The Bringers just shrugged; they didn't know what the lights were, either. This didn't trouble them; they expected new magic to be different from anything they'd known.
Art couldn't get a good look at the things, couldn't tell if they were fairies, or some sort of mutant firefly, or something else entirely. He felt as if he ought to be frightened by such things, but he wasn't.
Fear came from threats, after all, from danger – or from the unknown. But the little glowing things posed no threat that he could see, and the Bringers assured him that whatever they were, they weren't dangerous.
And they weren't really unknown. They were magic. Raw magic, bubbling over, spilling back in time, shapeless and random – and harmless.
It was very odd, just how certain Art was that the lights were harmless. Sometimes that certainty troubled him slightly, but he was so sure he was right, what harm could it do that he didn't know why he was sure?
And they were a distraction. He didn't have time to worry about Faerie or the thing in the pit or the drifting lights, or the bone-handled dagger or the box of treasures or the locked door in the wardrobe room. He had lights to aim, cues to learn, and a vital decision to make.
Would he go through with the performance?
On Monday of the final week Marilyn knocked at the stage door around midnight to suggest a late-night snack together. He was distracted, not thinking, and let her in while he locked up.
The Bringers had departed a few minutes before, so it seemed safe enough. He left her staring at the muddle of sets while he checked the basement doors.
He wished he could have locked the door to Faerie, but none of the keys would fit.
As he was climbing the stairs again a flight of the glowing things cruised past him, vanishing around a corner under the steps. He paid no attention until he looked up and saw Marilyn standing in the open doorway, staring.
“What were those?” she asked.
He glanced down just in time to see the glow fade; as usual, he hadn't gotten a clear look at them.
“Fireflies,” he said.
“I never saw fireflies like that,” Marilyn said. “Besides, it's too late in the year, isn't it? How'd they get in here?”
“Well, I don't know, then,” he said, shrugging.
Marilyn stared at him, then down at the point where the lights had vanished.
“I don't know,” Art repeated defensively.
“Okay,” Marilyn said. “I'm not arguing; you coming?”
The date was not a success; Marilyn made no further mention of the mysterious elfin lights, but somehow, after she had marveled at the bizarre stage set and Art had mumbled unresponsively in return, they wound up first discussing, and then arguing about, Maggie Gowdie. Marilyn managed to take offense at Art's passing mention that Maggie's grandmother had claimed to be a Scottish witch.
Art's heart wasn't in the argument, though; he was always thinking, underneath, about the big question.
Should he go through with his part of the performance?
Wednesday Jamie came back from California, broke and tanned and full of stories about L.A. – and curious about what was happening at the theater.
“A play,” Art told him.
“What kind of play?”
Art couldn't answer that; his thoughts on the subject were too confused.
“You'll have to come see it,” he said.
Instantly he regretted it. Hadn't Myrddin said the audience wasn't to be human?
He didn't want to say any more, and did his best to steer the conversation back to Hollywood, where he could safely ignore it while he thought about his choices.
Then it was Saturday, and the point of no return was nearing. He had gone through lighting rehearsal, full tech rehearsal, dress rehearsal, without voicing his indecision, without saying anything to disturb the Bringers' calm assurance that he would cooperate. And the performance was to be this evening.
If he was going to back out, he had to do it now, while there was time for the Bringers to flee into Faerie – those who preferred escape to death, at any rate. He guessed that would be roughly an even split.
He stood by his lighting board, checking how the blue wash at the edge looked on Rabbitt's skin, and trying to make up his mind about two things at once: Should he do a last-minute gel change? Did he want to unleash magic on the world?
In the blue light Rabbitt looked even darker than he ordinarily did, but it was a healthy enough color; Art thought it would do.
No new gel, then.
But magic...
“Mr. Rabbitt,” he asked, “what'll it be like?”
He had hinted at the question repeatedly, had even asked it directly, and had never gotten a good answer; he was making one last try.
The huge magician cocked his head in Art's direction. “Do you mean, when the magic is come?”
“Yeah.”
Rabbitt smiled wryly. “In truth, lad, none of us really, entirely knows what will happen.” He waved theatrically. “It might be that unicorns will be reborn, that dragons will walk the mountains once again – or perhaps not, perhaps the magic will take new and strange forms.” He dropped his arm and shrugged. “Whatever unintended side effects we may achieve, we can be certain that magic will once again be so accessible that anyone with the will and belief will be able to use it, not just wizards and mages.”
“Anyone?”
“Oh, nearly.”
“Well, I mean... who?”
“You, perhaps.” He smiled again. “It's said that young lovers will be particularly good at it. That's if the stories are to be trusted, of course.”
“I'm not a young lover,” Art protested.
“Ah,” Rabbitt said, with a broad grin, “but perhaps you will be.”
Art frowned.
Something bright and green flitted across the periphery of his vision; he started and stared.
One of the mysterious lights from the basement, the fairies or will-o'-the-wisps or whatever they were, had ventured up the stairs and emerged onto the stage.
