The Motion of Puppets (28 page)

“You cannot leave,” the Good Fairy said, laying a hand upon her shoulder. “You can only be rescued from this place by someone from the other side. Someone who will agree to lead you away.”

“But they were here,” Kay said. “I know it. I can feel it.”

Out in the yard, the cat mewed, the strange yellow light reflected in its eyes as it walked toward the barn. The cat stepped closer, growing bigger, until it was nearly at the edge, and then it penetrated the landscape as though stepping out of a two-dimensional picture of the night. It headed straight for the darkened alcove that held the cellar door. A light went on in the farmhouse, and a window flew open, the farm girl crying out in the night for her cat.

A voice came from behind them.

“You better shut those doors.”

Startled, they spun around together, and there in a weak circle of light, grinning despite his best efforts, was the Devil himself.

 

22

The Devil bowed his head slightly, introducing himself again to his friends who thought him dead and gone. Kay and the Good Fairy rushed over and mashed their arms around him with joy. Had he the power to blush, he would have colored from scarlet to crimson. With an awkward shrug, he freed himself and picked up the cat nuzzling at his cloven feet and petted its fur with his sharp-nailed hands. Setting it gingerly on the floor, he whispered “scat” and the cat pranced through the doorway, holding its tail in the air like a question mark before running back to the yellow house.

“The doors, my friends, shut the doors before we are caught.”

Kay and the Good Fairy rushed to the doors and swung them shut, careful not to put the locking bar back into place. From the corner by the cellar, the Devil produced a kerosene lantern and, striking a match on his thigh, lit it, and the Good Fairy gasped at the flame.

“Please, don't worry,” the Devil said, with a diabolical smile. “If I cannot manage a little bit of fire, who can?”

“We thought you were unmade,” said Kay. “We thought you were dead.”

“What happened to you?” the Good Fairy asked.

“Dead? Not dead. Come with me and I will show you what happened, but you must not be afraid.”

His hooves clopped on the wooden floor like a billy goat crossing a bridge, and they followed his horns into the adjoining room. A dozen puppets stood frozen in a line. Blue from head to toe, they were dressed in tattered rags and wore rough beards and wild hair of tangled curled paper. Each man had an arm on the shoulder of the man in front of him save the leader of the gang, who bent forward as they trudged grimly toward a primitive cell with real iron bars, and around their broken shoes an excelsior snow had fallen. They looked cold and miserable and forlorn.

“I don't think I've seen a sadder bunch of creatures,” the Good Fairy said.

The Devil held the lantern close to the leader's face. He bore a frozen expression of utter despair in his eyes. “These comrades are headed for the gulag. Some Russian play—the Three Sisters might know the name.Perhaps one day soon we can arrange a rendezvous between these lonesome souls and those charming young ladies.”

The first prisoner cracked a smile, and a chuckle ran the length of the chain, intensifying man to man until the final prisoner burst into a hearty laugh.

“The Devil puts a spoon of honey into another man's wife,” the leader said. “We have been waiting for you for ages.”

The line broke apart as the puppets roared to life, laughing and clapping one another on the back. A pair of the prisoners broke into a chorus of a drinking song, and the leader embraced the Devil and pumped his hand in congratulations. One of the men winked at the Good Fairy and mimed his appreciation for the cleverness of her unusual wooden construction.

“Follow me, comrades,” the Devil said. “More wonders to behold.”

In the next room, more puppets cheered their arrival. They were dizzying in their variety, long and short, fat and thin, bright and somber in design. Three giant disembodied heads—long-forgotten buffoons made for a political satire—propelled themselves forward by chomping their jaws. A quartet of skeletons shook their bones and danced a mazurka. Old familiars from children's stories sang out: the Three Little Pigs pink as hams, a Dish and a Spoon with the glow of the recently eloped, and a little old lady who sat by a giant shoe, eight tiny heads peering through the eyelets and another young one sliding down the tongue. All the people were happy to see the new arrivals and clamored for their attention.

“No wonder we heard voices from our room,” Kay said.

