The Motion of Puppets (32 page)

If I remain still, Theo thought, he will think he is dreaming and fall back asleep.

The fat man burped and chuckled to himself. “Will you not speak, ghost, and tell me why you are here? Have you come at last for me? Have my wanton ways finally bested me? One hopes. Ah, well, he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune. Come and sit with me awhile and tell me what it is like to be dead. Whether or no it is wiser to have never been born at all.”

Theo put on a false voice, deeper than his own, his cadence slowed by half. “Had you not been born, you would not know what it is like to be alive, and without life, death is impossible to understand.”

Raising a fist to his forehead, the fat man appeared to be in pain. “You are a strange spirit with a strange philosophy, and you are giving me a headache. I am called Silenus, friend. What name did they give you while you were upon this earth? Or are the names we keep but hollow things? Come have a drink, whoever you are, and we shall celebrate your escape from melancholy reason.” Silenus gently slapped the donkey on the rump, and it hawed once and rolled over to sleep on the next pillow.

Theo shuffled up the mountain of cushions, and folding his legs to keep his shoes hidden, he sat next to the drowsy old drunk. When offered a tipple from the jug, he politely demurred.

“What need of wine has a ghost, eh? When one is dead, the crass appetites disappear, but if one is immortal, appetite is all, I am sad to say.” Silenus patted his enormous belly. “Tell me who you have come for, friend, so I may drink to your good fortune.”

“I came for my beloved—”

“Ha! 'Tis an old story. The oldest. Love.”

“Do you know a puppet named Kay?”

“Again with the names. I am lucky to remember my own. Or my brother's name, Bottom, is it? Are you looking for Bottom?”

Theo shook his great ghostly head. “I am looking for Kay.”

Silenus scratched his head, dislodging the laurel garland from his head, but he took no notice that it had slid to cover one eye. “They are all above in Elysium. I had to take my leave of their giddy-paced shindig. Too much for me. But ask the Original, he knows everyone. Before you go, take a holiday, Old Haunt. I have no one else to talk to but this little ass.”

The donkey brayed its complaints.

“I must go,” Theo said. “I have an appointment to keep before dawn.”

“Yonder love awaits,” the old drunk said. “Chase her if you must, but remember you must keep what you catch.” He flopped back suddenly and was asleep again before his head hit the pillow. The little donkey shifted till they were side by side like spooning lovers.

Rising carefully, Theo straightened his costume and rehearsed how to appear to be floating as he headed for the stairway. The music swelled as he climbed each step, the conversations rising and falling in symphony and dissonance. Through the small holes in his mask, Theo saw flashes of light and color till all at once he reached the top and the room exploded into cacophony. A mad attic full of nightmares. Puppets everywhere, so many that he was frightened enough to consider retreating to the peace and quiet of the bower. Wait for Egon—where the hell was he? But Theo pressed on, lifting himself across the threshold, and stepping away from the opening, finding a shadow near the wall to soak it all in.

Small and tall, little fairies twirling on wires and giants walking as if on stilts. Fat and bone thin, a tree person, flat shadows propelled by sticks, effigies, dogs and cats and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on cardboard horses dark as molasses. Three little pigs and nine little babies. Huge heads bouncing along on their jaws. A carnival on acid, a mad costume party with the empty costumes walking, talking, dancing, singing. A couple of marionettes locked in an embrace. A juggler spinning a bird on the end of a string in an infinite loop.

Hot in his overstuffed head, Theo breathed in the aroma of paper and paste, balsa and coiled wire. His mouth tasted of sawdust and ink. With no holes for his ears, Theo could not easily make out the directions of the sounds which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at all.

A little dog, no bigger than a toy, found him out at once. It sniffed around the hem of his costume and whimpered at the alien scent, and Theo tried to nudge it away with his toe. A beautiful Japanese woman in a luminous kimono rushed to his rescue, but she stopped short when she apprehended his costume.

