“That’s two days in a row she has not been in. It would appear that Madame Romania from Romania has abandoned her caravan, Deacon. What do you say to having a little look inside?”
“Are you sure that is a wise idea?” Deacon asked, glancing nervously around.
Evening was creeping in, and the park appeared deserted. Doing her best to appear casual, like someone simply out for an evening stroll and admiring the caravan’s decorations, Oona walked around the side of the wagon and stopped to read the sign painted along the side.
MADAME ROMANIA FROM ROMANIA! FORTUNES
TOLD, PALMS READ, SECRETS REVEALED INSIDE!
“Hmm,” she intoned. “You know, Deacon, the first time I saw that sign I noticed how new it looked. As if it had been freshly painted.”
Deacon glanced over the sign and nodded. “Now that you have drawn my attention to it … you are quite right. The sign does appear to be in excellent condition, if compared to the rest of the caravan.”
Oona shot a quick glance over her shoulder and then hurriedly scooted beneath the wagon. Deacon hopped to the ground and watched Oona flip the latch on the underside of the caravan. The trapdoor swung open on its hinges.
“Fairly easy, I’d say,” Oona said, and poked her head inside.
The inner wagon was black as pitch, and not at all inviting, but Oona pulled herself inside. Something pricked her finger as she seated herself on the edge of the trapdoor.
“Ouch,” she said.
“Are you all right?” Deacon asked from below.
“I think so,” she said, and produced a match from her pocket. She struck it against the edge of the trapdoor, and the fabric-lined room filled with flickering light. An oil lamp sat on a nearby shelf, and Oona lit it, turning the dial to full.
The silver charms that hung from the ceiling glistened eerily in the lamplight, and a sudden panicky feeling stole over her at the thought of being caught. She did her best to ignore the fear.
Deacon hopped inside. “What is it you are looking for?”
Oona tore aside the curtain that divided the front of the caravan from the back, revealing row after row of hanging garments, all jam-packed together, tighter even than Isadora Iree’s wardrobe.
Oona held the lamp up. “Costumes.”
“Costumes?” Deacon said. “There must be—”
“Thousands,” Oona said.
“But what does it mean?” Deacon asked.
Oona dropped to the floor and felt around the spot near the trapdoor. Several seconds later she held up a long quill.
“Here,” she said. “I pricked my hand on this when I first entered.”
“A porcupine quill?” Deacon asked.
Oona nodded. “And who do we know, Deacon, that would need thousands of costumes, and is also in the habit of keeping porcupines as pets?”
“You don’t mean that Madame Romania from Romania is actually the Master of Ten Thousand Faces? Albert Pancake?”
“I mean precisely that, Deacon,” Oona said. “That is why there is a trapdoor in the middle of the wagon. This is the same type of wagon used by theater troupes around the world. The walls can be pulled open, and the floor becomes a stage.”
Deacon hopped to the tabletop. “I see. The trapdoor is used to create certain special effects during a show and would be very handy in a quick-change performance. But why would Albert Pancake wish to tell you such an outrageous story?”
“I have my suspicions,” Oona said. “But I think we should ask him that very question. Come, Deacon.” She turned down the oil lamp until it went out completely, and then lowered herself through the trapdoor. “I believe tonight is a perfect night for the theater.”
The theater was packed. When Oona inquired about tickets at the box office, she was turned away when the attendant pointed to the sign in the window.
SOLD OUT!
Oona wasn’t too discouraged, however. As many of the theatergoers were entering the building, she casually merged into the meandering line and slipped inside quite unnoticed, despite being the only girl in line with a raven on her shoulder.
Ushers stood guard at each of the auditorium doors, ready to check tickets and escort the audience to their seats. With no ticket, Oona knew she would need to find another way in. A door at the far end of the lobby caught her attention. Navigating her way through the crowd of richly dressed patrons, she soon saw that the door was marked with the letters: BSL.
“BSL?” said Deacon. “What does it mean?”
