When they got to the train station, Colette and Franny ran to Silenus and began asking questions, while Stanley slowly sauntered up behind them.
“What happened?” asked Colette. “What did you see?”
“Were they there?” Franny asked, frightened. “Were they really waiting for us? Are you all right?”
“We are all fine,” said Silenus. “And I don’t know exactly what we saw there. We’ll discuss all that on the train.”
“You don’t look so good, Kingsley,” said Colette. “Are you hurt?”
Kingsley was still standing crooked with the elbow of one arm held close. His skin had not gained any color, and a cold sweat clung to his cheeks. “No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’ll feel better once we get on the train.”
“Then let’s go,” said Franny. “I have all our tickets ready.” She held them up, and George saw her hands were heavily bandaged. Copper and burgundy stains were spreading through the wool from wounds below.
Colette said, “It was costly, but we’re still under budget, for now.”
“We’ll need one more,” said Silenus. He nodded in George’s direction. “For the boy.”
“The boy?” said Colette. She looked at George, incredulous. “He’s coming with us? Why?”
“Because I have some questions for him,” said Silenus. “Quite a few, actually. And besides, it’s no business of yours, girl.”
“It’s my damn business if it’s my damn budget that’s buying his ticket!” said Colette.
“But you’ve got room in your budget for this, don’t you?” said Silenus. “Isn’t there room for emergencies or some such?”
“I said to budget for emergencies, but you told me not to bother!” Colette said. “And we’re already at the limit for train fare!”
“I can pay for myself,” said George. “I have my own money.”
They all looked at him, surprised. “You do?” said Silenus.
“Yes,” said George. He was a little nettled by their disbelieving looks. “In fact, I have plenty of money. I could probably pay for all of your tickets, if I wanted to.” Then he turned around and marched toward the ticket booth with his head held high (despite Silenus’s derisive snort). He was about halfway there before he stopped, turned around, came back, and asked, “By the way—where are we going?”
“To Illinois,” said Franny. “To Alberteen.”
“To the sticks,” said Colette.
“To the next show,” said Silenus to her sharply. She gave him a surly look but did not respond.
George bought his ticket, which was indeed fairly costly, and on his way back over to them he noticed the cellist was standing next to the station benches, watching him. He gave George a little wave and motioned him over.
“Yes?” asked George.
Stanley reached behind a bench, lifted up George’s suitcase, and held it out to him.
“Oh, great!” said George, and took it. “I forgot that I’d left that at the theater! Where did you find it?”
Stanley reached into his coat and took out the blackboard again. He scribbled for a second and turned it around: HAD FALLEN OPEN BACKSTAGE. REFOLDED YOUR CLOTHES FOR YOU.
“Oh,” said George. “Well. Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
Stanley smiled and shrugged.
“What about your luggage? Did you just leave it all at the hotel?”
He began to write again. He wrote astonishingly fast and smoothly. It said: THAT IS BEING TAKEN CARE OF.
“Do you not talk?” asked George.
Stanley shook his head again.
“Is it an injury? Or…”
He thought about it, and wrote: YES. VERY OLD INJURY.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said George.
He then wrote: DO NOT MISS IT. NEVER HAD ANYTHING INTERESTING TO SAY. He smiled and shrugged again as if to say, “What can you do?” But then his face turned troubled and he gave George a curious look, as if something George had done had just given him a headache. He massaged one temple and blinked rapidly.
“Are you all right?” asked George.
Stanley smiled weakly, nodded, and motioned to the luggage car. They both carried over their luggage, but Stanley’s fingers never left his head.
The backdrop and table from Kingsley’s act were already loaded in the car, and Stanley secured his cello in the corner while George carelessly tossed his suitcase in. Once they were done Kingsley himself limped up with three little coffin-like boxes balanced in his arms.
“I know those!” said George. “Are your dummies in there?”
“My what?” said Kingsley, affronted.
“Your… your dummies. You know, your puppets?”
