonna move or what?”

More followed, climbing higher and drifting wider, cutting through the cloudless sky: a grinning Felix the Cat; the Guinness leprechaun; Team Rocket’s Meowth.

Amber’s eyes went wide. “Aww, please let there be tickets. Please let there be tickets. Please…”

The driver blared his horn and it almost pulled her attention back, but a rainbow balloon cleared the university spire and sent sunlight cascading through its panels, casting a spectrum across town center. So captivated by the light show, Amber didn’t notice the Capri revving or lurching forward, even when the front bumper screeched to a stop an inch from her shins. When it finally dawned on the driver she’d utterly forgotten his existence, he swore at her and backed out.

“Forget you, you dippy twit! Go burn in hell!”

“Burn…hell?” Amber barely noticed him leave. It took the fifth buzz of her phone to break through her trance and when she blinked down at the front screen, the name didn’t register until she pressed it to her ear. “Oh, Orna! Hey!”

“Hey yourself,” Orna said. “What’s got you all hyper?”

“I’m riding a hot air balloon today. Right? Tell me I’m riding a hot air balloon today.”

“Why would that be up to me?”

“It’s your festival.”

“Our festival. I’m just the organizer. And that means I organized balloonists to be here. Organizing them to do me favors I did not.”

“What’s the point in having friends in high places if I can’t abuse your authority?”

“Where are you? I wanna see you dressed up like a dolly.”

Amber looked around. “Holding a parking spot by the university entrance for Loreen and her definitely-not-a-boyfriend.”

“The potato farmer?”

“Potato farmer’s slightly more sophisticated cousin. But in potato farmer’s truck.”

“Ah, a summer romance. I…hey, wait. I think I see you!”

Amber tiptoed higher and sure enough saw Orna waving across the green. At a completely different leprechaun.

“Behind you,” Amber said. “Left. Too far left. Yeah, there—no, you had it! How are you missing me? I’m wearing a hat the size of your bra cups!”

They gave up on the phone when their eyes met through the crowd and Amber switched to flapping her arms overhead like she was trying to flag down a rescue chopper. Behind Orna, she noticed the Capri had found a parking spot and its driver had set up a speaker on its roof. He stood in a wool trenchcoat and wore a billboard on ropes over his shoulders, his voice amplified by a headset through a hiss of static.

“Nationalism is simply about keeping the Irishness of Ireland in a world that seeks to make everything the same. It’s not racism…”

A black guy Amber recognized from campus trudged past with the same look of distaste the driver had given her legs. He muttered “Yeah, unless you don’t look a hundred percent Irish” as he passed by, shaking his head, but before Amber could connect the dots, Orna slipped in between a group of lads in football shirts without missing a beat and somehow left every one of them holding a flyer. She met Amber halfway and they hugged and linked arms and strode off to the green.

“I thought you were keeping that spot for your ride?” Orna said.

“Oh, yeah!” Amber kept their arms linked and rounded her friend back to the parking spot. “So, we ready to raise some cash?”

Just as Orna opened her mouth, a burst of pastel confetti exploded around them. They stumbled back, blinking at the rain of pink and blue. From the plume stepped out a short, thick-set man in the same green outfit Amber wore, even down to the platform boots and stockings.

“Tada!” he declared, sweeping his hat off with a bow. “Ah, a fellow leprechaun! I see yer crock is empty. Have a stack of flyers to do yer bit for the cause.”

He reached under a cravat that looked suspiciously like a beard wrung into a tie and dropped in a single page. The thunk made the plastic handle bend and when she looked down, a stack of a hundred sat cradled inside.

“Um, thanks?”

The leprechaun bowed and bounced off to hand out more to guests and students. Orna raised a pointed finger like she was about to say something, but shook her head.

“Yeah, so about the cash. Guess what? No need, we got a sponsor! The owner’s some rich guy from the States who’s leasing the building to us for ten years. Pro bono. And he’s footing the opening! Drinks are on the house tonight, girl!”

“You’re feckin’ with me?” Amber squealed. She pressed her forehead against Orna’s and they jogged on the spot, laughing like they’d just won the lottery.

“Nope. Apparently all we gotta do is take some prototype gizmo and show off how amazing it is at uni. Everyone sees us excel on our assignments and then we tell them it’s all thanks to this hand sized laptop doodad coming out next year from… whatever phone company they sell the design to. He may or may not have hinted everything we need to know for the entire year is already on them.

