Free Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Martin Millar

forgotten it.”
    Aran was sitting down, but had he been standing he would have reeled in shock. This was obviously a disaster. The whole carefully worked-out plan depended utterly on Elfish knowing forty-three lines of Shakespeare in one week’s time. Anything less would lead to total defeat.
    â€œWell, why did you forget it?”
    Elfish fumbled in her pocket and produced a scrap of paper.
    â€œBecause of this,” she said angrily, and thrust the paper at her brother.
    â€œSomeone pushed it through the letterbox and I was so upset worrying about where it came from and what it meant that not only could I not learn the end of the speech, I forgot all the rest as well. And I can’t remember it today either.”
    Aran studied the note.
    â€œWho is this Herrick and why is he shoving poems through my front door?” demanded Elfish. “And what’s all this about lying with Mab? Is that meant to refer to me? The man must be some sort of freak.”

    Elfish began to work herself up into a tantrum.
    â€œCalm down,” said Aran. “Herrick does not want to lie with you. He’s been dead for three hundred years. He was a poet. This is an extract from one of his poems.”
    â€œOh.”
    Elfish calmed down a little.
    â€œThen what does it mean?”
    Aran asked if it had been written by Mo but Elfish could not remember ever having seen Mo’s handwriting. Also, she said, Mo would never have heard of any seventeenth-century poet either.
    â€œBut Cody would,” Aran pointed out. “He is fairly knowledgeable about literature. Not as knowledgeable as me, of course. I imagine that he and Mo deliberately found an obscure Queen Mab poem and sent it to you. Possibly they’re suggesting that they know more about Queen Mab than you do. Possibly it was just meant to upset you.”
    â€œWhat a stupid idea,” Elfish said with contempt.
    â€œWell, it worked, didn’t it?”
    â€œAbsolutely not,” said Elfish, and stormed through to the kitchen to find a beer.
    â€œStill,” said Aran later, “I don’t understand why it has upset you so much that you’ve forgotten the entire speech.”
    Elfish did not understand this either, but had Mo been there to join in the conversation he could have told her. He recalled very well the time that Elfish had been trying to learn a long set of lyrics the night before a gig and had failed utterly, despite the fact that normally the learning of lyrics did not cause her any problems. Elfish, for all her determination, could not learn lines under pressure. She had demonstrated this several times in the past. In her determination to outsmart Mo, she had neglected to remember this. Mo had
not forgotten, which was why he had gone along with the scheme, and was even now spreading the word to his friends about the debacle that was to come. He knew that the pressure would get to Elfish, and he knew that sending her the poem would add to it.
    â€œNo doubt it was a temporary failure only,” said Aran hopefully. “You’ll remember it all soon.”
    Elfish teetered on the brink of depression, but checked herself in time.
    â€œNo doubt,” she said. “Meantime I must pay Mo back for this attack. I thought Shakespeare was the only person to write about Queen Mab and now I find this Herrick did as well. Are there any more obscure Queen Mab poems in the language?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” admitted Aran. “There might be.”
    â€œThen please find me one so I can put it through Mo’s letterbox. I refuse to let him think that he knows more than me about Queen Mab.”
    Aran was about to object that finding an obscure Queen Mab poem for Elfish sounded very much like the activity which he was determined to avoid, being still concerned with his overwhelming depression, but he stopped himself. He did not wish to disappoint his sister. Besides, obscure literary research was always