The Motion of Puppets (33 page)

The Ghost nodded.

“And you are after that girl over there? The one who loved the Original?”

More tentatively, the Ghost nodded again, and the maenad huffed and stepped aside reluctantly. As he drew near, he grew more familiar, his strange costume and demeanor giving him away.

“Who is that? Isn't he one of those small puppets that we hung in the stalls?” Kay asked. “How did he come to grow so large? What strange magic is this?”

Cocking her head, Noë studied him more intently. “He wears my noose around his neck. Perhaps we should be frightened of this ghost.”

Theo floated to Kay's side and hesitated, awestruck for an eternal moment. Reaching out to hold her hand through the cloth, he bent to whisper in her ear. “It's Theo. I've come to take you home, Kay.”

 

26

His voice in her head stunned Kay. Impossible, yet unmistakable. A voice out of the past, from another world, a dream sound. She pulled away and stared at the Ghost. A make-believe doll made of scraps with a drawn-on face. He was not real, he could not be her Theo, he was little more than idle imagination. A cruel trick conjured by some prankster. The Devil's plaything. A hoax.

“Kay,” the Ghost said. His great head shook uncontrollably, the muslin sheet quaked.

“Go away,” Noë said. “Don't bother her. What kind of creature are you, anyways? Who made you, Ghost? You look like old Firkin's handiwork. Did he send you? He can't even paint a straight line.”

“Kay,” the Ghost implored. “It is me under this costume.” He stepped forward as if to embrace her, but she backed out of reach.

“You heard her,” Kay said. “We want no part of your twisted game. I think it is quite mean of you to pretend to be someone you are not.”

Stomping her foot, Noë shouted, “Boo! Leave us alone, you handkerchief!”

From beneath the sheet, he held out his hands, and she saw his skin and bones, the wedding ring on his finger. “You are Kay Harper,” the Ghost said. “Your mother is Dolores Bird, who lives alone on a farm in Vermont. You and I met in New York, and we were married earlier this year, and I lost you in Québec. I am Theo Harper.
Tu ne te souviens pas de moi?
I love you.”

Drawing her paper face close to him, she saw in the center of the painted ovals his blue eyes peering through the small holes cut into the cloth. Kay pulled him toward her, holding him tightly enough to feel the beating of his heart against the hollow chamber of her chest. “It's you? Have they made you one of us? Are you dead? Have they turned you into a ghost?”

She kissed the streak of black smeared across his face.

Behind them, the makeshift orchestra played the first bars of an antic melody. The assembly sorted itself into two groups facing each other across the floor.

“I'm not a ghost,” Theo said. “And I'm not dead. This is a disguise so that I won't get caught. I am not a puppet, I am a man.”

Unable to contain herself any longer, Noë tapped Kay on the shoulder. “The others will notice the two of you together. Take heed.”

Kay remembered who she was and separated from Theo. “This is my friend Noë. She is all right. She won't give you away.”

Seizing the opportunity, Noë grabbed Theo's hands and nose to nose peered closely into his eyes. Like an infant entranced by a new face, she scrutinized with a rapt intensity. “So you are a real person hiding under there?”

With a laugh of delight, he squeezed her hands. “I'm Theo, and a real person, last I checked.”

“Really real? From the other world.”

“Come from the outside world.”

“How did you find us?” Kay asked. “How did you get here?”

Theo told the story as quickly as he could, beginning with the toy shop in Québec and ending with the journey of his friends Egon and Mitchell and their plan to break into the barn to look for her. “We were to rendezvous at the car with some evidence, but that was before I met the Queen and her consort. That was before I saw the puppets were … alive.”

The puppets began a line dance, one from each row matching with another and promenading down the middle of the two clapping rows, making for some unusual combinations: Puck and the Good Fairy; the bunraku demon, head in hand, with Teddy Roosevelt; the Three Sisters escorted by the Three Little Pigs. Each pair showed off their best steps and moves.

Breathless, Nix ran over and planted himself in the middle of Theo's story. “Join the fun. Have a go. The Devil wants to know why you aren't dancing.”

