“He’s right, you know,” Floss said, and she was very calm. “There is no way we let them win without a fight. Let it go. We’re not in any worse shape than we were before.”
Max said, “Right. Now move, people!”
We followed Max’s direction to the letter. Everyone was everywhere at once, it seemed. The worst part was setting the stage. Doing that with an audience watching was off-putting. First, we could feel the eyes on us all the time. Second, we could hear the comments, like a backdrop to every move we made. Statements like, “Doesn’t look like much, does it?” and “They can’t be done yet, can they?” are not confidence-producing. The best we could do was try to pretend that there was no one there at all, and that we were all cheery and bright. Sometimes acting came in handy for the most interesting things.
Fred and Nicholas had decided to let their faerielight be stationary. They said they were worried that a bike ride might “upset” it. Now they put it on its stand just as the shadows started to stretch across the grassy space in front of Elbe’s.
A phalanx of fireflies surrounded Fred. First he looked surprised; then he looked like he was listening. Finally I saw him smile. “You certainly aren’t required, but you’d be most welcome,” he said. The fireflies settled in the corners of Elbe’s porch and began to blink soft light into the dark spaces.
I nudged Tonio, who was wrestling the dance-hall scrim. He looked up, blinked twice, and nodded. “We won’t need half of those candles, after all,” he said.
Max carried stools out, three of them, for sock puppet workers and backup singers, and started lighting the candles we would need.
El Jeffery paced both the porch and the grass at the base of the steps. He wheeled his unicycle through both areas as well, and finally left it on its side in the grass. It looked like a sleeping giraffe. “More room,” he explained, in case one of us was watching or listening.
But really, none of us were. I hung posters over the railing using candles in little ceramic bowls as both weights and illumination. I put my lyric lists on top of the stair post. When Floss called me I went into Elbe’s and found her sorting sock puppets. Edgar leaned by the door, ready to be brought to life by Lucia, and the chorus line of rod puppets stood stiff and straight in their green ballet skirts.
“Put these outside, please,” Floss said, waving at her stack of socks. “Two on each chair. Then find out where in the world Lucia went.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? She brought the socks in. She brought the chorus line in. I saw her.”
Floss shook her head, impatience evident in the movement. “She brought them in, yes, but she said she needed accessories and left again.”
“But we’ve only got…” I tried to find a clock, but all of the ones in Elbe’s seemed to be operating in different time zones.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” Floss muttered. “And I know. But she insisted she needed two bouquets and a minitambourine and that we’d be glad we had them.”
I shook my head, but I didn’t say anything. I just gathered the socks and arranged them on the three stools, the middle one with Elvira because, since she was Mr. Fox’s main adversary, I thought it was important that she be in the center. That was one reason. The other was that I liked her and I thought she deserved it. On the right stool I placed one blue and one charcoal sock; on the left, one dark blue and one blood red.
“And where you came from I don’t know,” I said to the red puppet as I put it down.
Max heard me and glanced at the sock puppets “The red one?” he asked. “That one’s mine. I’m now half socked in the service of art.”
I managed a weak grin. “We can call her Maxine then, just for you.” He chuckled, low in his throat.
“Twenty minutes,” Tonio said, and I went back inside to see if there was something else Floss needed done. She handed me the chorus line and said, “Whoever pulls the curtains on the stage gets them, too.”
XXIII
“Points lost, I’d say.”
The faerielight was glowing red orange on its stand. The corners of the porch were a soft, firefly gold. There was just enough of a breeze that the leaves whispered poetry through the tree grove where Floss’s family had set up camp. Major and Feron, chummy as friends who shared a locker, were with them. The sky was the pure blue that comes before twilight, and the moon was curled on its back, toes pointed north.
Edgar was onstage, the sock puppets were as ready as sock puppets could be, and El Jeffery was pacing, his drum bumping against his side. The puppet stage curtain was drawn. The chorus line was toward the back of the porch, stiff and, for the time being, lifeless. Tonio and Max were straightening the dance-hall scrim. Floss was doing something magical with honky-tonk piano noises, and Fred and Nicholas were standing on the grass, checking the stage for dark edges.
