her. It was only then that she realized she was lying down. Yes, I am asleep. He was a strange man. Tall, sharp-angled, with wavy black hair that lay around his face in wild, unkempt curls. He wore sunglasses. One lens was red, the other was black.
Who was he?
She felt like she knew him.
She felt like she should remember.
But dreams were funny that way.
“You lost quite a bit of yourself in the transfer.” He stroked his hand over her hair. And still, she felt nothing. “It seems you were a bit of a house of cards. An igloo. You looked strong from the outside, but…on closer examination, it seemed there was not much there.” He sneered. “You pretty ones are all the same. Hollow.”
She didn’t understand. She tried to move. Her limbs felt strange—detached. She couldn’t feel them. Her arm shot up unexpectedly, and he caught her forearm and pressed it back to the table.
“Now, now. Don’t be hasty. One thing at a time. Take it slow. You’ll have to learn to move again.”
She obediently lay back on the table and watched him. He was the only thing that seemed like it was real. The anchor in the dream. “Who are you?”
He grinned as if something she had said pleased him. She didn’t know why. She didn’t recognize her own voice. But he seemed to know so much more than she did.
So very much more.
He was a very important man in this dream.
Maybe this was his dream, and she was only a small part of it.
Yes.
That must be it. She was just a figment of his imagination. That made much more sense. That felt natural.
“Why, my dear Amanda…” He tapped his finger on the end of her nose. She felt nothing. “I’m your father.”
15
For the first time, Cora watched one of Simon’s puppet shows. Oh, she’d seen him use his puppets. But never in front of a live audience. She had never actually seen him at work. And now she knew she had been missing out. Standing by the back of the tent to keep from taking up a seat in the crowded space, she found herself smiling.
He was a good storyteller.
Damn good.
Creatures and characters battled on the stage as Simon told his tales. Some were fairytales. Some were not. On the surface, it looked like it should be for children. But like the man himself, they were twisted and just a little off. Like an old Jim Henson movie. If Henson had done a line of cocaine with Clive Barker.
Most of the audience was comprised of adults. And she wasn’t surprised. The puppets that wandered the aisles or soared overhead were marvels. Cora heard people whisper to each other, asking how it was possible.
The crowd gasped as the huge dragon walked out onto the stage. The strings that operated the creature were nearly invisible from where she stood in the back. It opened its mouth, roared, and…spewed fire over the heads of the crowd. Everyone shrieked and jumped back, then applauded.
Cora chuckled. He has pyrotechnics. Of course he has pyrotechnics. This is Simon.
“Now!” The Puppeteer took center stage. Charismatic and imposing, terrifying and alluring at the same time. “We get to my favorite part of the night.” He patted the neck of the dragon. It hrumfed loudly. “Our last story begins the way all the best stories do—on the English countryside.”
The scenery changed. The drop that had been there flew up into the rigging, and another dropped down in its place. It was rolling fields, with puffy white clouds, and a forest off to house left. The flat construction of a stone tower, carefully painted in trompe l’oeil to look as though it were dimensional, slid on from the left. On top of it perched the small figurine of an archetypical princess, complete with a pointy pink hat, clutching her little wooden hands to her chest in concern.
The dragon roared and plodded across the stage, curling up around the castle.
“Here we have a tale as old as civilization. The frightened princess, stolen away and endangered by a terrible, wicked beast.” Simon grinned. The dragon spewed another jet of fire into the air over the crowd. “Whatever shall we do? Whoever shall come to save her?”
On cue, from the left side of the stage emerged a knight in shining armor. The puppets only came about up to Simon’s waist. He took a step back out of the way of the knight as he boldly charged across the stage, lifting his