The Motion of Puppets(22)

The overhead lights beat down like so many suns. She sat up, surprised once more that she could sit. Only the Dog had awakened before her. He sat by the door staring at the knob, forever hopeful that he might be let out. Hanging from the coatrack, the Queen opened one eye and yawned. After a long slow stretch, she began worrying the knots holding her in place. Nix, who slept curled into a ball, unfurled to full length and sprang to his feet, toddling over to wake Mr. Firkin. In the bustle of the midnight morning, she did not notice anything out of the ordinary until all the puppets had risen. The two Judges and the Hag were missing. The mismatched chessmen sat atop the worn and folded board, and in the old woman’s rocking chair sat No?, her knees drawn up and her straw head resting on her crossed arms. Leaping down from the shelf, Kay scurried across the floor and pointed to the empty spaces. “They’re not here. They’ve gone!”

The Three Sisters untangled their wires and strolled over to the place where the vanished puppets should have been. Olya laid a hand on Kay’s shoulders, and Masha and Irina inspected the spot like two children wondering where their lost toys had gone. The others came over as well. Even the Worm inched his way to bear witness. Some bowed their heads, and others looked wistfully at the curtain to the toy shop.

“Where are the Judges?” Kay asked. “What happened to the Old Hag?”

“They’ve been selected,” said Mr. Firkin. Beneath his walrus mustache, he was smiling. Murmurs of delight filled the air. The Devil waltzed the Good Fairy across the floor. Nix turned three cartwheels and ended with a heels-over-head backflip. Even No? overcame her immediate regret and clapped and whistled.

Seeing the confusion on Kay’s face, the Queen took her aside from the boisterous celebration. “You should be happy for them. They’ve gone to a better place. The Quatre Mains is putting on a new show, and he must have selected those three to be in it. They have the chance to do what they have been created to do, you see. Who knows, they may be out in the great world, perhaps a children’s show in the city square, if they are lucky. And if you are good, and the puppeteers find a part for you in this show or the next, then you will have your chance, too. There is nothing like a performance to lift the spirits.”

“So they are just in a puppet show for now? They will be coming back?”

The Queen stared at her shoes. “You can never tell. The ways of the artist are mysterious. Sometimes the puppets return, sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they last forever. Do you remember the wooden man in the bell jar?”

“What do you mean never come back?”

“Don’t worry yourself, child. Just be happy for them. They have a chance to be under the spotlight.” She patted Kay atop her head and then went off with the Dog, playing fetch with a ball with a nose attached to it.

The night went on as other nights had, though with a lingering bittersweetness. There aren’t too many occasions when a new role comes your way, but on the other hand, she expected to see everything in its proper place—the Judges exchanging pawns and bottle caps, the Old Hag cupping her ear to catch the latest mischief. But they had vanished.

With no companion of her own, No? seemed particularly forlorn. Kay found her in a far corner, whittling with a nail file at the stub of a pencil, intent on her task. Dark circles ringed her button eyes, and here and there, pieces of straw had fallen—or had been pulled—from her head. She jangled her right foot rapidly over the edge of the box on which she sat, and she hummed a song to herself under her breath.

“What are you making?” Kay asked.

“A point.” Her voice had an odd rasping sound, like a duck with a cold. No? glared at her, but Kay did not take the hint.

“A pencil point, I get it. What do you want a pencil for?”

“In case I ever find a paper, so I can write a note. You don’t happen to have a paper?” She whittled more furiously, the shavings popping from the wood.

Kay shook her head, and then suddenly remembered where she had seen paper of a sort. On tiptoe, she stole over to the abandoned chess set that the Judges had contrived from a few real chessmen and the odd flotsam and jetsam of the Back Room—a few bottle caps, an eraser, the lid to a tube of glue. Among these treasures was a spent matchbook, the outside printed with a picture of a dancing woman and the advertisement for a club called Les Déesses and an address in Montreal. But the inside was gloriously blank. She tucked the matchbook under her jumper and wound her way back to the corner. Making sure nobody was watching her, she sat next to No?, her bottom resting on the cold bare floor, and handed over the piece of cardboard.

“There,” she said triumphantly. “Write to your heart’s content.”

“Are you sure nobody saw you? There are spies everywhere.”

Using her body as a shield, Kay made the corner secluded from the rest of the room. The straw-haired girl printed in block letters: HELP. Get me out of here. When she finished, No? folded the cover to hide the note and concealed it under her blouse. “We need to get a message to the outside world to come rescue me.”

“But you can never leave. Besides, why would you want to leave the Back Room? Is it because the Old Hag was chosen to be in the show? Don’t worry, the Queen said that she will return.”

“Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. I’ve seen them come, and I’ve seen them go, and I’ve rarely seen them back in here, no matter what she might say.” Her eyes danced in her skull. “Depends on what the puppeteers decide, or what the man in the bell jar tells them to do. Listen, kid, you haven’t been here so long, but it is a hell of a way to live. I don’t want to end up on a shelf. Or worse. We gotta figure out how to get this note under the locked door. We gotta find some way to let the people outside know that we are trapped in here.”