“They are my marionettes. They are very different from common puppets, or crude dummies.”
“Don’t marionettes have strings?” asked George.
“Are you so sure that mine do not?” said Kingsley. “Perhaps they have strings, and you simply did not see them.” Once he’d loaded them he gave George a haughty look and marched off to rejoin the others, who were now boarding the train.
“Well,” said George to Stanley. “He’s a little ridiculous, isn’t he?”
Stanley glanced at George. Then, with a dubious smile and a shake of the head, Stanley gestured to him to follow.
When George climbed in he moved to sit with them at the end of the passenger coach, but Silenus coughed uncomfortably and said, “Ah, listen, kid, we got some business stuff to discuss. Would you mind if you, uh…” He nodded toward the other end of the car.
“Oh,” said George, disappointed. “Are you sure? I’ll be very quiet. I won’t listen.”
“I’m sure.”
“Oh. All right then.” He got up to move.
“Thanks,” said Silenus.
As soon as George was several rows away the group began talking quietly. A great deal of it sounded like bickering, with Silenus’s angry growl often answering a question he apparently found impertinent. They argued straight through the train’s departure, with the clack and hiss of Stanley’s chalk punctuating the sounds of the locomotive. George could make out little of what was said.
After a while Franny stood up and sat down across the aisle from him. She smiled and said, “They talk much too fast for me. I tire of it very quickly.” She did look extremely tired. Heavy bags hung around her eyes, which were crisscrossed with red blood vessels.
“Well, it’s pretty late,” said George. “There are Pullman coaches at the back. I’m sure you could sleep there.”
“No,” she said, still smiling. “I don’t sleep.”
“You don’t… sleep? At all?”
“No. I try, frequently. I find a dark place, and I shut my eyes, and I try and drift away…” She leaned back and showed him, sitting motionless. She suddenly seemed like a statue made out of wax, sitting in the seat with its eyes closed. But then her eyes snapped open, and she said, “But I never do. I’m always awake, aware of everything that’s going on.”
“How do you live without sleep?” asked George.
“I ask myself that question every day,” said Franny. “I still can’t think of an answer.”
She was kneading the palms of her hands, where the bandages were stained. One bandage came unraveled at the wrist, and he spied a hint of black writing on the visible sliver of skin. She saw him looking, and moved to cover it up.
“How did you hurt your hands?” he asked.
“My act,” she said. “Have you seen it?”
“Yes! You were incredible! I have to admit, I’ve seen a lot of performers, but only very, very few of them compare to you.”
She smiled, but his praise did not seem to mean much to her.
“Did it go wrong?” said George. “Is that how you got injured?”
“Oh no,” said Franny. “It went perfect. It just happens nearly every time. Hands were not designed to bend and twist metal, or pick up statues, or juggle stones. The wear and tear is natural.”
“So it’s not fake? No rubber safes, or bars, or anything?”
“No, no. It’s all real. All the safes, real iron. All the bands, real steel. And the weight, all that weight… that’s real, too.” She seemed very weary, as if she could feel the stupendous weight of those safes and iron bars pushing down upon her now.
“How do you do it?” asked George.
She looked at him slyly. “Do you really want to know?”
“Sure.”
Franny glanced around. She leaned in and said, “I grit my teeth.”
“You what?”
“I grit my teeth when I do my act. You have to grit them the right way. But if you do it, it gives you great strength.” She flexed her arms as if to show off her bulging muscles, but she seemed as gaunt as ever. Then she winked at him, and touched the side of her nose.
“Oh. Does it hurt much?”
“Yes. Very much. But it’s manageable.”
“I see,” said George. And he did, to an extent. During some child shows at Otterman’s he’d heard the children’s shoes squelching as they’d walked off the stage. Their parents had been unable to buy them better shoes, and they’d danced to the point that their feet bled.
“Is it true that you can hear the men in gray?” said Franny. “That you can sense them, like a dowsing rod near water?”
