Winterlong (43 page)

Behind the curtains that designated “backstage” the Players gathered their props. Miss Scarlet rose from her nap. I assisted her into a gown, groomed her to assuage her stage fright, and shook out Miranda’s blond beribboned wig.

“But where is your Caliban costume, Wendy?” she asked. “You can’t double in
that
—”

She pointed at the white shift spangled with silver spiderwebs that I wore as Ariel.

I reached beneath an overturned basket and withdrew a torn crimson tunic, the one Fabian had been wearing when we had our cheerful backstage scuffle. I slipped it over Ariel’s costume and rubbed my face with dirt. I mussed my hair and stuck a few dead leaves behind my ears for good measure.

“There,” I announced, leering at Miss Scarlet and shambling to her side. “Caliban: the Gaping One himself.”

Miss Scarlet shook her head. She tapped her foot, bent to flick a twig from the sole of her high-buttoned boot, and looked up at me with clouded eyes.

She said, “Wendy, you can’t go on like that. There’s a houseful of Paphians out there: you’ll cause a riot. This is
not
a good idea.”

“Too late: it’s the only one I’ve got.” From the slopes of the amphitheater rang a chorus of bleary voices singing “The Saint-Alaban’s Song.” If we didn’t start soon the audience would be too unruly to play to. I shut my eyes, summoned the image of the Boy until His surge of imprisoned rage flooded me, helping me focus my impression of Caliban. That metallic tang in the back of my throat; a twinge of fire behind my eyes. Breathing deeply, I pushed back the shadowy figure groping through the darkness for me. I turned to bow to Miss Scarlet. Before she could warn me again I pulled aside the curtain and left her, scooping up my little pouch of cosmetics and taking my place behind the largest tree abutting the stage area.

In the middle of the grass stood Fabian. He cleared his throat and announced, “In honor of the Birthday of the Regent of Zoologists, Rufus Lynx, there will now be presented
The Tempest,
as adapted for this stage by Toby Rhymer and performed by this troupe.”

Catcalls from the inebriated Zoologists. On the bench fronting the stage Rufus Lynx beamed, flanked by several Illyrians holding feathered masks in their laps. At the end of the row sat Jane Alopex. She spied me and waved. I waggled a finger at her (very unprofessional) and stepped back into the shadows.

My first entrance as Ariel provoked cheers from the Paphians. But this was nothing compared to their excitement when I reappeared a moment later as Caliban, red tunic askew over Ariel’s gossamer. Leaves fell from my hair as I lumbered toward Toby, magnificent in his sorcerer’s robes and turban. I cursed Prospero boldly and turned to snarl at Miranda cowering behind her father.

“Greetings, cousin!” a woman yelled from the hillside. From the corner of my eye I saw a Paphian stagger to her feet, a coronet of macaw feathers dipping rakishly over her brow. She bowed and made the Paphian’s beck before the man beside her pulled her back down. But other Paphians took up her cry, saluting me as Aidan and Raphael and Baal-Phegor, the demon they called the Naked Lord. The Zoologists craned their heads and tried vainly to silence their guests.

Toby gave me a dangerous look, gazing fixedly at my costume as he finished the scene. I made a hasty exit to the wrong side to avoid confronting him. Fabian whistled softly as he slipped past me onstage, shaking his head. In the shadows behind one of the torchieres Justice waited, and pulled me to him in the darkness.

“Did you hear them?” I whispered gleefully. “ ‘Lord Death, Lord Baal!’”

From the other side of the stage came Toby’s voice reminding me of my cue. I motioned for Justice to wait, and began to sing offstage in Ariel’s voice:

“ ‘ … Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange …’”

As I sang I tore off the red tunic, spat into my hands, and tried to rub the dirt from my cheeks. I was so elated I was shaking, and reached for Justice’s shoulder to steady myself.

“Shh!” He glanced over his shoulder, then pointed to the side of the hill where trees were crowded near the last row of benches. “Wendy, there are lazars here—”

I stared at him in disbelief. I smoothed Ariel’s gossamer webs and tugged a leaf from my brow. “Where?”

“On the hillside there, among the trees.”

