The Troupe (52 page)

“That’s odd,” she said. “I think I may feel the same discomfort. Perhaps the chef used too much spicing. He has overdone himself before, when pressured.”

The seneschal put a hand to his stomach, and winced. “Somehow I do not think so, my lady. This is a very cold sensation, rather than a hot one. And it is very—” But the seneschal never finished his description, for he abruptly started coughing. Ofelia watched impatiently as the man tried his hardest to articulate his meaning in between his coughs. But she could not make out what he said, as another member of the host started coughing nearby as well, followed shortly by two more.

“What is wrong with all of you?” asked the lady. “Have you honestly gotten so sensitive?”

The seneschal tried to shake his head, but after one tremendous hack he looked up with terrified eyes. With outstretched hands he showed he’d just coughed up an enormous amount of blood. To their terror, several other fairies began coughing, and more and more until the entire host was hacking and choking.

“What is this?” said the lady. “What could be—” But then Ofelia began coughing as well. She stared around for aid as she coughed, but none came. She coughed so hard that, to her shame, her mask slipped off and clattered to the floor.

They did not all cough up the blood, but all of them bled; for most of them it came from the eyes and skin, as if they wept or sweated blood itself, slipping from the edges of their white masks. They slapped at the bleeding parts of their bodies, trying to stanch the flow, but in their agitated states they could do nothing to stop it. The blood built up around their feet at the feasting table, collecting into a large pool, and even though the lady was bent double with her coughs she still managed to see that the pool of blood seemed to defy
the slope of the floor: rather than lying at the far end of the room from her, the pool somehow stayed directly at her feet.

There was a quiver in the pool. And then, as if the blood filled a large hole in the ground, a single trembling hand pierced the surface of the puddle and felt around the wooden floor for support. Finding a table leg, the hand grasped it and hauled the remainder of its owner up out of the pool in a very violent, sanguine birth. Yet this was no child: even though the lady and the rest of the host were now very weak from the coughing and the loss of blood, they could see that the person who’d just climbed out of their floor through the pool of blood was none other than a nude, blinking, crimson Heironomo Silenus.

He gagged and sniffed and wiped his eyes. Then he looked around at the expiring host of fairies. “Jesus,” he said. “You know, I wasn’t entirely sure that would work…” He turned toward the end of the table to the lady, seated in her chair and wheezing. “Goodness, Ofelia. I can see why you keep that mask on.”

“You!” whispered Ofelia furiously. “You were dead… you’re supposed to be dead!”

Silenus stood up, dripping, and took a lit cigar from one of the ashtrays at the table. He took a drag and said, “You should have listened to your mother more. If you had, you’d’ve known that dying is one thing I’ve made sure to be very bad at.”

“What!” said the lady. “But how…”

“Maenad’s honey,” said Silenus. “Gathered from the thyrsus itself, and hidden in the cork. It has such unusual properties when ingested, you know. For the maenads themselves, its regenerative properties allowed them to survive the bacchanalia. When diluted with wine, however, it takes a while to act. And it will act, even if there are”—he glanced around at the dying fairies—“obstacles in the way.”

“You bastard,” she whispered. “I should have never granted your last request. Will you never give me any peace?”

Silenus shrugged. “I may make things quicker for you, if you answer my question. Now—what have you done with the others?”

Annie crawled through the hole she had made in the bottom of the train car. She lay there for a while below its undercarriage, simply trying to force air into her lungs. Then she got up on her hands and knees and dragged herself below the front axle.

She looked back, taking in the full length of the train car. She had never tried anything like this, as she’d told Stanley. Safes and metal bars and statues, these had been simple things, with none weighing more than half a ton. Yet this… this was immense. Merely lifting it would be a magnificent feat. And to do what Stanley had suggested, why… that was inconceivable.

She blinked, and suddenly she was not sure why she was sitting here below the train car. It was very cold out, and she realized she was hurt in many places… That did not seem right. Where was her coat, and her scarves? What had happened to her?

