“Andre! My pantaloons!”

Annoyed, Andre finished fastening Giuseppe’s fur lined cloak in place and whispered, “What about them?”

“They snagged on the back of the carriage set,” the older boy hissed. “Check them.”

“Where?”

Guiseppe gestured at the back of his left knee and Andre twisted about, trying to get a good look at the fabric of the actor’s tights without falling off the narrow platform behind the set. It took a few seconds to get a good look at it. There was a small rip there so Andre focused for a moment and conjured a small wooden clothespin into existence with his Gift. Then he folded the cloth over to hide the rip and pinned it shut. Then he tucked the pin into the back of Guiseppe’s knee high boots and readjusted his cloak so it fell naturally again. “There. It will hold until the end of this scene.”

The actor wasn’t paying attention to him. His focus was on the stage, where Maestro Mastroianni was finishing a wistful song as the other two stage hands bustled about in cloaks, posing as passers-by while clearing the stage. “Hurry,” Guiseppe whispered. “You’re going to miss your next cue.”

Since he was running late because of the actor’s carelessness Andre wasn’t exactly grateful for the older boy’s warning. Still, it was true. Andre took two long strides down the platform and launched himself off it. Stakes of varying heights were driven into the ground as makeshift stairs but he ignored all but two of them, briefly resting the balls of his feet on the four inch square pieces of wood while his weight tipped forward. 

He rolled into a somersault and vaulted forward with the added speed to reach his next spot just as Isobella started to move her giant puppet into position. Andre slipped in front of her and grabbed hold of the paper jaws of the dragon. Together they carefully slipped the puppet’s face through an opening in the canvas backdrop that hid them from view but let the dragon’s torso sized head show to the audience.

At first the crowd just made a quiet murmur. In truth, the puppet wasn’t much to look at, there were other acting troupes that had more impressive props to use in the story of Ulysses and the Dragon. But the prop wasn’t what made their version special.

As Isobella worked the puppet’s jaws and Antonio’s basso profundo voice spoke its lines Andre closed his eyes and focused on his own gift. In his experience, the most difficult part of conjuring something from nothing was keeping a picture of the something in his mind. If you didn’t know what a thing looked like it was hard to keep the nothing from drifting off in smoke. Fortunately, for this story smoke was exactly what he needed.

So Andre held his hands out, palms up, and conjured smoke into the jaws of the dragon, letting the foul, acrid substance drift out in sinister fashion as Antonio, speaking in a voice more musical than draconic, pronounced doom on Ulysses and all Lome with him. The Maestro, speaking as Ulysses, launched into an impassioned speech. He spoke of duty. Of loyalty. Of the heart beating in every man’s breast that told them to resist famine, violence and death with every moment of their lives.

The crowd roared their approval at his words. They booed the dragon as he laughed at Ulysses’ resolve. Andre conjured nothing and let it drift away in smoke.

Finally, Ulysses finished his defiant speech and Antonio grabbed a long, thin sheet of metal he shook to make the dragon’s booming roar. Andre stopped his conjuring and grabbed the puppet from Isobella. She quickly stepped back from the paper puppet and canvas backdrop, raised her hands to the sky and threw a bolt of blazing fire towards the stars. The crowd oohed and aahed in appreciation. Having a flamehand or fireheart show the dragon’s rage was a common enough conceit among actors but it never failed to please the crowds, no matter how many times they might have seen it.

Andre tried not to let it bother him. Conjuring flame was more impressive than conjuring smoke, after all. It was just that normal conjurors couldn’t do it without burning themselves in the process and throwing it was out of the question.

Isobella’s display was the Maestro’s cue. The sequence had played out so many times that Andre could picture it now in his mind’s eye even with the backdrop between him and the action on stage. Mastroianni would call his men to follow him to battle then turn towards the back of the stage. Then, instead of running towards the curtain that led to the stair stakes he would drop down into a squat, weight perfectly balanced over his heels, and leap. A perfect, arcing trajectory would take him up a good three feet over the top of the backdrop and down to the ground behind the stage.

As the Maestro leapt, Andre handed the puppet off to Antonio, then gripped his hands together with the palms inwards and began to conjure again. When the Maestro landed on the ground with a soft thud, Andre and Isobella threw their hands upwards towards the sky in unison, a blast of flame and smoke exploding from them with a sharp crack.

The crowd whooped in delight.

Giuseppe and the Maestro ran back and forth holding large wooden swords up so they cast shadows on the backdrop when the flashes of flame illuminated them. Antonio moved the dragon puppet towards them from the other side. They went through a carefully choreographed dance that told of Ulysses’ battle against the dragon entirely through smoke, flame and shadow while the pipers played a rousing tune. The crowd’s delight continued.