“I guess,” he said. “It’s like everything freezes up around them. But the sounds are what I notice most. They all just die off. I suppose maybe it’s because I have such good hearing, but that doesn’t seem right.”
“He’s very interested in you,” she said, and nodded toward Silenus.
George sat up. “He is? Really?”
“Yes,” she said, but she did not share his excitement. Rather, she seemed very grave. “I would be careful, if I were you. Harry is a very clever man, but sometimes he’s not as right as he thinks he is. Sometimes he’s very narrow-minded. He sees what he wants to see. And he doesn’t understand how that could hurt those around him.”
“Oh,” said George.
“So, as I said, be careful.”
“Franny!” Silenus called from the other side of the car. “What are you doing? Come here, this concerns you.”
Franny gave him a quick smile, and stood and rejoined the group’s discussion. George watched her go. Then, feeling terribly alone, he leaned over and rested his head on the windowpane, and watched the midnight countryside speed by.
Once the troupe finished its summit Silenus stood and walked to the middle of the car, which was otherwise empty, and said, “All right. It’s late. I suggest we all get as much sleep as we can. We’ve got a free day tomorrow, but there’s rehearsal bright and early on Monday.”
“I hate traveling without our things,” said Colette. “Can you imagine what it feels like to sleep in this outfit?” She gestured to her white tights, which were only partially hidden by her coat.
“Listen, no one is happy about the current arrangements, but we will all just have to make do,” said Silenus. “Look at me, you think I like being stuck in my performance costume?”
“I packed some pajamas,” said George, eager to catch Colette’s eye. “You can borrow them for tonight, if you’d like. They’re silk, and very fashionable.”
She favored him with a cold stare. “You are, of course, aware that I am half a foot taller than you, and a girl?”
George’s face fell. “Well, no. I mean, yes, sorry, yes, I did realize that you were a, a girl, but—”
“Moving along,” said Silenus. “You should all get some sleep in the overnight coach. We’ll be at the hotel in several hours, and you can catch up on whatever rest you’ve missed then.”
“And if they’ve tracked us to the new hotel?” asked Colette.
“Then we’ll improvise,” said Silenus. “Which will be very hard to do if we’re all dead fucking tired. Now go on.”
All of them left except Stanley, who sat sideways in a chair across the aisle. Franny murmured, “I suppose I’ll wander down to the dining car,” as she left. George stood up to follow them to the Pullman, but Silenus clapped a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “Not you,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Silenus sat down next to George. He smelled of old tobacco and cedar, tinged with train smoke. He grumbled for a moment and reached into his pocket and took out a small flask. He took a long pull from it and offered it to George. “Fancy a taste, kid?” he said. “I’d imagine you’d want to, considering the stuff you saw today.”
George took the flask and allowed himself a small sip. He tried not to let his face curdle, but it did anyway.
“There you go, fire of the gods in you, chin chin,” said Silenus.
“Is that single malt?” asked George. He stifled a cough.
Silenus gave him a very hard look. “No. No, that is not single malt.”
“Oh, well,” said George. “I didn’t think so, but, you know, some of Islays have that flavor to them. That was why I asked.”
Silenus looked at him for a moment longer. “How old are you, kid?”
“I am nearly seventeen.”
“Sixteen, huh? I’d never have guessed.”
“Oh. Thank you,” said George proudly, though there was an edge to Silenus’s intonation that made him wonder if the comment was entirely genuine.
Silenus took the flask back and had a swig that absolutely dwarfed George’s sip. Judging by his red eyes, it was the last in a long line. “They say it’s not for the young, but they also say it’s not for the old, and look at me. It’s the only thing that keeps me percolating sometimes, I swear to whatever god you fucking like, so what do they know.” He stared out the window. The car rattled and clanked as the train cut a new swath through the countryside, and the lights darkened a little. “Ah, well. Busy day, eh, George? What would you call it? A win? A defeat? A stalemate?”
“I’m not sure, sir. To be honest, I… don’t really know what’s going on at all.”
