The Troupe (42 page)

“The wings and ribs of a crow that has spent much of its life aloft,” said Silenus. He began searching through the tiny bones with one finger. He selected one very small vertebra and examined it. “Burn the bones of the earth, sing the songs of the sky,” he muttered. Then, to the disgust of nearly all of them, he popped it in his mouth. He grimaced and maneuvered it around until his cheek bulged.

“Are we really doing this?” asked George. “Are we really going to see… well…”

“Yes,” said Silenus. “We are. But seeing them shouldn’t worry you.”

“No?”

“No.” He continued rummaging in his bag. “You should worry about
them
seeing
you
.” He took out a large silver hand mirror. He spun it around in one palm, and George saw it was mirrored on both sides. Silenus hung it from the sapling by a string so that one side reflected the wood while the other reflected their own faces.

“Harry, what is all this for?” asked Colette.

“The fae folk are generally a mercurial and superficial breed,” said Silenus. “They don’t engage in most worldly affairs because they believe themselves above us. The rest of the world is sort of in a mist to them, and—lucky for me—they never go outside of their little kingdom. So it takes a lot to get their attention. Certain vestments, tokens and totems suggesting power, that kind of thing. One who burns the very Earth and keeps the skies below his tongue is someone worth considering.”

“But you aren’t actually like that,” said Colette. “You’re just faking.”

“Am I?” said Silenus. “How do you know?”

“What’s the mirror for?” asked George.

“They’re also very vain,” said Silenus. “The first thing I want them to see is themselves, and mirrors do not work properly where they come from. They’re highly valued.”

Franny looked around herself, confused. “You know, I… I think I remember this,” she said. “I’ve done this before. Haven’t I?”

“No,” said Silenus sharply. “You have not. I would know if you had.”

“Oh,” she said, and nodded.

Silenus checked his pocket watch. “All right. It’s time.” He knelt and lit a match and started the kindling. Blue flames began to dance along the tarred branches. Then he stood and said, “We’ll need to go over a few rules before we actually encounter any of them. First, never address one of them as an equal. Always refer to them as ‘my lord’, or ‘my lady.’ That is of absolute importance. Second, do not rise to any insult, should any come. And they will come. But you’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

“Why are we asking for help from these snobs, then?” said Colette. “They sound unbearable.”

“They are unbearable, but they are also very powerful,” said Silenus. “So we’ll all just have to be fucking polite, all right?”

A cold wind rolled across the field, and the hanging mirror began to spin on its string. George was so surprised by this that he hardly noticed the mist intensifying in the wood beyond.

“Now, the third rule—they may offer you things,” said Silenus. “Under no circumstances should you
ever
accept them. Their gifts do not come free, and, though they live and function by very specific binding agreements, they are extremely skilled at twisting words to their own ends. It may be something you want very desperately—something you almost feel you cannot live without—but you must not accept it. All right?”

“All right,” said Colette.

“All right. And the last rule is—you
must not ever
draw attention to their masks.”

“Their what?” said George.

“Their masks. Don’t look at them too long.
Don’t
touch them. And, for the love of fucking Christ, do not
ever
ask them to remove them.”

It seemed to have gotten even colder now. Stanley was shivering in his nice sack coat. The mirror kept spinning on its string, but it began to slow, and when it did George thought he saw that one side of the mirror was reflecting something that should not have been there: it showed the troupe standing in the intersection, true, but behind them was a tall, spindly wood, with graying trunks and many twisting vines, and above the wood was a dark night sky with thousands and thousands of stars…

George looked behind them, but saw nothing resembling what he was seeing in the mirror. It was day, and there was no wood. The coldness of the air grew so great that he began to shiver along with Stanley, and it felt as if they were being slowly pulled to somewhere much denser, much harder, and much colder than the world they had just recently been within. “Something is wrong…” he said, but no one heard.

“Why do they wear masks?” asked Colette.

“The seelies are immortal,” said Silenus. “They do not die naturally, only by violence. But when your life span is eternal, you eventually see
everything
. And you can’t avoid a few accidents or mishaps. So though the remaining fey folk are still immortal, they… do not resemble their original selves. And they are very, very vain, so they hide their faces…” The spinning mirror abruptly came to a halt. Silenus looked up at the misted woods across the field. “Behind masks.”

