Tomorrow’s questions indeed.
hat do I have to say to convince you this is a bad idea?” Archer’s eyes burn with intensity.
“I get closer every time. Closer to the answers we need.” I pray he and Caroline don’t hear the tremor in my voice. “I have to go back.”
Caroline looks up from Anthony’s sleeping face. Tired hope flashes across her eyes even as Archer’s exasperation boils over.
“You don’t have to do anything. The first couple of times left you so exhausted you could barely move and the last time sent you into a seizure.” Archer looks away. “I’m not sure I can continue to condone this. There must be other ways of looking into Anthony’s problem.”
“Like these?” I pick up the dictionary-sized file of Anthony’s work up to this point. “The answers aren’t in all these tests.” I brush my hand across Anthony’s forehead. “They’re in here. You know it. You’ve seen what I can do, what I can learn.”
Archer lowers his head. “Doesn’t change the fact I don’t want to sit here and watch you kill yourself trying to be a hero.”
Caroline places a hand on my shoulder. “I appreciate everything you’re doing, Mira, but Thomas is right. You didn’t see what happened to you the last time. It was more than just a seizure. You looked almost… possessed.”
Jason, who has stood uncharacteristically silent in the corner since their arrival, catches my eye before turning his attention back to the swaying branches outside.
I close my eyes and rub at my temples, my head aching from the sulfuric fear wafting off the three of them. To be honest, there’s nothing I’d like more than to never have to set a metaphysical foot inside Anthony Faircloth’s mind again.
Two things, however, spur me on.
The sad eyes that stared out at me from Tuileries and a promise I made to Isabella.
“Find the boy,” she said, “like you found Sarah.” Then the part that made me cry. “You can do it, Mami.”
The thought of returning home and facing Isabella having failed is unbearable.
“I appreciate what you two are trying to do, but I’m making progress here and I’m not stopping now. I’ve made it out safely three times before and I’ll make it out again.” I turn to Caroline. “You know in your heart this is working. But I need you to believe in me. In Anthony. Can you do that?”
Caroline doesn’t say a word as she lays Anthony down on the couch as we’ve done three times before. She pulls a chair around for me and as I take my seat at her child’s head, she rests a hand on each of my shoulders and whispers into my ear.
“You look after my boy, Mira Tejedor, and I’ll look after you.”
The “Promenade” theme is different this time. Not the harsh piano assault from my first adventure in Anthony’s mind, nor the rich brass from my second and third. This time, muted woodwinds and strings fill the air, their tone and meter mournful. All in a different key than the previous iterations, it’s clearly some sort of hint I’m supposed to understand. In some ways, this cat and mouse with Anthony reminds me of Sarah Goode’s kidnapper and the games he played with the police. Anthony maintains an air of mystery while doling out clue after clue, all but begging me to decipher the strange puzzle his mind has become even as he changes the rules at every turn.
Unhampered by witches, gnomes or the other denizens of the Exhibition, I pass the alcoves of the various pictures I’ve already visited and head for the next along the hallway. I consider stopping by the castle to check in on Tunny, Modesto, and Antoine until the ridiculousness of the idea dawns on me. As real as all this seems, the Exhibition is not an actual place and the “people” I count among my “friends” here are not real. This realization, along with memories of all the different ways this place has tried to kill me, quickens my steps.
The next alcove is different from the others. The space is dim, the ambient light that fills all the other alcoves replaced with a pair of candelabras, one on either side of the full-length frame. Bathed in the flickering light, the picture surprises me as well, both in its medium and its subject matter. Rather than the elegant oils, watercolors and pastels of the other masterworks, a detailed pen and ink sketch with a few flashes of color fills the frame of this piece. In it, a trio of young girls dance arm in arm.
Ballerinas all, the dancers stand arrayed in the strangest costumes I’ve ever seen. With beaks upon their noses, their heads and arms are covered in yellow down while their legs are costumed to appear like bird legs. The strangest facet of the ensemble, however, is the large unbroken egg surrounding each of their bodies. I step into the alcove to inspect the drawing further. Below the candelabra to the right of the frame, a placard contains five words written in tiny script.
