The Troupe (51 page)

A thousand thoughts went racing through his head. Could Stanley
really be his uncle, or his cousin, or perhaps even his brother? Why would he have never said so? And yet, more troubling than anything, this discovery meant that it had never been Silenus at all who’d been carrying the song, but
Stanley
, always Stanley… he was the true bearer. Why had Silenus lied? And why was Silenus not carrying it? Was it possible, he wondered faintly, that Silenus could not carry the song at all?

And if that was the case, then that would mean that Silenus could not truly be his father. Nor could he be Stanley’s father, as George had briefly wondered. Harry had said the ability to carry the song was passed on from parent to child. And if Silenus was not his father, then…

George suddenly remembered the way Stanley was always watching him, always seeking to touch him and hold him. He remembered the dozens of little gifts, the hundred little favors, the thousand comforting smiles. He remembered the way the man had held out his watch after fondly playing with its wind-up knob, offering some treasured gift. And he remembered how distraught Stanley had been when George had told him he wanted nothing more to do with him.

An image swam up in his memory: Stanley, standing on the snowy rooftop of the theater outside of Chicago, holding up his blackboard, eyes terribly old and sad. And written upon the blackboard was:
YOUR FATHER LOVES YOU, GEORGE. PLEASE KNOW THAT. FOR ME
.

George looked down at the card he now held in his hand. It read:
YOU ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. I LOVE YOU
.

“Oh, no,” whispered George. “No, no, no. No, it can’t be, it just… it just
can’t
.”

“What?” said Colette.

George rushed forward and flung the backdrop up off them. He saw hundreds of dark shapes pouring through the trees, yowling as they pursued Stanley down the hill, and he shouted in fear and confusion and began to start off after him.

Colette leaped up and grabbed him to hold him back. “George, what are you doing?”

“Let me go!” he shrieked. “Let me go, let me go!”

“I can’t, he said we have to get up the hill!”

“You don’t understand!” he cried. “Let me go! I have to get to him, I have to!”

“Will you shut up before you get their attention?” she said.

But George leaped forward once more to try to break free. Colette gritted her teeth, flung him to the ground, and grabbed a smooth stone. “Sorry, George,” she said, and cracked him lightly across the head with it.

It did its job. George whimpered a little, but then his eyes shut and his head rolled back and he lay still.

“He said we need to get up the hill,” she said. She picked him up, threw him over one shoulder, and began to walk slowly up the slope. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”

George knew nothing but darkness for a long time. Then there was a voice in the darkness singing, and a light appeared before him. It was not terribly bright, but it was a very warm light, and as his eyes focused he saw the light formed a perfect square, and it’d been quartered. He realized he was seeing a window in the dark, set up high in the side of a house, and there was someone stirring behind it.

The singing changed, very slightly, and the night sky came pouring in above, and as its gentle radiance flooded his vision George saw he was seeing his grandmother’s house, the very place he’d called home less than a year ago. But the oak tree out front wasn’t quite right, he saw: it was not nearly as tall or as wide as he remembered.

I’ve seen this before, thought George. There’s someone underneath the tree.

And there was. There was a man standing there in the shadows beneath the tree, and even though George was still faintly hearing the First Song in his ears (where was it coming from? he wondered. Was he dreaming it?) the man opened his mouth, and from it came the First Song as well. The two songs formed a duet, one emanating from everywhere, the other coming solely from this shadowy singer.

A girl came to the window of his room, and she opened it and looked out. The singing stopped, and the girl waved. She retreated and shut the window and the light went out, and the man under the tree nervously smoothed down his hair and his clothes.

Someone rushed down the front porch steps. It was the girl from the window, he saw. And as she walked from the shadow of the house George saw it was his mother.

His mouth fell open. He had never known her, nor did he have any memories of her. He had only seen photos of her before, and in those she’d seemed a pale, lonely-looking girl, certainly nothing like a woman. Yet the person running barefoot across his grandmother’s lawn was most certainly a woman, with long, flowing brown hair and a bright, happy smile. He realized, to his shock, that she was terribly beautiful. She could not have been much older than George was now.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come!” she said as she ran.