Amber bounced on her toes and gripped Orna’s arms for balance. “So we get a student bar, a free phone and an automatic pass? Is that even legal? Oh, who cares, I want that balloon ride even more now. One day, I’m gonna look back from my deathbed, unable to decide which day was better, this one or my first wedding.”

“You could ride a balloon on your honeymoon.”

“Do I get a new phone for my honeymoon?

“It’ll be my something new for you.”

“Grand, but then I won’t be part of making the world a better place that day. I mean, stuff is good and all, but I’d want something to stoke my ego as well.”

Orna rolled her eyes. “Your future husband can stoke your ego.”

“What a lucky guy. Maybe I’ll meet him at the party tonight.”

“At a party dedicated to a distinctly non-hetero crowd?”

“It’s not like we’re not welcome. And he could be bi. As long as he works out and doesn’t have a will of his own, I’m happy.”

The Capri owner’s microphone squealed louder and they winced as he fought to adjust the feedback.

Orna shook her head. “That church lot aren’t thrilled. Been calling it all sin and threatening anyone who walks by since we booked the square last week. Like it ever helps.”

Amber rolled her eyes. “Forget the craic killers, what’s our plan if we don’t need donations?”

“Ah,” Orna said, “apparently we all get paid as staff for acting like concierges, so give directions if someone asks, or pose for their photos. You’ll be earning your own money today so don’t ask to borrow any of mine this time.”

“Hey, I brought my own money today. Well, my dad’s.”

“Your dad’s money isn’t your money.”

Amber jabbed a finger at her. “Hey, I earned it. Straight As on every assignment. Once I’m working proper, I’ll spoil you rotten for every penny you ever leant me.”

“Oh, you want to spoil me?” Orna leaned her elbow on Amber’s shoulder. “If you’re that keen to provide, well, we already fight like a married couple. Might as well make it official.”

Amber snorted. “Grow some biceps, a beard, and a bulge in your pants. I might say yes.”

The leprechaun, passing by, stopped mid stride to eye the crotch of Orna’s dress.

“Bulge in your pants, eh? Glad I’m not the only one here,” he said, and bounded off.

Orna shook her head. “Speaking of which, I’m introducing you to someone later.”

“A crossdressing leprechaun?”

Orna twirled a loose lock of hair and reddened slightly. “Somebody picked me up last week.”

“Oh? And where was this?

“The floor,” she said. “Seriously, she literally picked me up off the floor while we were setting up that night. You’re always perving at muscles, so I figured you’d approve of this one.”

“Approve? You just demoted me from marriage material to blessing your new squeeze.”

“A gal can only take rejection so long, dear.”

The sharp honk of a horn and a driver screaming something unintelligible earned a hiss through Amber’s nostrils. She turned to glare, only to find Jake drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“Hey, dummy, get out the way,” Loreen said, standing through the sunroof.

Amber hopped onto the grass. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else gonna tell me to burn in hell.”

Loreen slumped back and mouthed “seriously?” from the passenger seat while Jake slid the car in. When he were sure the rear didn’t stick out too far, he stepped out and was immediately distracted by Orna, his gaze lingering on her chest a beat too long. Loreen stepped between them and planted a peck on his cheek.

“Thanks for the lift, stud,” she said, elbowing his ribs. “Lemme buy you a bite. As a thank you.”

“Nah, you gals are volunteering and your sister’s been holding this space for an hour. Hotdogs on me. By the by, who’s that?”

“Orna?”

He strode over to shake Orna’s hand, gesturing at Loreen and vaguely out at the festival. “Amber said you organized all of this. That’s impressive.”

“Especially when it wasn’t even Amber in the car with you,” Loreen muttered, rolling her eyes. “Come on, you three. Let’s get to work.”

The four stayed together a while, moseying through the stalls. Half were stacked with sugar while others dared them to step right up to try for a prize. Amber and Loreen did their best to direct the waves of tourists and answer their questions, posing in enough pictures to make them internet famous for at least a week.

At the center of everything stood a stage where a local tribute band to RockSling, the paleolithic themed kings of eighties power glam, was testing the amps with their greatest hits. It didn’t help they were dressed in cave dweller power glam, though. Half the band had to be in their eighties.

