The Troupe (46 page)

It had all gone on too long, he decided miserably. Someone needed to put right what had gone awry. He would have to take his father’s place. It would be a monumental task, but it was one that had to be done. And maybe he would not have to do it alone.

It would be a great performance, would it not, to sing the song of eternity? There was no greater piece to play. And George had always wanted to dominate the theater. Yet he felt no joy at the idea, only terror.

He lay down on his bed and shut his eyes. He was justified, he told himself. This was warranted. And though he would not admit it to himself, all he saw in the dark was that image of Colette, hands placed upon her rib cage, smiling slightly as she fondly remembered some past moment with his father.

George slept very lightly, and awoke long before anyone else. He dressed and wandered down to the front foyer to wait for the rest of the troupe. The lady’s house mirrored his mood: every room was large and empty, and there never seemed to be enough light.

The remainder of the troupe came rumbling down the stairs much sooner than George expected, Silenus charging behind them like a shepherd. He was juggling his hat and his coat, and he kept shouting, “It doesn’t matter! Forget about it! We’re not making any stops, we’ve only got to move!”

“But where are we moving to? I thought we’d practically already be at one of the places!” said Colette. She, too, was half-dressed. Apparently Silenus had roused them well before they’d anticipated.

“There are two pieces of the song we’ve had our eye on,” said Silenus. “We’re getting dropped off at one, and then we’re going to have to run like hell to get to the other. We have to take as much advantage of this opening as we can.” He stopped, spotting George. “Oh, there you are. I thought I’d have to chase you down.” He seemed pleased to find he was packed and ready, and said, “Well, at least someone’s on task today. Thank you, my boy.”

George nodded. Silenus threw his arm around him and shouted, “Now step lively! The lady’s already prepared the way for us, but that’s no excuse to drag your heels.”

As they hurried out the front door George glanced back to look at Franny. As usual, she was ensconced to the nose in her drab coats and fraying scarves. All that was visible were her eyes. But rather than dazed they were extraordinarily sharp, and seemed to gleam with some anguish George could not name.

The lady and her entourage were waiting at the start of the path through the wood. Rather than white, she was now dressed in a deep cherry red, complete with a red parasol. Her mask was still white, and with it fixed atop her red figure she made George think of an insect whose color warned predators not to approach.

“Ah,” said the lady. “There you are. We’ve been waiting. I see you all have put your usual amount of thought into your dress.”

“The path is ready?” asked Silenus. “Everything is set?”

“I have moved the path, yes,” said the lady. “For the moment, it ends in a set of woods outside of what is referred to as Lake Logehrin, right at the start of its dam. It will be night there now. If your conclusions are correct—and I should think they are, being as my mother provided the instruments that produced them—your little song rests in a dell in the center of a very small island just off the coast of where you will arrive.”

“Excellent,” said Silenus. “Then I must thank you, my lady, for all the help you have given us.” Once more, he bowed. “I trust you know that this will be the last time that I trouble you.”

“I would think so, player,” said the lady. “Should we see each other again, it may not be nearly as amicable as this has been.”

Silenus glanced up at the lady. Like all fairies, she was nearly inscrutable behind her white mask. Then he bowed once more and led them down the path.

George was not sure when the black wood receded. He never saw it dwindle away, nor did he notice the path beneath his feet change.
What alerted him was the change in the air: in the wood around the Founding it had smelled of damp and moldering leaves, and everything had been still and close, yet as they walked he began to smell pine and moisture. After a while they all looked around themselves and saw they were now in an isolated glen in a pine forest, and they saw no stone path behind them, or dark wood, or Queen Anne home or bonfires.

“Thank God that’s fucking over,” said Silenus. “Those people give me the fucking creeps. I can’t stand not knowing if they’re looking at me or not.”

“Where are we?” asked George.

“Northern New York, west of Lake Champlain, on the south side of Logehrin.” Silenus looked up at the sky. “Now. Where do we need to go?”

Stanley took out a small compass and consulted it, then pointed ahead.

