The Rebirth of Wonder (17 page)

Afterward he talked to Maggie, and to
Myrddin, whom he had known as Merle Innisfree.

Everything Maggie had told him in the fields
of Faerie was confirmed; if he did not participate, the ritual
would fail. Magic would pass from the world forever, and all the
magicians but Maggie would die.

“
There's no chance
you could do it again in November?” he asked.

Myrddin and Maggie looked at one another.
Then Myrddin shook his head.

“
I shouldn't think
so,” he said. “I doubt there would be enough left of Sedona to
serve our needs. And it wouldn't matter, in a way – you'd just be
putting it off. Lad, you'd still know about it. We'd still need
your help – but instead of here, it might be in Antarctica, or
Kathmandu, or the Amazon jungles.”

“
Oh,” Art
said.

“
We need you, Art,”
Maggie said. “Maybe I shouldn't have told you, but I didn't know
what else to do.”

“
But turning magic
loose – you say yourself you don't know what it'll
do.”

“
It's been done
before, you know,” Myrddin pointed out. “The species seems to have
survived.”

“
Are you sure? When
was the last one of these... these things created? How do I know it
wasn't magic that killed off the dinosaurs?”

Maggie looked startled; Myrddin said
judiciously, “It might have been, at that, I suppose. And I've
heard stories about Atlantis, of course. But Arthur, my lad, the
Stonehenge power spot was only opened about eight thousand years
ago, and Sedona probably a little after – though we don't know who
started Sedona, or how, or why.”

“
Eight thousand
years.”

“
About
that.”

“
This hasn't been
done in eight thousand years?”

Neither of them answered that.

“
That's prehistoric.
I mean, literally.”

Myrddin nodded.

“
You said you needed
my participation,” Art said.

“
That's right,”
Myrddin replied.

“
Participation,
how?” Art asked. “The play's got seven roles, and the rest of you
are mostly just a chorus – would I be in the
chorus?”

“
I suppose so, yes,”
Maggie said, with a glance at Myrddin. “I was sort of a late
addition, and that's where I am.”

“
But I can't sing,”
Art protested. “I can't do magic. I don't act, you know, I never
have – I don't think I'd remember my lines.”

Maggie glanced worriedly at Myrddin, who
smiled.

“
Stage fright, lad? No need for that. You need to
participate, true, but nobody said you had to
perform
.”

Art needed a second to think about that; then
he turned and looked at the neatly shelved lighting
instruments.

“
I expect it'll make
the show look a little more professional, don't you?” Myrddin
asked, putting an arm around Art's shoulders.

Chapter Seventeen

The temptation to tell
Marilyn when they met in Dumfrey's Antiques the next day was almost
irresistible. The knowledge that she wouldn't believe him helped
considerably in fighting temptation, but then came the realization
that he could
prove
it to her by taking her down to the door into
Faerie.

And that would also prove that he wasn't
going insane, wasn't imagining the whole thing. He didn't really
think he was deluded, but independent confirmation certainly
wouldn't hurt his self- confidence.

That thought gnawed away at his resolve, and
he almost cracked at lunch, when Marilyn asked if he'd figured out
what the people who had rented the theater were up to.

But if he told her, she would have to join
the show. She might not mind – or she might.

And what if he decided
against participating, and she
didn't
?

She might blame him for eleven murders. She
might blame him for wiping away the little magic that was left in
the world – if that made any difference. Nobody knew if it made any
difference, if anyone but the magicians would notice when it was
gone.

And she might tell others, and each new
person would mean a whole new debate.

“
Oh,” he said at
last, “they're just doing a play, same as they said all
along.”

“
Really?” Marilyn
cocked her head. “But you said they weren't doing any
preparation.”

“
Well, they weren't,
but they are now. Got a slow start, that's all. I'll be hanging the
lights tonight – or at least starting to.”

Marilyn nodded. “So did you ever find out
anything about this, what was it, 'mystic classic of the
stage'?”

He nodded. “Yup. Turns out it was written by
some secret society back around the turn of the century, or
something, so it's always stayed sort of underground, never gotten
wide distribution.”

“
Oh, foo, that's no
fun, then! That takes almost all the mystery out of it!” She
slapped at him gently.

“
Sorry,” he said,
smiling.

“
I mean, what good
are a bunch of mysterious strangers if they aren't smuggling dope
or something?”

“
Not much,” he
agreed.

“
So are they
planning to advertise this show of theirs? I haven't seen any
posters or anything.”

Art shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “Hey,
have you seen Susan around lately?”

The conversation wandered away from the
theater, but Marilyn's question lingered, and that night, as he
pulled the first Fresnel off the shelf, Art asked Myrddin, “Do you
guys want an audience for this thing?”

“
Why do you
ask?”

Art shrugged, and one of the shutters on the
lighting instrument rattled. “Just curious,” he said.

“
Well, as it happens, we
need
an audience
– and we expect to have one,” Myrddin told him.

“
Really? You haven't
done any advertising, have you?”

Myrddin grinned at him. “I
never said the audience would be
human
,” he replied.

Art decided not to ask any more questions
just yet.

He couldn't stop thinking about it, though,
as he clamped the lighting instruments in place.