By midday, their stomachs rumbled and an air heavy with frosting and fried meat only served to tease them more. Sweets and candies glistened behind glass shields with muffins tops, puffed with glitter and far too vibrant sprinkles, promised both an extreme sugar high and multicolored poop for a week. Only their price tags prevented stocks running low before they could be replenished.

After giving in and buying a single slice for the price of a whole cake, Amber spotted her friend, Cazz, helping a brass band set up near the middle of it all. She strummed on a small ukulele and sang into the ear of her girlfriend, a woman connecting wires and whose name Amber was almost certain began with the letter N. They waved in passing, then Loreen returned to cuff Jake upside the head when he froze to stare “at them lesbians lockin’ lips.”

“Hey,” Amber said, “if you wanna see girls kiss so bad, get broadband.”

He flushed crimson and ducked his head low, distancing himself after that as the twin lady leprechauns eased the foot traffic and directed it through the maze of rides and games. Each stall flashed and competed for Jake’s attention against fluttering multicolored banners webbed around stands and street lamps and over an ever moving crowd. The flashes and music worked in perfect sync against each other and Jake found himself spending far too much at an air rifle range against tin cowboys, then competing with a ten year old tossing rings at weighted bottles. He won a keyring Pac-Man worth a tenth of what he’d spent and let the kid have it, taking it as a sign to spent the rest of his day and coins at the arcade, a mishmash of the latest games between classics like Q*bert and Pac-Man himself. The noise merged everything from eight bit beeps to fully orchestrated music that rivaled the vendors hollering for anyone who wanted more food. They worked the crowd with free trays of skewered meats, sugared sweets, and sugar spun and melted.

“Having fun?” Loreen said, when they ran into each other again.

He parted the folds of his empty wallet. “ A little too much.”

She laughed and promised to escort him from the crowd to the bank, passing by a dense line snaking its way up to a face-painting tent beside the stage. The crossdressed leprechaun was on it, entertaining the line by juggling two balls using only his nose and a surprisingly good impression of a seal. Before the kids could grow bored of it, though, he opened his mouth and let them fall in without swallowing, then reached in after to pull out an oversized patchwork quilt, completely dry.

His next trick required a volunteer and the little girl who stepped up, disappeared under it. The fabric lying flat on the floor without her beneath it. When he lifted it up again, a rain of confetti showered everyone watching and he placed the blanket over thin air, asking it to bow. It fell on a standing shape that did as asked, which he then revealed as the girl, half bent and looking up at her parents with nothing but confusion.

“What a brave lass, don’t you think so, boys and girls? I think she deserves to get to the head of the queue, don’t you?”

His audience agreed and the girl was bumped up to the front.

“Now, for me next trick, I’ll need an even braver volunteer, and the prize is a ride in one of our balloons! Who’s feeling brave today? How about you, sir?”

His finger landed on the tall Capri driver, who was stomping through the green, still wearing that homemade billboard scrawled with biblical condemnation. The crowd laughed as he scowled and stepped back, forcing his way through the press of bodies and muttering something that made one mother cover her daughter’s ears.

“I’ll do it!” Amber’s voice cut through. She ran past Jake and Loreen without seeing them and jumped at the edge of the stage. “Pick me!”

The leprechaun held his hat to his chest. “Sorry lass, but we’re here for them. Finish your job, then try again!”

“Aww. Why isn’t anyone corrupt around here?”

She got a little titter from their watchers before a teenage boy stepped in with a hand raised. The leprechaun called the boy up and swept his blanket overhead. It trailed confetti again and wrapped the kid up like a burrito, leaving only his head uncovered. The leprechaun hat was placed on the his head and sank over his eyes, down to his chin, then continued lower than what was physically possible.

“Now I know what you’re all thinking,” the leprechaun said. “We already saw that. He’s just doing the same trick with a hat, right?”

As the hat touched the stage and swallowed the boy’s shoes, not a single person murmured in agreement.

He handed Amber a toy telescope from beneath his hairy cravat. “Well, I promised our lad a balloon ride, and I always deliver. Lass, would you care to find him for me. I’ll get you a clue. He’s exactly where you want to be!”

She frowned and looked at the toy in her hand, confused until a shadow blotted the light. Then her brow unknotted and she put it to her eye, twirling up to see the kid waving from the basket of the balloon overhead.

“No freakin’ way!”

“This is awesome!” the boy called down. “Whoo!”