This was the first time one of the more obviously magical spontaneous phenomena, as opposed to the Bringers' spells, had manifested itself anywhere except the basement.
And it didn't vanish when he stared at it; it flickered, and darted about so that he couldn't see it clearly, but it didn't vanish.
He looked at his watch. Less than an hour before curtain.
He had to decide.
“Art?” someone called.
He turned and found Maggie beside him, and was oddly disappointed.
“Hi,” she said. “Hope I didn't startle you.”
“Just pre-show jitters,” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied, forcing a smile. “Me, too. But anyway, I need the key to the box office.”
He blinked at her. “You do?” he asked stupidly.
“Well, yes, of course I do,” she said. “I'm manning the booth.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“Selling tickets,” she explained. “Someone has to. People are coming to see the show, you know. Even though we didn't advertise except the one poster out front.”
“They are?”
“Sure. A lot of your friends from Dream, for one thing – they're all curious about us.”
“You have tickets?”
“Conjured them myself – with ten bucks at the local print-shop.” Grinning, she held up a stack of printed red pasteboard. “The key?”
“Uh.” He reached in his pocket, then stopped. “I'll take care of it,” he said. “Someone needs to open the doors, too, right?”
She asked, “You don't need to be back here?”
“Not right now.”
Together they walked up the aisle, and he stared out at the empty seats.
Somehow, he had become so involved with the ritual aspect of the play he had forgotten that it was a play, a performance people could watch and enjoy even if they didn't know about spells or magic or other mysteries.
<
br /> But it was a play, and there would be an audience, with real, everyday people in it.
In the lobby he unlocked the box office without a word, then crossed to the big front doors. He threw back the bolt and opened the right-hand door an inch or two, then peered out the crack.
Marilyn and Jamie were already waiting on the sidewalk, talking idly. They were standing apart; Marilyn's hands were behind her, against a signpost, while Jamie's were in the pockets of his cutoff jeans. They weren't looking at him.
They were here to see the show.
At that moment, Art suddenly knew what he had to do.
It didn't matter if it changed everything. It didn't matter if it was dangerous – after all, what was life without a little risk? What was life without a little magic? He'd invited Jamie here himself. He couldn't disappoint an audience.
After all, magic or no magic – the show must go on.
Chapter Twenty
Only about thirty citizens of Bampton were in the audience, yet when Art risked a glance around the curtain in the middle of the first act he saw no empty seats.
Just what was occupying the others he couldn't really say. Some of them had faces, some didn't. There were the mysterious cellar lights flitting here and there, too. And he could hear something thumping under the stage.
The Bringers of Wonder were untroubled by such details as they went through their performance.
Art had seen real magic in it before, in rehearsals, but nothing like what he saw now. Strange colors flickered in every corner; magic swirled in the air, surged back and forth in waves. He could feel it, like an impending thunderstorm, but a thousand times more intense.
He wondered what the humans in the audience made of it.
Then he heard his next cue coming, and he slipped back to the lighting board, and back to his work.
There was no intermission between acts; Art could feel himself that the magic wouldn't allow it. It had waited, somewhere, for a very long time; now it was awake and eager, not to be held back.
The second act was brief and simple: in it the mage and his apprentices confronted the gods and demanded that magic be restored to the world; the gods considered the request, and then granted it, expelling the dragon that had kept magic confined – or perhaps instead freeing the dragon that was magic itself; the play was deliberately ambiguous.
In rehearsal, Al Tanner, playing the gods' spokesman, had provided an illusion of a dragon for the climax, when the dragon burst forth from its cave; Art had considered it a rather unconvincing illusion and a weak ending.
As he felt the magical forces crawling across his skin and flashing through him, as he saw the light from his instruments bend and twist and change, he began to wonder whether Tanner's illusion would work properly.
As the final scene began, Tanner did not raise his wand. The thumping from beneath the stage sounded again, louder than before. Art felt a sudden surge of panic.
By then it was too late to do anything; the floor burst open in a spectacular roaring explosion of flame and splinters, and the Dragon arose, spreading its wings.
Shining emerald green, wings lined with black and with colors Art could not name, the Dragon rose from the crypts beneath the stage and looked out at the audience with blazing eyes. The Bringers of Wonder tumbled back away from the monster, which seemed to fill the entire stage; the mismatched sets toppled and shattered, falling in fiberboard and plaster ruin. Art wanted to run away, to flee in terror; he wanted to run out onstage and do something to the Dragon, anything, to make it go away. He wanted to jump down into the audience and protect Marilyn.
What he actually did, though, was to bring up the center-stage ring of licos to full, and keep the blue background lights at half while dropping everything else to black. The Dragon was lit in a blaze of glory, the golden light glittering from its vivid green scales.
Cue 49. Myrddin had insisted on it, even though Art had said it wouldn't look right on Tanner's illusion.
Myrddin had been right.
Then the Dragon rose up out of the stage and vanished into the flies overhead, and Art looked up, astonished.
He saw only the catwalk and the lights and the ropes and the other normal overhead clutter. The Dragon was gone.