The rest of the troupe looked. There was an odd, fluttering light in the forest, and a figure was emerging from the tree line. It was very tall and dressed in such deep black that George could make out nothing but a bright white face and a gray cap. For some reason the
sight of this bizarre thing in the woods inspired a terrible dread in him. Its movements were strange, as if its legs were too long and it had to wade forward, like a man on stilts.

“Here he comes,” said Silenus quietly.

The figure strode across the stony field to them. It looked like a man, but if so it was the tallest man George had ever seen, reaching nearly seven feet. He was dressed in a fine black suit made of a fabric that seemed to glint even in the lowest light. In a manner somewhat like Franny, he had no visible skin: he wore black gloves, and at his neck and his wrists he wore black and gray handkerchiefs or scarves. On his head he wore a gray homburg hat, and upon his face he wore an ornate white mask. It was meant to mimic noble, Roman features, with a long, delicate nose, a thin, thoughtful mouth, and a smooth, clean brow. But though the features were close enough to human, they were not exact, and along with the mask’s blank, dark eyeholes they made the white face alien and disturbing.

The man stopped when he was several feet away and examined them. He glanced at the mirror, and for a moment stared at himself, transfixed. This seemed to put him in a better mood. Then he turned back and said in a high, soft voice that was muffled by his mask, “Greetings, Heironomo Silenus, Oldest Wanderer, Harvester of Echoes, Bearer of Lights Eternal, Master of Stage and Speech and Song.”

For a moment they did nothing. The troupe and the man in black simply looked at one another. He was such a foreign and uncomforting creature that George was not sure what they were to do.

“Pardon my rudeness, my lord,” said Silenus suddenly, his words brimming with courtliness. “Thank you so much for hearing and answering our summons.” He swept off his hat and bowed low, and kicked George’s ankle, indicating for him and the others to do likewise. The men all bowed, and the women curtsied. “You are looking
splendid, as always. Am I correct in thinking that you have kept up with the current fashions, my lord?”

The man in black looked at him blankly for a long time. Then he said in the same soft voice, “It is expected of the court of Heartache’s Founding to always keep pace with the absolute newest trends.”

“Of course it is,” said Silenus. He nonchalantly spat out the crow bone and stood back up. “It was stupid of me to even ask. You do these new tastes a far better service than any other gentleman I have ever seen, however.”

“I, personally, find these latest fashions utterly vulgar and despicable,” said the man in black.

“Yes, yes,” said Silenus. “You are absolutely right in this assessment, my lord. It’s so regrettable.”

“I love them,” said the man in black, “
because
they are so vulgar and despicable.”

“Well, of course you would,” said Silenus. “Any gentleman of your excessively good breeding would.”

The man in black stared at Silenus for a long while again. Then he looked around at the troupe. He did not seem impressed.

“Ah, yes,” said Silenus. “Allow me to introduce my traveling companions.” He then did so, going from member to member and describing their talents and roles.

“Am I correct in thinking that you and your companions wish to gain entry to the court?” asked the man in black.

“That is indeed our wish, my lord,” said Silenus. “If it would please you and the court, that is.”

“How unusual. As a herald, it is given to me to refuse or admit any guests,” said the man in black. “Most are refused. But the lady has told me that you should be admitted at any time and under any circumstances, Silenus. She dearly wishes to see you again. In fact, it is rumored that you have been avoiding her.”

Silenus gave him a placid grin. “Surely that is an issue for the lady herself, and no other?”

The herald stiffened. “If you wish. Follow me, and I will accompany you to the house.” He beckoned, and the troupe began to follow him across the field. Except now they found that things had changed: it was night, not morning, and they no longer stood on an intersection but on a single paved road that led from the depths of one dark wood and wound across the frigid meadows to another. Huge, unearthly black stones now dotted the fields around them, some so tall as to cast shadows across the starlit road. Silenus hardly noticed, but George and the others stared around themselves as they walked.

“I don’t recall coming out of those woods,” said Colette, looking behind. “Wasn’t there a few houses back there a while ago?”