“A g-g-g-ghost!” she screeched, and her eyes rolled back to an awful yellow, and red horns stuck out of her forehead, and her smile became a rictus of horrible pointed teeth. Theo blanched and thought this must be the devil the others had warned him about, but just as he started to speak to her, a samurai crept up behind her and with one swift stroke chopped off her head. It rolled across the floor, laughing. Yapping and snarling, the little dog chased after her noggin in a macabre game of fetch. Arms extended, the headless body took off blindly to try to find it first.

“Do not worry,” the samurai said. “She will trip over it soon enough, and we will patch her up before dawn.”

Theo floated away from the racket to find a quiet vantage to pick through the crowd, trying to distinguish the familiar from the strange. Looking for those from the Halloween parade, he spotted the Three Sisters at once. In a line with men in Russian costumes, the tallest sister had hitched up her skirts to dance the kazotsky, her hinged legs kicking out like a Cossack's, a broad smile striping her face. Two children were climbing on the shoulders of the puppet made from twigs and branches, and he saw as well the old woman asleep in a rocking chair, oblivious to the chaos all around her. The Devil was in hiding.

His first glimpse was fleeting and from behind her, a flash of hair, the curve of a bare arm. The woman with the straw hair was facing him, directly opposite, deep in a corner of the room. Even from a distance, she looked bereft, and another woman reached out to offer what seemed to be a gesture of consolation. Half-hidden by the crowd, she turned toward him slowly, a series of still images that coalesced into a whole motion. He saw her face again. Kay. Alive. In the form of a puppet, but Kay at last. He broke and crumbled. At last, at last, at last.

*   *   *

The Original could not rein in his anger. While all around him the maenads and satyrs cavorted, he paced creaky and stiff legged, muttering to himself. “Beware of me? The Queen said to beware of me. Of the so-called others. That's a fine irony, coming from her. Beware the Queen is more like it. She is a monster, a tyrant, the very bitch of power and duplicity.”

Kay cowered in front of the little wooden doll, uncertain what to say to cool his temper.

“I make the overture,” he said. “I extend the olive branch and what answer has she? I cannot come to your party. She warns you and all my friends from the Quatre Mains of me? I ask you, who is in the wrong here? That minx, that trollop, that petty husk of paper and glue.” He scratched the scar line that bisected his chest, and his eyeholes glowed with ire.

“To be fair, sir, she gave us permission to attend, and we were concerned that you had taken our friend, that you may have unmade the Devil.”

“Murdered the Devil, is that what she'd have you believe? And I suppose her fat friend is in on this, too. Firkin, hah. Why would we want to get rid of the Devil? Why would we want to lose anyone at all? The Queen is under a misguided impression if that's the story she bruits about. I am all for harmony among the toys. Every puppet in his place, follow the rules, and you will find happiness. And peace, order, freedom.”

“Freedom, is it?” Kay asked. Through the whirl of the dancers, she looked for Noë and saw her standing alone and anxious despite the jolliness around her. “So we are free?”

Stopped by her question, the Original slowly turned to face her. She saw just how old and worn he was. Cracks along the poplar grain had deepened, and the holes on his arms and notch atop his skull where ropes had gone were dark with the grime of centuries. “We are all free,” the old doll said. “Free as destiny allows.”

“Then you will hear out my friend Noë?” She pointed to the forlorn figure on the other side of the room. “She is slowly going mad from this puppet life and wants her old self back. Can you grant her that freedom?”

A shadow of disappointment crossed his face, and the hinges at his neck groaned as he bowed his heavy wooden head. “Child, you mistake me for something I am not. Long ago the shamans made me who I am, just as I had the Quatre Mains make you into what you have become. You ask for a free will beyond my power to grant. The puppeteers can take her away if they please, as has been done before at times. Though I do not know what fate awaits those who are cast out. But, we are free in the night hours, free within this space—”

“That's no freedom at all.”

Livid, she turned away and pushed aside a scowling maenad in her path, deaf to the entreaties of the ancient doll calling her back. She stormed away in long strides till the Devil caught up with her. Grabbing her by the arm, he spun her around with brute force. “What in the hell are you doing? What did you say to him? Have you lost your senses?”

“Once upon a time, I thought he was a god,” she said. “But he is nothing more than one of us. Grown old and tired by the centuries.”

