Mystery at the Millennium Theatre
By Freya Bell
Freya Bell is a new Canadian writer residing in Alberta with her husband, cat, and dog. The head moderator of Worldsmyths, Freya has helped shape this anthology alongside her co-editors, all driven by her love of speculative fiction. Find out more at www.freyabellcreates.wordpress.com
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Irava stifled a yawn as she placed smelly beads of brown oil onto the workings of a piece of brass machinery built into the floor of the theatre’s backstage. Harnesses dangled far above her head in the rafters, fitted with clever hooks connected to anchors that had once supported the bodies of dozens of wooden marionettes. The marionettes had always said it didn’t hurt, but Irava couldn’t help but flinch at an old memory of them suspended above the audience. It had been years since they had enough functioning marionettes to put on a flying show but the theatre manager liked to keep the machines in working condition, just in case any of the broken marionettes woke up.
She yawned again and stretched, her back popping. It was late; the theatre curtains were long since drawn and the human dancers were asleep in their dormitories. Only she and Heta were still up, carrying out maintenance on the impressive machinery that made the Millennium Theatre a one-of-a-kind attraction. Sure, the Astaria a few blocks away had a team of professional illusionists that could make you feel like you had been transported to a faraway land. But that was just flashy, untouchable magic. The marionettes that lived and danced on this stage were real and tangible. They could talk to fans, shake their hands, sign autographs for them. An illusion couldn’t do that.
Irava sighed and reached for her wrench to tighten the bolts on the hoist. The crowds certainly didn’t agree with her, now that more than half of the marionettes had broken down. Fewer and fewer people came to their shows, even the ones with human dancers. The Great Sleep, the marionettes called it. Sleep? It seemed more like dying to Irava, but she wasn’t about to say that to them. It scared them enough as it was.
“Irava? Are you done yet?” Irava’s head jerked up as a voice called from the other end of the backstage area.
“Yes, Heta. Just a moment,” she called back. Despite the oil, the bolts squeaked as she hauled back on the wrench, and the sound seemed too big for the room. The backstage was packed with backdrops, props, and bits of costume; she’d have thought all that fabric would muffle the sound. Perhaps it was the loneliness of the place. Even in childhood this place had felt empty in spite of the clutter. She had been younger than the apprentice dancers when she arrived, and had spent a lot of time playing backstage. Irava could feel the weight of the silence on her shoulders like a physical thing. She chucked her wrench into her toolbox with a groan. Why was she so introspective tonight?
“Irava, are you coming?”
She stifled a second groan. “Yes, Heta. I’ve just finished up.”
Heta, always with her schedules and perfect order. No doubt the older woman was thinking of Irava’s tendency to daydream. Irava couldn’t help herself; her dreams were so much more real than her life here.
Irava stood and collected her toolbox. It’s not like life in the theatre was bad. She loved the marionettes. But now that Goldfeather had fallen into the Great Sleep, she had no one she liked to talk to. Heta was old and ornery, and Barnaby was on the opposite shift as her. Even when he had time, he was always running off somewhere.
Heta was stationed at the other lift over on the opposite side of backstage, and Irava wasn’t in a hurry to meet her. The Head of Maintenance took her duty over the marionettes dead seriously. Her sourness was legendary, enough to almost wrinkle Irava’s uniform with a glance, but she paid it no mind. Heta always looked like that. Nevertheless, she picked up her feet as she hurried over.
Irava has just passed midstage when a strange sound echoed out of the air vent in the wall beside her. The sound of electrical sparks and grinding metal brought her head up—the marionette cradles being activated. Irava frowned and set down her toolbox. No one should be in there at this time of night.
“I’ll be there in a moment, Heta,” Irava shouted. “I just need to check something.”
Irava turned right towards the back of the theatre and made her way past props of castles and dragons and silhouettes of painted knights, still needing repainting to prepare for tomorrow’s showing of Prospero’s Revenge. The sound of the cradle machinery powering down echoed through the vents, and she hastened her steps.