The crowd clapped as his balloon sailed away, joining the others spread out across the sky. The leprechaun kicked up his hat and caught it on the rear of his head, revealing a winking smiler painted on a bald patch, his ginger ring of curls giving it a beard with locks. More laughter and clapping ensued when he tipped that hat forward and Amber dropped the spyglass in its open brim. The sound of cheers rolled out across the green.

“Thank ye, yer a marvelous assistant,” the leprechaun told her. “Would ye mind helping me out with me final trick? Ye might think ye seen it before, but I wager ye haven’t.”

He asked her to reach into his hat and instead of the telescope, she pulled out a skateboard.

“No, that’s not it.”

The audience laughed and Amber reached in again, pulling out a bowl containing a decidedly live goldfish, which she in turn decided a little girl at the edge of the stage could keep if she promised to love and feed it. Next up came a rope that suspended itself in the air, somehow settling in a stiff upright position despite wiggling when she moved it. As she reached in to pull out more of it, though, a gleaming chainsaw cleared the brim and she screamed. It was already buzzing.

“Aha! Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls, please do not try this at home!” The leprechaun dropped his hat, which landed with a dull thud, revealing more of the rope that refused to drop with it, then poked his belly and asked Amber “Yer not squeamish, are ye?”

“No?”

“Good. Now what I want to ye to do is pretend me belly’s a big ol’ redwood and yer a lumberjack. Can ye do that?”

“Saw your belly?”

“Saw me belly!”

She hesitated, the leprechaun turning it into a dramatic pause, then held the chainsaw to his waist from the back and closed her eyes. When the audience went silent, Orna let out a short “Feck.”

A spray of confetti hit Amber in the face as the saw tore through the shorter man’s midsection. He said nothing, looking faintly amused as it finished its journey, then grabbed the rope and lifted his torso off his waist. An audible gasp washed over the watchers as his legs stepped away to strut around independently.

“Oh, come on, ye can be livelier than that,” he called to them. “Entertain us!”

The legs stopped midstep and turned to face him, despite their lack of face. Then they turned back to the audience, nodded his crotch and began a traditional Irish Jig to an upbeat remix from the brass band, which had finished setting up. The kids screamed with excitement and the adults, too relieved it hadn’t turned into a horror show, laughed with them.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough. Don’t leave me hanging here all day,” he said. But the legs had other ideas. They danced halfway back, stopped, then moonwalked away again. “Hey, I said that’s enough!”

His upper half dropped down to the skateboard and paddled after them. The legs, in turn, turned and ran away. The kids laughed as he chased them across the stage twice before they jumped over him and shuffle danced backwards through the curtains, off stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it seems me time on stage has been, uh, cut short,” he said, “so thank ye for being a wonderful audience, thank ye to me lovely assistant here, and I hope to see ye again soon. Now, get back here, the two of ye!”

He turned and rolled after them, back through the curtain as a brass band kicked up some chase music and the audience cheered.

Behind the bulk of the crowd, Loreen stared wide eyed. “Me and Amber were going to do our mirror routine.”

Jake nodded slowly. “Good luck. Ain’t nobody gonna follow that.”

Amber waved to the audience and tried to sidle off, but as the music reached a crescendo, the legs returned to take one last bow. Instead of a cut section of body, its belt framed what looked like a slice of cake printed in pride flag colors. Then they jumped, clacked their feet, and ran back backstage as the crowd began to disperse, and Amber, saved from the awkwardness of leaving alone in front of them all, sighed in relief.

“Was the fakest Ulster accent you ever heard or what?” Orna greeted her as she descended the side stairs.

Amber said “Yeah, very pantomimey,” but the long haired stage hand immediately distracted her by hefting a wide lectern over his shoulders and marching past her as if it weighed nothing. Orna waved her hand between Amber’s eyes and the man’s bulging arms.

“Stop getting distracted by…hello? What, is it a bicep worth marrying?”

“Oh, totally. If he wasn’t gay,” Amber said, ogling the man as he ogled another. “Why are all the hot ones gay, Orna?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Loreen and Jake approached and Jake leaned in to see what they were staring at. “What’s hot?”

“Strong guy,” Orna said.

Jake smirked “If you like strong guys, why don’t you come help me shift logs at the farm? Feel how heavy they are before I take ‘em to the chipper?”

He flexed an arm, which got an excited “Hmmm!” from Amber, followed by a longer, drawn out echo by Loreen, but when a waft of sizzling pork breezed by, he lowered his arm and raise his nose instead.

“I found hotdogs! And there’s the bank!”

