The Troupe (50 page)

“Is that…” said Colette.

“It is your Light,” said the wolf in red. He stared at the twinkling diamond with terribly sad eyes. “I did not ever know I could ever take part in something so wonderful and terrible, so beautiful and frightening. But it is not mine. I loved having it, but it is not mine.” He held it out to George. “Here.”

George stared at it. “What?”

“Take it. It’s yours.”

He was not sure he could. He’d only ever taken on one piece of the song before, when he was a child, and he could hardly remember that. “I don’t know if this is how it’s done…”

“For God’s sake, George,” said Colette, “this is no time to worry about procedure!”

“All right!” he said. “Fine.” He reached out, and as he did he felt a painful, magnetic pull, one that was a bare fraction of what he’d felt when he took on his first piece of the song, but one that hurt regardless.

His finger touched the little jewel of light. There was a soft flash, and his body spasmed. It was as if a lightning bolt had flowed into his finger and up into his mind, and he saw…

… A rainy afternoon, and the ocean, and a pile of stones. The little girl has one arm in a splint, but she is still determinedly using one hand to pile the stones on top of one another, making her tower. It will be a good tower, a tall one, and nothing will ever be able to knock it down, not even her brothers. Everyone will marvel at this tower…

Then it was gone, and he gasped. George saw his hands were shaking. He suddenly felt much, much heavier, somehow, as if there were a lead weight rolling around within his mind. He realized he had just absorbed about seven seconds of existence for some spot in Creation, a tiny bit of beach that had once played host to a small, determined girl on a rainy afternoon…

“Did you see it?” asked the wolf in red. “Did you see the little person making the tower on the beach?”

George, breathing hard, nodded.

The wolf in red smiled. He did not look quite so human anymore. His face seemed stiffer, and there was something blank in his eyes. But he said, “I have always wondered who that little person is, and what happened to her. I suppose I will never know. I don’t know what you will do with it, but please take care of that little bit of Light for me. It was very good to me. I should have liked dying, though. It seemed as if it was as important as living.” Then the smile vanished. “They will smell you here soon. Do you know that?”

They both nodded.

“Good. What I will do is lead them away from you as best as I can. I do not know how effective this will be—most of my kin do not trust me any longer, and… and without your bit of Light, I am not sure I will remain what I am. It is possible I might betray you.” He looked at the sleeve of his coat, which was no longer the bright red it had once been. Perhaps soon it would return to gray. “I hope I won’t, but I cannot say. You will have to use your time wisely, and act quickly.”

“What should we do?” asked Colette.

“
I
don’t know,” said the wolf. “
You’re
the ones who have had the Light for so long. What do you normally do in these situations?”

George and Colette glanced at each other, terrified.

“Whatever you do,” said the wolf, “good luck. I hope you succeed. Stay quiet for now, but in a bit, you should be safe to act.” He nodded to them both, and reached up and grabbed the side of the backdrop. Then he took a breath, launched himself out, and cried, “I heard them run back down the hill! Here! Follow me!”

George and Colette sat in silence for a moment, listening to the growls follow the wolf down the hill. “So… what
do
we normally do in these situations?” Colette asked.

George shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Far away west down the hillside from where George and Colette hid—far enough to be deaf to the wolves’ pursuit, but not far enough to be blind, if one had the right vantage point—Annie lay bruised and nearly broken on the floor of the old train car, and yet she was not quite dead. The fairies had beaten her and even cut her throat, but the mechanisms that had propelled her body for the last half-century were not affected by superficial damage like broken bones and slashed flesh. She wept where she lay, partially due to pain, but mostly because she could not bear to think about her betrayal.

But this was just the beginning of her anguish: as she wept, she would sometimes find herself wondering why she was weeping. Something bad had happened… but when? she wondered. Was it days ago? Or just recently? And why was she in this train car, anyway? Then, with a horrified gasp, she’d remember what had happened and how she’d gotten to this place. But it took longer and longer each time.