“My guess is that it stands for ‘backstage left,’ ” Oona said, and, glancing anxiously over her shoulder to see that no one was watching, she turned the knob and slipped inside. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. She peered curiously around. The two of them had entered what appeared to be a long, dark corridor.
“So this must lead backstage,” Deacon said.
Oona could only hope he was correct. She had never been backstage in the theater before, and she was fascinated. More than her curiosity to see how a theater worked, however, it was her determination to discover why Albert Pancake had deceived her that propelled her forward.
The two of them slowly made their way down the narrow passageway. Oona tripped once on a stray sandbag, nearly losing her balance completely, and then shortly afterward she tumbled headlong into a pile of rope.
“Are you injured?” Deacon asked concernedly from beside her.
Oona pushed herself back to her feet. “I hit my knee, but I’m fine. This theater life is more dangerous than I would have thought.”
Deacon chuckled as they pressed forward, but Oona didn’t find it very funny. She had knocked her knee quite hard and limped the rest of the way down the narrow hallway.
At last, they exited the corridor and found themselves in the backstage wing of the theater. Long swaths of black fabric hung from the ceiling high overhead, keeping the theatergoers from seeing backstage. Oona could hear the audience taking their seats, hundreds of voices chattering away.
“Can I help you?” a voice asked.
Oona spun around to see a man leaning against a line of ropes, his arms crossing his broad chest and a toothpick sticking from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, hello,” Oona said, throwing her hand to her chest. “You startled me.”
“You ain’t supposed to be back here,” said the man. His face was cast in shadow, though by the bulgy arms that stretched out his shirtsleeves, Oona took him to be someone who worked backstage, a stagehand.
“I am looking for Mr. Pancake,” Oona said. Her voice trembled slightly from being startled, and she suddenly felt very silly.
“Mr. Pancake is getting ready to perform, love,” the stagehand said. “If you have a ticket, then you can watch him out there, with the rest of the audience.”
“But … it is a matter of life and death,” Oona lied. “I must speak with him before the performance.”
The stagehand stepped forward. Oona stiffened as he uncrossed his bulky arms, placing his hands on his hips. Oona’s nerves returned in full force as he leaned down, his face coming within an inch of hers. She could smell his breath, which smelled overpoweringly of mint. “You can give the message to me, love. I’ll get it to him. You can trust me.”
The man’s face was still shrouded in the darkness of backstage, yet his eyes caught the light. They sparkled, and Oona cocked her head to one side, as if noticing something.
“Please keep your distance, sir,” Deacon said, puffing himself up menacingly on Oona’s shoulder.
The man took no notice and did not retreat. The stench of mint enshrouded him. “Just give the message to me, missy. I’ll get it to him. And hurry it up. We got a show to put on here.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” Oona said.
“What isn’t possible?” asked the stagehand.
“For you to give the message to Mr. Pancake,” Oona said. “Unless you give the message to yourself.”
The stagehand’s head s
napped back, eyes blinking. “What?”
“You are Albert Pancake,” Oona said. “The Master of Ten Thousand Faces. I recognize you.”
The stagehand stood up straight. “That’s impossible. How? I mean, um, you’re wrong. I’m just a stagehand. Work backstage, love.”
He flexed his arm, as if this might prove his identity.
“I recognize your eyes,” Oona said. “You are very good, Mr. Pancake. Exceptional. But the one thing you cannot change about yourself is your eyes; I noticed that very thing about you yesterday, during our meeting in the lobby, when you imitated my uncle. You looked just like him … all except for the eyes. But it wasn’t until I saw you in the dark tonight, without the rest of your miraculous face to distract me, that I realized I had seen those eyes before. I am speaking, of course, of Madame Romania from Romania’s eyes, whose face was hidden behind that ragged cloth. That, combined with the smell of mint, which you seem to be so fond of chewing, gave you away.”
For a long moment, the stagehand only stood there, his face enshrouded in shadow, and yet Oona could see those eyes first round in surprise, and then begin to shake back and forth in obvious disbelief.
