“Where do I start?” I whisper to the other Helen. “Did I miss my cue?”
She frowns like she doesn’t understand me. “Professor, the play is over.” She looks at my toga dress. “Are you okay?”
I better say my first line before it’s too late, before she takes it from me. What’s the line again? Oh yes. I look at the audience and smile.
“？‘I have supped full with horrors,’？” I say.
The audience quiets. Clapping peters out. Wait, is that the first line? Definitely not that. I turn to the other Helen, who’s looking at me, afraid now. Oh no, I’ve said the wrong first line. Shit. Better try again.
“？‘I will not be afraid of death and bane till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane,’？” I shout.
The audience is still now.
“Professor Fitch,” hisses the other Helen, tugging on my arm. Her face begins to spin just like the stage, just like the walls, just like the clapping bodies in the dark. Everything spins and tilts. No wonder Helen appears to be panicking. She takes my hand.
“Take a bow with me, Professor,” she pleads.
I bow and the audience cheers again. They applaud wildly, so sideways. Then out of the corner of my eye, I see someone approaching. A young woman dressed as an old man. She’s got a fake beard and scepter. A rhinestone crown sits on her burnished curls. The King coming toward me. To ask me to heal her, of course. She’ so very ill.
“Miranda,” the other Helen whispers, “come with me.”
“Wait,” I tell her, “it’s the King. I have to heal her. She’s in so much pain.”
But the King doesn’t look in pain at all. Her face is glowing. Her cheeks are flushed with health. She’s positively beaming as she bounds toward me, calling, “Ms. Fitch, Ms. Fitch!” Completely unbothered by the tilting, spinning stage. Tilting and spinning more quickly, more fiercely now.
I stare at the King running toward me. Her bright leaf-green eyes fixed on me. Not the King, I realize. Mine enemy. Mine enemy reaching out her hands to kill me. To take her revenge for everything I have done. Right here on the stage in front of my wildly cheering audience.
“Ms. Fitch,” she screams as she lunges for me.
I back away, away, out of her grasp, and when I do, I fall. Right off the stage. It’s a long way down to the theater floor. For several minutes or hours, I feel like I’m floating, floating down. Sailing through the bright, spotlighted air, screaming. I hit the floor with a loud crunch. Feel my whole skeleton rattle. My bones vibrate and explode into stars.
Black sky, bright stars. I watch them disappear one by one.
CHAPTER 30
A LIGHT. SOFT on my face. Is this death? The light of God or the devil? No. Earthly light. Theater light. I’m alive. Sitting in a bright little room. Concrete walls lined with vanity tables, lighted mirrors. And children. Children in shoddy Elizabethan costumes are gathered all around me. Sweaty faces bleeding bad makeup, looking at me with concern and fear.
“She’s awake, she’s awake,” they murmur to one another. Then they walk away from me.
I feel a cold, damp cloth on my forehead. There’s a soft hand holding mine. Paul.
“Oh, Paul,” I whisper. “You’re here, thank god. Where’s Ellie?”
“I’m right here, Miranda,” says a nearby voice. Young and soft like the hand that’s holding mine. The voice belongs to the hand, I realize.
I turn. Ellie. Not baby Ellie. Not my Ellie. Ellie full-grown. Dressed in her red Helen costume. She looks worried. “Who’s Paul?” she says.
And I see his face swallowed by the dark. A cold dark creeping at the edge of my consciousness.
“Ellie,” I whisper, “what happened?”
“Don’t you remember? You fell off the stage, Miranda.”
“I did?”
“Yes. It looked like a pretty bad fall too. At least I thought it was. We were all so worried. For a minute, we all thought we’d lost you. Luckily, there were some doctors in the audience.”
“Doctors?”
“Yes, three of them. Sitting front row center, right where you fell, can you believe that? They examined you and said you were just fine. Nothing at all broken.” She smiles. “Isn’t that lucky?”
The cold dark grips me. “Yes. So lucky.”
“Oh, Miranda, what’s wrong? You’re pale. Are you all right? Are you in any pain?”
I recall the crunch of my bones when I hit the theater floor. The rattle of my skeleton. I search my body, bracing myself. Nothing. Just a heaviness in my chest. A dull hum in my limbs that wasn’t there before.