The Motion of Puppets(86)

“Listen,” Kay said as the others settled in their places.

“Snowing again.” Olya sighed. “We will be buried alive till spring.”

Her sisters feigned sympathetic looks and flopped onto the railings of the stalls.

“I think it is a beautiful sound,” said the Good Fairy. “Makes everything quieter than usual somehow. Peaceful.”

The old barn groaned under the weight of the accumulating snow. Outside the white world was cold and empty. Kay put her ear against a crack in the wall to listen. The wind picked up from the west, whistling in the gaps, howling now and again. She thought of Theo in the storm, in the woods where the others had discarded the pieces of him. Caught in the branches of the trees, the tattered clothes snapped and rippled like ruined flags when the wind blew, and the paper limbs and hollow head made a kind of music. Kay could hear him singing, always singing for her.





Acknowledgments

Thank you to all of the magical puppet companies that inspired this story: Basil Twist, the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Pointless Theatre Co., and the Bread and Puppet Theater. Thank you as well to my agent, Peter Steinberg; to my editor, Anna deVries; and to all of the wonderful people at Picador. And, as always, thank you to Melanie, for making a better book.