It was gone – but where?
Then he smiled, remembering. Illusion. The essence of magic is deceit. There was no dragon, really; Tanner had just done a better job with his tricks.
Then he looked out at the stage.
The lights were wrong; he'd missed his cue. Quickly, he went to Cue 50, and brought up #7 while slowly fading everything else.
Myrddin was out of position, knocked aside by the great beast – or by Tanner's illusion, whichever it was. Now he scrambled across the stage to take his place under the spotlight for his closing speech.
Art watched, and saw him stumble as his foot came down on a board that gave beneath him; the floorboard had been broken by the dragon.
Then the magician was standing in his place in the light, declaiming his lines, and Maggie was hauling on the curtain, Dr. Torralva helping her. Myrddin spoke his final line, Art brought down #7 in a three-beat fade, and the curtain swung closed.
Applause swelled up from the audience, invisible beyond the closed curtain.
The show was over.
There were to be no curtain calls; in fact, Art realized as he brought up the curtain-warmer that several of the Bringers seemed to have vanished. None of the onstage or backstage lights were on, but an eerie glow seemed to suffuse everything; by it Art could see Maggie and Myrddin and Morgan and Dr. Torralva, and a fox was standing atop the stump of a papier-mâché streetlamp, but the others were gone.
Had the Dragon gotten them, eaten them, consumed them somehow?
But the Dragon wasn't real...
But then what had wrecked the stage?
And had the ceremony worked? Myrddin and Morgan and Torralva were still alive, but what about the others? Maybe the whole thing had been a bust, and the others had died, had turned to dust and blown away.
No. He knew that wasn't what had happened. He could feel the magic in the air, could feel it pouring up out of the hole in the stage, like cool air from a cave, like the electric tingle of static, like the heat from a furnace, all at once – and not really like any of them. The spell had worked.
In fact, he could almost see the magic bubbling and spilling out of the hole, in blue and purple and colors he had never seen or imagined before, like heat shimmer and sparks.
He really, really hoped that hole was an illusion, or just the traps opened.
But he still had something more immediate to worry about. The applause had become ragged and uncertain, but there was still an audience out there.
The show must go on. He had his job to do.
He brought down the curtain-warmer, waited a long five beats, and brought up the houselights. That should make it plain that the show was over.
Sure enough, the applause died away during the five beats of darkness, and was gone by the time the houselights were up full.
His job was done.
The show was over, and magic was loose upon the world – in theory. Whatever that really meant.
He couldn't resist; he left the board, crossed to the curtain, and peeped out around the end.
The audience was beginning to drift out to the lobby.
Somehow, despite the feel of raw magical energy in the air, Art had assumed that when the play was done the various mysterious phenomena would cease, and the supernatural portion of the audience would vanish.
They had done nothing of the sort.
There were goblins bouncing on the cushions in several seats; translucent things that Art took for ghosts were floating up and down the aisles. The ordinary citizens of Bampton were all out in the lobby – the few faces Art could glimpse at that distance, through the doors, looked apprehensive.
All but one, that is. Marilyn was standing at the foot of the stage. She spotted him peering
out, and waved.
He waved back, took a quick glance at the ruins, at the remaining magicians, and beckoned to her.
She hopped quickly up onto the stage and slipped around the end of the curtain.
“Art,” she said, “that was incredible.”
“Yeah,” Art agreed. He took a final glance out at the house, then stepped back to the board and turned on the work lights. He caught Marilyn's hand, and together they looked at the damage.
The sets were shattered and scattered; bits of painted paper and wood were everywhere. Some of them were scorched and blackened.
And the stage was smashed open. There could be no doubt; it had not been an illusion.
Cautiously, the two of them advanced to the edge, not speaking, stepping carefully, testing each board before putting weight on it. When they neared the edge, Art leaned forward and peered down into the hole.
He could see the big basement room, the unused old sets, the stone walls, all lit by an eldritch red glow. The center of the wooden floor was gone, however, and he could also see down into the pit beneath, the pit that went down deep into the living stone beneath the theater.
That was where the glow seemed to be coming from.
All that should be down there, he knew, was old trash, but that was not what he saw.
Instead, he saw the Dragon, looking up at him, red eyes glowing in its shadowed face.
It was unquestionably the same dragon. There couldn't be two like that.
“But it vanished going up,” Marilyn protested. “How could it be back down there?”
“Magic,” Art said.
“It is magic, isn't it?” Marilyn said. “Those things in the audience – they aren't just midgets in costume, or special effects, are they?”
“Is that what you thought?” Art asked, startled. He had become so accustomed to magic over the past three weeks that he had forgotten how this must all seem to Marilyn.
She didn't answer. He sighed, and said, “I guess I'd better explain.”
“About time,” she told him.
By the time he finished telling her everything they were sitting on the porch steps outside the stage door and dawn was breaking in the east. Myrddin had interrupted them once to apologize. The old magician had then used his magic to repair the stage and clear away the destroyed sets and props – even he had been surprised by how easy the spell was – while Marilyn stared in wonder.
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