BALLET OF THE UNHATCHED CHICKS
No sooner do I read the words than a quick melody of woodwinds and strings erupts in the space. The pen and ink girls in their hatchling costumes begin to dance across the paper’s smooth surface. With flawless technique, the three of them move en pointe in perfect step as the space within the frame opens up and a third dimension comes into play. The music evokes the sound of chirping birds and bumbling chicks making their way around their nest. The pleasant tune fills the space for over a minute before stopping, the sudden silence leaving the trio of girls frozen in place.
I touch the picture, expecting the surface of the intricate drawing to fall away and allow me inside as the others have before. This time, however, art remains intact, the thin paper forming an impervious barrier to the world beyond.
“Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks,” I mutter. “Where did this Mussorgsky guy come up with this stuff?”
“I come and watch them dance from time to time.”
The voice, though startling, is not altogether unexpected. I spin around and lower my eyes.
“Hello, Tunny.”
“Why are you here watching the canaries dance?”
“They’re canaries?” I ask.
“Canary chicks. Or at least girls dressed as canary chicks.” Tunny smiles, his teeth like petrified wood. “Contrary to what Modesto would say, I’m not completely without sense.”
“You two are on a first name basis, then?”
“He hates it when I call him that.” Tunny hangs his head. “Truth be told, I’m pretty sure he hates it when I call him anything at all.”
“I don’t know about that.” I remember how Jason looked over Anthony’s still form the day before. “Under all the bluster, I suspect he likes you more than he’d care to admit.”
Tunny raises a mossy eyebrow. “You think?”
I turn back to the picture. “You said you come and watch them dance, but their dance lasts not much longer than a minute. What if you want to see the rest?”
“That’s all there is.” Tunny answers. “The ballet is quite short and the chicks dance but once with each visit.”
“We have to leave if we want them to dance again?”
“Come. I’ll show you.”
Tunny takes my hand and the two of us saunter back up the hall. We pass a painting called Bydło where two yoked oxen plow the fields surrounding a house that rests on its roof, its frame hanging crooked on its section of wall. The crumpled canvas of Tuileries lies undisturbed on the parquet floor of its alcove. The Old Castle still hangs in its place, though the drawbridge remains up and the edifice secure as I requested of Modesto at my last visit. We pass the alcove where the charred frame of the Gnomus painting rests.
Tunny looks up at me wistfully. “It’s hard not having a home.”
“I’m sorry, Tunny. I can only imagine. But, what about the castle?”
“It’s fine, I suppose. Modesto spends all his time trying to help Antoine talk and doesn’t even look at me anymore except to tell me to ‘get out from underfoot’ or nonsense like that.” He kicks at an imaginary rock, and studies the floor. “I’d rather spend time out here in this lonely hallway than listen to that guff.”
“Don’t be so hard on him, Tunny. Or yourself,
for that matter.”
Tunny looks up at me, and his face breaks into a half smile. “All right.”
“My daughter used to do ballet, you know.” Isabella’s last recital from over a year ago flashes across my mind. How proud she was and how much she enjoyed losing herself in all the pirouettes and spins. “I miss seeing her dance. She enjoyed it so much.”
“Why did she stop?” Tunny asks. “Is she all right?”
“Oh, it’s nothing like that. Our family had… other priorities.”
Tunny snorts. “We’ve been gone long enough.” He pulls me back toward the alcove that houses the Ballet. The moment we arrive and step through the arch, the music begins anew, the woodwinds chirping like a nest of baby birds. The trio of egg-clad ballerinas begins a similar but different dance from their previous performance, each separating from the others yet all three twirling in unison. Somehow, they manage not to fall despite their clumsy costumes.
“I need to get in there, Tunny.” I glance down at my little friend. “Can you help me?”
“You must enter before the song is over.” He touches the paper’s surface, his squat digit penetrating the plane as if he were reaching through a flowing sheet of honey.
