The Rebirth of Wonder (10 page)

“
Of
course.”

Karagöz took the dagger and studied it
carefully.

“
It is not mine,” he
said at last, handing it back, “but it is assuredly a fascinating
item.”

More of the Bringers had arrived – though as
always, Art hadn't seen them enter. He began to wonder about some
secret entrance somewhere; had they cut a new door in the wall or
something?

Wherever they had come from, they were
interested in the knife, and he found himself passing it around,
like a kid at show-and-tell.

At least this got him introduced to the
remaining members of the group; the obese Oriental was Wang Yuan,
the aging black woman was Tituba Smith, and the herculean black man
was Mr. Rabbitt – no first name was given, and Art found himself
without the nerve to ask.

None of them recognized the dagger, leaving
him as baffled as ever about its origins.

While Granny Yeager and Dr. Torralva were
studying it, Art took the opportunity to remark to Innisfree, “I
tried to look up Merton Ambrose at the library, and couldn't find a
thing.”

Innisfree's mouth quirked. “I am not
surprised,” he said, his accent definitely Scottish for the
moment.

“
No?”

Innisfree looked sideways at Art for a
moment, studying him. “I suppose I should explain, Arthur.”

Art did not reply, but simply looked at
Innisfree, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

Innisfree sighed.

“
The Bringers of Wonder,” he said, “are perhaps more
nearly a philosophical society than a thespian troupe – or at
least, they once were. And Merton Ambrose held the post I now
hold.
The Return of
Magic
was his masterwork, but it was only
printed privately, not published to the general public. Among us,
it's recognized as a classic, I would say, but virtually no one
else has ever heard of it, and it can't be found in any ordinary
town library.”

“
Oh,” Art said. “Um.
Then do you expect much of a crowd for your
performance?”

Innisfree seemed surprised by the question;
he eyed Art carefully before answering, “I believe those we wish to
see it will come see it, and that will be enough.”

“
Boy!” Ms. Yeager
shouted before Art could think of another question. “Come take your
damned gewgaw and get out of our way, we have work to
do!”

“
Yes, ma'am,” he
said. He collected the dagger and a few apologetic glances from the
others, and headed for the stairs.

Chapter Ten

That session was relatively short; Art was
called upstairs at seven, and went home for a late dinner. Call for
the following day was for six – Art had noticed the trend toward a
later and later start, and he entirely approved. Six o'clock meant
he ate dinner first, a little early, and arrived at the theater
about a quarter to.

The day had not been one of the best he ever
had; he had been thinking about driving into Boston, to see if the
Boston Public Library had anything about Merton Ambrose, but he had
wanted to take Marilyn along for company, and he couldn't find her
anywhere.

By the time someone finally told him that
she'd gone swimming with Anne and Susan, it was too late to make
the trip to Boston by himself. Instead he had spent the afternoon
wandering around town, looking at the shops and watching the
tourists and sweating in the heat.

At a quarter to six it was still hot outside,
and the inside of the theater was sweltering, but the sky had
clouded over and he heard thunder rumbling in the distance as he
let himself in. No one was in sight anywhere near the theater,
inside or out.

He walked up to the box office and turned on
the air conditioning; by the time he had crossed the lobby and
re-entered the house, the Bringers were all waiting silently for
him onstage.

He had actually been expecting that. He
accepted without question the mystery of how they all appeared so
suddenly and quietly; it had become familiar and contemptible. He
waved brusquely to the group as he passed and headed wordlessly for
the basement.

There was no point in trying to learn
anything about what they were really up to. They weren't going to
tell him, and he had other things to do than argue with them. He
was in no mood to listen to old Ms. Yeager bitching at him.

He had completed his work on one wall of the
prop room the day before; anything that had rotted, rusted, or torn
he had pulled out and thrown in the trashcan, and the rest he had
sorted out and put away again, using a fat felt-tip marker to label
the boxes as clearly as he could.

All the prop guns were in one box, prop
swords in another, prop knives in a third – except that that one
particular wooden one with the peeling paint had never turned
up.

He would have thought that someone had walked
off with it, but that would mean that someone else had been down
here, and that didn't make sense. No one had been down here while
he was here, and the place was locked the rest of the time.

The stupid thing had probably gotten tangled
in something and put in the wrong box.

It didn't matter, anyway. He was here because
he had to be. It made no difference to him or to anybody else if
some moldy old prop was mislaid.

Stepping up onto the steel frame against the
stone wall at the outer end of the room, he reached up and pulled
an unmarked box off the top shelf.

It was heavier than he expected, and he
almost dropped it. Carefully, he held it over his head as he
lowered himself to the floor. When he was standing safely on
bedrock once again, he lowered the box and opened the flaps.

Junk. Old toys, mostly. He wondered what play
they were from.

He reached in and pulled
an item out at random, and found himself holding an old
Star Wars
action figure,
a worn and battered storm trooper.

He smiled. He'd gotten one of these when he
was a kid, when he was five or six years old and they'd just come
out. He'd named it Charlie, Charlie the Stormtrooper, and he and
Charlie had fought long wars against invisible Nazis on the floor
of his bedroom.

He'd lost Charlie years ago, of course.

This one looked just like Charlie. Of course,
all these mass-produced figures looked alike, but this one even
seemed to be worn in the same places, had the same crooked angle to
its head from getting bashed against the headboard of his bed
during a brief period of Nazi success.

A coincidence.

