Irava cleared her throat. “Master Blomstadt is questioning the others and sent us here to wake you. I know it’s unlikely, seeing that you were asleep, but do you remember anything?”

Lady Moon shook her head, red curls swaying against the white paint on her throat. “We followed our routine, same as every night. Marilla was looking forward to another showing of Prospero’s Revenge, and we went to sleep by the ninth bell like always. And we all sleep so soundly, I recall nothing between falling asleep, and waking up.”

The Mariner nodded in agreement and plopped his leather hat over his grey wig. Elliot looked away and covered his permanent, broken grin with a wooden hand.

“Elliot, have you got something to add?” asked Irava.

Elliot shuffled his feet and stared at the ground. The Mariner nudged him. “Elliot, the lady asked you a question.”

“It’s just… I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“Oh, Elliot.” Heta reached out and patted his arm. “That means nothing, maybe we just need to replace your copper plates.”

Elliot shook his head sadly. “That’s what we tried for Goldfeather too, but she never woke up again, did she?” He sighed. “But, that’s unimportant. I heard voices last night as I drifted in and out of sleep. A man’s voice. I couldn’t hear what he said, he was too far away, but I think I heard the crank too. I think he woke Marilla up.”

Irava raised her eye at Barnaby, who flushed and looked away. “I talk to myself when I do maintenance, so what? I didn’t do anything to Marilla.”
Heta nodded. “Of course, Barnaby. We don’t suspect you, do we, Irava?

Irava paused. “There’s still the matter of Elliot hearing a man’s voice, and you’ve admitted to being in here alone”
Barnaby flushed bright red. “It’s not like that! I would never do anything to harm the marionettes. You aren’t the only one that loves them, you know.”

“Then talk, Barnaby. Why was Elliott hearing a man’s voice?”

Barnaby flushed deeper, mouth working as he searched for words. He muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” asked Irava in a sharp voice.

He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I was in here with Taera. That’s… that’s why I had my shirt off.”

“Oh. Oh!” said Irava, exasperated.  “Barnaby! She had better corroborate this.”

Barnaby winced. “I hope so, too. You know what Master Comard thinks about ‘fraternization’”.

Heta sniffed. “He thinks, rightly, the chorus girls and the theatre staff shouldn’t let themselves get so distracted!”

“Speaking of distracted,” interjected Irava, “We should get back on task. Assuming Barnaby’s story is true, that still leaves a mysterious person or persons working the machinery and taking marionettes.” She gestured up the length of the space. “If it wasn’t for the sound of the machinery I heard earlier, I would have assumed one of us just forgot to lock the door, and that Marilla’s cradle malfunctioned and she just woke up and wandered off.”

“Marilla would do no such thing!” Tom spat with a glare. “She loved performing, she loved us! She would never leave us.” 

Irava’s face softened. “I’m sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean anything by it. You know how these old things are. Maybe there was a malfunction, maybe the cradle gave her nightmares and she didn’t know what she was doing.”

Tom turned away, arms crossed and face hard. “The theatre is our life. None of us would do anything to jeopardize it.”

Irava patted his hard arm. “I know, Tom. We just have to explore every possible explanation, no matter how absurd. Is there anything else you can tell us about Marilla? Has she run into any trouble with the staff, the performers?”

Tom hesitated a moment before dropping his arms. “Marilla’s a good person.”

“I know, Tom.”

“It’s just… The human performers annoyed her. She was always saying things about them, how clumsy they are. But they were just complaints, she barely even talked to the girls.”

Irava nodded. “For what it’s worth, Taera doesn’t think much of Marilla, either.”

Tom flinched at the name, but offered no explanation.
Irava frowned at him, but turned to Heta. “I think we’ve learned all we can here. It’s time we go into the vents.”

Leading the others, Irava retraced her footsteps and found her way back to the prints in the dust. She pointed to them. “See here? I followed them as far as I could, but some passages are less dusty than others, and I lost the trail. That’s when I found the office and the notes. I can lead you there after we find Marilla.”

Heta nodded, and they split up to cover more passageways.. 

Irava continued down the leftmost passage. The floor was clean and dust free, but ten minutes of wandering the footprints reappeared. They came and went, accompanied at times by a second set of larger footprints. Whoever had taken Marilla had definitely come this way.