A bellow as Toby repeated a line. Justice grimaced and ran onstage for a brief scene. He returned minutes later to whisper, “Look to the left when you next go on: hiding in the bushes by that big oak. I counted five, and something else with them too—aardmen, I think.”

Beneath the flaking powder and rouge his face was ashen, and his voice shook as he said, “It’s like the Butterfly Ball, Wendy—they’ll take us—”

“No,” I whispered,- glaring at the dim silhouettes as though I might destroy them with my eyes. “No, they won’t. I won’t let them.”

“Wendy! How can you—”

But here was another cue. I squeezed his hand and darted on, gave Ariel’s speech and flitted offstage. I had several minutes before I would be on again as Caliban. Behind the stage was a small stand of birch trees. I grabbed my tunic and crept among them unnoticed. I hugged close to one of the bigger trees and scanned the hillside for lazars.

And found them. My heart tumbled to see how near they were. They ringed the top of the amphitheater, hidden for the most part behind tall grass and brush. But they must be growing bolder. Several no longer crouched but stood to watch the play unfold—with great interest, it seemed, since in the wan torchlight I saw them covering their mouths to stifle their laughter. A quick count gave me ten. Not all children, either. I saw four tall figures standing close together, long hair matted and their faces filthy. But even from that distance I could make out the dusky skin and round eyes that marked them of the House High Brazil. They watched hungrily, like the weary dead envying the living their share of a feast.

A few steps away from them another tall form stood aloof: wiry and with long tangled hair, a silhouette that was somehow familiar to me. I stared for a long minute, trying to place her: no doubt an admirer from an earlier masque. I finally turned my attention to the other, stranger creatures pacing restlessly among the Paphians. At first I thought that more of the Zoo animals had escaped. Large powerful beasts, stooped like the apes I had seen in the Primate House, with spines curved as though they were unaccustomed to standing upright. I glanced at the stage to make sure I had not missed my cue, then turned back to them, fascinated. They slunk back and forth among the lazars, short wiry tails whipping through the high grass. Every few minutes they would pause to press close to the tallest Paphians. Pointed ears raised as they listened to the voices rising from the amphitheater. But large intelligent eyes glinted beneath their heavy brows, and their powerful forelegs ended in huge gnarled hands. I sniffed, caught their rank smell: canine servility and wolfish bloodlust just barely held in check by the presence of the human lazars.

Aardmen, and the enslaved Paphians who served the Madman in the Engulfed Cathedral. For the first time I realized how brave (or reckless) the Zoologists must really be, to live with them so near.

I turned back to survey my fellow Players and our audience. Zoologists and Paphians alike stared enthralled as Toby cast his spells and Miss Scarlet Pan defied him. For the moment the watchers on the hill were equally entranced. Lazars and aardmen tamed by an ancient play upon a stage:
that
would make a story Toby Rhymer himself would be proud to tell, only who would be left to hear it? A score of maddened chattering monkeys and countless caged beasts. I could make an escape now if I tried, might even alert Justice or some of the offstage Players to run to safety and leave the rest, actors and audience alike, to the mercy of King Mob.

But I could not leave them. I tried to imagine fleeing, tried to picture myself safe, taken in by one of the Paphian Houses or by the Curators, or even back at
HEL
. But each time I brought up an image of myself safe within the Home Room or a seraglio at the House Miramar, a gory shade would thrust it aside. Miss Scarlet with her head shaved and electrodes protruding from her skull, starving behind iron bars. Toby Rhymer torn by the ravening jaws of the aardmen. Jane Alopex fighting bravely until she fell “pierced by a lazar’s arrow. And worst of all the thought of Justice lying dead, his golden hair matted with blood and his blue eyes cold and empty.

Sudden anger tore through me, frustrated rage that I should be thus enslaved. My head swam as I stared at the stage where Toby gesticulated wildly and tossed handfuls of glitter. Prospero’s bitter words slashed through the air:

“ ‘Poor worm! Thou art infected;

This visitation shows it!’”