At last he said: “That’s incredible. In all my years as a performer, never once has anyone seen through my disguise.”
He sat on the floor, and hung his head forward.
“And now, Mr. Pancake,” Oona said, “I must ask you why you masqueraded yourself as a gypsy woman and told me that dreadful lie about the Punchbowl Oracle?”
Albert Pancake did not look up, but only continued to sit in the darkened wings of the theater. The sounds of the audience drifted in through the stage wings.
“I was hired to do it,” Mr. Pancake said in a small voice. “I was told exactly what to do: the portrayal of the gypsy woman, the punchbowl, and, most specifically, to say the line, ‘You are not responsible for the burden you hold.’ I was to convince you of the bowl’s existence and then discover its theft while in your presence. If I accepted the job, I would receive a large sum of money. More money than I could resist for such a simple job, really.”
“Who put you up to it?” Oona demanded. “Tell me the truth and I will promise not to tell the police.”
Mr. Pancake suddenly looked up. “The police? What did I do wrong? I simply impersonated an old woman and told some fortunes. There are no laws against it.”
Oona thought this over for a moment. It was true. No laws had been broken. None that she could think of, anyway. And indeed, she realized that if anyone deserved punishment, it was herself, for being so gullible in the first place. She should have known better, should have listened to both Deacon and her uncle. But the idea of being relieved of her guilt had overridden her clearheadedness.
“Who hired you to distract me with this wild-goose chase, Mr. Pancake?” Oona demanded, unable to hide her anger. She leaned forward, peering down at the sitting man in the same menacing manner he had done to her only minutes before. “Whoever put you up to it most likely wished for me to focus my energies on this hopeless mystery instead of on the contest,” she said. “Let me guess. Was it Isadora Iree?”
Mr. Pancake shook his head.
“No?” Oona said. “Then perhaps it was her mother, Madame Iree?”
Again the Master of Ten Thousand Faces shook his head.
“Who then? Roderick?” she asked. “Or maybe …”
She trailed off, the realization coming to her slowly. She slapped her forehead. “Why did I not see it immediately? Sir Baltimore. He hired you to distract me with the story, the same story that he read time and time again to his daughter from her book of obscure faerie tales. Deacon, do you remember Adler Iree saying that Sir Baltimore had bet a substantial amount of money on the contest?”
Deacon clacked his beak before saying: “Sir Baltimore knew that you were the most able-minded challenger. He hired Mr. Pancake to distract you with all this poppycock of magic bowls so that his son, Roderick, could take the lead.”
Mr. Pancake pushed himself up from the floor and sighed deeply. “Well, it would seem you have figured everything out for yourself, and so, if you are quite done—”
He made as if to move past Oona toward the stage.
“Just a moment,” Oona said, stepping in front of him. “I haven’t figured out everything. For instance, the ring.”
Mr. Pancake’s brow rose, and Oona could tell that he knew precisely what ring she was speaking of. “You mean the dressmaker’s ring?” he said. “You found it, did you? Baltimore said you would be clever. Well, seeing as the cat is out of the bag, I’ll tell you. The ring was my doing, but not completely my idea.”
“How so?” Oona asked.
“Well, the dressmaker—Madame Iree—came into my caravan early on during the party and wished to have her palm read. It was not the first time I had played the role of Madame Romania from Romania, and I am quite good at telling fortunes.”
Oona folded her arms. “False fortunes.”
Mr. Pancake shrugged, raising his hands in a what-can-I-say gesture. “False is my game, Miss Crate. So anyway, I asked Madame Iree to close her eyes … and … well, let’s just say that the ring slipped from her finger.” Mr. Pancake wiggled his own fingers, as if to show how easily a ring might slip off by itself. Oona shook her head, disbelieving. Mr. Pancake had clearly stolen it. “At any rate,” he continued, with a clearing of his throat, “once she had departed, I dropped the ring through the caravan’s trapdoor.”