Taking Tunny’s lead, I dive through the surface of the sketched piece of art. As with everything in this strange ballet, the experience is different from with the other paintings. I stare down at my hands. Unlike the other works of art, where I retained my basic form, my limbs and torso have been reduced to pen and scrawled color, much like the three ballerinas. My clothing has shifted as well, the intricate green sarong I’ve worn since my first voyage into Anthony’s mind replaced with a red ballet costume trimmed with black lace. The tutu about my waist fans out like a set of dark wings, keeping with the feathered motif of the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. More than anything, the sudden absence of the dagger’s heft at my hip leaves me feeling naked.
Before I can take a breath, the chirping music begins again and I’m up on my toes, dancing in step with the trio of hatchling dancers as if I were a marionette on strings.
“Tunny,” I shout, glimpsing my gnome friend time and again in the brief seconds the fervent dance allows me to look in his direction. “Help me.”
Tunny’s lips move, his arms flailing frantically, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying. The music picks up, and my body launches into a succession of pirouettes that ends with me frozen with one leg thrust in the air and the other holding me aloft en pointe. “Arabesque pose,” comes Isabella’s voice from the depths of my memory.
Strangely appropriate for someone who goes by the name Scheherazade.
The trio of hatchling dancers stand similarly frozen and stare at each other. Like me, it appears their eyes are the only parts of their bodies under their control. The two girls on the outside of the trio appear bored, even complacent in their held poses, but the girl in the center gapes at me, her green eyes filled with terror. Familiar green eyes. I fight to force my lips open, to speak, to make my tongue move even a millimeter.
“R―”
Her eyes grow wide.
“Ra―”
Almost there.
“Rachel.” As the word leaves my lips, my body goes limp, the invisible strings controlling my body cut. I fall to the floor, my teeth snapping down on my tongue as my chin hits the unforgiving wood. My body attempts to cry out in pain, but no sound comes, at least not from me.
“Dear, dear, Scheherazade. There is no Rachel here.” The witch’s voice emanates from every corner of the space. “The girl’s name is Trilby, and she has no need of you or your poison tongue.”
“Trilby.” My tongue freed, I push the words from my mouth. “And why do you keep her this way, witch? Forced to dance for all eternity for your amusement?”
“Young ballerinas need discipline, wouldn’t you agree?” A raspy cackle fills the space.
I force my gaze from the floor and look up at Trilby, her lips quivering beneath the prosthetic beak, her trembling green eyes awash with tears.
“Not like this.”
Trilby, her body frozen mid-contortion, begins to hyperventilate.
“Please,” I grunt. “She can barely breathe.”
“She’ll be the better for it later.”
“But you know the truth, don’t you?” The Jupiter-like gravity on my limbs lets up, at least a little. “This girl isn’t Trilby, or even Rachel for that matter. She’s―”
“Silence.” Any joviality in the witch’s tone vanishes. “You believe you can talk your way out of every trouble that comes your way, Scheherazade, but your stories will not help you in this place.”
My body rises to its feet yet again, my unseen puppeteer apparently ready to put me through my paces anew.
“Now,” the guttural voice commands. “Dance.”
I’m on my toes in an instant, arms stretched to the sky, my fingers flirting with each other above my head. The chirping music of the ballet begins again and my body spins in answer. I cavort to the left and the right as the three hatchling ballerinas surround me in a close circle.
“What are you trying to prove?” The music accelerates and my body answers. “You reign over the Exhibition with jaws of iron, claiming your actions protect these priceless pieces of art, but you enslave or destroy anyone who stands in your way.”
“And your way is better?” Her derisive tone cuts across the playful tune. “Love the boy enough and he’ll return from wherever his mind has gone? Is that it?”
There it is. I made her say it.
“Love who enough, witch?”
The music falters and whatever force animates my limbs releases me.
“Well played, Scheherazade,” the witch mutters. “I suppose your honeyed words can beguile even me.”