“Don’t call me sir, kid. Call me Harry. And you’re not alone in the not-knowing game. Most days we’re all playing. But one thing I’m keen to know, George, is why the hell you were backstage in the first place.”
“What do you mean?” asked George.
“I mean, why did some kid feel the need to sneak backstage and warn me about what was waiting for us?” asked Silenus. “I don’t know if I have a guardian angel, but if I do and he sent you, then he’s missed a lot of fucking opportunities.”
George thought about what to say. “I just… heard those men in the hotel talking about you, and I knew I had to help,” he said. He was not quite sure why he was lying; mostly it was because he did not yet know what this man was, and he found he feared the answer.
Silenus watched him shrewdly. “Just knew you had to help? Out of the goodness of your heart?”
George felt sure that Silenus could sense his lie, but he drummed up his pride. “Well, yes. Is that so strange to you?”
Silenus grunted and took another sip from his flask. “Very,” he said. “Especially since it’s gotten you into such a heap of shit, hasn’t it?” Then he drifted off into thought.
George wondered what to say next, and found he had so many questions he was not sure which one would get out of him first. He wanted to know about the men in gray, and the song, and most of all he wanted to know about Silenus and his mother, and why he’d chosen her and she him and why he’d never returned. But now that George had the opportunity, all his confidence vanished. Silenus did not seem like a family man in any way. He did not appear eager for a son, and the idea that he might have one emerging from his long-forgotten past had certainly not occurred to him yet.
George was not even sure if Silenus remembered his mother at all. So rather than asking any of the questions he really wanted to ask, he said, “Do you mind if I ask you something, sir?”
“I mind very much, but I’ll tolerate it,” Silenus said.
George looked at Stanley, who was watching him. “Is it all right if he’s here?”
“Stan is completely trustworthy,” said Silenus. “I’d be lost without him. Anything I hear, Stanley can hear.” As if to corroborate his faith, Stanley nodded with a mild smile.
“There was a show you put on in a little town to the south of here,” said George. “A very small town, just a couple of months ago. I just wanted to know… if you’d ever been there before then. For an earlier show.”
“What was the name of this place?”
“Rinton,” said George.
Silenus gave him a puzzled look and lifted his eyes to ponder the question. “Rinton?” he said, as if the word was foreign to him.
And there was something in the way he echoed the name that drove all hope from George’s heart. He realized Silenus did not remember anything about George’s hometown, not even his most recent visit, so he almost certainly did not recall his mother or anything that had lead to George’s conception. Their relationship must have been forgettable and trivial, and George’s creation incidental.
Silenus pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, I can’t recall. I don’t remember any time before that. But the names of these towns kind of blend together in your head after a while. You got anything, Stan?”
Stanley was staring at George curiously, but he only shrugged.
“Oh,” said George. He hoped his face did not show how crushed he felt. “All right.”
“Is that all you wanted to ask me, kid?” said Silenus.
“Yes,” said George faintly.
Silenus shook his head and chuckled. “That’s your only question? You’re an odd one, I’ll say that. There’s a lot about you I find confounding, but the one thing that really gets me is that… well, you were awake. You, some fucking kid backstage, stayed awake throughout the whole of the fourth act, or so it seems. Do you know what that means? Or what the fourth act even is?”
“No,” said George. “Not really. It… changes things, doesn’t it?”
Silenus weighed whether or not he should answer. “Maybe. In a way.”
“It makes something reach in, into the theater, and then… I don’t know what. But I heard that song before, and felt it change things then, too.”
“In Rinton?” said Silenus. “That was the first time you heard it?”
George was quiet as he thought. Then he said, “No. No, I missed your show in Rinton.”
“Then you saw us before Rinton?”
“No,” said George. “Tonight was the first time I saw you. But it wasn’t the first time I heard the song you played.”
