The Rebirth of Wonder (11 page)

The whole thing was just crazy.

“
I need to go shut
off the air conditioning,” he said, putting down the
box.

“
I'll see you
tomorrow, then,” Maggie said, smiling. “At seven, this
time.”

“
But tomorrow's
Saturday, you can have all day...” he began. Then he stopped. “Oh,”
he said. “Do you mean seven in the morning?”

“
No, no – seven p.m.
In the evening. Even if it is Saturday.” She opened the stage door
and blew him a kiss, and then she was gone.

Chapter Eleven

The Boston Public Library
wasn't any more help than the Bampton library, as far as Merton
Ambrose and
The Return of Magic
were concerned, and his car overheated on the
drive back. By the time he got home and rushed through a quick meal
of leftover chicken it was five past seven.

He wasn't sure whether he expected to find
the Bringers of Wonder waiting for him in the parking lot or not;
it might be more in character for them to appear mysteriously once
he was inside.

In the event, he found Maggie sitting alone
on the porch, elbows on her knees, watching the sun set over old
man Christie's fields. Christie's aging white gelding, Spanner, was
in the nearest field, watching her in that vaguely puzzled way
horses have. White birds were circling over her head; as Art
approached they swooped away and seemed to vanish, like soap
bubbles popping, in the shadows of the theater's eaves.

“
Hi,” he called.
“Sorry I'm late.”

She turned and smiled. “Hi, Art,” she
said.

“
Where are the
others?”

“
Oh, they saw you
weren't here and went down the street to get a soda or
something.”

He looked up at the sidewalk, but didn't see
any sign of anyone else. “I guess they aren't in any hurry,” he
said.

“
I guess not,”
Maggie agreed. “After all, everything's been going so
well...”

“
Has it?” Art asked,
startled.

“
Well, yes,” Maggie
replied, equally startled by his reaction.

“
But it's been
almost a week, and you haven't built any of the sets, or hung any
lights. Do you have costumes designed, or
anything?”

“
Well,
no...”

“
Then what's going
well?”

Maggie hesitated before replying. “The
performance,” she said at last. “The preparations. I mean, I guess
we haven't done much on the... the technical side, but we've got
the scripts all set, and I think everyone knows his part, just
about.”

“
Really?” He glanced
up at the red-painted clapboards behind them. “I hadn't heard
anyone rehearsing.”

“
Have you been
listening?”

“
Um...” Art realized
that for the past few days he had been far too busy in the prop
room to pay any attention to noises overhead. For that matter,
while one could hear what was happening onstage from the big room,
from the prop room events upstairs were pretty
inaudible.

“
I guess not,” he
admitted.

For a moment they stood silently on the
little porch; then Maggie suggested, “Let's go on inside; they'll
all be along in a minute, and if I'm not here waiting they'll know
to come on in.”

“
Right.” Art fished
the key ring from his pocket and unlocked the stage
door.

Inside, with the work lights on, he could see
that a second, larger white chalk circle had been added to the
design on the stage, completely surrounding what had been there
before.

“
What's that?” he
asked.

“
What? Oh, that,”
Maggie said. “That's just so we all know where to stand. See, over
there, that red squiggle? That's my place. At the beginning, I
mean, when the curtain goes up.”

“
Blocking marks,”
Art said.

“
I guess,” Maggie
agreed.

“
Sort of funny
ones,” Art remarked. “Fancier than usual.”

Maggie just shrugged.

Blocking marks, learning the script – that
sounded normal enough. Maybe the group was legitimate after all,
and just had some peculiar approaches to their business. Art looked
over at the lighting equipment shelves, in the stage left wings.
“Still haven't done any lighting work,” he remarked.

“
No,” Maggie agreed.
“I think we're still working on the staging. I mean, don't we need
to know what's going to be where before we light
it?”

“
Yeah,” Art admitted, “you do. But you haven't started
building the set, either – are you going to
have
a
set?”

“
The show doesn't
call for much of one,” Maggie explained. “It's mostly supposed to
take place in a single room, on a single night.”

“
Still seems like
you'd want to get that done and out of the way,” Art
muttered.

Maggie shrugged again.

“
What about
costumes?” Art asked. “Did you people bring those with
you?”

“
Some of us,” Maggie
admitted. “I haven't got mine yet, though.”

Art nodded.

Maggie was being relatively informative
tonight, he thought, and in fact, everything was looking somehow
far more normal than it had all week. Blocking marks, learning
lines, going out for a drink before getting started, that was all
the sort of thing he expected. He found himself feeling
generous.

“
If you like,” he
said, “you can come down and look through the costumes downstairs,
see if you find something you like. What sort of part is
it?”

Maggie smiled wryly. “Oh, I play a witch,”
she said. “Of course.”

Art smiled back. “I'd have expected old Ms.
Yeager to play that part.”

“
She's the
old
witch, silly,” Maggie said,
grinning. She poked him in the shoulder. “I'm the
young
witch.”

“
Oh.”

For a moment, the two of them stood there on
the stage, looking at one another; Art glanced around at the door,
wondering when the others would arrive.

“
There are costumes
downstairs?” Maggie asked, breaking the silence.

“
Sure,” Art said.
“Wanna see?”

“
Lead the
way.”

Art did just that.