Noë tried to shoo him away. “Some of us prefer not to make spectacles of ourselves. Go to the Devil and tell him leave us be.”

Bouncing like a restless child, Nix would not be so easily deterred. “And he wants to know who you are, Ghostie. He says he never set eyes on you around here before. Where'd you come from?”

“He's the ghost in the attic,” Kay said. “Ordinarily invisible, but he makes himself known when there's a-haunting to be done. Go tell him that, Nix, and stop pestering us so.”

Nix pulled at the sheet. “You don't scare me. Can you pass through walls, Ghost?”

Fearful that he would be unmasked, Theo stepped away, but the clown kept coming for him until Noë stepped to his rescue. “We can't have you misbehaving, Nix. It's not polite to ask so many questions. How about I take you to the dance, and if I promise to take a turn with you, we can leave these poor folks alone for a moment.” She took the juggler by the hand and led him off, glancing back at Kay. “You owe me one.”

*   *   *

Theo and Kay watched till they were safely out of earshot, and he risked taking her hand in his. The paper crinkled slightly under pressure, and it did not warm to his touch. She was two things at once, her true self and simulacrum. To reconcile the conflict in his mind, he stared at her, trying to scrape away the facade and see whether she existed apart from her form. Or whether form mattered at all. He was thrilled to be so close at last.

“What has happened to you? How did they change you into this?”

“I do not know how I changed.”

“I missed you, Kay. And nearly went mad when you disappeared. I searched for you, looked every day, and saw you everywhere. The police thought you had drowned, but that was another woman. Dead, she came to me in my dreams. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't work. I was so lonesome for you.”

Kay leaned her shoulder against him. “I wondered where you had gone. Do you remember the old toy shop on the rue Saint-Paul? I was afraid someone was after me, and I went inside. When I woke up, I was in the Back Room with the puppets. I had become one myself.”

The passage out of the labyrinth of her story became clear to him. “The Queen, she said that there is only one chance to have you back as you were. We must escape this place tonight, before dawn.”

“As I was? Not a puppet?” The possibility seemed to momentarily disconcert her. She lifted her hand to eye level and considered its shape and substance, and then she looked at the rows of dancing friends, Nix and Noë making their procession down the center aisle. “I don't remember how I was.”

“You were real. A person, alive just like me.”

Her shoulders drooped, like a marionette whose strings have been unbound.

“We need a plan,” he said. “We could try to sneak away downstairs, but we would have to make it through the crowd unnoticed. And if we were not caught, we could try the front door which was—”

“Unlocked,” she said. “We heard voices outside earlier. I didn't know it was you who was coming, but we left it unlocked.”

“Or if someone is guarding the door, we could slip out through the cellar. My friend Egon is waiting for us, and there is a third man, Mitchell, with a car out on the road.”

“Dangerous. They might see us try to leave.”

“That's why I think it better to go through the hole in the wall up there.” He pointed to the spot a few feet off the ground where the silo joined the barn. A few boards were missing, and the opening looked wide enough to squeeze through. He stared at the spot, wondering how to sneak by the puppets and make their escape. “We'll need a diversion. Perhaps your friend could help us? The one with the straw hair.”

He looked for her in the crowd. The puppets strolled down the line, their movements out of rhythm with the music, and he realized that their timing was off. In other respects, they seemed quite human, their size, the sophistication of their forms and features, but they could not fully disguise the time signature of their motions. Like a film played at the wrong speed, they could not quite trick the eye. Theo felt like Muybridge at his spinning-wheel camera. If he could just turn the crank with the correct rotation, he could make them appear more lifelike.

“I had not thought of Noë,” said Kay. “She has helped me before. And when we were in the Back Room, she was punished for trying to escape. But she is going crazy in this place.”

“Perhaps there is someone else you could ask. That fellow she is dancing with. Or that creature made out of branches—”

Kay laughed. “The Good Fairy? I suppose I could, but what do we do about Noë? Can we take her with us, Theo?”