Lucia still wasn’t back. I kept looking for her, kept listening for the jingle of that little tambourine, but there was nothing. I was going to find Tonio—talk to him about the fact that we had no Lucia and where was she when we needed her so badly, but first I had to hand out the lyric lists.
I never got my chance to talk to Tonio because, just as I handed out my last booklet of lyrics, there was Bron, striding toward us with steps so long he might have been wearing seven-league boots. As he came close, I said, “Don’t worry, you won’t miss it.” I decided he was almost as good to ask as Tonio since he was coming from the direction Lucia had gone, so I added, “And you haven’t seen Lucia, have you?” Then I saw his face.
“Persia.” He stopped hard and fast, like he’d run into an immovable force. Like he’d run into Reginald. “Here. Before I lose every shred of control that I have.” He thrust a crumbled sheet of paper at me, and I stood there and held it between my thumb and first finger. I had that breathless feeling that comes when you know, even before you’re sure, that the news is going to be bad, and I’d already had way too much bad news for one night. I felt the way Nicholas must have felt on that day so long ago, the day when Tonio had had him read the subpoena. If I didn’t read it, we could stay balanced on the knife edge of knowing and not knowing forever. That would be the safe thing to do.
Bron apparently did not share my desire to stay balanced. “Do you just want me to tell you?” he asked, and the stretch and strain in his voice meant that he already had, really. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Reginald has Lucia.”
“What?” The syllable came out like a stage whisper, my shock putting such a hard snap on the “t” that all the Outlaws heard, stopped what they were doing, and stared at me. I barely noticed.
“What do you mean? Lucia went to get bouquets and a tambourine. I asked, just a little bit ago. Floss promised she’d be right back.” I wanted to make Bron say he was wrong. To make my case stronger, I pointed and said, “And Reginald’s right there, with Major and Feron.” I pointed toward the group under the trees, which was when I noticed the absolute absence of the troll.
By now we had two minutes to showtime, and instead of us taking our places, breathing deep, and running our own personal mantras, we were gathered in a knot around Bron. I still held the note much as I would have held a dead rat’s tail.
“Reginald has Lucia,” I repeated Bron’s words.
“And he says,” Bron stopped to pry the note from my fingers, “I want to get this exact. ‘Win and she comes back. Leave and she stays with me.’” He read more, this time to himself. “Right. Yes. The terms—”
Major interrupted him. He’d come up so quietly I hadn’t heard him at all. “Not starting on time? Points lost, I’d say. And you really can’t afford to lose all that many points when you’re starting out with a deficit like this.” He pointed toward our stage with scorn.
Floss took two slow, gentle steps toward Major. “Where is she?” Her tone was Saturday afternoon relaxed, but I saw him shift back before he stopped himself. “Lucia was not in the terms of the agreement,” Floss added.
“Things change. You know that. Everything i
s always in flux.”
Floss didn’t bother to answer. She brushed past him the way she’d pass by an uninteresting display at Elbe’s and walked with flat steps to the little cluster around her parents.
“Floss, dear, how lovely to see you.” Her mother’s voice was clear and carried beautifully in the soft evening air, and I suddenly hated her. “We’re all so pleased you’ve decided to come back home. Your brother has especially been missing you.”
“If you mean Fred, we’ve talked. If you mean Feron, I doubt it.”
“Why, Floss, whatever do you mean?” Feron asked.
Floss stiffened, but she was royalty, after all, and it showed now. She didn’t look at Feron, didn’t speak to him. Instead she directed both looks and words toward her mother. “Actually, Mother, as you know, I’ve been at home for quite some time now. I just didn’t bother to stop at your house.” Her voice carried to the crowd even better than her mother’s had. “I came over here to mention that if anything happens to Lucia that doesn’t involve all of us, I will personally guarantee bad times in your future.”
“Threats?” said her mother. “From you?”
