The Rebirth of Wonder

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

“Ah, Arthur,” Innisfree's voice said, “A pleasure to see you.”

  Art started, and looked over his shoulder.

  The Bringers were on the stage behind him – not just Innisfree, but several of them, perhaps all of them.

  Art scooted himself off the stage and turned to face them. “I didn't hear you come in,” he said.

  “Well, we didn't want to disturb you,” Innisfree explained. “You looked so thoughtful, sitting there.”

  Art had not realized he was being particularly thoughtful, and did not understand how he had failed to hear the stage door opening and closing, had failed to hear footsteps on the stage, had failed to see the sunlight when the door was opened. He made no answer, but instead simply stood, looking up at Innisfree, and the old woman, and the woman with the braid – she wasn't in green today, but in a gown of maroon silk that looked totally inappropriate for such hot weather.

  “What the devil are you staring at, boy?” the old woman shouted. Her voice was incredibly piercing.

  “Nothing,” Art said. “You startled me, ma'am, that's all.” She was, he noticed, wearing either the same clothes as yesterday, or others equally dismal and unmemorable. Like the other woman's, they were far heavier than was reasonable on a hot August day.

  “That's no reason to stare like a damned owl.”

  “Sorry.” Art blinked and turned his gaze elsewhere.

  Maggie was off to stage right, watching him; she wore cutoff jeans and a red paisley halter.

  “Well,” Innisfree called, “I think we're all here; shall we get started?”

  “What, you expect us to get anything done with this idiot staring at us as if we were his television set?” the old woman demanded. “It's pretty clear he doesn't have the wit for anything more complicated than TV.”

  “Baba,” Innisfree said, “leave the boy alone. You know why he's here.”

  “All the same, sir,” said the man with the elegant mustache, “I think we would all be happier if he did not remain where he is, watching us from the audience.”

  Innisfree looked about, confounded, as a general round of nodding and affirmative muttering greeted this.

  “It's all right,” Art said, coming to Innisfree's rescue, “I've still got some things I can do down in the basement. If you need anything, you can send someone down, or just call through one of the traps.”

  Innisfree's relief was obvious. “Thank you, Arthur, you're a gentleman.”

  “You're welcome,” Art said, as he headed for the steps up to the stage.

  Maggie met him there, and walked beside him to the basement door; she glanced back over her shoulder, then whispered, “Don't mind Ba... I mean, Ms. Yeager. She's just as disagreeable with everyone.”

  “Yeager?” Art threw the old woman a quick glance, which she nonetheless seemed to catch. When he turned away again he was sure she was glaring at him.

  Maggie nodded. “Barbara Yeager. Her friends call her Baba – if she has any friends.”

  Art paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked at Maggie, noticing the sweat on her forehead. He still hadn't turned on the air conditioning, and the stage was hot.

  “I'd sort of like to know who everybody is,” he said. “Nobody's ever done any real introductions, and I don't like not even knowing any names.”

  Maggie blinked. “Well, you know my name.”

  “That's true,” Art admitted. “And I know Mr. Innisfree, but you people call him something else.”

  “Oh – Merle, I guess you mean. That's his first name. M-E-R-L-E, Like Merle Haggard.”

  Art nodded. “And the Chinese woman's name is Fox? Like the animal?”

  Maggie nodded. “I don't know her first name,” she said, apologetically.

  “Are you two going to stand there jabbering all day?” the old woman demanded.

  “Just a minute, Grandmother!” Maggie called back.

  “Is she your grandmother, the one who said she was a witch?” Art asked, whispering.

  “Oh, no, of course not!” Maggie stifled a laugh. “No, we just call her that. I think she likes it. She's Russian, you know, and 'Baba' is short for 'Barbara,' but it's also the Russian word for 'Granny,' so... well, anyway, I don't think she really has any kids or grandkids of her own, and none of us are directly related. Except maybe Merle and Faye. I think they're connected somehow, cousins or something.”

