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By Root 1990 0

The brownish material fitted itself easily over his hands, almost as snug as the skin it resembled, and before he was ready each thumb was a puppet’s arm, the little fingers too, and three fingers were shakily raising each head as if the performers were being roused from sleep. The spectators were already cheering, a response that seemed to entice the tufted skulls above the stage. Their entrance was welcomed by a clamor in which requests gradually became audible. “Let’s see them knock each other about like the young lot do these days.”

“Football with the baby.”

“Make them go like animals.”

“Smash their heads together.”

They must be thinking of Punch and Judy, Shone told himself—and then a wish succeeded in quelling the rest. “Let’s have Old Ruthless.”

“Old Ruthless” was the chant as the stamping renewed itself—as his hands sprang onto the stage to wag the puppets at each other. All at once everything he’d been through that day seemed to have concentrated itself in his hands, and perhaps that was the only way he could be rid of it. He nodded the man that was his right hand at the balding female and uttered a petulant croak. “What do you mean, it’s not my day?”

He shook the woman and gave her a squeaky voice. “What day do you think it is?”

“It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Thursday, rather. Hang on, it’s Friday, of course. Saturday, I mean.”

“It’s Sunday. Can’t you hear the bells?”

“I thought they were for us to be married. Hey, what are you hiding there? I didn’t know you had a baby yet.”

“That’s no baby, that’s my boyfriend.”

Shone twisted the figures to face the audience. The puppets might have been waiting for guffaws or even groans at the echo of an old joke; certainly he was. The residents were staring at him with, at best, bemusement. Since he’d begun the performance the only noise had been the sidling of the puppets along the stage and the voices that caught harshly in his throat. The manager and Daph were gazing at him over the heads of the residents; both of them seemed to have forgotten how to blink or grin. Shone turned the puppets away from the spectators as he would have liked to turn himself. “What’s up with us?” he squeaked, wagging the woman’s head. “We aren’t going down very well.”

“Never mind, I still love you. Give us a kiss,” he croaked, and made the other puppet totter a couple of steps before it fell on its face. The loud crack of the fall took him off guard, as did the way the impact trapped his fingers in the puppet’s head. The figure’s ungainly attempts to stand up weren’t nearly as simulated as he would have preferred. “It’s these clown’s shoes. You can’t expect anyone to walk in them,” he grumbled. “Never mind looking as if I’m an embarrassment.”

“You’re nothing else, are you? You’ll be forgetting your own name next.”

“Don’t be daft,” he croaked, no longer understanding why he continued to perform, unless to fend off the silence that was dragging words and antics out of him. “We both know what my name is.”

“Not after that crack you fetched your head. You won’t be able to keep anything in there now.”

“Well, that’s where you couldn’t be wronger. My name …” He meant the puppet’s, not his own; that was why he was finding it hard to produce. “It’s, you know, you know perfectly well. You know it as well as I do.”

See, it’s gone.

“Tell me or I’ll thump you till you can’t stand up,” Shone snarled in a rage that was no longer solely the puppet’s, and brought the helplessly grinning heads together with a sound like the snapping of bone. The audience began to cheer at last, but he was scarcely aware of them. The collision had split the faces open, releasing the top joints of his fingers only to trap them in the splintered gaps. The clammy bodies of the puppets clung to him as his hands wrenched at each other. Abruptly something gave, and the female head flew off as the body tore open. His right elbow hit the wall of the theater, and the structure lurched at him. As he tried to steady it, the head of the puppet rolled under his feet. He tumbled backwards into the moldy curtains. The theater reeled