“Wait,” the Devil said. “You ain't seen nothin' yet.”

Some of the gulag refugees stayed behind in the impromptu celebration, but the Devil and his entourage crowded into the narrow hallway and proceeded toward the next room. Stopping suddenly and holding his hand for silence, he motioned for Kay and the Good Fairy to join him. The space was dark and cool, and a small circle of light appeared and expanded from the size of a dime to the size of a dinner plate. Delicate notes from a koto set the tone, and a bunraku puppet took the stage, a beautiful Japanese woman in a marvelous embroidered kimono whose movements harmonized with the music for six measures. Then a switch in her head was thrown, and she rolled back her eyes to a hideous yellow, horns popped out of the front of her skull, and she grimaced to reveal two rows of sharp teeth. Kay yelped at the sudden transformation, and the demon quickly changed back into the young woman and began laughing hysterically at her own joke. A deranged monkey clapped its hands against a gong. Two samurai drew their swords and waved them in a blur, and a braggart waggled his bushy eyebrows.

Introductions followed all around, and bowing low, the ningyō proved gracious and begged forgiveness for having scared the visitors. The Devil took delight in the machinations set in place but could barely contain his enthusiasm to show them the next chamber. He led them into a tableau which Kay recognized at once from
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Fairy marionettes hung from the ceiling and spun slowly, the light reflecting off their silken wings—Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Moth, and the rest surrounding a life-size Oberon and Titania reclining on a mountain of pillows brocaded with gold and silver threads. The changeling boy, an Indian prince, done as a rod puppet, nestled in the bed between the fairy king and queen, and off to one side lolled the rude mechanical Bottom in his ass's head crowned with a garland of paper hibiscus. The four youthful lovers were shadow puppets flat against the wall, and perched on a cider barrel, Puck awaited his cue.

“My people,” the Good Fairy exclaimed.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Puck shouted, and all at once, the puppets danced to life, shouting their huzzahs. Bottom brayed. The lovers swapped places and swapped back. Oberon joked, “Ill met by moonlight” to Kay, and the fairies swam in the air on invisible wires. Kay felt as though she was back in the cirque and stretched her limbs, wondering if she might ever be so fluid as to tumble and balance again. The others from the other rooms jammed into the scene till it nearly burst with puppets exuberant with performing before a new audience.

“I had no idea you were so many,” Kay said to Puck.

“This is but the floor below. Wait till he takes you to the loft. Wait till you see the Original.” He pointed to the wooden staircase leading up.

“The Original?”

“The man in the glass jar.” Puck clapped his hand to his mouth, suddenly aware that he had let out a secret.

Intrigued by the prospect, Kay pestered the Devil, pulling on his tail to get his attention. “Will you take us there? To the upper floor.”

In the din, he pretended not to hear her question. The Russians were singing about vodka, the bunraku witch played a surfing song on the koto, and Puck ran amok, spreading mischief. Even the Good Fairy had joined the party, branches thrown into the air, allowing the children from the shoe to have a good climb.

“I want to see more,” Kay said.

The Devil took her hand. “All in good time. We should be getting back. We can't leave Noë swinging from a rope all night long.”

“How did you know about what we were doing in the stalls?”

“This barn is at least a century old and is filled with cracks and chinks and holes through which one might easily spy. You don't think I would just up and abandon my old friends without keeping an eye on you. We've covered the whole perimeter of the bottom floor and are nearly back where we started. Take a look.…”

Through a sliver in the wall, Kay could see the stalls and the trough, the backside of the Queen obscuring most of the view, but she glimpsed Noë on the beam, the noose around her neck, continuing her filibuster.

“Before we go any farther, we should rescue our old comrades. Let them know that this is everyone's barn and that they have nothing to fear from these so-called others. There are no others, only us, all the same. One big happy family.”

“And then you'll take us all to the loft?” Kay asked. “To see the Original?”