The person under the tree appeared to busy themselves with something. Then when they were done they strode out, and George saw it was a tall, thin young man in a very prim (perhaps overly prim) suit. He was smiling and carrying a sketchpad in his hand, and written on it were the words:
HOW COULD I RESIST YOUR CHARMS
?

George gasped. It was Stanley, though he was almost unrecognizable. His hair was not smooth and blond and straight, but pitch-black and wildly curly, an adolescent’s haircut if ever there was one, yet it faintly resembled Silenus’s hair when he hadn’t slicked it down with pomade. Stanley had not yet refined his sense of dress—his tie was crooked, and he had been forced to make a hole in his belt to fit his narrow waist—but it was most certainly him, though he could not have been twenty.

Alice Carole leaped into his arms, and he neatly caught her and spun her around. She laughed while he grinned hugely, and they kissed. “Do it again,” she said. “Sing it for me again.”

He set her down and put his arm around her and led her away from the house, over toward the Cortsen fields George knew so well.
He opened his mouth and very softly began to sing the First Song. Alice’s eyelids fluttered as she listened. When he was done she said, “It’s so beautiful. Why don’t you sing it more often, for everyone? I bet you could fill up whole theaters with that.”

He took out his sketchpad (George saw it was dangling from his shoulder by a loop of string) and wrote:
MY UNCLE IS AFRAID IT WILL BE STOLEN
.

“That man was your uncle?” she asked. “The mean one?”

He flipped a page, and wrote:
GREAT-UNCLE. AND HE IS NOT MEAN. HE IS IN MOURNING
.

“For who?”

HIS WIFE
.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry I called him mean, then. Did you know her?”

Stanley shook his head.
SHE PASSED A LONG TIME AGO
.

“He must have loved her very greatly then, if he still mourns her. I wish I knew what it was like, to be loved like that.” She smiled slyly.

Stanley stopped her and spun her around, smiling and shaking his head, and they kissed.

“Will you leave me?” she asked, and now she was not joking.

He shook his head. But his face grew troubled.

“You don’t know,” she said.

He did not answer.

“You do know. You will have to leave, won’t you. You travel all the time.”

He wrote:
CAN YOU COME WITH ME
?

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know, Stanley.”

They held each other close for a long while. Then Stanley took his sketchpad and wrote:
THEN WE SHOULD ENJOY WHAT TIME WE HAVE
. And hand in hand they walked away to the road, and crossed to go to the creek in the woods.

“They do look terribly happy, don’t they?” said a voice beside George.

George turned and started in shock. Another Alice Carole was standing there beside him. He stared at her, then looked at the other Alice, walking away with her hand in Stanley’s, and then back at this second one that stood beside him. She was oddly colorless, and the edges of her face were indistinct, but even so he could see she was smiling at him.

“You can see me?” he said. “I thought… I thought this was a dream.”

“It’s not a dream, George,” she said. “It’s an echo of something that happened long ago.”

George stared at her, but his mother did not seem to mind. Her eyes traced over every inch of his face, and though they brimmed with tears she could not stop smiling.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked. “Am I dead?”

“Dead?” she said. “No. Didn’t I just tell you what this is?”

“It’s an echo…” he said. “So you’re an echo, too? Like the ones in the graveyard with my f—with Silenus?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How?”

“The First Song is not bound by time and space, George,” she said. “You know that. Those two elements are but melodies within it. And echoes can be much larger than mere people. If you wished, and if you had the talent, you could use it to see any moment in any place. Right now you’re witnessing two echoes—one of a treasured moment, and a second of a person—me. I am so glad to finally, finally meet you.”

“How is that possible?” he asked.

“It depends on who is singing the song,” she said. “If certain parts are stressed, certain echoes are created. It takes a lot of talent to do it, but then your father always was an extraordinarily talented man.”

“Stanley?” George asked. “He’s doing this?”

