Curtain Call
If reports from the ship sailing the Maskira Sea near Eleutherae that day are to be believed, it all happened at once: A flash of light flooded every opening of the Playhouse—which most claimed had risen from the ground only moments before to begin with.
The sailors had no choice but to believe their eyes: The Playhouse had returned to Eleutherae.
Then the shattering of windows, the crash of marble. An eruption of golden flames shot toward the sky and all the way up the hill, the heat so suffocating, the first mate would tell stories of how it tingled on his skin for days, how all the fish floated right to the surface, dead.
And just as fast, the Playhouse was gone, turned to ash.
But this was only the second most surprising thing that day.
Figures stood around the mountaintop in that same moment, then descended right into it, vanishing in the well, their bodies a surge of light brighter than the moon.
“Look,” someone called, face angled at the sky where the flames of the Playhouse whipped through the clouds, melting them like ice.
All at once, a flood of light cascaded over Eleutherae’s destroyed ground in a rage of golden fire that razed through the weeds and ash and left patches of brilliant color in its wake.
Then golden stars broke overhead, illuminating the mountain in all its ancient, lost beauty.
Of course, no one would believe the sailors. They might not have believed their own eyes, either, were it not for the lone survivor stranded at the edge of Eleutherae, hailing for passage on their ship.
An audience member, the man told them, who had not escaped before the Playhouse moved.
Though, when they asked the man what had happened, he refused to say much. “Just a brief intermission, I think,” he explained and, to their surprise, smiled. “Even the most tireless of actors needs a short reprieve to prepare for the final act.”
The man vanished the moment they docked back in Theatron.
After the Playhouse disappeared from the District, speculation stirred that the Players would return for vengeance. That the disastrous finale had broken the thin threads of peace, and the Playhouse would come back to curse the North as punishment for its one and only tribute ruining the festival.
Instead, something peculiar befell Theatron the very next morning.
Children woke with songs on their lips. Storybooks opened to long-forgotten tales, their blank pages thrumming with golden life.
Warm air broke overhead, flooding the sky with yellowy light and fracturing the chill that had haunted Theatron for as long as anyone could recall.
Rather humorously, confusion plagued Theatron as the dulled hues of lips and hair and eyes and clothes deepened into vivid shades of color, like bright paint spilled over a gray canvas.
Absurd claims vowed the statues of Players across the land had developed the strange habit of blinking their golden eyes when no one was looking.
Most surprisingly, those with marks watched with great alarm as the golden symbols upon their necks vanished, nullified and no longer of any use.
Meanwhile, the cloudy, golden-glazed eyes of Revelers mysteriously cleared, their obsession with the Playhouse gradually replaced by memories and stories of their own lives.
Years later, talk of the Players would settle, then dwindle, and finally, fade into the sparkling things of myth and legend. Mere humans would even build stages of their own and fashion masks to wear upon them. They’d perform Comedies free of Compulsion and Tragedies free of true death.
One day, it would be argued whether or not these things ever had a place in theatre to begin with.
However, stages everywhere would find themselves plagued by preposterous reports of hauntings—rumors of cast members no one recognized gracing the stage during a show or of rips in costumes no one had worn.
Often, of props that would curiously go missing, never to be returned.
Frightened stagehands would swear of steps heard in dressing rooms long thought empty and mischievous laughter fluttering in the wings when no one was around (often accompanied by bickering).
One thing, however, did not change.
Children looking in mirrors everywhere would claim to see shifts in the glass, revealing the image of a great white mountain, and to hear voices speaking on just the other side.
Voices that would sing to them, whisper stories into their pages, and tell them the stage’s greatest secret: the theatre is not a place one merely visits.
In fact, some of us never left.