He had decided on a simple design that would
reflect the mystic circles that made up much of the play; a ring of
Fresnels gelled warm gold and pale pink would flood the center of
the stage with light, and an outer ring of licos gelled medium blue
would provide background and accent. Specials were set for each
upstage corner, for the scenes when characters popped up there
unexpectedly. The downstage corners and the outer edges were left
dark – they weren't used, and he didn't have the equipment to spare
for them.

Never said the audience would be human,
Myrddin had said. Art looked down from the catwalk at the Bringers
in their places, running through the dialogue. They had never said
the audience would be human, but there they were, going through
their paces, untroubled by it. He looked at their shadows on the
stage and remembered his business.

Real strip lights would have been nice, but
the theater didn't have them and he'd never gotten around to making
any. If he got lucky, and didn't need a week just to eliminate
unwanted shadows, he might still have time to do something about
that. For now, though, he expected he would have to resort to the
same trick he'd been using for the past ten years, taping unframed
gels over the onstage work lights and cutting a dimmer into the
circuit.

If not human, then what? What else was there?
As he climbed down the stage-left ladder a flare of enchanted flame
lit the wall around him, which was no comfort at all.

Back at the equipment shelves he counted the
Fresnels. He would have one left over; now, where could he put that
to do the most good? He looked out at the stage as the magicians
stepped back in simulated surprise at the High Mage's anger.

Myrddin hadn't meant magicians; all the
magicians in the world were in the show, not the audience, and
besides, they seemed human enough, generally speaking.

They didn't really have a curtain-warmer;
that should properly take at least three instruments, and he wasn't
going to have any leftover licos, not after he rigged the specials
for the corners, but a lone Fresnel with the shutters wide open
would be better than nothing, especially if he angled it across.
He'd need to think about which side to put it on; the show was just
about the most symmetrical he'd ever lit, which didn't help. He
slipped out onto the downstage corner to look the situation over,
carefully avoiding Baba Yeager as she made her exit.

Here he could look out over the empty house,
and wonder what would be in those chairs. Not magicians – what
else, then? Magical beings of some sort?

He forced himself back to business. If he
hung the Fresnel at stage left, it would partially light the steps
at stage right; if he hung it stage right, they'd be in complete
darkness. The show didn't use the steps, so ordinarily he wouldn't
want to call the audience's attention to them, but this wasn't
ordinary. He looked out at the house again.

He didn't know what the
audience would
be
. Gods? Demons? Fairies? Elves? Gryphons, dragons, unicorns?
Would they care about the steps? Would the cast want to be able to
see the steps in case something went wrong?

Elves, fairies – and there
was a door to Faerie downstairs. Was
that
where the audience would come
from? He looked out into the darkness and tried to imagine elves
and fairies sitting out there.

Hang it at stage right, he decided. Whatever
the audience was, he thought he'd be happier emphasizing their
separation from the events onstage.

Separation – an idea stirred somewhere in the
back of his mind as he went to the shelves and lifted down the
instrument he wanted.

He stood for a long moment with the Fresnel
in his hand, looking up at the iron lighting frame mounted to the
right side of the proscenium, but the idea wouldn't come clear.
Instead, a question came to him.

Why was he doing this?

Why was he hanging these lights when he
hadn't yet decided whether he wanted to help out?

If he refused to go along, would they cancel
the show, or would they try it without him?

Would just having hung the lights be enough
cooperation?

Did he really want to unleash wild new magic
on an unsuspecting world? As before, a surge of terror hit him at
the thought – and something else underneath it.

Real magic.

Kier Kaye muffed a line and burst out
laughing; Yeager called a rude comment, and Dr. Torralva gently
reprimanded them both.

They didn't seem worried by the prospect of
dying before the year was out – but then, they expected the ritual
to work.

Could they be so sure, though? Shouldn't they
be more worried than this?

Yeager was still in the stage-left wings; she
wouldn't reenter the action for a few minutes yet. With the Fresnel
still in his hand, Art ambled over to talk to her.

“
Go away, boy,” she
told him.

“
Ms. Yeager,” he
began.

“
Pah
!” she snapped, followed by
something in a language he didn't understand. It sounded like
Russian. It also sounded insulting. “If you
must
talk to me,” she said,
reverting to English, “at least use my right name, now that you
know who we are, and not that stupid lie they made up for me. It's
Yaga, not Yeager – I'm no damned German!”

“
I'm sorry,” he
said.

“
You should
be.”

“
I wanted to ask,
though...”

“
Then
ask.”

“
About this... this
performance. What if it doesn't work?”

She turned and stared at him, with yellowed
and terrifying eyes. After a moment of silence, a moment in which
Myrddin's onstage dialogue could be clearly heard, she snorted.

“
If it doesn't
work,” she said, “the world will be a sad, drab place, and I won't
much mind missing it.”

“
Missing
it?”

“
Well, I'll be dead
and gone, won't I, chick? We all will. By Christmas. They told you
that, I'm sure – even if that little ninny who calls herself a
witch forgot, Myrddin wouldn't miss a chance.”

“
You're
sure?”

“
Are you questioning
me?”

“
Oh, no!” Art
protested. “Nothing like that!”

“
Well,
then.”

“
When you say the
world will be sad... how do you mean that? What will change,
really?”

Again, she took her time about replying.

“
Having second
thoughts, are you?” she demanded at last.