Several doors branched off the back wall of the theatre, leading into a labyrinth of gas-lit hallways and storage rooms. Irava took the first door on the left, past the dormitories of the human performers, past storage rooms for props and instruments. She strode to the back of the theatre, where a tall ornate door stood at the end of a wide hall. The polished dark wood of the door was carved with dancing figures of marionettes, their jointed limbs flung with wild joy.
Irava tried the handle. Locked, as it should be. But the sound of the machinery had been clear, so someone must be in there.
There were only a few keys. She had one, Heta had the second. Barnaby had the third key, and Master Blomstadt the fourth. No one had business in the Cradle Room at this hour. She pulled out her own key and stroked its filigree decorations. She had had to work hard to earn it, and the weight of it in her hand always brought her joy.
The lock turned under the touch of her key, and she eased the heavy door open. Well-oiled, it made no sound as it swung into the Cradle Room.
The room was narrow, but long. Gas lamps lit themselves as the door opened, another invention of the creator of the marionettes, Alistair Tompre. He had gone missing decades ago, and no one knew what happened to him. The lamps illuminated the strange devices lining both walls, like elongated chairs that the occupant could sit upright in while being fully supported. Forty marionettes slept there, their bodies held in place by deep red leather straps. Their hands lay on armrests set with copper inlays. They had to maintain physical contact with the copper while they rested; it revitalized them.
If anyone had been here, they were gone now. There was no sign of movement, and the crank at the back of the room was still.
She had seen inside one cradle once, when the brass panels had been removed to discover if they could be repaired so that the marionettes caught in the Great Sleep could wake up once again. It hadn’t worked; the knowledge required was lost after their inventor’s disappearance, and Master Blomstadt wasn’t about to pay to bring in a University thaumaturge to study them.
Irava reached out and adjusted a fallen strap on Champion’s cradle. He had only recently been taken by the Great Sleep. She hoped his dreams were sweet, if he dreamed at all.
Handsome Tom, Lady Moon, The Mariner, Elliott the Grin. They were the few that still woke up. Old Fisheye, Bold Eagle, Benny, Fenn. And Goldfeather. Her friends, now trapped in the Great Sleep.
She paused in front of Goldfeather’s cradle and brushed the blonde hair from her painted wooden face. They had been friends since Irava had arrived at the theatre as a small child. She’d been her favourite. Heta had allowed her to wake Goldfeather outside of showtimes so they could play together. The Sleep had taken her a few months ago, and Irava tried not to mourn, but it was difficult to act like she wasn’t dead. She sighed and continued down the hall.
And stopped.
Marilla’s cradle was empty.
Irava’s thoughts scrambled. A marionette weighed twice what a full-grown man did. You couldn’t just carry one away. This had to be why she’d heard the machinery moving, but who could have woken her up?
The inlays. Maybe they came on for her, some sort of… stored charge woke her? There had been a thunderstorm earlier. But no, Marilla would still be in here if she had woken up: the door was locked. Someone had to have taken her.
She should tell Heta.
No. Wait. Heta would blame her, say she forgot to lock the door in her daydreaming. What if she was fired! Irava had nowhere else to go, no family, no skills. No, calm down. One step at a time. Marilla wasn’t in her cradle. There had to be a logical explanation.
Irava would look around, check the area before reporting to Heta. She would look like an idiot if Marilla was found just around the corner.
She was no investigative Brownstaff, and had no powers to create tracer spells and reveal footsteps. She couldn’t recreate the scene from the wall’s memories. But she had determination. Marilla was a friend. She would find her.
The door bore no signs of tampering, no tell-tale scrapes from a lockpick. The carpet was clean and unmarked, as was the crank at the back of the room used to wake the marionettes. The crank’s wheels and cogs looked exactly as they had after this evening’s show, though she could hardly claim to understand them.
The marionettes slept peacefully in their cradles, bodies reclined and unmoving. Unbreathing. There was a time when she found that frightening, but now it was part of the charm of them.
Marilla’s cradle looked as it always did, polished and gleaming. The straps lay at the sides of the chair and were uncut.