He put the storm trooper aside and reached
into the box.

A seashell, a shell the size of his fist –
just like one he'd picked up on Cape Cod one summer. His father had
told him what kind it was, but he didn't remember; a whelk, maybe?
Whatever it was, it was about the most intact shell he'd ever found
anywhere on the New England coast.

This one looked just like it.

He held it to his ear and listened in wonder
to the roar of the sea – though he knew it was really the echo of
his own bloodstream pumping.

He lowered it again and stared at it.

What had happened to that old shell of his,
anyway? It had disappeared once when he cleaned his room, and never
turned up again.

Strange coincidence, the shell and the
stormtrooper both looking so familiar. He reached into the box
again.

When his hand came back out, it slowed, and
then stopped, his third discovery dangling before him.

It was Bear.

There was absolutely no possibility of a
coincidence or a mistake; this was Bear, the ratty, mildewed teddy
bear he had adored as a child, and then relinquished in an
impromptu ceremony when he started first grade. The left hind foot
was torn, and the pink patch his mother had sewn on had never quite
covered the tear; the button eyes didn't match exactly because one
was a replacement; a narrow wedge of the dark brown plush was pale
gray where bleach had been spilled on it once in the laundry
room.

It was, beyond any question, his very own
Bear.

What the hell was it
doing
here
?

Was this really Charlie, then? And his own
lost seashell? He dumped the box out on the floor and began pawing
through its contents.

Several minutes later he sat back, confused
and furious.

Everything in the box was something he had
lost, something that had once been beloved and magical. Practically
everything he had ever loved and had lost was in there. There were
a few items he didn't really recognize on a conscious level, but
they were old, heavily used baby things, and there could be little
doubt that they, too, had once been his. A pacifier still had part
of his name on it.

What the hell was all this
stuff doing here? Who had put it here? Who had collected it
all?
How
had they
collected it all?

It couldn't have anything to do with the
Bringers of Wonder; they wouldn't have known about any of this
stuff, or been able to find it.

Had one of his parents found and saved all
these old things without telling him? Had his father put the box
down here for safekeeping, with the idea of hauling it out someday
for the sake of nostalgia?

That didn't sound like his dad at all. He was
nostalgic enough, maybe, but he'd have kept everything in the
house, and he'd have told Art, he wouldn't have kept it a
secret.

And whoever it was –
what
right
did
they have to muck around with Art's private past?

There were things here
he'd have sworn were secret, that no one ever knew he even had –
the ragged copy of
Bizarre Sex
#9 he'd kept hidden behind his bureau when he was
ten, the foil-wrapped condom he'd picked up in the parking area on
Hilltop Drive when he was thirteen. How had anyone found
those?

And why would anyone collect all this stuff
so indiscriminately?

It was crazy. It made him nervous.

He dumped everything back in the box, closed
the flaps, and started to carry it back to the high shelf – then
stopped.

Why should he put it back
up there? After all, this was all
his
stuff. It didn't belong in the
theater at all!

He took the box over to the door and set it
down. All those lost treasures were going home with him.

So was one other item, he decided. He got the
bone-handled knife from the shelf where he'd left it and put it on
top of the box.

That settled, he pulled out the next box, a
big one.

For a moment, he hesitated before opening it.
What if this box held something else weird and mysterious? What if
it held more lost things – someone else's, perhaps? Or an entire
set of strange cutlery? Or something even more out of place?

Well, what if it did? It wasn't going to jump
out and bite him.

He lifted the flaps and
found a stack of cardboard imitations of Roman shields, a remnant
of a production of
Julius Caesar
some ten years back. Those went over near the
swords, of course.

He found no other oddities that evening.

It was about eleven when Maggie called him.
She was waiting at the top of the stairs when he came trudging up,
the box of lost treasures under his arm.

“
What's that?” she
asked.

“
Oh, found some
things I'd lost,” he replied.

She blinked at him, then smiled broadly.

“
Already?” she
said.

He stared at her, puzzled and angry, as he
mounted the last few steps.

“
What do you mean, 'already'?” he demanded. “What
do
you
know about it? Did you have anything to do with
this?”

“
No, no,” she said,
“I didn't mean anything.”

“
Then why'd you say
it?”

“
Just... I don't
know. It popped out. I didn't mean anything.” She turned away,
toward the stage door.

He glared at her back. So
the Bringers were involved after all – but how
could
they be?

“
I've been meaning
to ask,” Art said, trying to hide his anger. “Where are you folks
all staying, while you're in town? You don't all live around here,
do you?”

“
Live around here?”
Startled, she turned to look at him. “You mean
us?”

“
Sure, you know, in
Concord or Bedford or wherever – I'm pretty sure none of you are
from Bampton, are you?”

“
Oh, no, none of us
are local.” She managed an uneasy little laugh. “We came in from...
well, from all over.”

“
That's what I
thought,” Art said with a nod. “So where are you
staying?”

Maggie waved a hand vaguely. “Oh, different
places,” she said. “I'm rooming with some distant relatives, third
cousins or so.”

“
Oh. Anyone I might
know?”

“
I don't think
so.”

“
In Bampton?” he
persisted.

She hesitated. “I'm not sure,” she said.

That was ridiculous, of course; how could she
not know what town they lived in? He glowered at her.

As he glowered, he was trying to figure out
just how the Bringers could have known about all those lost things.
It seemed clear that they must have local people working with them
– but who? And why?