Then she remembered. “No! No!” she cried, and slapped the side of her head. “Remember! Remember, damn you! Anne Sillenes… My… my name is Anne Sillenes.”

She would have to lift it up, she remembered, or at least try. Even
in her ruined state, with every joint and bone in her body rebelling, she had to try.

She sat up and settled the train car’s axle on the backs of her shoulders, then raised her arms and gripped it on either side. She positioned her feet, trying to equalize the balance, and began to push.

She groaned and her knees shook violently, and beads of sweat began to appear at the top of her brow. There was a faint moan from somewhere within the train car, the protest of reluctant metals that strained to bear the force put upon them, but no light appeared between the car’s wheels and the ground, and the car did not rise one inch.

She gasped and collapsed. “Damn it,” she said, weeping. “Damn it all. I can’t. I told him I can’t, and I can’t.”

She was nearly consumed by despair then. She’d betrayed those she loved, and was now helpless to do anything for them. And as she sat on the cold rocky ground she looked around herself, and wondered why she was crying. She did not seem scared. Perhaps, she wondered as she touched the wounds on her arms, it was because she was hurt…

Then she heard it: the sound of the First Song, echoing down the hill to her. The air became alive with all those faint and unearthly voices, yet then they were followed by a thousand howls and snarls. It sounded as if the song was leading the wolves west, down the hills into the valley before the dam.

Then she remembered again. “Jesus,” she said. “Oh God, he’s started, he’s
started
.”

She mournfully looked up at the train car, but then shook herself. To do this, she realized, would destroy her. The symbols inked on her skin could not maintain her body under such pressure. And yet there was a bleak freedom in that realization. In a way, each of her seconds had been her last, and all of them had led to this last act. She would not spend her remaining moments in futility and despair, she
decided; she needed only to stand up, and carry a little more weight with her.

And perhaps she would at least die knowing who she was, and who she’d once been.

She stared at her wounded hands.
My name is Anne Sillenes. Anne Marie Sillenes.

She positioned herself below the axle again, gripped it with both hands, and began to push. She did not strain herself this time, but applied a steady, increasing force up. She felt bones and joints begin to pop throughout her body, vertebrae cracking and muscle walls rupturing, but she kept pushing harder and harder.

The average train car, as that one was, weighs nearly seventy tons. Its frame is around eighty-five feet long and is solidly built of the strongest iron and steel. It is made to distribute its weight evenly across the ground, never tipping, never losing its balance, transporting its precious cargo with speed, safety, and efficiency. It is not in any way meant to rise up from the track it was made for, not an inch, not a millimeter.

And yet that night, with a great squalling and twisting and rattling of metal, and dust and pine needles and pinecones pouring off of its roof in tumbling cascades, Anne Sillenes lifted it up slowly, slowly, achingly slowly, and stood with its front balanced on her shoulders.

She trembled mightily and her breath came in quick, panicked gasps. Her body could not come close to functioning normally while lifting up such a stupendous weight, yet the arts that made her live were not hindered by the strain, or at least not yet. As the train car kept rising up and she saw more and more of what was before her, she almost lost her concentration in disbelief and delight. But then she saw the hill ahead, with so many trees and stretches of rocky ground, and at the very top was her goal, the little knoll where one end of the dam met the side of the valley, anchoring the whole construction.

“Oh, God,” she gasped. “Oh God, it’s so far…”

But she knew she would have to. Really, it was only a little ways, she told herself. She had already traveled so far in her life. This would be only a couple of steps more.

And that was the most dangerous part, she knew: lifting the train car was one thing, but walking with it was another. Each step would demand one perilous moment when the car’s whole weight was balanced on one foot while the other reached forward, and she was not sure if she could stay upright. And besides, she didn’t know if she could pull the train at all: she had not even gotten the wheels off the old tracks, and would they even work in the soft earth?

She began leaning forward. Her quivering increased, and she tried to ignore the tickling in her throat as some fluid trickled down its sides. But then there was a great clunk from behind her as the wheels fell off the track, and another, and she staggered forward with one foot ahead and the other behind.

