The Motion of Puppets

by Keith Donohue

  Theo made the introductions. “I’m Theo Harper. These are my friends Egon and … Dr. Mitchell. We’ve come from New York City to see the puppets.”

  The boy nervously shifted his glance from side to side.

  “How about you, boy?” Egon asked. “Got a name?”

  “Drew,” he said at last. “We’re closed.”

  “Hello, Drew,” said Mitchell. “Are your parents around? You’re not here all alone?”

  He snapped his fingers, hiding his hands behind his back. “She’s here. But she don’t like to be disturbed during the day, not while reading.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Don’t have no mother. No father neither. They took me in.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mitchell said. “Who took you in?”

  “The puppet makers.”

  From the upper floor, a door opened and then slammed shut. Heavy footsteps in the hall. Drew looked toward the staircase. “Now you done it. She’s gonna be mad. Watch yourself.”

  A lanky young woman with long red hair hanging in a single braid came stomping down the stairs and stormed into the living room. When Mitchell rose out of habit, Theo and Egon aped his etiquette.

  “Sit down,” she said. “This isn’t 1893. What can I do for you gentlemen? I am sure Drew has told you—like I asked him to—that the museum is closed for the season, so if you come to see the puppets, you’ll have to come back in six months, sorry to say. And if you’re here for something else—I can’t imagine what that something might be—out with it. I was trying to read.”

  Mitchell dared to speak. “We were just telling your brother—”

  “Not my brother.” She laughed.

  “Drew, here. We came all the way from New York just to visit the puppet museum.”

  “You should have read up about us on the Internet, then you’d have known we are closed November first to April first. Cold up here in Vermont. Would have saved a lot of trouble.”

  Egon picked up the case. “We’re with a big talent agency in Manhattan and have heard great things about your work.”

  The girl looked down upon him with disdain. “No exceptions.”

  “Is there someone else we could talk to?” Egon asked.

  “You could talk to the puppet master. His farm, his puppets. But he isn’t here.”

  “When will he be back? Later this evening?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Does he have a cell phone?” Egon asked. “We could make an appointment.”

  “No phone,” she said.

  From the rocking chair, Mitchell said, “Surely you could just let us have a quick peek, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

  She tugged her hand along her braid. “Barn’s locked. Don’t have the key.”

  Behind his fist, Drew snickered a wet guffaw.

  Through the picture window, the red barn glowed softly in the late afternoon mist. She would not be persuaded, and they would have to find another way. Theo stood suddenly and announced they were leaving. “We’ll check back tomorrow after we’ve had a good night’s sleep. And if you see this puppet master, could you please tell him we are in the area and are very much interested in his work?”

  “I’ll tell him about you New York people when I see him, but we really aren’t interested in that sort of thing.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality. We’ll see ourselves out.”

  They drove around a bend until the farmhouse was just out of sight, and then Theo had Mitchell pull over and shut off the engine. In the gloaming, they backtracked down the country lane, sneaked in behind the bus, and made their way to the barn. Egon tried the handle to the front door, but it was locked as the girl had said.

  “There’s got to be another way in,” he said softly, and they walked along the perimeter, the grass wet and spongy under their feet.

  A wooden fence abutted the silo standing at the barn’s western end, and behind it the grass had been worn away and a few slabs of granite jutted forward to make a ledge. Enclosed by the fencing, a pasture gradually sloped fifty yards to a small stream that marked the end of the property. Beyond the stream, the land rose through a forest of birch and pines that led to the road at the base of another mountain.

  “I’ll just hop over into the meadow,” Egon said, “and see if there’s a back entrance. See that ledge there? I’ll bet you that’s where the sheeps or goats used to sit and watch the day go by. Some of these old barns on a hillside like this have a cote built into the lower floor. The sheeps go in and out through the basement door, so to speak.”

  “Too dangerous,” Mitchell said. “You’d break your neck if you fell down that hill.”