“All right,” said Silenus. “Let’s hurry now. Stanley and I will collect this one bit of the song, and then we’ll hightail it to Plattsburgh and catch a train to the next. Should be quick and simple. All right?”

No one answered as they charged through the forest. Soon they saw the lake ahead, wide and flat and sparkling with moonlight, except the west side ended not in a shore but in a long, smooth arc of gray. It was the dam, George guessed. To the east the river rose into the high hills, and to the west, on the other side of the dam, the landscape descended into a rolling valley. Evidently the valley had once been filled with water, but due to the dam the river was but a trickle down below. Down the southern shore at the base of the dam there was a shining string of railroad track, but it looked abandoned. And there ahead of them on the edge of this artificial lake was a small black spot, just a tiny scrap of island that carried the burden of three huge pines that stretched up into the sky.

Then George heard something, and he froze: there was a moan on the wind, terribly deep and resonant. He had seen the First Song’s
performance so many times that he knew it by heart, and while this seemed
similar
—a note the mind could hardly recognize, and no instrument or voice could ever mimic—it was something he’d never heard before. He realized that what he was hearing was a part of the song that must have lain undiscovered for years and years, singing of a part of the world that had long been lost.

He stared at the island. He was not sure how he knew it, but he immediately sensed a heaviness there, as if there was an additional hidden burden that little island was carrying.

“There it is,” said Silenus hoarsely. “I can almost see it. Jesus Christ, we’re so close.” There was a desperation in his voice that George had heard only once before, in the graveyard when his confessions had come trickling out. But Stanley did not seem anything so pleased. He rubbed the side of his head as he stared at the island, and gave a deep, uncertain sigh.

Silenus turned and glanced along the shore. He found a particularly large, flat boulder and stood before it. He turned around and walked back and forth in front of it several times, apparently completing some dance with his back to the stone. Then he stopped in the middle of one step, turned around, and put his hand on the knob of the door in the stone.

The rest of the troupe blinked. There in the boulder was the huge black door they saw so frequently in their hotels. Like every time before, it had appeared without anyone noticing.

“I didn’t know it could show up out here,” said Colette as she watched Silenus enter.

Stanley wrote:
IT GOES WHERE IT IS NEEDED. IF THE NEED IS GREAT ENOUGH
.

Silenus came out of his office dragging the big black steamer trunk. “Hurry!” he cried to Stanley, and Stanley sprinted over to help.

George, Franny, and Colette watched as Silenus and Stanley waded out into the cold waters of the lake and trudged up the muddy
shores of the little island. They stooped down low and soon were indistinct from the rest of its terrain.

“There they go,” said Franny. “The cowards.”

“Cowards?” said Colette. “What do you mean?”

“I mean they are cowards, the both of them,” she said.

“How?”

“How could they be anything else?” said Franny. “They’ve spent their whole lives with what is most dear to them hanging just before their faces, and yet they can’t allow themselves to embrace it. Neither man can allow themselves to be happy for a moment, not with all that darkness hanging below. What silly creatures they are.”

“I’ve never heard you talk this way,” said Colette.

“I expect you’ll soon be hearing a lot of things you haven’t before,” she said.

George felt a sudden pulse in the air. The moan shivered through the sky again, and he quavered a bit, knees almost buckling. He had never been this close to the song when it was harvested, excepting the one time he’d accidentally taken it on himself. He realized he was hearing voices everywhere, and seeing patterns in everything: the stars and the trees and the rocks on the ground all seemed to be spelling something out, or aligning to form strata that all swirled around that little black island.

“They’re close to it,” he gasped. “I think… I think they’ve almost got it.”

“Goody for them,” said Franny sourly. “Now will they be happy? Now will they rest? I think not.”

“What is wrong with you?” asked Colette.

“Who are you to be so impertinent, girl?” said Franny. “Do you know how long I’ve traveled with them? How much I’ve seen? If you knew what I knew, and what a torture the very sight of you is to me, you’d hold your tongue.”