The music stopped abruptly, and the lines dissolved, the puppets laughing and clapping and nearly falling over with fatigue. The Cat played a melancholy air on the fiddle, the strain reflecting the change of energy in the room. Quiet conversations took over. Romeo wrapped his arms around a sleepy Juliet. The ningyō monkey pulled its tail and in a slow whirr of gears curled up into a ball the size of a melon. Even the little Children of the Shoe were tired and one by one nestled against their old mother for their naps. An interlude in which to rest and find a second wind.

The perfect moment for their getaway, Theo thought, but the tap of a sharp nail on his shoulder pinned him to the spot. The Devil had materialized in the silence, and his other hand held Nix by one ear.

“Mr. Ghost,” he said, “my minions have been watching you, and I have been told that you have been here in the barn all along. Hiding in the attic. Can you imagine such a thing? There is no attic to a loft, so dear Nix must be mistaken.”

“I'm afraid that's all my fault,” said Kay. “I said attic when I meant to say … the silo. Isn't that right?”

Theo nodded.

The Devil let go of Nix with a snap of his fingers. “You must listen more carefully, Nix. But tell me, does Mr. Ghost not speak for himself?”

“He is a creature of few words,” said Kay.

“I'm hoarse,” Theo said in his best falsetto. “From talking philosophy with Silenus.”

“Silenus? You know Silenus? I've been wondering where he has gotten to.”

“Down below,” Theo said, pointing through the cloth.

“I'm obliged to you, old spook,” the Devil said. “The Original has been looking for Silenus this past hour to settle a conundrum. You and I shall have to continue our discourse later.” His tail wagged like a dog's as he hurried to the stairs.

Checking to make sure they were alone, Theo whispered to Kay, “We must go.”

“Not without Noë.”

“There's too much risk.”

“I cannot leave without her.”

He blew out a long breath, settling the matter. “Fetch her, but be quick, while the Devil is away. And see if the Good Fairy would be willing to create some distraction.”

*   *   *

“You are out of your mind,” the Good Fairy said. “You will never make it. And, besides, what proof do you have that he is who he says he is? Have you even seen his face?”

All around them the others rested, sleeping on the bare floor, bodies twined around bodies or slouching against the walls. A stupor had befallen the party, too much wine and song. Kay glanced across the room at the Ghost, trying to remain inconspicuous near the hole by the silo. “I don't need to see his face to know my own Theo. He's been to see the Queen, and she granted him permission to try, but we need you to cause a commotion when we go through. Something that will capture their attention.”

Jittery as a hummingbird, Noë bounced on her toes. “Please, please, please. We would ask you to come with us, but your head would never fit through the hole.”

The Good Fairy felt the broad crown of sticks jutting from her head, ruefully gauging the circumference. “I suppose you're right. Big-headedness is the curse of a broad intelligence and wide learning. Are you sure you want to leave us? Could you not instead ask the man if he would stay? I'm sure it could be arranged if broached delicately.”

“I will lose my mind if I don't get out of here,” Noë said.

“And you, Kay? Much to gain, but much to lose as well.”

For a moment, she considered her life among the puppets. She thought back to the week of shows in Montreal with the Quatre Mains, the thrill of being out of the chorus and made the storyteller to perform in front of cheering audiences. And she thought of the friendships she had made, and how sad she would be to leave the Good Fairy, the Sisters, and all the others. “He is not suited to this life. And I love him. Surely you understand.”

With a sharp yap, the little dog made himself known at their feet, looking anxious for a game. Noë shook her finger and told him to be quiet or go away.

“I do not understand,” the Good Fairy said. “I am afraid I will never understand love, or how you allow emotion to better reason. But you are my friend, and I will help you. You'll need to be quick when the time comes. Don't delay, fast as you can.”

The Dog whimpered at Kay's feet, and she bent to pet it one last time. “What will you do to keep everyone's eyes away from us?”

The Good Fairy picked up the little dog and held it close and quiet. “Leave that to me, best you don't know. Now, go, tell your man to get in position. As soon as you hear me shout, be on your way. Good-bye and good luck.”