“But she wrote a note.” Kay looked at No?, who was sobbing quietly, her face buried in her hands. “She said that someone could come and save her. Rescue us.”
“A thin hope,” the Devil said, “to base your dreams upon. Yes, if someone knows you are here. And, yes, if they come for you after midnight when we can move about. And, yes, if they know it is you—who you used to be—and not how you are now: a mere puppet. And, yes, if in escaping, they trust you will follow and not look back.”
“Oh, dahlink,” Olya cried out. “If they get past the puppet in the Front Room. If they love you, if they know where to find you. If, if, if. Too many ifs.”
“Better,” the Devil said, “to put away such dreams.”
“I am sorry that I ever had them.” She thought of her husband and wondered if he had forgotten her by now. The Back Room was as quiet as she had ever heard.
At last the Queen cleared her throat and broke the silence. “Since you have confessed and apologized for what you have done, and I know that in your hearts you promise never to try to run away again, this court finds that you have been punished enough.”
And with that, the trial was over, the verdict rendered, yet they all sat still and in place, like dolls in the window, until the time came to put away their playthings.
*
The beauty was in the conception of the problem, and the elegance was in the solution. It all started with a horse. Muybridge had been commissioned to photograph the horse in motion, ostensibly to determine just how it moved, whether or not all four feet left the ground at once. Hard as it is for the modern mind to conceive, in centuries past, no one really knew. The eye was not quick enough. Artists guessed. Scientists speculated. Until Muybridge figured out a scheme to use a series of wired cameras tripped by the animal as it galloped. The mare’s name was Sallie Gardner, and the twenty-four pictures were made on June 15, 1878. Theo sat at the kitchen table surrounded by his abandoned work, the translation of the life of Muybridge. He studied the famous images, in which he could clearly see that as the horse moved forward all four feet left the ground at the apex of its stride. The legs folded together under its belly, the horse appeared to be flying in midair. Flipping on his smartphone, Theo watched a short video that ran the photos in sequence. At regular speed, it lasts for three seconds, but the anonymous poster had looped and slowed the images, capturing the motion of the filly’s fluid stride. He could not stop watching Sallie Gardner and her jockey, hitting replay again and again. Eventually the light behind the tiny image began to bother his eyes, and he wiped clear the screen and set down the phone.
The pages had fallen out of order, the translation broken from where he had left off his work. In fact, the whole apartment was a shambles, the bed a wreck of sheets and blankets, Kay’s pillow hugged to death, the sink awash with dishes, dirty towels and stacks of laundry in the bathroom. He had let the place go. Kay would be horrified by the clutter when she walked through the front door, though he had given up listening for her key in the lock. All the usual reminders of their daily routines were falling away. He had stopped believing she was just in the other room.
Kay used to jump slightly when he entered or at the knock on the door or the ring of the phone, just a reflex, no more than her muscles flexing, but he had always noticed how easily she startled in such moments. Yet for all her expressive energy, she was most compelling in the stillness of their time together. She had a way of curling herself into the smallest possible space when alone, reading a book or watching TV, and it often surprised him to find her wedged into the corner of a sofa or hiding behind the wings of an armchair. He would watch her surreptitiously and study the emptiness in her expression or the concentration behind her eyes. More than the sound of her voice, the music of her laughter, her body next to his in bed or walking hand in hand on a warm summer night, more than action, he missed the stillness of her and felt that slipping away. He could be alone with her, but it was difficult learning to be alone without her.