His mother nodded. “Can’t you hear it, from all around us? He is singing about us as he leads the wolves away from you. It is all that
concerns him, all he wants to think of. He sings of this moment, and the girl he loved, and the child she bore. You, George.”

George frowned. “I… I never would have thought he was my father,” he said faintly. “I didn’t, until just now. Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

“Well, he always was burdened by his responsibilities,” she said. “It was that uncle of his, I think… he was always controlling poor Stan. Much like my mother was. Your grandmother, I mean. I think that was why we got along so well. We were both looking for an escape, though he sought a home and I sought an adventure. We both got what we wanted, for a little while.”

He looked at her eagerly. He had never seen her this closely before. “So, are you really my mother?”

She smiled and shrugged. “I am, and I am not. I’m a little more, and a little less. I know some things she did not. Like about you, George, the child she never knew. You have seen so much, and though you have had your troubles I know you will act admirably.”

“I’m not so sure,” said George. “I’ve… I’ve treated Stanley horribly, and I’ve been so arrogant and made so many mistakes. I wish he would have told me who he was.”

“Don’t fret, George. He knows that if things were different you would love him. Things like that can’t be hidden.”

He looked at her, and almost began to cry. Perhaps it was the way she was looking at him: head tilted, smiling widely, a posture that was very common to his grandmother and also to himself. “I’m sorry, Momma.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“I don’t know. For everything. Nothing’s gone right. It feels like I’ve done nothing, and when I did do something it just caused more harm.”

She stroked the side of his head. Though this was an echo, her fingers felt warm and real. “Don’t cry,” she said softly.

“Do you hate me?” he asked.

“Hate you? Why would I hate you?”

“I killed you. When you gave birth to me, you died.”

“You didn’t kill me,” she said. “I lived. I knew love, and I bore a son. What happened happened, and I don’t regret anything. I am proud of you, George.”

“Oh,” said George, wiping his eyes. “I thought you did. I thought it was my fault. I don’t know why. It was stupid.” He sniffed again, and she took him in her arms. He had never been held by his mother before, to his memory. He did not want it to ever end. “What’s going to happen, Momma? Will everything be all right?”

Smiling, she shook her head. “No,” she said.

“No? Why not?”

“
Why
isn’t the question,” she said. “What will happen will happen. And you will all just have to bear it, my darling. You will, and your father will. But I could not be prouder of any two men for what you will both do, George.”

“You know what we will do?” he asked.

“Yes. Everything that has happened and will happen is somewhere in the song, George. From here I can see what is ahead, and when everything will end.”

“End?” said George. “How will it end?”

“It will not be long now. I can show you,” she whispered into his ear. “Would you like me to do that?”

He nodded.

“Shut your eyes, child.”

When he did, he felt her lips and her hot breath close to his ear. Her voice said, “Now all you have to do is
wake up
…”

And he did.

Far, far away from the dam, in a tiny, forgotten corner of reality that was totally inaccessible unless it did not wish to be, Ofelia and the rest of the fairy host slouched in their chairs in her feasting hall, stupefied with drink and food. As always, many of the host were already sleeping. Nowadays they found it difficult to sleep at all if their appetites were not sated by the taste of the unusual.

It had been, Ofelia thought, a fairly good dinner. But as she cleaned her teeth with a small ivory pick, she reflected that she was not completely satisfied. She realized she’d been thinking for years that she would not truly be pleased until she’d checked off this last achievement on her list, but one of the dangers of such thinking is that the event one hopes for never quite lives up to the expectation.

She took out her anger on her seneschal, demanding to know what he thought of the meal. He agreed that yes, my lady, the chef’s preparation was most ingenious, infusing the flesh with wine and tobacco, as it’d doubtlessly seen much of both in life. And yes, my lady, pairing it with the Arcadian vintage (aged with the bitterest of
memento mori
) was nothing less than an oenophilic triumph. And no, my lady, the event had not been marred by the slightest of hangovers left by the
uisce beatha
. “Although, I do admit, my lady,” he said, “that I have a small irritation in my stomach at the moment, though that has only started just recently.”