Colette looked to George, scandalized by this abuse, but George could not pay attention: the piece of the song within him sensed the
connection taking place mere yards ahead, and it ached to join. For the first time, George began to realize just how much of the song Silenus and Stanley carried with them. The sense of momentum emanating from that island, of gravity and sheer
pull
, was so overwhelming he could barely stand.

The water rippled, and everything grew cold. It felt as though the stars halted in the sky and the wind died. Somewhere countless voices were moaning, and then they rose up to an awesome and terrible pitch, and George was as small and lost among those voices as a reed among the waves of the stormy ocean…

Then it stopped, just as abruptly as it’d started. A horrible, strangled cry rose from the island, but it was quickly cut off.

“What was that?” asked Colette. “Are they all right?”

Even Franny stayed quiet, so George guessed she did not know either. “I believe,” she said softly, “that I will sit down now.” She walked away and sat below a tree on the edge of the shore.

For a long while there was nothing from the island. Then George saw movement. At first he thought it was only one person, yet then there was a splashing and he saw both men were there, Silenus leading the way with one hand on the trunk, and Stanley behind holding up the other end. Yet Stanley could hardly stand: he was bent over, and he sometimes had to use his free hand to support himself.

They dragged themselves up to the shore and set the trunk down. Stanley almost collapsed immediately, but stopped himself and sat on the ground with his back against the trunk. Silenus sat on the trunk itself, took several deep breaths, and took out a cigar and lit it.

“What happened out there?” asked Colette. “Are you hurt?”

Silenus cleared his throat. “We are fine,” he said, but Stanley shook slightly and put his face in his hands.

“You don’t look fine,” said George.

“That’s because our research was correct,” Silenus said. “It was… an extremely large piece of the song.”

George stared at the trunk. What could be in there? he thought.
The trunk looked no different, nor did it appear special in any way. Could they have even
more
of the First Song in there? And how did they get it in and out? After all this time, he still was not sure.

“Where is Franny?” asked Silenus.

“She’s over there,” said Colette, and she gestured. “She’s acting very strange. I’ve never heard her talk that way.”

“Talk what way?” said Silenus.

“Well… she said some very nasty things about you both, and me. But more than that, she sounded more alert than I’d ever heard her.”

Silenus frowned and began to walk over to her. “Franny!” he called. “Come on down here. We need to get moving.”

Franny did not answer. George could hardly see her in the shadow of the tree.

“Franny!” said Silenus. “Are you all right? Are you hurt, my dear?”

“Yes,” said Franny’s voice. “Yes. I am hurt.”

“You are? What happened?”

All at once there was the sound of laughter from the wood. It did not seem to come from one place, but rather from all around them, as if the forest were full of laughing people. Everyone jumped up and looked about, even Stanley.

“What the hell is going on?” said Colette.

“I don’t know,” said Silenus.

Then one by one they begin to appear: pale white faces, hanging in the darkness of the forest, perfect and blank and eyeless. They hovered in the gaps between the trees, blinking into existence like lamps. And one appeared very nearby, but it was much taller than all the others, and at the corners of its eyes were twin streams of perfect blue tears.

“What is this?” said Silenus.

Stanley rose and walked behind Colette and George, and put a hand on either one’s shoulder. He pulled them back, wary, ready to jump in front if need be.

The fairies began to emerge from the wood, and George immediately felt a terrible fear at the very sight of them. They were such tall, foreign creatures, not nearly as graceful as they’d seemed back at the Founding. The last to emerge was the one nearby, and when it did they saw it was the lady, still dressed in blood red, but now she seemed taller and more spindly than ever, and as she walked she swayed back and forth.

“Ofelia?” said Silenus. “What are you doing here? I thought our agreement was done.”

“It was,” said the lady, laughing. “It is.”

“Then what are you doing here? The host never leaves the Founding anymore.”

“There are exceptions to every rule,” said the lady. She towered over Silenus, staring down at him. “And I would make one in this case. I would be a poor daughter, would I not, if I did not come to see justice meted out on my mother’s killer?”