“Promises,” Floss snarled.
“I suppose banishment is preferable as a group activity.” Her mother said this in about the same voice that she might have used to read the weather report from the morning paper.
“I repeat, whatever happens, Lucia had better be a part of it.”
Floss’s mother waved her hand, royalty to her subject. “I have nothing to do with your missing person. When this is all over perhaps you can discuss your problems with Major or Feron. Major is so charming, and of course, you know your brother.” And she very deliberately turned her back on her daughter.
Floss spoke to that back, saying, “You might want to watch the company you keep. Some people from both inside and outside of Faerie are Janus-faced. You never know who they might be allies with.”
Her mother made no response.
Tonio spoke then, from near Elbe’s porch, from a spot close to Bron and me. His voice was conversational and easy, and it was obvious that he was directing his comments to Major. “Lucia’s my friend. Lucia’s got nothing to do with you and me, or your little dreams of glory, or whatever the hell you and your friend have up your sleeves. Get her back here. Because however this plays out, if she’s not here when we’re through, you’ll be very, very sorry.”
Major smiled. “It’s interesting when the stakes change, isn’t it?”
I went and stood next to Tonio. Max moved to his other side. Nicholas, Fred, and El Jeffery stood in a solid row behind us. Tonio returned Major’s smile, but his was sharp-edged and glittery. “Just remember what I said. Because I can make promises just as nicely as Floss.”
Floss was back with us by then, standing next to me. The crowd on the grass was barely breathing. I knew they were waiting to see what would happen next. The air was so thick with tension I felt my lungs fill with the stuff. I coughed and said, “Don’t you all think it’s past time for this show to start?”
I pressed Floss’s hand and turned to start the long walk to Elbe’s. She followed me and, like a parade, one by one, everyone else fell into line behind us.
We had to change things. Floss, not Lucia, worked Edgar, and he was feisty and strong, scary and rude. In spite of my worry about Lucia I actually had to stifle a snicker when Edgar came out chomping on a big cigar, screaming at the chorus line. I thought that all the screaming was probably because that was how Floss herself felt at this point. Aside from worries about Lucia, Major, her parents, and Feron, she also had to deal with her normal stage worries of puppet magic. Anything else she might have wanted to add, like piano sounds, tapping feet, whatever, was superficial at best.
Fred, not Nicholas or Tonio, helped Max with the extra scrim. When they first tried to set it up, it folded over on itself for one long second. I could see the frustration on both their faces, but then Max gave it a yank and it straightened right up. The yank was vicious, and I wondered if Max was thinking more about Major than about scrims. Max got stuck with the proscenium curtain, too.
Tonio and Nicholas each worked two sock puppets. It seemed that one of them should have been Edgar, and Floss should have been some of the backup singers, but everything was upside down at this point and we were all just doing the best we could do. One of the gray socks never got to move at all, but she wasn’t really needed. The cutting anger that Tonio and Nicholas managed to slide into their vocals worked just fine with four puppets instead of five.
I moved the chorus line, but they came downstage instead of up because I had to become Elvira, too. Elvira, when she finally figured out what was happening, wailed her songs like a scar-washed blues singer, voicing all my own pent-up emotions.
And El Jeffery? He beat the hell out of his drum. The beats were staccato slaps, so hard I expected to see his big griffin nails punch right through the drum head. His unicycle lay on the grass like a dead thing, and he gave Floss little boosts of magic whenever he could.
Elbe abandoned his apolitical stance and worked too, charting the fireflies’ tracks to keep as much light on us as possible. He even came up with the idea of sending batches of them out into the crowd. They were like little night-lights that the throng used to help them read the lyrics. And he definitely got the audience participation started, singing out “Five foot two, eyes of blue” when Elvira made her first appearance. Elbe had a lovely tenor voice.
Was it the best Outlaw performance ever? Not by any unit of measurement known to humans or fey. By the time we were done, though, Edgar had lost his production company, Elvira had exposed him for the cad that he was, and, most important, she was still alive. She’d also regained the honor of his previous stars.