The lights were more sparse here, and in the darkness she ran into an unseen set of stairs. She rubbed her bruised toes and sat on the step with a groan. But wait. Somewhere above her. Was that a voice?

Irava stood and slowly felt her way up the staircase. Yes, two voices: a man’s and a woman’s. They sounded familiar, but the echo distorted them, and she couldn’t quite determine to whom they belonged.

Light shone from a large vent at the top of the tall, narrow staircase. She slowed as the voices grew louder. They were near the vent, on the other side. She crept up to it, noting that both large and small footprints disturbed the dust here.

“...Replace me! I’m not about to let that filthy air breather take everything I’ve built up here,” said the woman, her voice sharp and biting.

“Master Blomstadt would never let that happen; he knows we are the reason people come to the Millenium Theatre. Please, just let Taera go and come back to the Cradle Room!” The man’s voice was pleading and tired.
“Silence! If you want to see your Goldfeather awake, you will help me with this.”
The man moaned with frustration.

Irava crept closer. She knew those voices, she was certain. The vent opened up onto the top of the stairs that led to the dormitories. The door into the women’s rooms was on the right, the men’s on the left. The staircase itself was wide and carpeted, to minimize the echoes. She almost didn’t see the speakers in the faint gas-light at first. They stood perfectly still. It was their lack of breathing that finally allowed the clues to come together in her mind.

She had found Marilla.

The marionette stood facing her, with the silhouette of a larger male figure blocking most of Irava’s view. But she’d recognize that strongman costume anywhere, with the fake lion skin cape and the leather breeches. It was Champion. But hadn’t he fallen into the Great Sleep?

There was a third figure, a human girl tied up at the top of the stairs, mouth kept shut by a length of cloth. Taera! But Marilla wouldn’t really hurt her, would she?

Marilla hissed, her normally smiling face contorted with rage. Champion had his huge hand wrapped around her upper arm, and she twitched with a half-hearted attempt to escape his grasp. But Champion held strong and muttered something under his breath. Marilla shook her head and replied with bared teeth, and pointed towards Taera with her free arm. Champion made a cutting motion and began pulling her towards the vent Irava was hiding behind.

Irava scrambled backwards, but before Champion could reach the vent, Marilla reached into her embroidered silk robe and brought out a knife. She stabbed it into the joint of Champion’s arm, and he released Marilla with a surprised yelp. Marilla ran towards Taera, but Champion caught her by the back of her wig, pulling her back. Irava scrambled at the vent, trying to open it. Marilla spun and grabbed the knife out of Champion’s arm and swung it at him, scoring his wooden chest. But he refused to let go. She struggled, wig ripping, and slashed at Champion again.

Champion dodged backwards, and Marilla fell forward. He tried to catch her, but she had too much momentum, and went crashing down the stairs. Her wooden skull bounced off several steps as she tumbled head over heels. She hit the bottom with a thunderous crack and lay still.

Irava scrambled with numb fingers at the vent. Champion approached Marilla with slow steps, the joints of his face turned down with grief. Irava pushed the vent open with a clang, and Champion looked back at her, frozen. 

“Champion, wait!” said Irava. Her voice broke Champion’s pose, and he bolted down the stairs. He hesitated at Marilla’s prone form before running off towards backstage.

Irava hurried to Taera. She tore off the cloth and Taera burst into tears. 

“She was going to kill me, she said she would!” Taera wailed. Irava undid the ropes binding her and nearly toppled over as Taera threw herself into her arms. “Thank you, thank you! You saved my life.”

It was difficult to pull Taera’s arms off of her, but Irava managed to wiggle out of her grasp. She took a deep, calming breath and ran her hands through her curls. “I think you should be thanking Champion, not me. There’s no way I would have been able to stop her myself.”

Irava stood and approached Marilla as she lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs like last year’s playbill. Her face was crushed and broken, and one shiny eye was missing. Her left arm was flung to the side at an unnatural angle, and the dark wood of her shattered form glistened in the light from the gas lamps. The fluids that passed as her lifeblood leaked into the carpet, staining it a vibrant mustard yellow. Irava stared, speechless with disbelief. Tears prickled her eyes, and she knelt and reverently closed the one remaining eye. Marilla may have been murderous, but with so few marionettes left in the world, it was still a tragedy.