  “Who's Faye?”

  “Faye Morgan, the redhead with the braid.” She pointed.

  Art glanced at the woman in maroon silk. Yes, he'd heard her called Faye; it had slipped his mind. “What about...” he began.

  “Maggie!” the redhead called. “Could you come here?”

  “Go ahead,” Art said, opening the door. “Thanks.”

  Maggie turned to see what Faye Morgan wanted, and Art switched on a light and descended into the relative coolness of the basement.

  He wondered how long it would be before someone asked him how to turn on the air conditioning; he had intended to do that, but had gotten distracted.

  For the present, he didn't worry about it – the basement was cool enough that he wouldn't suffer, and the Bringers, as they had made abundantly clear, weren't his problem. He found the dustpan and broom; the little heap of dust and wood shavings was just where he had left it, waiting to be cleared away.

  He could hear footsteps overhead as the Bringers went about their business – whatever it was. His playhouse wasn't private anymore.

  Down here, the theater's odor was just as distinctive, but different – the hot attic smell of dry wood was thin and faint, almost lost in the cool dark cellar fragrance of earth and must and damp stone.

  Cellars below, attic above, and nothing in between; the theater was treasure house and playroom, but no one's home.

  He swept up the mound of debris and dumped it in the battered steel drum that served as a trashcan. That done, he returned broom and dustpan to their regular places, and then stood, eyes closed, in the center of the big room.

  Below him, he knew, was the pit in the stone that he had told Maggie about; he remembered seeing it when he was just a kid, maybe four or five years old. It had been a dark square surrounded by gray stone that seemed to go down and down and down forever, deep into the secret black heart of the world; it had terrified and fascinated him. He remembered that he had thought it smelled strange, and a faint draft had seemed to blow down into it, as if something huge and moist and alien were down there, breathing slowly in, trying to suck him down into the blackness.

  He supposed that whoever built the church had intended it as a crypt of some sort; it had been too big for a well. So far as he had ever heard, though, no one was entombed there; it was just a big square empty hole that later generations had dumped trash into.

  He hadn't seen any trash as a kid, so far as he could recall, but all the grown-ups had told him it was down there.

  Maybe they should have left it open, he thought, and gone on dumping trash down there until they filled it; it would have been easier than hauling the steel drum out through the big outside door every so often to empty it.

  Now, though, with the new floor in place for eighteen years, there was no sign that the pit existed, or had ever existed. He couldn't feel any air moving through the cracks in the floor, couldn't smell that strange scent over the ordinary stone and moisture of the basement.

  He opened his eyes and listened.

  The Bringers were moving around overhead, going about their business – whatever it was. He could hear voices muttering, but could make out no words. He could hear footsteps as they moved about, but no pattern, no organization. No one was calling instructions, no one was moving sets.

  He wondered just what sort of a show this Return of Magic really was; was it a play, or a magic act, or what?

  Well, it apparently wasn't his business, and nobody was calling for him to come turn on the air conditioning, or to help hang lights, or to show them where anything was. Irritated, he turned and marched out into the pa
ssageway, where he pulled the key ring from his pocket and unlocked the first door on the right.

  He turned on the light inside the door and looked at a long, tall, narrow room lined with shelves – to either side the shelves were built onto the wooden walls, while at the far end freestanding storage racks stood against the rough stone of the foundation. Most of the shelves were filled with cardboard boxes; a few held loose items, sometimes neatly stacked, sometimes shoved onto the shelves in heaps.

  This room was dedicated to small props and set dressing – things like silverware and lampshades and vases. Sorting through all this would, he was sure, keep him busy for hours.

  Maybe days.

  An hour or so later he rolled the steel drum in from the big room; the objects deemed too far gone to be worth saving had overflowed the box he had chosen for their disposal, and he had barely started.

  Chapter Seven

  It still seemed as if he had scarcely begun when he heard Maggie's voice calling, “Art? Are you down here?”