She had done it. She could move. She swallowed, and began to push forward again. She took one step, and another, and then another. She did not know it, for she could not look behind, but the wheels were not rolling with her but digging huge gouges in the earth. But it did not matter: even with this resistance she could push the train car forward.

Suddenly she wondered what she was doing. She was in so much
pain
… Why was she carrying such a huge weight? Why did she need to pull it up the hill?

She did not know, but she knew she had to keep carrying it. She had to carry this train car up to the top of the knoll, for some reason that was of upmost importance. And she realized she was whispering something, over and over again: “Anne Marie Sillenes. You are Anne Marie Sillenes…”

Every inch was a battle, every step a war. She felt blood running down her back from where the axle bit into her shoulders, but she ignored it. The vertebrae in her neck were pulverized, but the symbols inked above them did not stop functioning, and she held her
head high. Something wet had happened to her knee, and she thought the kneecap there had broken free and was floating in fluid, but she did not care, and kept pushing forward.

Sometimes she remembered why. Other times she could not, but pushed regardless.

Anne Marie Sillenes. Annie. Anne Sillenes…

And as she carried the train car up the moonlit hill, crushing stone and root and heaving with each step, she began to think that this was not a new weight at all; perhaps she had been carrying it her whole life, from the very beginning, always staggering up the hill pushing this immense load, and she had only been waiting for the right opportunity to lay it down, which had finally come tonight.

Anne. Annie. Fran Marie Sillenes.

And what if I drop it? she asked herself. What if it should fall from my fingers and slide back down the hill?

Well, then, she said. Then I will simply pick it back up, and start again. It would be only a few minutes more. A few last steps in a long line of them.

Annie Fran Sillenes. Franny Beatty Sillenes. Franny Sillenes.

And as she dragged this terrible burden up the hillside, she realized she was saying things and concentrating on memories that were utterly unfamiliar to her. Why was she chanting these words? Whose name was this? And why was she focusing on this handful of fractured recollections? They were ghosts of events floating in her mind, without reference or context, like she’d stolen the memories from a stranger… and though she did not know who the people in them were, she thought of these memories as happy. So she decided to keep concentrating on them as she carried this terrible weight, remembering this strange girl (what was her name? Was it Annie?) and her memories and the things she had seen.

She remembered when the girl had first seen him at the fair, this short, ferocious young man with the old man’s eyes, and how he had juggled and sung for the crowd and yet he’d bungled his act because
he kept glancing at her, unable to take his eyes away. And later when he had approached her, grinning and proud, she had asked him if he was from around here and he had said no, no, I am from very far away, very far away indeed. He’d then earned her favor with a special treasure: a ripe, golden-pink peach, and as the girl had caressed its fuzzy skin (his eyes growing bright as he watched) she had asked where he’d gotten it and he had grinned and shrugged, and she’d asked if it was from his hometown and he had said no, no, he came from places even farther than the ones that had grown the peach, and those places were very far from here. And she had smiled then, puzzled.

She remembered it would not be the last time the girl would be confused, but she could not remember who this young man was. What was his name? How did she remember him? She did not know.

Fran Marie Sillenes. Annie. Anne Fran Sillenes.

She remembered how the girl and the young man would travel in the trains, the girl seated by the window so she could watch the country race by, he lounging with his head in her lap like a schoolboy, and it was on one of these journeys that he’d told her he had been traveling his whole life but when he was with her he felt like he was standing still. And he’d reached into his pocket and taken out a little box and the girl’s heart had begun fluttering madly, and he’d said he wished to stay still with her forever, no matter where he was, and would you come with me, Annie, would you come with me to the far places at the end of the sky and bring with you the home that I have found in your heart, and he’d opened the box and within it was a little silver ring with many fine engravings, and she’d looked at him and he was weeping, and she’d said yes, yes, forever yes, I will be with you I will be yours.