Then someone in the audience called out, “Come on home now, all is forgiven.” Everyone seemed to recognize that lyric, and we joined together in a rousing chorus of the music hall favorite “That’s What You Think.” It was a fitting end to Elvira’s story. I breathed out, long and slow, and I felt that we’d done something we could be proud of.
We bowed; the audience applauded and laughed. Edgar and Elvira bowed too, and the applause got even louder. Then I saw Major, Feron, and Floss’s parents walking out of their little grove of trees. They were walking away from us, rejection apparent in every line of their bodies.
The voice that yelled, “Wait!” belonged to Elbe. Thank goodness for Elbe. I think we were all too stunned to say or do anything. We’d been given no answer and we had no Lucia. Were we all just supposed to stand there, emotionally spent, exhausted, and hoarse-voiced, the sweat drying on our skins in the cool evening air?
Floss’s mother turned. “Yes?” she said, and her voice was quite a few degrees below the outside air temperature.
Major turned with her. “You have your answer, I think,” he said. “We’re leaving. And really, Tonio. You thought this little charade would win us over? Please.” His laugh was nicely done. Just enough vitriol to be insulting.
But Tonio was thinking. Tonio was fast on his feet. “Let them decide,” he said, pointing to the crowd on the grass.
“Impartial judges.” Elbe was approving.
“Applause?” Nicholas asked.
But I remembered the little woman in the Wellingtons and the sprigged dress. I remembered her sign, “Puppets 10, Rulers 0.”
“No,” I said. “Match points.” I ran up Elbe’s stairs. “Wait,” I yelled as I went inside.
Elbe followed me so I was out in under a minute, pads of paper and boxes of pomegranate-and apricot-scented markers in my arms. “Rate it,” I called to the crowd. “Rate the show. Ten out of ten is perfect. Zero out of ten is the worst.”
“Don’t give them ideas,” Nicholas whispered into my ear. His breath was warm where it brushed against my cheek. I almost grabbed for him, just to feel the warmth and life of him, but I handed out pads of paper instead. By the time I’d reached the back of the crowd, marveling one more time at t
he diversity of the inhabitants of Faerie, those in the front were waving their papers. In spite of everything, I’d enjoyed seeing these people, performing for them. If I really could see inside, all I saw here were decent beings trying to survive and be happy. I turned around and saw my friends watching the crowd. Floss and Fred were standing together, eyes bright. El Jeffery stood at Floss’s right side, and I say again if a griffin could smile, that’s what he was doing. Tonio and Max were holding hands. And next to me Nicholas called to the royal family, “Come up to Elbe’s porch. See what the audience thinks.”
When the chill voice of Floss’s mother swept over us, I was almost surprised that she was still there. Almost. I didn’t want to even try to look inside her. I didn’t need to. I knew from the outside that she was the kind of person who’d believe she’d won, no matter what.
I’d always thought cold air dropped, but her personal patch of cold air, her voice, was streamlined as a dirigible. It arrowed straight toward Floss and Fred. “I hardly think we need to worry about what they say.”
I could see the derisive quotes around the word “they,” clear and clean as if they were painted in the evening sky. There was a stunned silence, then a mounting rumble from the crowd behind Nicholas and me. It sounded mutinous. Then another voice floated over it, calm and filled with a sadness that made my heart ache.
“Then why did you stay?” Floss asked. “Even for those few minutes? Because that’s always your answer, isn’t it? Ignore the ones who are affected. Live in your insular, little world. Don’t make any effort to talk to real people. You knew what your answer would be even before you floated that note to us two days ago.”
The royal family turned their backs as if they’d rehearsed it. As a brush-off it was very effective. Even in the deepening twilight, even without extra firefly light, I could see that there was some kind of discussion going on. Major raised his arm, pointed back at all of us, and laughed. His teeth flashed white in the gloom. Next to him Feron looked thick, relaxed, and substantial.
Blood & Flowers Page 18