A Midsummer's Day by Heather Montford

ripped what breath Vaughn had from his lungs.
    But there was no screaming.  He didn’t hear fire ravage his wooden stage.  The wooden benches.  The wooden roof.
    There was no sound of his audience running for their lives.
    What he heard... was the sound of applause?  He wrenched himself from the thick muck and stood.  Through mud filled eyes he saw no sign of destruction.  He saw no fire, no bomb crater.  He saw no sign that the elephant had escaped from its pen on Caravan Way and had fallen over.
    Had he imagined the whole thing?  That must have been it.  He hit the mud too hard.  He imagined the shockwave.
    Vaughn wiped the thick mud from his eyes and, with two deft flicks of his wrists, flung it as far into the audience as he could.
    Giddy shrieks were his reward.  He and his two fellow beggars delighted in splatting the danger zone, the first eight rows of the audience.  Anybody wearing white received special attention.
    The other beggars joined him at the edge of the pit, and the three took their bows together.  Forarin, the hero of this showing, pushed villainous Puck back into the mud.  Vaughn threw himself into the pit as hard as he could, and more shrieks greeted his ear.
    He stood again, breathless and happy.  The crowd moved on.  It seemed no one wanted the usual souvenir photo with the beggars today, so he went to a compartment hidden around the back of his stage.  Some muddy prankster had replaced their worn terry towel, long having forgotten that it was once white, with a rag made from a burlap sack.
    Damned jokester, whoever it was.  He was supposed to be the prankster of the pack.  His very name gave him that quality.
    Whoever had left the burlap rag failed at their attempted prank.  The fabric wasn’t scratchy in the least, and even around the delicate skin around his eyes it was amazingly smooth.  He wiped his face and threw the rag back into the compartment.
    Something was… off.  From a distance, the crowd beyond the last row of seats looked no different.  No smaller.  Children at a nearby game threw mud soaked sponges at game masters dressed like the mud beggars.  The line leading to the privies was every bit as long as usual.  Women shopped at a stand selling chopsticks for their hair.  Sammie liked the things so much she owned three sets herself.
    But…
    There was nobody dressed in jeans.  Nobody in shorts and tee shirts and sneakers.  People squinted against the harsh sun for the lack of sunglasses.
    All the tourists were gone.
    Everyone was in period costume.  Men wore rough breeches and jerkins.  The women wore long gowns.
    What in the hell?  He hadn’t paid that much attention to his audience when they left, but there damned well were tourists in the stands at the start of the show.  He had personally tortured three in sparkling white tees himself.
    There hadn’t been enough time for them to completely disappear from sight.
    “Fair thee well, Cousin Puck?”  Forarin joined Vaughn near the seats.  “Thou hath a bewitched look about thee.”
    “What in the blazes is going on?”  Vaughn walked out onto the Dregs road.  Being closer to the situation didn’t make things better.  “What happened to the tourists?”
    “I know not what thou dost mean, Cousin Puck, with this most strange word tourist.  We have seen us our normal audience of peasants, gone now to view them other shows.”
    Vaughn sighed.  “Enough, Scott.”  He broke character and used Forarin’s real name.  “No one’s close enough to hear.”
    “By what manner of name be this Scott?”  Scott crossed his eyes.  “Methinks the most oppressive heat hath tainted thy senses.  Come and let us eat.  Another performance awaits us hence.”
    “Are you freaking serious?”
    Scott just stared blankly at him.  He was out of his flipping mind.  It was hot, and he’d taken one too many hard hits in the mud.  Maybe the mysterious shockwave, if it really existed, had knocked Scott’s