Stanley and Silenus both sat forward. Their eyes were fixed on George, searching every part of him, and Silenus hardly noticed that the ash from his cheap cigar was threatening to fall upon his lapel. “Do tell,” he said.
“I didn’t remember it at first,” said George. “I never even knew it’d happened. Then just tonight, when I heard your chorale, it… it woke something up in me. Something recognized the song that you played. I remembered what had happened, a little. But what it means is beyond me.”
“Then please be so kind as to remember it again, kid,” said Silenus. “I’d like to hear this.”
George nervously glanced at Stanley again.
“I already told you Stan is safe,” said Silenus impatiently. “Now go on, kid. Tell us. Tell us about the song you heard.”
The train car rattled around them, and the lamps flickered. George waited for them to return, then took a deep breath and began to speak.
It had taken place when George had just entered the second grade, and like most of George’s beginnings with anything this one had been a fair disaster. On his first day he’d managed to exasperate his teacher and irritate his fellow students, chief among them Benny Russell, a squat boulder of a child who’d somehow taken a comment of George’s out of context and assumed that George was ridiculing his shoes. After receiving more than his fair share of bloody noses and bruised ribs, George had begun hiding out in the old dead creeks on the north side of town after school. Benny Russell had eventually forgotten about his grudge, but by that time George had become fascinated by his hideout, turning his attention to the gulleys and the ravines, the sides of each one layered and lined like crumpled silk, with strange, earthy treasures peeking from their many creases.
George found old tin cans, ancient signs, lumps of quartz, and roots grown into strange shapes and patterns. These he especially prized, since many of them seemed to have grown into the shapes of masks or faces, with malformed eyes and bulging pig snouts. He used a roll of twine to tie the root-faces to sticks, and set them along the ravines to ward away spirits and enemies, or at the very least Benny Russell.
He passed that summer like the overseer of a quarry, making detailed plans that accomplished little but were discussed in important tones with many invisible assistants. Sometimes he shifted his hoard of tin cans with his stockpile of iron stakes, pretending that the cans were coveted by an enemy that would love to catch him unawares. On these days he’d move his army of root-faces, lining them up to stare down his assailants and prevent a new attack.
It was the day after moving one squadron of root-faces that George returned to find something had changed. When he approached his miniature army, he stopped short and barely managed to stifle a cry of surprise.
He looked his wards over. He wasn’t seeing wrong: though he’d very definitely left them facing out of the creek in different directions toward the Allsten fields, they were now all facing in, and seemed to focus upon one point in the woods, like they had all witnessed some strange event and were still gaping at it.
George, suspecting meddling, began circling through his kingdom, looking for marks of disturbance, but he could find none. He arranged the root-faces differently, not moving them far but making it clear that they were his, and daring whatever saboteur it’d been to try again.
When he returned the next day he found that the root-faces had turned again, all of them staring into the woods with their uneven eyes and twisted, slack mouths, and again they seemed to be looking at one thing in particular. George inspected each of the sticks, looking at their bases for any bent grass blades or shoe prints, but he could find none. It was as though they had all spun around of their own accord.
George turned to see what they were looking at. He walked from pole to pole, peering through their eyes, and decided that the root-faces had all been made to stare into the side of a very small hill, not more than forty yards into the woods.
George surveyed the area around the hill. He was no fool, and immediately felt it was some sort of trap, possibly set by some of his old enemies who’d finally found his hideout. He selected a stout stick, and swung it several times to feel its heft, with the additional bonus of intimidating anyone who was watching. Then he ventured toward the hill, shifting from tree to tree and looking to see if anything moved. When nothing did, he approached the hill directly, calling out, “I’m armed and I’m mad and I don’t care who knows it!”
There was no answer. He looked around at his army of wards. They were silent, but seemed watchful. George wondered if he’d somehow invested them with intelligence, and they’d actually seen something.