  He put down the chrome cocktail-ice mallet he had been studying and called in reply, “In here!”

  A moment later the witch's granddaughter stuck her head through the doorway and smiled at him.

  “Hi,” she said. “We're all done for today.”

  Art glanced at his watch and read 5:44. “Dinner break?”

  “No, we're finished for today.”

  “Okay.” He looked over the various objects he had pulled out of the box he was working on, and shrugged. “I'll do the rest of this tomorrow, I guess.”

  “What are you doing?” Maggie asked, stepping into the room.

  “Sorting,” he said.

  Maggie looked at the rows of boxes. Some were labeled, in a variety of different hands and using a variety of implements, from charcoaled stick to fountain pen to felt-tip marker, from crayon to pencil to paint; others were not marked in any way. Some of the inscriptions were cryptic – “E Laws 3rd C'nut,” for example – while others, such as “Cocktail set, Christie's Mousetrap, 1973 production,” were clear. Many boxes bore names, or dates, or descriptions of contents, or some combination thereof; most of the names were unfamiliar, and the dates went back at least as far as 1926.

  “What is all this stuff?” Maggie asked.

  “Props,” Art told her. “If you need any for this show you're doing, let me know, and I'll see if I can find them for you.”

  “Where'd they all come from?”

  Art shrugged. “They just sort of accumulated. People would pick them up at yard sales for a show, or find them in attics, or make them – ” he gestured at a foot-long prop dagger made of wood painted silver, the wood cracked with age and the paint flaking, ” – and then after the show, they'd just leave them here in case someone needed them again later.”

  Maggie nodded. “I think I see,” she said slowly. “This explains a lot.”

  “It does?” Art looked around, puzzled; he didn't see how the prop room explained anything at all.

  “Never mind that,” Maggie said briskly, in an abrupt change of tenor. “I came down to tell you we're leaving, and we'll want to get back in tomorrow at two o'clock.”

  “Two?”

  “Yup.”

  Art looked around.

  This could wait, he decided. He would have plenty of time to get it done before the Bringers held their one and only performance on August 30th. He picked up the ice hammer, placed it atop the 1973 cocktail set box, then turned off the light and herded Maggie out the door before closing and locking it behind them.

  At the top of the stairs, when they emerged into the backstage area, Art was startled to realize that the air was cool and sweet, the hot, dry, dusty air of the morning gone. The Bringers must have figured out for themselves how to turn the air conditioner on, he decided. He would need to check on that and make sure they had turned it off again.

  The only illumination came from the backstage work lights; the stage was dim, the house dark, the lobby doors closed, so far as he could see. Maggie, paying no attention, headed for the stage door, while Art turned toward the steps.

  “Where are you going?” Maggie asked, startled.

  “Oh, I need to check the place over,” Art said. “Make sure you people left everything where it belongs. You go ahead, you don't have to wait for me.”

  Maggie hesitated, then answered, “All right,” as Art descended the steps from the stage.

  He waved a quick farewell; when he turned to say good-bye the stage door was closing behind her.

  He hesitated, slightly irked at her quick exit – though he knew that was unreasonable of him. He'd said himself that she didn't have to wait. Then he shrugged off his annoyance and marched up the aisle to the lobby, through the lobby to the box office, and back to the control panel.

  The air conditioner was off, the thermostat still set where he had left it; he put his hand on the air conditioner housing, and could feel no coolness. The metal was room temperature.

  They must have turned it off a while ago, he decided. But usually the theater heated up fast. Had it cooled off outside? The weather reports hadn't predicted that.

  Puzzled, he went on about his business, checking all the doors. When at last he emerged at the rear of the theater the sun was swimming on the horizon, bloated and red, and the air was still furnace-hot.

  He stood on the back porch for a moment, trying to figure it out.

  Then, with a shrug, he gave up and went home for dinner.

