The Motion of Puppets(61)
While the bees were herded away, the Good Fairy attended to No?. She cleaned her best as she could of the sticky honey, and taking the horseshoe nail from Kay and a length of twine, she sutured together the ragged ends of the paper wound. The whole time No? said not a word, the expression on her face as blank as a doll’s. Kay watched the operation, torn between guilt and hope, and when order was finally restored, she was held for an accounting. The puppets arranged themselves in two rows along the stalls, and the Queen paced back and forth between the troops, boiling her thoughts.
“And just whose brilliant idea was this? To plague us with this swarm?”
“Mine, Your Highness,” Kay volunteered. “Though I had no idea about the bees—”
“You don’t think. You hear a sound inside a head, so you cut a hole? What on earth gave you the idea that it was allowed?”
No? spoke for the first time. “I asked her to, Your Majesty. I was going mad and needed some relief.”
“And you thought that poking a hole in your brain would help? Did you not consider that if you open your mind, you will release everything it holds?”
Kay pondered the question and thought it most unfair. “She had bees in her brain.”
“And that gives you the right to let them out where they might attack the rest of us? Have you not heard of keeping your thoughts to yourself? Had Mr. Firkin here not been as clever, those nasty things might have flown up my nose or into your ear, and then where would we all be? Mad as hatters. Mad as March hares. Mad as your friend there, missy.”
“I beg your pardon, but I was only trying to help.”
No? stepped up to her own defense. “I feel much better now, I do. No more racket in my mind.”
“Have you stopped to consider,” the Queen asked, “that these bees were not the cause of her problems but a symptom of them? I didn’t think so. There will be no more poking of holes in anyone’s head, do you understand? No more fraternizing at all between the two of you plotters.”
The heartbreak showing in her eyes, No? could not bear to look at Kay. The Queen stepped before her and with a wave of her hand demanded that she bow down. “You are to no longer complain of bees in the brain. I command you to give up this nonsense of madness and the desire to escape. You are a puppet of the Quatre Mains, and it is high time you started behaving like one.”
Her robes sweeping the air, the Queen quickly turned to Kay. “And as for you, learn your place and like it. Or I shall lump you till you do. I want you to go to the corner and stay there, until I say you may be excused. You are hereby charged with ensuring that no bees will come near our person … not one, you understand? And you will clean up the bodies. Well, what are you waiting for?”
Kay felt like a little schoolgirl, sitting by herself in the corner, but she was glad that she had tried to help No?, who seemed better already, the madness drained, a pleasing dullness in the way she moved. As for the petty tyrant who ruled their world, the Queen must be obeyed, but loyalty is best earned and never coerced. Kay would bide her time. She would find a way to show that hearts trump the Queen.
20
They gathered around the television set like a nuclear family. Theo, Egon, and Mitchell on the sofa, Mrs. Mackintosh perched on an ottoman, and Dolores in her wheelchair, the dog dozing at her feet. The Yankee pot roast had disappeared, the apple tart as well, and night had settled into the restive hours between supper and bedtime. Through sheer persistence, Dolores had been able to track down a copy of the video recording from the TV station in Burlington, and they were all ready for another point of view on the Halloween parade.
The biggest difference between the recordings was the quality and higher resolution. The whole piece had been constructed like a story and not merely a series of images marching across the screen. However, one did not see as much of the puppets on the news as they had on the home movie. More intercuts of the children and parents watching the parade go by, and a cute ten seconds of a little girl telling the reporter which puppet was her favorite. “The sticks one,” she had said. Kay had appeared twice in the story, both times fleetingly—in the parade and in the aftermath in the parking lot.
“I’m surprised you spotted her,” Theo said.
“She’s sharper than you think,” Mrs. Mackintosh said.
“Quiet, the both of you,” Dolores said. “I badgered them to send the B roll as well.”
Mitchell leaned forward. “B roll?”
“All the background stuff they shoot and then splice into the main story. Just watch.”
The cameraman had started with a panorama of the decorated streets of the small town, the children gathered at the edge of the sidewalk, sitting on the curb, waiting for the show. The footage jumped to the actual parade, three full minutes, with good shots of each of the puppets, from the tubby barrel man at the head to the giant queen at the end. Kay appeared from a different angle than in the home movie. She was clear and crisp and the shot stayed with her longer as her handler wobbled her forward. At the moment the puppet’s face was closest to the lens, Dolores froze the picture.
“That’s her. I would know my own daughter anywhere.”
Mrs. Mackintosh swiveled on the ottoman to face the three men. “I nearly fainted when I saw her. Whoever made that doll surely knew Miss Kay.”
Theo stared at the image on the screen. So much time had passed since he had last seen her. Lately he had been wondering just how true the face he conjured in his imagination was, between the idealized and the real, the desire to see her again so great that he had forgotten precisely what she looked like. Sometimes he could not picture her at all, and other times, he could close his eyes and re-create all the colors of her eyes, a rough patch of skin on her hand, a beauty mark behind her left ear. The paradox fell apart as he stared at the face on the TV. He, too, was certain that the puppet had been copied from his wife’s face.