Illyria (16 page)

'"And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,'" he
said and began to sing.

"When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day!'

He sang as he had all those years before; as I'd heard him sing,

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night after night, alone in bed in my Islington flat; as I'd heard him every time I stood offstage, fighting waves of fear until I could take that first step onto a stage in Manchester or Bristol or D.C. His voice rang so loudly that the candles guttered in their holders; the dark room closed around us until I felt the attic walls and in the corners of my eyes saw sparks of lightning, blue and black and silver.

"But when I came unto my beds,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

With tosspots still had drunken heads,

For the rain it raineth every day."

I blinked. Tears blurred my vision so that it seemed I glimpsed the resurrected theater through a snow-covered window. I rubbed my eyes, then gasped.

It was snowing: tiny whirling flakes like glitter or talc but cold, and wet--snow, real snow, impossible snow, falling in a moonlit column from the ceiling onto the paper stage as Rogan sang.

"A great while ago the world begun,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

But that's all one, our play is done,

And we'll strive to please you every day!

The eddies rose and fell with my cousin's voice, sweeping over all of us in waves, matchstick trees and painted moon and cardboard

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figures in a toy theater, snow and shipwreck and stage all whorled together into one great bright storm with Rogan and me at its center, motionless in our embrace, long after his voice fell silent, long after first light struck the stony face of the Palisades and the frozen river far below.