Finally the dragon was pierced by Ulysses’ blade, its shadow lit by a few dying flames springing from Isobella’s fingertips, as Andre sent columns of black smoke drifting off into the air. The Maestro, Giuseppe and Antonio – going on as the King of Lome – marched triumphantly on stage for the closing scene.

Isobella moved to the side of the stage while Andre grabbed the Lady of Verdemond’s veil and brought it to her. She swiftly wrapped the lace around her head, favored him with a bright smile and said, “Good work tonight, Andre.”

“You’ll have them on their feet, Signora.” He passed her a crown of laurels so she could reward Ulysses and held the backdrop aside as she swept out onto the stage to a rousing fanfare.

As he predicted, the audience leapt to their feet with raucous cheers. The Maestro bowed his head and his wife placed the crown upon his head, bringing Ulysses’ story to an end.

The crowd applauded and stamped their feet. The Maestro and his cast basked in their adulation. Andre collected the blacklights scattered behind the stage and clamped the shutters on the lanterns closed. The noise of the crowd faded as they began to drift away into the gathering dusk. A handful of the more curious souls lingered around the platform and the Maestro climbed down to mingle with them, Isobella dutifully at his side.

Andre and the other two stagehands began breaking down the more delicate parts of the set while Giuseppe and Antonio collected props. Inside of ten minutes the backdrop, props and set dressing were packed away in boxes. The blacklights were reopened to hold back the dusk and the boxes were carried to one of the caravans and packed away. The platform and stakes would be taken in the next morning.

As Andre did a final check of the platform, shining the reflected rays of his lantern about for anything he might have missed, the Maestro found him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Not a bad show, Andre.”

“Thank you, signore. You were inspiring as always.”

“Was I?” The Maestro’s voice took on a teasing tone. “If this is what you sound like when you are inspired I fear the day you become apathetic.  Your voice will leave you entirely.”

Andre considered trying to force cheer into his voice but doubted it was worth the effort. And it’s not like he could fool an actor with the Maestro’s skills anyway. “Sorry, sir. You know how it is.”

Mastroianni snorted, as if he couldn’t conceive of a person who didn’t feel the thrill of the theater. “We need to find a part that suits you, Andre,” he said, turning to stare out at the open field around their little stage. “There has to be one out there somewhere.”

“I’m not a performer, Maestro.” Andre scratched absently at the side of his neck. “At least as a stagehand the audience doesn’t have to suffer for my lack of inspiration.”

“Stagehand is just another part to play, Andre,” the Maestro replied, hands folded behind his back as he thoughtfully strutted about the perimeter of the stage. “You’re passable at it. But the troupe isn’t so well off we can afford to have merely passable players in any of our roles. We can find something you’re better at, Andre. You’re fit to be one of our best players. I’ve known it since I first discovered you.”

“I was less than a year old then,” Andre pointed out. “And you hadn’t even formed the troupe at the time.”

The Maestro spun to give him a look, his expression unreadable in the gloom of night. Just as the silence turned uncomfortable he chuckled and said, “You’ll understand it in time, Andre, that I am certain of. The rest of this can wait ‘til morning. Get some sleep.”

“Yes, Maestro.”

He closed the shutters on his blacklight and picked his way back towards his caravan by the light of the rising moon. It waned crescent overhead, giving just enough light to walk by if one felt like taking a risk. Andre rarely felt like taking such risks but whenever the Maestro spoke about his taking a role in front of the crowd such a mood fell upon him.

The truth was that he didn’t care much for the theater. Half a day ago there had been nothing in the open field where they performed and by mid morning the following day things would be returned to that state. What meaning would anything they’d done in that tiny window of time really have? Sometimes Andre wondered if the world would really care about anything he did at all. If he fell in the dark and broke his neck did it really make any difference compared to how things would unfold if he did not?

In the face of such difficult questions, what did a few people making empty speeches on temporary stages have to say, really?

When he raised those questions to the Maestro the actor just laughed and told Andre he simply hadn’t found a stage big enough to perform on yet. Andre wasn’t certain such a place existed.

As he climbed the steps up into the stagehand’s caravan the light atop the tower that stood over Citadel Fionni sprang to life. It illuminated the waters of the Gulf of Lum on one side of the great city and the Adriatic Ocean on the other, warning ships that drifted too close to the city on either side. It also shed a warm light on the city spreading to both sides of the narrow peninsula. 

It illuminated the fortress at the heart of the city’s streets. And unknown to Andre – or the Maestro – the light hid the stage he had spent his whole life looking for.