Oona nodded, a look of both understanding and annoyance crossing her face. “So you took the ring and dropped it beneath the caravan to leave a false trail … in case any one, such as myself, should go looking around for clues.”
Mr. Pancake shrugged. “It was all Baltimore’s idea. He suggested that I plant some evidence. Told me to take something from one of the guests and leave it somewhere that was not too obvious. Something that would keep you busy looking in the wrong direction. I thought that was going a bit overboard, but he seemed to be under the impression that you would be curious enough to find it. He said that if you were anything like your father, that you would stop at nothing to solve such a mystery. He was banking on it.”
“And he was right,” Oona said, not without a pinch of pride.
“Now, if you will excuse me,” Mr. Pancake said rather hurriedly, “my audience awaits.”
The man pushed Oona aside and sauntered through the swaths of long, black fabric and onto the stage. The auditorium filled with the sound of applause. He grinned broadly, waving to the audience as he began: “Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome one and all …”
Oona stared after him, unable to listen, thinking instead about what she had just learned. It all made a perfect kind of sense … and yet …
“And yet, that still does not explain how Isadora is getting all of the answers to the challenges,” she said, and could not help but feel a sort of anticlimactic sense of accomplishment at having solved one mystery, only to be confronted straightaway by yet another.
Gloomily, Oona made her way back through the darkened corridor to the front of the theater. They found Samuligan waiting for them at the curb. The carriage ride home was a cold one. The temperature outside had dropped considerably, and with a glance through the window toward the sky, Oona wondered if they were in store for some rain.
“Fitting,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Deacon.
Oona only shook her head despondently as the carriage rolled past Oswald Park. A dampness filled the air, and the park appeared dark and abandoned. The shadowy form of the tower could be seen jutting from the center of the park like a crooked finger that pointed to some hidden message in the sky. But the sky was black, its meaning obscured by the swirl of accumulating clouds.
As the tower disappeared from view, Oona leaned heavily against the window and sighed. The mystery was a blur, and it irked her to no end. Try as she might, she simply could not understand how Isadora was doing it.
On the fo
llowing day, the Wizard escorted Oona to the park. “Wouldn’t want to miss the final challenge,” he said. “In all the years the contest has existed, no one has managed to beat the final task.”
Oona nodded, her gaze fixed out the carriage window, focusing on nothing in particular as they rolled down the nearly deserted street. The sky was gray, and rain beat on the roof, coming down in heavy sheets. There was a chill in the air, and yet Oona hardly noticed her own discomfort.
It was one needling thought that absorbed her, one exasperating question that blocked out her surroundings like a thick curtain. How was Isadora Iree getting the answers to the clues ahead of time? It was simply infuriating. Half the night she had pondered the question and had been unable to find a satisfactory answer.
“There is simply not enough information,” Oona said.
“What was that?” the Wizard asked.
“Hmm?” said Oona. “Oh, nothing.”
“Is something bothering you, my dear?” the Wizard asked. “I would think you might be excited to have gotten as far as you have in the competition. But you look as if you’ve lost your best friend.”
Oona nodded, but said nothing. She, of course, had lost something. Something precious indeed. She’d lost the hope that her mother and sister had died for some reason other than her own magical incompetence.
She thought of Sir Baltimore, and how he had set the whole thing up, how clever he had been to have the gypsy woman hint that Oona was not responsible for the burden she held. Now that she thought about it, the words could have applied to most anyone, and most anything. Sir Baltimore knew of the accident in Oona’s past—it was common knowledge, after all—and so he had created the perfect phrase to capture her attention: “You are not responsible for the burden you hold!”
How vague and enticing the promise had been. And then the hint that only the punchbowl could tell the truth of the matter. Despite the fact that her uncle had assured her on countless occasions that she should not blame herself for what had happened, she had always known that those were just words to comfort her. It had been she who had conjured the Lights of Wonder, and she alone who had lost control.
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