  From inside the barn came a muffled barking that sounded like a mechanical yap from a windup toy. With a wave, Theo herded them toward the front entrance, and the barking intensified and changed directions. From the direction of the farmhouse, a black mastiff charged straight at them, ears pinned back, teeth bared. They froze in place, and the dog stopped a few feet away, tense and ready to spring if they took another step. It moved its snapping jaws on a swivel among the three of them so quickly as to appear to have three heads at once. The storm door slapped shut, and the redheaded girl hurried across the yard followed by the boy. She ran like a Muybridge series, a jerky stop-motion sequence that made her look like a puppet, and the boy’s timing, too, was just a fraction out of sync. The boy grabbed the dog by the collar, and it relaxed under his grip.

  “I thought I told you we were closed,” the girl said. “I told you it was locked. Now, I think you better get and don’t come snooping round here no more.”

  * * *

  “Did you hear it?” Kay asked.

  Olya stretched and yawned mightily. Just after midnight, and they were the first ones astir. “Such a reckit. Who can sleep with such a reckit?”

  Her sisters grumbled at the disturbance and rolled away from the lamp that Mr. Firkin had lit before going to see to the Queen. Nix woke up beside them and immediately reached for his juggling. One by one the puppets roused themselves.

  “There was the dog,” Kay said. “Did you not hear it barking outside? And strange voices. Someone trying to break the lock.”

  “Dahlink, I can see trying to get out of this drafty old place, but why would anyone try to break in?”

  “Didn’t anyone else hear it?” Kay asked again. “Three voices.”

  The Old Hag lifted a hand to her ear. “What’s that you say?”

  Over in their corner, the Good Fairy and Noë were hanging their finger puppets on strands of twine from a crossbeam above the stall. With the brush of her hand, the Good Fairy called her close. “I heard it, too. Late in the day after the sun had dropped behind the mountains. Noë heard them, didn’t you?”

  “The men. Three new ones, and then the girl who lives in the house, and the boy, and the big black dog.”

  The tiny puppets spun on their ropes like witches on the gallows. The Queen was passing, and the prodigious train of her gown stirred the air. Because of her great size, she commanded the tight quarters, and they were ever watchful and aware of her presence. The three of them huddled closer so as to not be overheard, but secrets were difficult to keep from one whose ears were twice as big as theirs. From their crouched positions, they waited till she was safely gone.

  “I do not trust the Queen,” the Good Fairy said. “Or that she always has our best interests at heart.”

  For the first time in ages, Kay felt relief and a sense of camaraderie with another puppet. Noë had long been her ally, but she may well have gone mad. Or was maddening everyone with her pretense. To have the Good Fairy admit to treason, an impulse she shared, made Kay near delirious with happiness. “I quite agree with you about the Queen. She has gotten too big for her own good.”

  Eyes gleaming with mischief, Noë drew a finger across her throat. “Off with her head.”

  Covering the hole of her mouth, the Good Fairy held back a laugh. “Shh, not so loud.”

&n
bsp; “I wonder what would be inside her head,” Noë said. “Delusions of grandeur and notions of power.”

  “You must be quiet and more circumspect,” the Good Fairy said. “Kay, what do you make of the noises at the door this afternoon?”

  “The girl and the boy were angry. Why else would they let loose the black dog? I think the men were trying to come inside, but they were stopped at the door.”

  “Who were they?” Noë asked. “I bet they were here to rescue us. We just need a person to come along—any person will do—as long as they are willing to lead the way.”

  Kay stroked her arm and smiled at her. “You don’t suppose they made it inside before they were caught?”

  “Could be. There is only one way to be sure that it is still locked,” the Good Fairy said. “But we must get by the Queen and Mr. Firkin.”

  “We’ll need a diversion,” Kay said. “Something that will keep their attention while we slip off and check the front door.”

