Excerpt: Wrenfaire, Vermont

Oddly, the little town started filling up with people. They arrived in sporadic groups, mostly costumed, but some dressed as the special brand of nutcase that is native to Vermont. Tie-dye and battened leather armor make for an unusual combination.

"Is there something going on today?" I asked Nathan, "It looks like a sneak preview or something."

Nathan and Mary-Anne glanced at each other, nervously, and then Mary-Anne said, "There's kind of a raid."

Nathan elaborated, "It's not a raid, it's a peaceful, non-violent protest against that development." He pointed at the nascent Wal-Mart.

"Yeah," Mary-Anne agreed, "What he said, but with weapons."

I was suddenly glad I brought my camera today.

Like a cooling gas subliming to a solid, the wandering re-enactivists soon formed into a throng, and then a gaggle, until finally they were a proper mob. King Scunthorpe, apparently without any twinge of irony, cantered out from the stables behind the feasting hall on a large chestnut horse in full regalia. He raised that age-old symbol of feudal stewardship, the megaphone, to his mustached lips and was soon outwitted by the device, as it made an ear-scraping sqwonk.

He leaned over and conferred with Ryland. He was carrying his carved wooden staff, but there was some decoration, some odd addition. I couldn't make out the details so I raised my camera and zoomed in. Oy! thought I, as there was a large roman candle duct taped to the top of the staff. And not just a New Jersey roadside-vendor type, this looked like something he picked up in South Carolina on a trip back from a wizards council held in some Boca Raton Days Inn. Today, the court wizard had brung the shock and awe.

With all the grace and poise of an aging role-player who had done enough drugs in the eighties to put Eddie Van Halen into a coma, Ryland fumbled the megaphone and dropped it to the muddy turf. He retrieved it, dropped it again, retrieved it again, managed to make the sqwonking sound directly into his one remaining functional eardrum which caused him to drop it like a hot rock, and finally seemed to realize that the switches and knobs on the back actually had some sort of function. After an amusing but all-too brief medley of monophonic college football fight songs, the megaphone was working as intended, and Ryland handed it back to the king, only dropping it four times in the process.

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, good citizens of Wrenfaire," he began. I didn't see any Romans. "Our humble village is under siege. Not a siege of arrows or the creaking wooden machineries of war, but of modern blight on our horizon. There is not one place, not one, that you can't see that abomination from!" He gestured at the Wal-Mart being constructed on the hill.

"Except for inside!" said one of his citizen serfs.

"Yeah!" another agreed, angrily.

Scunthorpe continued, "If we let this stand, the inevitable victem will be our lovely Wren's Nest tavern, a place I know is close to each one of our hearts. Some of you were married there. Many of our children – the future of Wrenfaire – were conceived in the inn's charming guest rooms or it's well-stocked storeroom." (At this, a six year old jumped up and down with excited pride). "Well, if we allow this invasion of modern commercialism to creep past our horizon, how long will we have before the Wren's Nest becomes just another Starbucks?!"

I could just make out the bright illustrated box of a U-Haul truck in front of the Wal-Mart's build site, as it unloaded a crowd of migrant construction workers like a clown car with powertools. Added to the workers already on the site, they would match, if not exceed, our number.

"What's do we say to the outside world, Wrenfaire?" Scunthorpe bellowed.

"Out of sight! Out of mind!" The town responded.