The Rebirth of Wonder (13 page)

Innisfree stood center stage, facing away
from his audience – the audience he presumably didn't know was
there. Art shifted his feet slightly; he expected to be watching
for some time yet, and he didn't want to get stiff.

The tall man on the stage raised his hands
and spoke a word, a word Art had never heard before and could not
begin to spell; abruptly, Innisfree's white shirt and light gray
slacks vanished, replaced by a floor-length white robe.

Art blinked.

That was a very good stunt; he had no idea
where the robe had been hidden, or how Innisfree had gotten it on
so quickly without a single snag or jerk.

Then Innisfree began
chanting. This time the words weren't
quite
as strange, but they still
weren't English; Art thought the language might be
Latin.

Other voices joined his, and four of the
Bringers stepped forward – Faye Morgan and Al Tanner to stage left,
Wang Yuan and Kier Kaye to stage right. They moved inward in slow
steps, stopping at the inner chalk circle, forming a ring around
Innisfree.

They were wearing robes, gold and red and
green and blue. Each of them was holding something. Morgan raised
what she held, and Art saw that it was a sword – and at least from
where he stood, it didn't look like a prop. It seemed to catch the
light amazingly well.

She waved it slightly, and the tip of the
sword drew a flaming red line in the air, a line that hung there,
burning. She twisted it back on itself and formed it into a symbol,
something resembling an infinity sign, but not exactly that,
something a little more complex.

Art blinked, and took a moment to rub his
eyes.

How did she
do
that?

Wang held up a bone, and etched a symbol in
the air; this one blazed white.

Kaye used a gnarled black staff, and her sign
glowed green.

Tanner's shape, drawn with something that Art
couldn't make out, something that glittered like glass, burned
gold.

The lights dimmed.

Art started; how did they
do
that
? None of
the work lights were on dimmers! The backstage lights never had
been, and he'd patched the onstage work lights back out onto the
regular toggle switch so they'd be handier for the
Bringers.

Were they running some kind of heavy
equipment that was draining current? Maybe they'd blown a fuse
before, maybe that was the emergency they'd wanted him for.

The other seven Bringers stepped forward now,
forming an outer circle; they were still in their street clothes,
and they didn't join in the chanting. Some held things, some did
not. Maggie stumbled over something, and Art thought he could hear
Yeager's penetrating voice muttering.

The lights returned to normal, and the four
symbols in the air vanished in wisps of smoke. Innisfree, still
standing at center stage with his arms spread, called out, “Behold,
our arts are mighty!”

“
Nay, Lord,” replied
Morgan. “They fade, they die!”

“
See, Master,”
Tanner said, “where once we brought forth
dragons!”

A pigeon appeared in the air before him,
flapping wildly. Art was mildly impressed; he couldn't imagine
where the bird had come from. It wasn't anywhere near so fine a
trick as the writing-in-air stuff, though.

“
See, Magister,”
Kaye announced, “where once we devastated kingdoms!” A flash of
fire sprang from her fingers and vanished in the
air.

Art had seen Tanner do that, or something
very similar, once before. Maybe Tanner and Kaye had switched
roles?

“
Sire,” Wang said,
“our powers dim!”

“
That's more like
it,” Yeager said – not in a theatrical proclamation like the
others, but just speaking normally. Her harsh voice cut through the
mysticism and shattered the illusion the play had created; Art
shook his head in annoyance at being yanked out of the
dream.

Onstage, Innisfree dropped his pose and
nodded. “It's working again,” he said. “We don't need to run
through all of it right now.”

“
You're sure it's
that young man who's responsible?” Karagöz asked.

Innisfree shrugged. “What else could it
be?”

“
But he's not...”
Maggie began.

“
Oh, he's not doing it on
purpose
,”
Innisfree interrupted.

Art blinked. Not
doing
what
on
purpose?

This was all very interesting. There
apparently really was a play being put on, and he had just watched
a scene from it – the opening, perhaps? And they had costumes and
props, at least some of them, even if they didn't have lights or
sets.

They had special effects, too – amazingly
good ones. That writing-in-the-air stuff was really something.

They weren't drug dealers or white slavers or
anything else reprehensible, after all; Marilyn's theorizing had
been wrong. They were a bunch of magicians putting on a show, just
as they'd said all along.

But what was he supposed to be responsible
for? Why did they want him in the building, but not watching? What
was he doing, not on purpose?

“
All right, people,”
Innisfree said, clapping his hands together in a gesture Art
thought every director who had ever lived must have used, back at
least as far as Aristophanes. “Let's see what we can do.” Innisfree
looked around, then pointed at Kaye.

She smiled, and vanished in a flurry of green
silken robe. A large black cat appeared in her place.

Innisfree's gaze fell on Wang, who raised a
hand. Wang held it over his head for a moment; something seemed to
shimmer.

Then he lowered it again and shook his
head.

“
All right, all
right,” Innisfree said. “It's still early, still three weeks to
go.”

Art stared at the cat, which was behaving
very calmly for a beast that had presumably just been flung onto an
open stage by some hidden device. The animal was sitting there,
watching Innisfree and the others; it wasn't even washing itself or
curling up, it was just sitting there.

Where had Kaye gone, anyway? He hadn't seen
any of the Bringers checking the traps or anything. If she was down
in the basement...

Something orange and white strolled out onto
the stage; at first Art thought it was another cat, but then he got
a better look at it.

It was a fox. A red fox.

He stared; how on earth
had that got there? He'd never heard of anyone taming or training
a
fox
.

The word reminded him of something, and he
looked at the Bringers.

