The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  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.

  Chapter 33

  A Man Very Bad at Dying

  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.”

  “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?”

  CHAPTER 34

  In Which Burdens Are Laid Down

  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 e
qualize 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.