The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue Read Free Book Online Page B

accord. We lucky few can move about as long as the people are not watching. Midnight to first light, we are free. Well, freedom is all relative, of course. Free within the confines of the Back Room. Free to move about, talk with one another, reconnect with old friends and meet new ones. Like you.”
    She remembered that there were people who would be wondering where she was. “And we cannot leave the Back Room?”
    â€œWhy would anyone ever want to leave?” Nix laughed.
    â€œNot on our own accord,” said Mr. Firkin. “What would people think if suddenly puppets could move like ordinary folk?”
    One by one, like raindrops trailing down a windowpane, the others slid off their places on the shelves and moved toward the table. The marionettes and rod puppets marched her way. The hand puppets appeared to be gliding on the hems of their cloth bodies, silent as ghosts. Some of them leapt to the floor as Mr. Firkin had done. Others climbed the legs of the table to join the rest as they surrounded her, curious, tempted but tentative. Three of the creatures, large marionettes in nineteenth-century dresses in dark formal colors, stayed behind, whispering to one another like sisters. She counted a devil, a fairy, a hag. A black man with white hair in a white judge’s robe, and a white man with black hair in a black judge’s robe. A rod puppet dared to touch Kay’s hair and then quickly drew back her finger. A glove puppet with long ears, wide black eyes, and a sharp muzzle sniffed at her feet with his black rubber nose.
    â€œHe looks like Pluto.” She laughed.
    â€œWell, he’s not,” said Nix. “He’s just an old dog who does nothing but bark and get into trouble.” On cue, the hound woofed twice and then sat back on its skirt, wagging a thin leather tail that curled at the tip.
    â€œThese are the players,” Mr. Firkin said with a flourish. “Our company.”
    â€œAnd who are the giants? Where have they gone?”
    None of them wanted to be the first to speak, as though they were operating on a covenant of silence. Nix shrugged his shoulders, and Mr. Firkin looked away when Kay confronted him. From their place at the back of the crowd, the Three Sisters cracked. “They are the puppeteers,” they said in unison.
    â€œThe makers and unmakers,” the wooden fairy said. “In service to the man in the glass jar.”
    â€œTut-tut,” said Mr. Firkin. He put a finger to his lips to silence her. “Enough of your philosophy. The man is called the Quatre Mains, the woman is the Deux Mains. They decide when you are to stay in the Back Room and when you get to be part of a show. They choose who performs, who must wait.”
    â€œAnd what if I don’t want to wait?” Kay said. “What if I want to go home?”
    The tallest of the Three Sisters sauntered to her side and draped a thin arm over Kay’s shoulders. On her sharp angular face, she wore a melancholic expression, a look of long suffering and heartbreak over the absurdity of life. She stroked Kay’s face with a delicate finger. “You don’t go home, dahlink. Not by your own doing, in any case. You are here for duration.”

 
    5
    In the alley behind the Back Room, a mockingbird was singing, trying out a few bars from a dozen different melodies, looking to impress any potential females in the area. How strange, Kay thought, to wander so far north. He might be repeating those same songs for a long, long time. The bird reminded her of her husband and how long and ardently he had wooed her, how long she had resisted. For the first time since her transformation, Kay was missing him. Not in the way she used to long for him after a few days apart, but in a deeper way, a feeling she had not had before, a realization that their destinies had changed, perhaps inexorably. The thought that he, too, might be lonesome troubled her, yet she knew that little could