He stopped when he came near the hill. It seemed a very old thing, a raw mass that had been shaped by slow, glacial forces, chewed by teeth of ice weighing thousands of tons. Yet there was something about its lumpy edges, or perhaps the way the wet, black stones peeked from beneath its bright green grass, that made him feel as if it had been constructed around a point, perhaps to conceal some object below. Then he noticed that there was a very small path that ran up the side and almost split the knoll in half.
He walked to the mouth of the path and looked back, and saw his dozens of root-faces staring at him. Perhaps it was the way they were situated on the outskirts of the forest, but it almost felt like the very landscape was arranged around this spot as well. Maybe the rocks and the trees and the streams themselves were also watching the mouth of this path, their attention magnetically drawn here, if they had any attention to give.
George felt the fleeting instinct to turn and run. But he did not, and instead walked up the path to the top of the hill.
He found that the hill was actually hollow, and there was a small, shady dell set in the middle, the edge ringed with holly trees. He began to follow the path down and discovered that the center was very moist and the earth very soft, perhaps fed by an underground stream. The center was deeper than he’d expected, as though the dell was actually below the rest of the earth, but he forgot about this when he heard a sound: a soft moaning, like the wind dragging over some hard aperture, though it was not unpleasant. It was almost like a chime, faint and atonal. He listened to it grow and fade, and climbed the rest of the way down into the dell in search of its source.
In the center of the dell the skies seemed gray and the air wet and cold. The black granite that had peeked out from under the tussocks on the outside were bare and exposed here, the loamy flesh of the knoll scraped away to reveal its bones. Yet though this place should have felt strange and frightening, it did not: it felt calm and peaceful here, like the chaotic comings and goings of the world outside could never pierce the skin of this place. Star lilies grew from the wet gravel in the bottom of the dell, and in some places there was a blue-fringed moss that almost seemed to glow. It felt, in some way, eternal.
George heard the soft moan again. It seemed as though the sky shivered with it, and he realized the moan now sounded like someone singing.
There was a crevice in between two of the black stones, and George guessed the sound was coming from between them. He went to the stones and peered through the large crack, and there the song seemed louder, like a low, breathy hum.
He squinted and saw there was something on the wall of the crevice. It looked, he thought, almost like a squiggle of light wriggling across the stone, like light reflected off a nearby brook. George saw no water, nor any light to reflect off of it, yet there the little glow remained, a faint, miniature lightning bolt that jiggled and danced in the dark.
Curious, George reached out to touch it. As his fingers grew close, the small vein of light slowed its dance, as if it could sense his fingertips, and almost seemed to wait for him.
When his fingertips were mere millimeters away, George began to feel an immense pressure pushing in on him from every side. It built until it was as if he were submerged under thousands of pounds of cold iron, pushing him down and smashing him against the earth. If he could have opened his mouth to scream, he would have, but the weight was so immense that he could not even blink. And yet his finger kept moving toward the little light, drawn in like a stone tumbling down a cliff side.
Then he heard it: a voice, or perhaps many voices, even millions of them, droning very low with a deep bass note pulsing, and some of the voices switched and found some higher register, while others swiveled through their ranges to reach notes that his ears could barely understand. And somehow George knew that these voices were doing more than singing, that for each second they sustained a note they were pushing and pulling at something, teasing at enormous things he could not see…
Then his finger made contact, and the voices rose to a loud shout. The squiggle of light flashed bright, and he felt as if the sky opened up and something rushed into him, like he had swallowed the seas and the stars and the shadows themselves, and he was certain he would split down the sides. The little vein of light pulled him closer and closer until it seemed to finally swallow him, and the world went blessedly silent and dark.
When George awoke later, curled up in a hollow in one of the dead creeks, he felt as though he’d had the best sleep of his life. He remembered his strange dream of the hill and the singing voices in the dell, but once he cleared the sleep from his eyes he saw that the root-faces were not actually facing in one direction at all, and the hill was little more than a mound of dirt. When he walked to it he found it solid through and through. He walked away, feeling slightly loopy, wondering what the dream had been about. And the rest of that strange summer afternoon he dismissed, and eventually forgot entirely.