  Chapter Eight

  The town library's copy of the book Jamie had particularly recommended, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, was already checked out; Art checked the entire shelf twice, just to be sure.

  He couldn't remember any other titles. He could have just chosen a book at random, but he hated doing that; he'd gotten too many boring volumes that way.

  It was ten-thirty, and he didn't have to be anywhere until two – well, quarter of, to be safe – and he couldn't find the book he wanted.

  Annoyed, he turned and saw the card catalog, and a thought struck him. He crossed to the wooden cabinet and found the title index, then looked under R.

  Return of the King, Return of the Native – no, there wasn't any “the” in the middle. Return of Nathan Brazil, Return of Monte Cristo, Return of Mr. Moto, Return of Martin Guerre, Return of Lysander...

  No Return of Magic.

  He flipped a few dozen cards in either direction without finding it; then he tried under “The,” just in case.

  It wasn't there, either.

  He gave up on the title index and tried by subject, under “drama,” “magic,” and “theater.”

  No luck.

  Well, Bampton's library was pretty good for a small town, but it still didn't amount to much compared to a big-city library, or a university's. They probably just didn't have the play in their collection.

  But they might have a mention of it somewhere; he left the card catalog and found the theater section.

  Most of the books were obviously not going to help much, but a few looked promising; he pulled them out and thumbed through the indices.

  The Return of Magic was not a Restoration comedy, apparently; he found some impressive lists of those. It wasn't mentioned in books on medieval mummers' plays, passion plays, and the commedia dell'arte. It wasn't by Shakespeare or Shaw or Ibsen or Chekhov; it had never been a Broadway hit.

  He frowned.

  Maybe if he knew who wrote it – going through every single playwright's biography would take forever. And it might have an alternate title, for that matter.

  He would have to ask about that.

  It was almost noon by the time he abandoned the search, and even if he hadn't found a book, he had at least managed to use up the morning; he went home for lunch, and then headed to the theater at about one-thirty, equipped with a couple of old magazines to read while waiting for the Bringers.

  He had been sitting on the edge of the stage reading the June issue of Esquire for pe
rhaps ten minutes when he heard footsteps behind him. He put the magazine down and turned, and found Innisfree standing at center stage, ludicrous in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

  Again, Art had not seen or heard anyone come in; he was beginning to find these silent entrances and exits rather aggravating.

  “Hi, Mr. Innisfree,” he said, putting down his magazine.

  “Good afternoon, Arthur, and a fine day it is, too!”

  Art had his own opinion on that, which was that it was still too damned hot out – he had turned the air conditioning on as soon as he could, and it was just now beginning to cut through the dry, dusty heat of the theater. He didn't say anything about that. Instead, he remarked, “I've been wondering – what's this play of yours about?”

  Innisfree blinked at him. “What's that?” he asked.

  “This play you're putting on, The Return of Magic – what's it about?”

  Innisfree cleared his throat. “Well, that's a bit hard to say.”

  Art suppressed the urge to say, “Try.” Instead he just looked up expectantly and waited.

  “Well,” Innisfree said, “you see, it's about a group of wizards and sorcerers who are worried about their magic fading away, and who gather together to seek out a new source of power.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Art said. “Lots of special effects and fancy lighting, I suppose.” He glanced at the shelves where the lighting instruments and cables remained untouched.

  “Well, I suppose; we haven't got into that yet,” Innisfree said uneasily.

  “Could I see a script?” Art asked.

  “I'm afraid we don't have any extra copies,” Innisfree replied, apologetically. “In fact, some of us are sharing as it is.”

  “Well, I could make some photocopies if you want...”

  “No, thank you – that might get us in trouble. The proprietors are very picky about that.”

  Art nodded. “Maybe I could find you some more, then,” he suggested. “Who wrote it?”

  Innisfree smiled crookedly. “No one you ever heard of, I'm afraid,” he said. “And I doubt you'll find copies.”