  “If I had a match,” Noë said, “I could start a fire—”

  “Don’t even joke,” the Good Fairy said, holding up the kindling of her arms. “It doesn’t have to be serious, just enough so they won’t notice we are missing. We’ll be there and back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  A new idea hatched in Noë’s addled brain. Fetching a length of rope coiled on the floor beside the corncrib, she twisted a noose in one end and measured out the remaining length. With a quick toss, she flung it over the crossbeam and tied it off to a rail on the stall. Masha and Irina watched silently, wallowing too deep in their own ennui to stop her or utter a warning. Climbing into position, Noë balanced on the rail. Taking care not to muss her new straw hair, she slipped the noose over her head and tightened the knot against her neck. Nodding once to Kay and the Good Fairy, she sighed as loudly as she could. When no one took notice, she cleared her throat and clapped her hands three times.

  “If in this world I cannot be free, then I cannot stay in this world,” she announced.

  “Get down from there at once,” Mr. Firkin hollered as soon as he had spotted her. “No, wait…”

  The Russians shook off their slumber and got to their feet. Nix dropped a ball, which rolled across the room, setting the little dog in motion, which startled the Old Hag. The Queen, anxious over this unscheduled execution, charged to confront her. Seeing their chance, Kay and the Good Fairy darted out of the room in the commotion. Noë had launched into a political diatribe, venting her long frustration in a fit of oratory.

  They rounded the corner into a small vestibule that served as the entrance to the museum. The room was brightened by moonlight streaming in through an octagonal porthole inset above the outer doors. Atop a rickety table stood a tin coffee can with “Donations Welcome” taped to the surface. Next to the can was a guest book with handwritten entries: The Millers from Woodstock found it “spooky.” Andi und Christian Ludwig from Ulm, Germany, wrote “fantastisch” and “never seens anything like it.” Along the opposite wall, bins filled with silk-screened posters from past shows were available for a few dollars each. The room as a whole produced an odd stereophonic effect. The stray voices in the other rooms were louder, but they could also hear the Worm crawling about in the chamber below, grumbling to itself, as well as their comrades in the stalls raising a ruckus over Noë’s admonitions.

  “You don’t think she’d really go through with it?” Kay mimed the pulling of the noose, the snap of the neck, the loll of the tongue.

  “I doubt it. But what if she did? The worst that could happen is that her stitches give and her head pops off. We’d simply have to sew it on again.”

  Offset from the center of the room, the great doors loomed. A wooden bar laid horizontally across the frame was braced against a metal clip, and they knew at once that nobody could have entered past that barrier. Whoever had locked it must have used a separate exit, perhaps the subterranean one guarded by the Worm. Directly opposite was a stairway that led to the basement, but the door to it, too, was shut tight. The visitors from that afternoon must have gone home disappointed.

  The temptation proved too great. Kay asked, “Shall we?”

  She grabbed one end of the bar and pulled while the Good Fairy pushed from the other end, and it slipped away easily. A beam of moonlight shone through the slim space between the double doors, and the handles were cold to the touch. With all their might, they pulled and the doors swung free.

  The night air crackled. The open yard stood before them, the frost glistening on the grass, the farmhouse dark and silent. Mere steps away, they hesitated on the threshold, listening and watching, studying the suddenness and impossibility of the world that looked as false as a painting on a curtain. Like her first time at the circus, holding on to one of each parent’s hands, and all at once burst forth the spectacle, the color, the sound, the motion hadn’t seemed real. Just as the world outside the barn challenged her sense of what was artificial and impenetrable. Yet there was no denying the chill breeze rushing into the barn, the stars fanning out into the endless sky. An owl hooted from a faraway tree, and they found themselves laughing at the staging. Kay wanted to leap through the surface but was afraid. She closed her eyes and watched a film of images flash by from a thousand different memories, each moment distinct but combining to make a whole picture of all that she had held dear and left behind. Her father, mother. Theo. Just out there, just beyond reach.