When he finished his story, Stanley and Silenus stayed utterly still. The ash of Silenus’s cigar had finally followed through on its threat and was now streaked down his lapel. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “That’s all you remember? You left nothing out?”
“I don’t think so,” said George. “But even though I heard it only for a moment in that hill, I know it was the same as the one you played in your fourth act.”
“Hm.” Silenus stared back out the window. “I’ll have to think on this for a while.”
“Do you know what happened?” said George. “Or what it was?”
“What did I just tell you?” snapped Silenus. “Let me think.”
George fell quiet, abashed. Silenus turned to look at Stanley, whose face was fixed in a look of confused dread, and they seemed to share some silent communication. Silenus bowed his head, thinking. Then he looked up and stared into George’s face. He shifted his head from side to side, as if trying to see George in a better light. Finally he asked, “And you say you’re from Ohio?”
“Yes?”
“You’re sure? You’re positive you’re from here?”
“Well… yes. I’m pretty sure. I certainly don’t remember being from anywhere else.”
“Hm,” said Silenus. Then he shook his head, as if disappointed. “It’s the oddest fucking thing…”
“Never mind. I’m going to make a proposition to you, kid. I can answer your questions for you, but I’m going to need some time. Three weeks, in fact.”
“Three weeks!” said George. “You can’t answer those questions for three weeks?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’ll take me a bit to figure all this out.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Too much for me to be willing to answer without reservations,” said Silenus. He scratched the side of his head, putting his top hat on a tilt, and sighed.
“What am I supposed to do until then?” said George.
“Come with us,” said Silenus. “We have three theaters we’re hitting in those three weeks. Come with us, help us load and unload, do whatever needs doing, and most of all, stay close and stay safe. I’ll compensate you for your time.”
“How much?” said George.
“How much? I don’t know… I’ll kick in for your food, and your lodgings, and—”
“I was getting forty a week at my position before,” said George.
“Forty a week!” cried Silenus. “Christ, kid, I’m not made of money! I can’t afford to pay some kid forty a week!”
“But I’m not just some kid. You won’t tell me what I am, but apparently I’m important to you.”
Silenus glared at him, but said, “Twenty.”
“Twenty? That’s pocket change! I wouldn’t consider less than thirty! I could be making twice that performing, if I wanted to. I’m in very high demand, you know.”
“Oh, is that so?” said Silenus.
“I am a classically trained pianist,” said George loftily.
“Jesus,” said Silenus. “High demand, he says. Classically trained pianist, he says. Pocket change, he says. I weep for the coming generations.”
“I saved your life,” said George.
“And I saved yours,” said Silenus, his voice a low purr. “You don’t have any idea what’s looking for you, but I do. You’re in worse trouble than you could ever know, kid.”
George considered it, and reflected that he did not want to know what Kingsley had seen in that street, the mere sight of which seemed to have aged or wounded him in some invisible manner. “Fine, then,” he said. “Twenty a week.”
Silenus stuck his hand out, and the two of them shook. “Now listen closely: there will be times in those three weeks when Stanley and I will have to leave you and the group,” he said. “You will not come with us, nor will you ask any questions about our absence. In those instances you will stay with the group and do whatever Colette says to do. But in all others you stick close to me or Stanley, and do not wander off and talk to strangers.”
“Fine,” said George.
“And whatever happens,” said Silenus, “if you ever hear that… that silence you heard outside the hotel again, you drop whatever it is you’re doing and get me straightaway.”
“I understand,” said George. “Can I ask you a question, Harry?”
“I suppose.”
George thought about it, and asked, “What are you, exactly?”
“What am I?”
“Yes. You’re not a performer, or just a performer. I’ve seen vaudevillians do a lot of things before, but I’ve never seen one pull reflections off glass. So what are you?”
Silenus smirked, sat back in his seat, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. “You’re wrong, kid. I am just a performer. I’m just putting on a show you haven’t seen before.”