I nodded grimly. I could not leave them to die. Something bound me there to all of them, Justice and Miss Scarlet and sour Gitana, Jane Alopex and those nameless others, swaggering Zoologists and mincing Paphians and even the mute apes mindlessly signaling to one another in their barren cages. Voices whined in my ears: no longer the Voices of the dead, but the remembered words of those who watched or strutted nearby. Miss Scarlet reciting poetry, Justice weeping that he loved me, Jane Alopex’s hoarse laughter. I ground my teeth, trying to will myself to turn and flee. But it was no use now. For good or ill I had thrown my lot with this mess of Players and Whores and Curators. I would die with them if I had to. From the stage rang Fabian’s sweet tenor, reminding me that in a few moments I should make my next entrance. I pulled on my tunic, trying to think of some way to keep the renegade Paphians and aardmen from attacking. My bold words to Justice earlier had been mere bravado. But I felt an edge of exhilarated terror and expectation now, the Boy’s hypostate seething inside me: a leviathan beneath calm waters. I recalled again Miss Scarlet’s doggerel:

They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show …

And I felt terror and strength and desire all at once, knowing that I was going to do the one thing I should not do.

“Greetings, young Lord Death,” I whisper, and laugh.

I step to the edge of the stage, tense my body and focus on the image of a tree, new leaves and a softer air than stirs this late autumn night. My hands clench as I summon Him; very faintly the Small Voices wail, warning me—

‘“
No
,
Wendy! He is too strong, so cold, he is so cold!
—”

I push them back, draw up in the image of the doomed twins among boughs of apple blossom, fragments of leaf and flower sparkling in the air and their high voices intoning:

Here we stand

Eye to hand and heart to head,

Deep in the dark with the dead.

The rush comes on, my heart hammers as though I have received a crystal pulse of adrenaline. As I step onstage I hear tiny frogs singing, whispered nonsense words; the creak of a branch breaking beneath a dangling form as a pendulum swings back from another time. My mouth fills with bitter liquid, a taste like hot copper. Through the air cascades the scent of apple blossom.

And He is there, green eyes shining with malicious joy as He sights me: a shimmering figure like something made of motes of light. The torches shine right through Him. I exhale and blink, try to clear my vision so that I can see the stage with its Players backlit by guttering lanterns. Waves of light ripple in the air before my face. Fabian lifts his head to greet me:

“Lo, now, lo!

Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me …”

He stutters over his last line because suddenly he sees that there is something in the air between us: a spectral form, with hair like clear water and eyes that outshine the dying torches, a beautiful boy’s face and body turning from me to extend a white hand to the terrified actor. From the audience come gasps and muffled cries. Toby’s curses turn to loud amazement, and I hear Miss Scarlet cry my name.

I laugh, take a step toward the radiant phantasm commanding center stage. In the audience the Zoologists hush their Paphian guests. They are delighted, certain they are seeing some miracle of stagecraft engineered for their Regent’s birthday.

For a moment everything comes to a halt: the actors have forgotten their lines, the audience waits impatiently. On the hillside the grass rustles as the lazars creep toward the stage, and I hear the deep cough of the aardmen breathing. The Boy too waits, hand cupped coyly beneath His chin, emerald eyes winking.

And just when it seems that something terrible must happen—an aardman will leap from the underbrush to rip out Rufus Lynx’s throat; the Boy will take Fabian’s hand and lead him to suicidal despair; Mehitabel will shriek and ruin Miss Scarlet’s next entrance—just when I think I will collapse into a seizure and force the whole spectacle to some awful conclusion—

Justice strides onstage, so white with terror that his pale hair seems dark as blood in the firelight. With shaking voice he cries, “
‘What’s the matter? Have we divels here?’”

A relieved sigh from the audience. The hidden figures in the trees grow still. My voice rings out as I shamble toward the glittering spectre, “
’This spirit torments me!’”

Scattered applause from the Zoologists. Paphians call on the Magdalene with slurred whispers. I try to make eye contact with Fabian. It is hopeless. He stands frozen, hands raised to fend off the ethereal creature suspended in the air before him, gazing with cold yet proprietary calm upon the amazed audience.

Then, despite his own terror, Justice recites Fabian’s lines as well as his own, stumbling through his speech. I crouch and strike at the air, as though there are demons there, and reply:

“
‘His spirits hear me;

For every trifle they are set upon me; sometime am I

All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues

Do hiss me into madness. Art thou afeard?’”

With unsteady voice Justice calls back, “
‘No, monster, not I.’”