The first costume room was on the north side
of the central passageway, next to the stairway and across from the
prop room; the ancient paneled door was painted green, with a
cardboard sign held on by thumbtacks, ink that had once been black
but was now faded to pale gray on a card that had once been white
but was now brown and speckled.

W
ardrobe
, it said.

This wasn't the only room that held costumes,
but the others were considered dead storage; all the good stuff was
supposed to be in this one. After some experimentation, Art found
the appropriate key; he opened the door and groped for the light
switch.

Maggie pushed the door wide as the light came
on, and stared in.

A lone bare bulb cast yellow light on a long,
narrow room; to either side a steel pipe extended from end to end
at about eye level, with dozens, perhaps hundreds of costumes and
empty hangers hooked over it. Both pipes sagged in the center from
the weight of the clothing. Above each pipe ran a single long
shelf, stacked with hats and hatboxes. The room's far wall was
rough stone painted white; centered in the stone was a small black
door, of normal width but only about five feet high.

Maggie stepped in and ran her eye down the
row of costumes on the left, then turned and looked over the row on
the right. There were gowns and robes galore, and several bodysuits
of plush or velour for use in simulating animals. There were cheap
imitations of tuxedoes, cut correctly but made of thin cotton;
opera capes, togas, doublets, and various period garments. Velvets,
silks, sequins, and gold braid abounded.

“
I don't see
anything really witchy,” Maggie said. “What's through there?” She
pointed at the black door.

Art followed the pointing finger and stared,
baffled.

He had seen the door when they entered, of
course, and surely he had seen it before, whenever he came into the
wardrobe room, but somehow he didn't remember it.

Where
could
it go? That was an outside
wall; anything beyond it would be under the parking lot.

“
I don't know,” he
admitted.

“
Really?” Maggie
turned to stare at him.

Art shrugged. “Really,” he said.

Maggie marched down the length of the room,
grabbed the knob, and tried to turn it.

“
Locked,” she
said.

Art was curious now. How had he missed ever
noticing that door, in all the years he had hung out in the
theater?

“
Hang on a minute,”
he said. “I've got all the keys here; let's see if one of them will
open it.” He marched up beside her and began trying
keys.

None of them fit.

He went through the entire ring twice without
finding a single one that would fit in the keyhole. Finally,
disgusted, he flung the entire ring against the wall. It struck
with a jangle, and fell to the floor; he glowered at it.

“
Well, it's not
important,” Maggie told him.

“
Yes, it is,” he
protested. “I'm supposed to know what's going on around here, and I
don't. I don't remember any door in here, and I'm supposed to have
a key for every door and I don't have a key for this one, and there
are things in the prop room that shouldn't be here – just what the
hell is going on here, anyway?”

“
I don't... I don't
know,” she said, taken aback.

“
And then there's
you people,” he shouted, turning all his accumulated anger and
frustration on her. “You appear out of nowhere, come and go
mysteriously, like a bunch of spies or something, you're putting on
a play nobody ever heard of that you haven't started advertising
with just three weeks to go, you've got no sets, no lights, you're
a dozen of the most strangely-assorted people I've ever seen, you
won't say where you're staying, you won't let anyone watch you do
anything – just what the hell is the big mystery, anyway,
lady?”

Maggie blinked back tears.

“
I can't tell you,”
she whispered.

“
Why
not
?” he demanded.

“
I can't tell you
that, either.”

“
Oh, hell.” He
scooped up the key ring. “Look, you people just have fun tonight,
okay? I'm going to leave you all to your own devices. You can find
your own witch costume. I'm going out for a walk, and if you finish
up before I get back, use the phone by the lightboard to call my
house, and either I'll be there or someone will take a message.” He
turned, and stamped away, down the passage and up the
stairs.

The Bringers of Wonder were on the stage,
standing in a ring around the chalk circles, arguing about
something. He paid no attention as he stamped out, slamming the
door behind him.

Outside, the sun was down, and the sky was
the deepening liquid blue of summer twilight. Three white birds,
startled by the slam of the door, fluttered out from under the
eaves and soared away on the evening breeze.

He stared after them.
Where had
they
come from? He had never noticed any birds nesting there, and
certainly not any like those. They weren't seagulls or pigeons –
they were smaller than gulls, more graceful than pigeons; he
couldn't place them.

His anger dissipating, he marched down the
steps to the asphalt.

To the west the last glow of sunset gleamed
above the treetops on Christie's little farm – if you could really
call it a farm. Two acres of pasture, chicken coops, and vegetable
gardens, inhabited by an old man, two horses, and a dozen hens –
not much of a farm, but the closest thing left in Bampton. Spanner
was still out in the field, quietly cropping grass in the gathering
gloom; his companion, little Sparkle, was nowhere to be seen.

To the north was a row of quiet little
houses, his family's own among them; to the south was the center of
town, where the tourists passed through and sometimes stopped on
their way to more interesting places, and where the locals did
their shopping when it wasn't worth a trip to the Burlington
Mall.

It was a quiet, pleasant place, Bampton was;
Art was used to that, and he liked it that way. If he wanted
excitement or confusion, he could go into Boston or Cambridge.

What were these people doing, these Bringers
of Wonder, bringing their mysteries here?

He looked east, out toward
Thoreau Street, along the side of the theater. Black asphalt
shingles along the roof, red-painted eaves, red-painted clapboards,
down to the whitewashed stone of the foundation – where could that
door go? It would have to come out under the parking lot, but
there
wasn't
anything under the parking lot.