She was losing herself, memory by memory. She knew she would soon forget everything, and she’d be lost to that awful stupor once more.

She sat up and looked around the train car with a dull, crawling terror, trying to remember why she was there, and what had happened, and who she was. “My name is Anne Sillenes,” she began whispering to herself. “My name is Anne Sillenes. Anne Marie Sillenes. You are Anne Marie Sillenes. You are, you are…”

There was a soft tapping at the train car door. She turned around and listened. After a moment the tap came again.

“What?” she asked in a creaking voice. She had to hold a hand to the gash in her throat to get the words to come properly. “Who’s there?”

There was a pause. Then another tap. She sat up, back creaking, and looked at the door. A small scrap of paper had been slipped under the crack.

“What is this?” she asked.

There was another tap.

She stared at the note for a while. Then she said, “There was… a man who always wrote things for me… Stanley? Is that who you are?”

One tap.

“What do you want, Stanley? Why don’t you at least let me out?”

The handle in the door wiggled. She saw it had been broken off or twisted, and he was showing her he was unable to open it.

“What is it you want, then?” she asked.

Silence. She frowned as she realized this was not a very intelligent question: he’d obviously written what he wanted on the note. Annie heaved herself over and picked it up with fumbling fingers. She held it below a small hole in the train car roof to read it by the moonlight.

Annie struggled to read what had been written for her. She
knew
she could read, she’d been taught her letters… but now it was suddenly so hard. She squinted as she pored over the words. It seemed he wanted her to do something with something else—the train car?—and then his note ended in a swear. She puzzled at this, but then noticed he’d spelled the swear wrong. It seemed a letter was missing, if she remembered it correctly.

Then she understood. It was not a swear at all.

“Why would you want me to do that?” she said.

Another note slipped in under the door, this one written on a piece of cloth. It read simply:
GEORGE AND COLETTE
.

She stared at the note for a while. Then a handful of fuzzy memories congealed in her mind: there had been children, hadn’t there? A little girl and a little boy, both so haughty but both so sweet, prettier than daisies, the little darlings…

Then she realized what he was asking of her. “I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t help! I’m broken, Stanley. I’m hurt all over. And I’ve never lifted anything that heavy!”

Silence.

“I can’t,” she said again. “I can’t.”

Still silence. Then a single tap.

It was impossible to really know what he meant by that tap: it could have meant yes you can, or that he understood and would try something else, or it could have simply communicated frustration. But whatever the intent behind that tap in the dark, to Annie it simply told her that she must, she must, there was no other way.

She began to weep again. “All right,” she gasped. “All right. I’ll try.”

Another tap. Annie nodded, though of course he could not see her. Then she crawled back to the center of the train car. Her left arm had been broken, and she had to set the bone herself. She gritted her teeth and with a horrible twisting she managed to get it close to the right place. She tested her fingers, and though they clicked unnervingly they worked.

Then she searched the train car floor for a weak spot, steadied herself, and began to kick at it.

Stanley sighed with relief as he listened to the pounding from within the train car. He looked the car up and down and found a long length
of rusty chain and a lock wrapped around the railing at the end. He removed it and held it in his hands, frowning. He would have preferred rope, but chain would do.

He moved to the edge of the woods and picked up his shred of the backdrop. It was flickering like a damaged electrical light as if the thing was in pain, but it could still mimic the trees and branches of the woods if it tried. Then he crouched and studied his surroundings.

Ahead and to his left was the dam, rising up like a blank gray cliff side. Before him and to the right the hillsides climbed up, eventually matching the dam in height, and at the very top they were shrouded in trees. He could just make out low, black figures springing through those woods, and somewhere among them were Colette and George.

He knew what Harry would have wanted him to do. He should run, and save himself. That was Harry’s only standing order for him: to run away at all times, and always ensure his own self-preservation. But Stanley was tired of running, and he now had a very great reason to stop.