“If you hadn't come to investigate the noises at the door, I would have come back to you in any case. There's a great celebration to be held tonight in our honor, for the puppets of the Quatre Mains. All we need do is convince old Firkin and the Queen to let our people go. Now, go fetch our bosky friend. We have an entrance to make. Not every day one comes back from the dead.”

“Good-bye, good-bye,” the fairies cried in their twinkling voices.

“Hurry back,” the samurai said. “Don't miss the shindig.” A Russian dissident blew a kiss and winked as they passed. They wound their way back through the maze, astonished a second time at the new worlds just around each corner.

*   *   *

They were lost. Driving around rural Vermont in the dark looking for a place to eat, they were not only hopelessly off course but shaken by the events back at the farm. That dog had been all teeth, and those two children of the corn had given them the creeps. At one point, Mitchell suggested that they head back toward Bennington for the night or better yet to forget the whole thing and go home to New York, but with the help of the GPS, they found an inn still serving supper.

Over onion rings and ales, they hatched a new plot. On the back page of the menu, Theo drew a crude map of the property, the position of the farmhouse, the bus, and the barn. He penciled in the meadow and the stream and the small wood. With his friends' assistance, he added the road that curved past the property.

“We'll go back when they are asleep. Dr. Mitchell, you will let us out here on the road behind the barn and then circle round past the farmhouse and park just out of sight. We will hike through the woods, across the stream, over the fence, and up the hill. Egon, are you certain there will be an entrance at the back?”

Raising his tipsy head, Egon wobbled. “
Mon ami
, one is never certain of a theory until confronted by proof, and even then I am not sure about anything having to do with these puppets and the crazies back at that place. Before I met you, life was a simple thing: a warm bed, a cold beer, now and then a hot woman. But let us leave that all aside. We are here now and must see it through. What was your question?”

“Another way into the barn?”

“Yes, that's where the sheeps and the goats would go in and out. A cote. Why would they lock the back door? Perhaps there is no door at all, merely a hole in the wall.”

Theo stared at his friend, trying to judge his sobriety. “Good, then we sneak in, look for this puppet—”

“How will you see in the dark?” Mitchell asked.

“Flashlights.” Egon rubbed his hands together. “I never travel without them. And I know what to do if we meet up with that hound from hell.” Glancing around to make sure none of the waitstaff was watching, he wrapped a piece of steak in a napkin and crammed it into his jacket pocket.

“This is more complicated than I thought,” Mitchell said. “And more dangerous.”

Theo offered him a way out. “Let us take your car, then. You could spend the night at the inn, and we'll be back in the morning.”

“I wouldn't dream of it. All of my life I have been reading about gods and monsters, the great quests, and I have gotten no further than a book in the armchair. Count me in, Harper. I am honored to be one of the Argonauts.”

Flush with drink and food, the route well mapped, they set out and arrived at the farm just after midnight. A light appeared in one upstairs window, but no new vehicles were parked in the drive. The girl would be reading in her room, the boy would be asleep, hopefully next to the dog. Mitchell continued on as planned and drove around the bend to the spot on the road at the edge of the woods.

“How long should I wait?” Mitchell asked. “Before I get worried?”

Egon calculated the distance. “Fifteen minutes' walk, twenty if we run into trouble.”

“Give us another half hour or so in the barn to find the puppets,” Theo said. “There were what … a dozen in the Halloween parade? We might not find Kay at first. Wait two hours, just to be safe. If we are not at the rendezvous, drive up to the house, and we'll meet you there.”

As they stepped out of the car, Mitchell called out from the driver's seat. “What should I do if something happens to you?”

Theo popped his head through the open window. “Make sure my book gets published. And tell Kay's mother that we tried.”

“No,” Mitchell said. “Nothing quite so … final. I meant, what do I do if you don't show up at the house?”

“Knock on the door and wake that harridan and that half-wit,” Egon said. “Tell them the truth and pray that dog is asleep.”

“
Audentes Fortuna iuvat,
” Mitchell said. He waved good-bye as they climbed over the guardrail and disappeared into the woods.

“Forward,” Theo said.