Basically, the room was pristine, with nothing out of place.
Irava’s next stop was the equipment room. Located off the back of the Cradle room near the crank, it held everything needed to keep the marionettes dancing-fit. A shelf to Irava’s left held different oils; some for smoothing the action of joints, others for polishing. A pegboard hung beside it, where tools like pliers and screwdrivers rested in orderly rows. The right wall held a long table which Barnaby used to conduct repairs and fix up costumes.
It was the back wall she was curious about. Barnaby had once mentioned it getting warm in here. It was true: the air was still, and a little on the stuffy side. The large vent, as wide as her arms, was embedded into the wall several feet off the ground. It was made of a light, silvery metal, and, like so many mundane items in the theatre, was pierced by holes that made up the image of two dancing marionettes. It should be more than sufficient to provide fresh air for a room this size, but nothing stirred beyond its grate.
She may not have the powers of a Brownstaff, but before they even let you attempt a tracer spell, they taught you to study the situation with all your senses.
Irava closed her eyes.
Scents of oils and woods filled the air. The scent of a marionette. It was quiet, still. She heard no movement of fans. Maybe it had shut down, with no need for cool air so late at night.
She opened her eyes and reached up to examine the vent by feel. A thin layer of oil covered the cool metal. Irava frowned and dragged over the chair from the table. Climbing up, the oil tracked up the right edge of the vent. She ran her fingernails under the edge and pulled.
Something moved.
She pulled harder. Metal grated on wood as the vent began to pull forward, then stopped. Irava tugged firmly, and something unseen deep within the wall clicked, and the section of wall swung open on silent hinges. Someone had to have oiled them, and recently.
She smiled and paused before ducking through the secret door. The inside was dark, but light reflected from somewhere further down the tunnel. It was hard to picture someone dragging Marilla’s body down here, but it had to be the only explanation. She crept forward as quietly as she could.
The passageway led her to a round room with tunnels branching off into the darkness. Pipes and wires and things Irava couldn’t identify lined the walls. Moonlight from windows high above lit the dust motes that swirled in her wake but she couldn’t picture where the windows would appear on the roofline of the Millennium Theatre. The air wasn’t as fresh as it should be, considering the number of vents, but moved enough to stir the loose curls on her forehead if she stood still.
As she moved into the room, gas lamps on the walls lit themselves. The dust was not entirely undisturbed. Two sets of footprints led from the Cradle Room passageway and off to the right. They could belong to anyone, the imprints plain like a dancer’s shoe. She followed them into the darkness. Vents studded the walls at irregular intervals, allowing the gas-lamp’s light to illuminate her path. Peeking through, she could see into the backs of closets and storage rooms, office spaces and practise halls and into spaces she was pretty sure had no doors.
Other narrow passageways led off, with stairs going up and down. The footsteps trailed off in different directions - whoever they belonged to, they had wandered far. Irava picked one at random, one that led upward, towards the attics.
The tunnel twisted and grew narrower, and it wasn’t until she reached a crossroads that she realized the footprints were gone. No thick layer of dust up here. She was lost. Irava spun in a circle, but the passage looked the same in both directions, with unevenly spaced gas lamps and grey brick walls.
No choice but to continue forward. She came to a crossroads of five passageways before long, but not just any crossroads. A pair of dancing marionettes were depicted in a fine mosaic under her feet, the colours a washed-out orange under the light of the lamps. Above her were skylights showing weak moonlight and a cloudy sky.
The clouds parted and the moon shone, banishing the orange-tinged shadows to reveal a door set back in a recess. It too bore the motif of dancing marionettes, a circle of them inlaid in gold into its dark wood.
Irava ran her hands over the engraved metal and paused. Air stirred through cracks in the airlay, just barely, something a marionette could never detect with their wooden hands. She pressed them and they shifted, the air coming stronger from behind the panel of the door. Interesting. She pushed harder and the circle of dancers turned. She applied more pressure. Click. Mechanisms within the door came to life, and the circle of dancers spun.
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