“You must have respect for your elders. He's seen things and done things that you and I can only dream of.”

“Nothing more than a puppet on a string.”

The Devil laughed at her and loosed his grip. “Come now, my dear Kay. It's not as bad as all that. You may think this is some kind of hell, but think again of all that you have forsaken and all that you now enjoy. We have no hunger, no real thirst. Our day-to-day anxieties vanish. There is no need for heartbreak or sadness or tears. We do not tire or grow older than the age we were made. No hate, no jealousy, no crime if we so choose. All we are asked to do is what we love. To perform. To make people laugh or cry or feel the heart's tug in the dark for an hour or two. We are immortal, eternal, and loved as long as there is an audience for our few antics.”

For the first time since her arrival, Kay wanted to slap someone in the face. “And what if we do not want to be puppets anymore?”

Time slowed, and she spun on her toes to take in the spectacle all around her. The comedy of the damned, oblivious to her exasperation, continued. She heard Olya's deep laughter as a dissident bellowed, “Catch me if you can.” Puck tiptoed around the four lovers sleeping it off, squeezing nectar onto their drowsy eyes. Good old Nix was entertaining the children from the shoe with another from his bag of tricks. A ghost she had not seen before hovered at the staircase. Such a life was filled with novelty and fun, loud as a carnival, happy as a circus, but she could not reconcile her desires. She searched the crowd for Noë, the Devil watching every move.

“She has always been a little crazy, our Noë,” the Devil said. “Touched since the day she arrived. Never heard her not going on about how she cannot stand one more moment, but I ask you, who is better in a show? Don't let the madness rub off on you. Enjoy the party, and don't waste your time with sadness. It's a long, cold, dark winter ahead, baby, and we don't want you to be so blue. A little sin will do you good.”

“Get thee behind me,” she said and walked away from the Devil. She fought her way to Noë, stuck alone in a corner, idly playing with the straw on her head.

“Men,” Kay said. “I had such high hopes for the Original, but he turned out to be no better than the rest of them, all talk and no action. And to think I used to adore him, back in the toy shop window in Québec. I remember passing by the Quatre Mains on my way to rehearsals each day, and there he was in all his antique glory. A wooden man trapped in a jar. My husband was jealous of him, can you imagine, but I never coveted a thing so much in all my life. He seemed alive, and I was such a fool for him.”

“Love makes such happy delusions.”

“The old man offered no way out, I'm afraid. I asked for you.”

Noë sighed. “I would give anything to feel that way again.”

Kay rested her hand on Noë's shoulder. “We could try the front door. Sneak away from the party, nobody will notice, and try our luck. Just because they say it is impossible doesn't mean we shouldn't try.”

“But what about the Queen and Mr. Firkin? They're still down below.”

“If they are in the stalls, they will not notice. And if they are guarding the door, we could always slip by the Worm in the sheepcote through the cellar door.”

With a nod of her head, Noë gestured at a figure over Kay's shoulder. “Don't look now, but I think you have a secret admirer.”

“Never mind all that—”

“He's staring a hole through me. I have not seen him before, have you? What's that strange puppet supposed to be, a ghost?”

Feigning nonchalance, Kay snuck a peek at the creature. He was the poorest excuse for a ghost that she had ever seen. Little more than a sheet and an oversized lumpy head. Slathered in mismatched ovals of black ink, his eyes appeared to have been painted by a child, and the mouth was but a slapdash brushstroke in the same dark ink. Holding it all together was a thick rope wound around the neck. Kay looked back to Noë and laughed. “You see the type who's interested in me.”

“Shall we run away?” Noë asked. “Before he says boo and tries to scare us? Where has this darling fellow been all night?”

Kay looked at him again, astonished to find him shaking as if he were afraid of her. The Ghost lurched forward awkwardly, unsteady on his feet, and then he looked right and left to make sure nobody was watching him. With a more measured pace, he seemed to float toward them, but halfway across, the woman in the leopard skin tunic, one of the maenads, stepped into his path.

She sniffed the air and held her spear across her chest. “I've not noticed you before, ghoul. Are you one of the Quatre Mains puppets?”