The sound of Marilla falling down the stairs had travelled far. Heta burst from the open vent, followed closely by Barnaby. Taera ran and threw herself into a baffled Heta’s arms, who patted her back awkwardly. Irava watched as their eyes traveled from her to Marilla’s body and put her hands up.

“I realize how this must look,” said Irava.

Heta’s face was hard as she approached. “Explain.”

Irava took a deep breath and told her of the unseen voices. Heta’s face moved from anger to incredulity to sadness as she described the struggle between Marilla and Champion.

“...Marilla was saying something about being replaced by the human dancers. She was trying to get Champion to do something to Taera. I think… I think she meant for him to kill her.”

“This is almost too much to take in. Taera, can you confirm this?” said Heta.

Taera sniffled and nodded. “Marilla’s always hated the dancers. She said such horrible things to me.”

Heta sighed. “What a mess. We must go into the tunnels if we are to untangle it. Approach Champion slowly if you do see him. The boy has a good heart, he would hurt no one on purpose.” 

A sound from inside the walls—footsteps in the distance. Heta gasped. “He’s in the vents.”

Irava led them into the network of tunnels, pausing from time to time to listen for the echoes of Champion’s footsteps. They went down a different path than before and the passageway led steeply downward and turned in on itself in a spiral. Gas lamps sputtered to life as they passed and lit the ramp with orange light. The dancing marionette motif of the vent carving continued here on the walls.

The dusty footprints opened up to a second round room, much larger than the passageways above. Rows of shelves lined the doorway, bearing marionette limbs and half-carved heads. Tables hooked up to wires that disappeared into the ceiling stood in the center of the room in a circle.

And on the far side of the room, beside glowing tanks of yellow lifeblood, was a cringing marionette. Champion. The strongman marionette was curled up on the floor, hands covering his face.

Heta motioned for him to step forward and Champion reluctantly stood.

“Alright Champion, slowly now. What’s going on here. Who woke you? I thought you were in the Great Sleep?”

The bulky marionette shuffled forward, head bowed.

“I was never asleep, Sir. Marilla woke me, made me pretend to be in the Great Sleep so I could help her.”

Irava and Heta exchanged a confused glance.

“But who woke her up? What happened with her, up by the dormitory?” asked Irava

“She woke herself up. The copper inlays just came on sometimes, and… I’m so sorry Miss Irava. Marilla, oh, Marilla.” Champion covered his face with his hands, sobs echoing up from the barrel of his chest. “I didn’t mean to do it! We were fighting. She was trying to get up to the dormitories. She didn’t want them training to take her place. She hated them. I tried to stop her, but she attacked me. She went down, so I ran.”

“You ran here? Why?” asked Irava.

“I didn’t know what else to do! When Marilla first woke me up, she promised that she could fix the others, so of course I said yes. I’d love to see my Goldfeather again.”

Irava held up a hand. “Marilla knows how to fix the marionettes? Why did she leave everyone to sleep?”

“She doesn’t know how to, not yet. She’s been looking for Master Tompre’s office. He kept it hidden, even from us,” Champion turned and gestured at the lifeblood tanks. “I came here to see if I could wake Goldfeather up myself, now that Marilla is… Gods. I can’t believe she fell. I never wanted that to happen!”

“I believe you, Champion. We all know you would never hurt anyone on purpose,” said Irava.

Heta cleared her throat. “What’s this about Marilla waking herself up, that’s what I want to hear about. Did she turn her own key?”

Champion’s shaggy blonde hair swayed as he shook his head. “No, nothing like that. She said it was her Cradle, it didn’t stay off. Marilla didn’t need a key because the copper plates were always active for her. She’s been wandering around this place by herself for months now, trying to find the office.”

 Irava cleared her throat and held up the leather notebook. “About that…”

Barnaby gasped at the sight of A.T. stamped on the cover. “Is that…”

“I’ve seen that before, it’s his!” said Champion.

“It’s true, these are Master Tompre’s notes. Oh, Heta! We might be able to wake everyone else up!” Irava’s smile faded. “But first we must attend to Marilla. Move her to the maintenance room, now that we have Master Tompre’s notes it may be possible to repair her. Even if she was mad with rage. But after that, we celebrate. The Millennium Theatre has a future again.”

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