Ms. Kaye was still missing, and now so was
Ms. Fox.

These people were
good
, he decided. If he
didn't know better, he would have sworn that Kier Kaye had actually
transformed herself into a black cat, and Ms. Fox into a red
fox.

The fox and the cat watched each other, but
neither made any hostile move – and that, in itself, was pretty
amazing. The fox settled down on its haunches a yard or so from the
cat and looked about with interest.

Flowers were raining onto the stage, and Art
had been so intent on the animals that he had no idea who was
responsible. Pink blossoms were falling and drifting from
nowhere.

A sudden wind stirred them up, disrupting the
slow, gentle swirls and sending petals and stems skittering across
the stage. Even from the far end of the house, on the other side of
the little peephole, Art could feel the sudden change in the
theater's air; it had turned cold and dry, and the wind was
increasing.

Art pulled away. What kind
of wind machine could do
that
?

He hadn't seen any wind machine, anyway. The
theater didn't come with one; previous productions had borrowed
household fans when they needed wind. He hadn't seen one backstage
anywhere.

He felt a chill that wasn't just from the
cool breeze now spraying out through the peephole.

People onstage were applauding.

This was crazy.

Art marched to the double doors connecting
the lobby to the house and swung them wide.

For an instant, he felt that cold, impossible
wind; then it died away, and the warm, dead air of the theater was
just as still as ever. A hush fell as everyone onstage turned to
look at him.

The fox ran for the wings; the cat watched
him with interest, but did not immediately flee.

“
Arthur!” Innisfree
called. “Was there something you wanted?”

There were flowers and
loose petals strewn all over the stage; he had not imagined that.
The cat was still there, staring at him; he had not imagined
that
, either.

But what could he say?

Could he say, “I think your magic is too
real,” or, “You're frightening me,” or, “What are you doing?”

“
I'm done up here,”
he said. “Thought I'd check the fuses; it seemed like the lights
dimmed a minute ago.”

The cat got up and ambled off, stage
right.

“
Suit yourself,”
Innisfree said. “Can't say as I noticed
anything.”

Art strolled down the aisle, hands in his
pockets, determinedly casual, as the Bringers stood about, watching
him or doing nothing. They looked just as sincerely casual as he
did, he realized; all ten of them looked as if they were nervous
and trying to hide it.

Eleven of them, that is; Ms. Fox reappeared
as he reached the front row. And twelve; when he mounted the
stage-right steps, Ms. Kaye emerged from the wings.

He scuffed at the flowers as he crossed the
stage; they were real and solid. He glanced around.

The five who had formed the inner circle –
Innisfree, Wang, Kaye, Morgan, and Tanner – were still in their
robes, but the props had vanished. He could see no sword, no staff,
no bone, no bottle.

And there wasn't any wind machine anywhere.
He even glanced up at the catwalk, but no, that was empty.

The main fuse box looked just fine, but that
was reasonable enough; it was designed for about 15,000 watts of
stage lighting, could handle 20,000 in a pinch, and the work lights
and a few special effects wouldn't bother it.

Not unless the special
effects were drawing a
lot
of current, in which case they'd be a serious
fire hazard. Art frowned at the thought, then shook his
head.

There weren't any cords or cables; nobody was
drawing extra current from this box. The work lights had their own
two circuits, each with a thirty-amp screw-in fuse, and those
weren't smoked or hot, let alone blown.

If there'd been enough draw to dim the lights
the fuses should have at least been warm to the touch, and they
weren't.

One of these days, Art thought, he'd have to
talk his father into putting in circuit breakers; it was getting
hard to find the old-fashioned fuses.

On the other hand, a circuit breaker didn't
get warm or smoked, did it? It was either tripped or it wasn't,
where fuses could show warning signs.

And he was thinking about this to keep from
thinking about anything else. He knew he was doing it. The rest of
it was too hard to deal with. Where had the wind come from? The
flowers? The fox? Why did they want him in the building?

They weren't drug dealers
or white slavers, but they might still be cultists, and right now
he wouldn't put it past them to be using
real
magic and wanting him for their
ritual sacrifice.

Except there's no such thing as magic, he
reminded himself. There couldn't be.

It was just a lot of things adding up, all
getting to him at once, that made him even consider the possibility
of real magic, he told himself. He knew better than that. If he
weren't by himself in the theater, surrounded by weirdos, at
night...

“
Looks okay here,”
he said.

“
Isn't there another
fuse box in the cellars?” Maggie asked.

Startled, he turned to look at her, and found
all twelve of the Bringers watching him.

“
Yeah, there is,” he
admitted. “I'll go take a look.”

They watched him cross the stage, watched him
fumble with the keys and get the basement door open; it was with a
great rush of relief that he took the first step down, out of their
sight.

He emerged into the passage at the bottom and
was unable to resist the temptation; he turned right and slid the
big door open and turned on the light in the big room under the
stage.

Nothing had been disturbed; the traps in the
ceiling were all closed, and showed no signs of recent use.

He shrugged and turned around.

The prop room looked just as he had left
it.

The wardrobe room was just as he remembered;
the black door was still there, still closed and mysterious.

He ambled down the corridor to the end, and
turned left, into the narrow passageway where the water meter and
the lobby fuse box resided. This space was in deep shadow; the only
light came from the ceiling lights in the central passageway, and
the last of those was about ten feet back from the corner. Art's
own body blocked out much of the light.

He could make out the pull-chain of the
passage's own light, though; he reached up and gave it a tug. The
bare bulb that hung down a few inches above his head came on.