“You speak of Anthony, don’t you, Baba Yaga? Anthony Faircloth, son of Caroline and William and brother of Jason and Rachel. Even in this place, where his sister dances for your amusement, it’s still all about Anthony.”
The music slows, growing discordant before falling into a random succession of notes and beats. The room goes silent and for the second time in as many minutes, I fall to the ground like a discarded toy.
“Do not speak such names here.” The witch grows quiet. “You will upset the balance.”
One of the two dancers flanking Trilby falls unconscious at the green-eyed dancer’s feet.
“Anthony…” Trilby disengages from the other dancer. “That name makes me sad.”
“Do not listen to her, Trilby,” the witch says. “This is your stage. This is where you dance. That is what makes you happy, is it not?”
“Where I dance.” The ballerina raises her head to the pen-sketched rafters and addresses the booming voice. “And who do I dance for, witch? You?” She points a shaking finger at me. “Her?”
In a swirl of gray and thunder, Baba Yaga appears in the air above us, the bottom of her mortar concealing all but her wiry arms, the pestle and ever-swishing broom gripped in her bony hands. The stone bowl comes to rest between Trilby and my motionless form.
“Have I not taken care of you, little girl? Kept you safe? Provided you the company of the finest dancers imaginable? Are you not happy?”
I fight to speak. “Perhaps she yearns for the one thing you cannot offer her here.”
The witch spins and turns her cold yellow eyes on me.
“And what would that be?”
“Freedom.” The whispered word falls from Trilby’s lips even as the unhatched egg surrounding her torso shatters, revealing a svelte dancer’s form wrapped in white. Her body molts, the yellow down and beak falling away revealing Rachel’s auburn curls and freckled cheeks.
“Trilby,” the witch whispers. “Don’t.”
“My time on this stage is done.” Trilby turns to me, her expression uncannily like that of the girl who looked in on me from the hallway at her home yesterday. “Will you take me to Anthony?”
“Of course.” In the face of Trilby’s defia
nce, the strength returns to my limbs.
I rise from the hardwood floor.
“You will never leave this place,” the witch grumbles, to me or Trilby I can’t be sure. “I will not allow it.”
The fallen ballerina comes to her knees and wraps her lithe arms around Trilby’s legs as the one still standing leaps at her shoulders. The pair wrestles her to the ground and holds her there as the witch’s mortar floats over to her side.
“Do you now see, little girl?”
Trilby stares back in defiance, her eyes darkening like an approaching storm. “In your forest among the Steppes, you may reign, witch, but this is my ballet. My home.” Her body rises from the wooden stage, the pair of other dancers hanging off her like so much dead weight. The girl floats in the air before the witch and in a blink the other two dancers vanish, absorbed into Trilby’s form. Her clothing shifts, her raiment transforming from white to an ensemble mirroring mine, the black lace atop the ruby red a stark contrast to the yellow fluff that covered her moments before.
A foreign expression flashes across the witch’s face. Is it… sadness?
“So,” the witch hisses. “You would choose the storyteller over me.” She spins and glares out into the Exhibition where Tunny still waits, his wooden visage a mix of fear and confusion.
“All of you have betrayed me in one way or another.” The mortar tilts to one side until the witch is again nose-to-nose with me, a closeness I’d hoped never to experience again. “Take the girl, then. The boy, the gnome, the troubadour. Take them all. Still I will deny you the answer you seek. That revelation rests in my realm, and you dare not go there.” She gestures toward the frame and the hallway beyond where Tunny looks on, his mouth agape. “Unlike the gnome, the girl understands her place in her work of art, as do I. Farewell, Scheherazade. Pray we do not meet again.”
Before Trilby or I can say a word, the witch spins the pestle above her head like some sort of archaic propeller and the mortar rises into the air, passing through the ephemeral ceiling above our heads. The moment she vanishes, my limbs are my own again. I rise from the sketched wood of the stage and brush off my pencil and ink form.
The Mussorgsky Riddle Page 14