  “You cannot leave,” the Good Fairy said, laying a hand upon her shoulder. “You can only be rescued from this place by someone from the other side. Someone who will agree to lead you away.”

  “But they were here,” Kay said. “I know it. I can feel it.”

  Out in the yard, the cat mewed, the strange yellow light reflected in its eyes as it walked toward the barn. The cat stepped closer, growing bigger, until it was nearly at the edge, and then it penetrated the landscape as though stepping out of a two-dimensional picture of the night. It headed straight for the darkened alcove that held the cellar door. A light went on in the farmhouse, and a window flew open, the farm girl crying out in the night for her cat.

  A voice came from behind them.

  “You better shut those doors.”

  Startled, they spun around together, and there in a weak circle of light, grinning despite his best efforts, was the Devil himself.

  22

  The Devil bowed his head slightly, introducing himself again to his friends who thought him dead and gone. Kay and the Good Fairy rushed over and mashed their arms around him with joy. Had he the power to blush, he would have colored from scarlet to crimson. With an awkward shrug, he freed himself and picked up the cat nuzzling at his cloven feet and petted its fur with his sharp-nailed hands. Setting it gingerly on the floor, he whispered “scat” and the cat pranced through the doorway, holding its tail in the air like a question mark before running back to the yellow house.

  “The doors, my friends, shut the doors before we are caught.”

  Kay and the Good Fairy rushed to the doors and swung them shut, careful not to put the locking bar back into place. From the corner by the cellar, the Devil produced a kerosene lantern and, striking a match on his thigh, lit it, and the Good Fairy gasped at the flame.

  “Please, don’t worry,” the Devil said, with a diabolical smile. “If I cannot manage a little bit of fire, who can?”

  “We thought you were unmade,” said Kay. “We thought you were dead.”

  “What happened to you?” the Good Fairy asked.

  “Dead? Not dead. Come with me and I will show you what happened, but you must not be afraid.”

  His hooves clopped on the wooden floor like a billy goat crossing a bridge, and they followed his horns into the adjoining room. A dozen puppets stood frozen in a line. Blue from head to toe, they were dressed in tattered rags and wore rough beards and wild hair of tangled curled paper. Each man had an arm on the shoulder of the man in front of him save the leader of the gang, who bent forward as they trudged g
rimly toward a primitive cell with real iron bars, and around their broken shoes an excelsior snow had fallen. They looked cold and miserable and forlorn.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen a sadder bunch of creatures,” the Good Fairy said.

  The Devil held the lantern close to the leader’s face. He bore a frozen expression of utter despair in his eyes. “These comrades are headed for the gulag. Some Russian play—the Three Sisters might know the name.Perhaps one day soon we can arrange a rendezvous between these lonesome souls and those charming young ladies.”

  The first prisoner cracked a smile, and a chuckle ran the length of the chain, intensifying man to man until the final prisoner burst into a hearty laugh.

  “The Devil puts a spoon of honey into another man’s wife,” the leader said. “We have been waiting for you for ages.”

  The line broke apart as the puppets roared to life, laughing and clapping one another on the back. A pair of the prisoners broke into a chorus of a drinking song, and the leader embraced the Devil and pumped his hand in congratulations. One of the men winked at the Good Fairy and mimed his appreciation for the cleverness of her unusual wooden construction.

  “Follow me, comrades,” the Devil said. “More wonders to behold.”

  In the next room, more puppets cheered their arrival. They were dizzying in their variety, long and short, fat and thin, bright and somber in design. Three giant disembodied heads—long-forgotten buffoons made for a political satire—propelled themselves forward by chomping their jaws. A quartet of skeletons shook their bones and danced a mazurka. Old familiars from children’s stories sang out: the Three Little Pigs pink as hams, a Dish and a Spoon with the glow of the recently eloped, and a little old lady who sat by a giant shoe, eight tiny heads peering through the eyelets and another young one sliding down the tongue. All the people were happy to see the new arrivals and clamored for their attention.