Stanley took out his board, and wrote:
THESE ARE THEIR LANDS. FICKLE AS THEIR INHABITANTS
.

“Have you been here before?” asked Colette.

Stanley shook his head, wrote:
FIRST TIME
.

“Well, either way it’s very disorienting,” she said. “And it’s so cold here. I’ve never been colder…”

George agreed. Where were they? Something the herald had said bothered him a little. Then he remembered the name of the court: Heartache’s Founding. Wasn’t that the name he’d glimpsed on Silenus’s strange map? Yet hadn’t that been in Kentucky? George had never been to Kentucky, but he decided he did not want to go if it was anything like this.

They entered the dark wood. At the mouth of the road the herald reached into a ditch on the side and produced a small bronze lantern. He ran one long finger along the glass and the candle within instantly became lit. He gestured with the same finger and they followed.

The candle flame made strange patterns on the dark tree trunks. At times the tangle of branches seemed to catch the light and form intricate hieroglyphs.

“I take it, then,” said Silenus, “that her ladyship still has no fondness for day?”

“Night is the best time for parties,” said the herald. “And what purpose would the court and the house hold, if not for parties?”

The road began to climb a tall hill, and as they emerged from beneath the trees the troupe gasped. An enormous house sat on the top of the hill, but it was not like any house they’d ever seen before. It was certainly not at all what George had been expecting. He thought fairies should live in castles, or in glens in the forest, but at the top of the hill was an enormous Queen Anne mansion, with many gables, turrets, ornate spandrels and spindles, countless fluted columns, and a long front porch with gingerbread trim. It looked much like a high-society home in twilight, with all the windows glowing warmly in the dark. The only thing that was odd was the large bonfires arranged on the hillside around it, which sometimes gave it a medieval, savage look.

“This is new,” muttered Silenus as they began to trudge up the hill.

The herald led them into an enormous foyer with a vaulted ceiling, smooth columns, and two tall arched doors with heavy bronze handles. Upon their entering, George’s keen senses went wild: the air was curiously, almost unbearably still, and even though his ears told him all was silent some part of him thought he was constantly hearing whispers and a fluttering of feathered wings from somewhere nearby.

The herald pushed the doors open and they followed him down a long carpeted hallway. There were no other doors save at the end. There were many paintings hung on the walls of the hallway, but the first few made no sense to George: in most of the unsettling scenes depicted, the painter had evidently used a dimension or color that his eyes could not easily translate, and they gave him a headache. After them came a series of paintings that were simply black, curiously enough. But toward the end of the hall the paintings began to make sense: they showed landscapes and cityscapes of stunning, beautiful imagery, some so awe-inspiring that they evoked sighs from the troupe.

“This is her ladyship’s private collection,” said the herald. “They are painted once every thousand years by one of the court artists. You can see the varying styles and subjects in them, and their progression.”

George looked back. There had to be at least several hundred paintings. “So, the oldest are at the end of the hall here, and they get younger toward the entrance?”

The herald surveyed him for a moment, as if he did not care for George’s impertinent tone. “Yes.”

The oldest paintings were so affecting George could hardly believe such beauty had ever existed in the world. But he remembered that it had not lasted long. He looked at the period of paintings that were utterly black. Had that been when the wolves first appeared? And after that, the paintings became so disturbing and twisted, as if the painters were horribly traumatized, or perhaps there had been nothing beautiful left to paint…

The herald opened the end set of doors and led them into an enormous, high-ceilinged parlor. Though one whole wall was a series of bay windows, the room was very dark, and they could just make out rings and rings of overstuffed chairs, a lowered wooden dance floor, and many tables at the back. Somewhere someone was playing a haunting melody on a very out-of-tune piano. At first the room seemed to be empty, yet as their eyes adjusted they saw it was not: tall, thin figures stood in groups or sat in the lounge chairs or at the tables, languidly drinking or eating. They somehow managed to elude the eye, as if they were made of smoke, unless you looked right at them. Each person wore a porcelain-white mask, many of which had an adapted mouth that allowed for a cigarette or a drink. The masked people stared at them as they moved by.