He tucked the chain into his belt, wrapped himself in the shred of backdrop like a cloak, and began creeping up the hillside.

Unlike for the wolves, it would not be hard for Stanley to find them. He could always find George at any time, if he was looking for him.

George and Colette lay shivering under the backdrop. They had discussed several options, but they still had no idea what to do. Despite the wolf in red’s attempt to lead the others down the hill, they could still hear howls from up the slope. So far they had not been found, but they knew it could not be long.

They heard a set of footfalls coming very fast, but it sounded as if they were not the huge paws of wolves. Rather they sounded like normal human feet again, perhaps clad in a nice pair of loafers.

For the second time, the corner of the backdrop lifted up, but it
was not the wolf in red: it was Stanley, wrapped in his own piece of the backdrop, which briefly resembled the bark of a tree, but when he was completely under it began fluttering nastily, as if it were having a stroke.

“What are you doing—” began Colette, but Stanley held up a finger. He reached into his pocket and held out a piece of old cardboard. Written on it were the words:
YOU MUST GET HIGHER ON THE HILL. HIGH AS YOU CAN GO
.

“What?” said Colette. “No! We can’t run out! They’ll see us!”

Stanley shook his head and took out another card. Apparently he’d expected this objection, because the card simply read:
I WILL MAKE A DISTRACTION
.

“What sort of a distraction?” asked George. “A friend of ours tried one just before, but I don’t think it worked.”

A pained look crossed Stanley’s face, and he made a soft noise of aggravation. He must have had only a few cards, and could not have written out every response. He shrugged.

“Should we go now?” Colette asked.

He nodded and bobbed his head from side to side. Soon, very soon, he seemed to say. Then he looked up at George. Stanley’s eyes were bright and full of tears, and he was breathing very hard. He gave George a trembling smile and handed him another card, but before George could read it Stanley wrapped him up in a powerful embrace and sighed deeply. Then he let him go and kissed him on the forehead, and lifted the backdrop and slipped back out again.

Colette peeked out from under the backdrop and watched Stanley sprint down the hillside. “What was that all about?”

George nearly began to tell her about Stanley and the strange infatuation he had for him, but then they heard a sound that was very familiar to them: it was the sound of many voices, thousands of them, all singing many notes of ethereal, ghostly pitches that made the hairs stand up on one’s head. All the snarling and growling in the woods stopped at the sound of it.

George joined Colette at the end of the backdrop. “What is that?” he asked. “Is that the
song
?”

George watched as Stanley leaped across one small pit in the ground, and as he did he happened to bolt beneath a beam of moonlight. His mouth was open, and his eyes were nearly shut, and his lips were moving; but it seemed that they were moving
with
the song, following and perhaps articulating its many changes in pitch. As he fled away the song became fainter, but they could still hear it echoing through the trees.

“Was… was he singing it?” said George weakly. “Was he
singing
the First Song?”

“It… it certainly seemed like it,” said Colette. “But I never heard him do anything but play the cello whenever I was on stage with him…”

Then a voice in the woods shouted: “There it is! He’s got it! He’s carrying it with him, trying to steal it away!”

“He’s not carrying it, you fool!” came another. “It’s in him! The Light is
inside
of him!”

All breath was knocked from George when he heard this cry. “What?” he whispered. “
Inside
of him?”

He stared at Stanley as he fled through the woods. Could that be true? Could the secret hiding place of the song not have been any box or lantern or any other little trick, but within Stanley himself? Had he been carrying the
entire
song within him for all this time? George’s mind boggled to understand it. He knew this was possible, since he himself carried a part of it and had just absorbed the tiniest piece (and what an enormous, terrible burden the full sum would be, he thought), and since Silenus’s trunk had contained no hint of it at all then he supposed that, rather than storing it there, it might have all been within Stanley himself. But if Stanley was truly carrying the song, then that… that would prove beyond all doubt that Stanley was a member of the Silenus family, and so also a relation to George.