As Jake slipped through the crowd to get out some cash out, Amber gave Orna a nudge. “And I get easily distracted?”

She laughed and while they waited for his return, the twins and Orna discussed whether teasing a little skin would spice up their routine or if they should just power through the raised expectations of a post leprechaun’d audience. A squeal of interference and the brass band striking up again pulled their eyes to the stage, where a man in a spotless suit waved from behind the center-placed lectern, a crystal peach pin glinting on his lapel. He tapped the mic once before an American accent echoed out across the green.

“Top of the morning to you all,” he said, followed by a pause. When he wasn’t met with the Irish town returning that quintessential greeting, he quickly tore out the first page of his notes.

Loreen leaned toward Orna. “Tell me that’s not our sponsor.”

“Yeah, he’s from Peachy Keene. Uh, his name’s Kilometer or something. Same spelling as the residential hall.”

“There’s no Kilometer Hall. Wait, Keene Hall? You mean Miles Keene?”

“You know him?”

“The building was founded by the Keenes. They started this town. How do you not know this?”

“How do you?”

She pointed around the square “There’s an entire hall after them? It has a giant plaque by the door. We’ve walked past it a hundred times. There’s even a statue of his great granddaddy next to the stage! And that’s got a plaque as well.”

“Oh. I never read them.”

Miles Keene spread his hands. “Today we celebrate the joy of being exactly who we are, proudly and without apology. For the first time in my ancestral homeland, civil partnerships are finally legal.”

This time, he did get a cheer, which was tailed by a cry from the edge of the crowd.

“Only on the godless side of the border!”

“Shaddap, you legalized same sex couples years ago!” someone in the crowd retorted.

“Not in the eyes of the church!”

The Capri driver leaned against the discarded frame of his billboard, sweating in his thick woolen coat. His jaw worked as if he were chewing on something bitter and Loreen raised her camera to take a snap. The crowd’s jeering covered his diatribe and as she focused on capturing the scene he was making, he checked his pockets and gathered his gear. Jake chose that moment to return through the crowd, obscuring her view, armed with four hotdogs. Three were buried under onions and mustard. One had ketchup on it, too. Too much ketchup.

“Didn’t know what you liked,” he said. “So you all got onions and mustard.”

“You want some hotdog with that ketchup?” Loreen said.

“No, but I’d appreciate you taking a picture of me eating it. I have an aunt in Chicago I like to troll. Apparently, and this is a direct quote, ketchup on a hotdog is wrong and unnatural. Although she’d probably say the same about all this going on here.”

“Better stand by one of those flags then.”

She took the picture as he posed with an exaggerated bite and they thanked him for theirs. Orna took hers with a smile he fast returned.

“And they say there’s no more real gentleman.”

Loreen’s smile dropped when he gave Orna a wink and took her hand, but before he could plant an equally exaggerated kiss on the back of it, the leprechaun from the stage slipped between them and did it for him. The twins laughed as the leprechaun planted a second on Jake’s hand before running off with a chortle. Amber looked down at Loreen’s camera to see the photo she’d taken of all three.

On stage, Miles Keene was wrapping up “…to emphasize progress, tolerance, and the virtue of celebrating diversity.”

He swept a hand across the crowd and somehow ended the gesture on the only black face in the sea of white. A shuffle rippled through the crowd as all eyes turned the focal point and the black face turned crimson.

“Oh, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“Turn your mic off before you apologize, you fekkin’ eejit,” the retorting voice returned.

“Wow,” Loreen mouthed. “I would not want to be that guy.”

“I think I know him,” Amber said. “We had a class together a year ago. I think his name’s Gandhi. No, Ghedi. Garry? I’m like eighty percent sure it’s something like that.”

Loreen took a picture as Keene managed to get Ghedi out of the spotlight, trying to salvage his speech and finish it. To the credit of everyone listening, the crowd went along with it and the applause swelled. He smiled, visibly relieved and shot an apologetic glance at Ghedi, who returned an amused one. The band started up again and all was good and right as rain, until the flaming bottle rained on that parade.

Nobody saw it fall. Only a few heard it crash, but everyone heard Miles Keene scream and saw him topple off the stage. Burning streaks splashed the front row and the band disbanded in seconds. One dropped their microphone into the spreading puddle of fire, turning the sound of music into a guttural roar. Flames dripped off the stage and Keene’s screams echoed through it all.