Susan Cooper - King of Shadows

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King of Shadows
King of Shadows
By Susan Cooper
This is a Pir8s 4 Kids Scan
Please donate 25 cents to a children’s charity each time you read this e-book.
This e-book is provided as a backup for the book you already own. If you do not own
“King of Shadows” you are not allowed to read this e-book.
ONE
Tag. The little kids' game, plain ordinary old tag, that's what he had us
playing. Even though none of us was younger than eleven, and the older
ones were big as men. Gil Warmun even had a triangle of beard on his
chin. Warmun was "it" for now, the tagger, chasing us; suddenly he swung
around at me before I could dodge, and hit me on the shoulder.
"Nat!"
"Nat's it!"
"Go, go, go!"
Run around the big echoing space, sneakers squealing on the shiny floor;
try to catch someone, anyone, any of the bodies twisting and diving out of
my way. I paused in the middle, all of them dancing around me ready to
dodge, breathless, laughing.
"Go, Nat! Keep it moving, don't let it drop! Tag, tag!"
That huge voice was ringing out from the end of the room, Arby's voice,
deep as the sound of a big gong. You did whatever that voice said, now;
you moved quick as lightning. For the Company of Boys, Arby was
director, actor, teacher, boss man. I dashed across the room toward a
swirling group of them, saw the carroty red head of little Eric Sawyer from
Maine, chased him in and out and
finally tagged him when he cannoned into a slower boy.
"Go, Eric, go—keep the energy up—"
The voice again, as Eric's scrawny legs scurried desperately through the
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noisy crowd; then suddenly a change, abrupt, commanding.
"O-kay! Stop! That's it! Now we're going to turn that energy inside, inside
us—get in groups of five, all of you, anywhere in the room. I want small
boys with small, bigger guys together, each group matching."
We milled about uncertainly. Small to medium, that was me. I linked up
with two other boys from someplace in the South, a cheerful, wiry New
York kid named Ferdie, and redheaded Eric, sticking to me as usual like a
little shadow. Arby's big hand came down and removed Eric straightaway.
"Pick guys your own size, Sawyer." He replaced him with a bigger boy in
unlaced high-tops and baggy jeans, with an odd face like a squishy
pudding. I'd seen him around, but I didn't know him. Now there were four
groups of five, and Eric left over. Arby put a consoling hand on his
shoulder, and faced us all.
"Now cool it!" The voice boomed out, deep and hypnotic. He was holding
Eric like a walking stick, like a prop; Arby was so completely an actor that
sometimes you couldn't tell where the division was between performance
and real life.
"This company is a family, a big family," he said. "Always remember that.
We shall be performing in a foreign country, we shall be absolutely
dependent on one another, we must each be totally trustworthy." He
patted Eric absently on the shoulder, and Eric looked at his feet,
embarrassed. But we were all listening, waiting.
Arby said, "The game you're going to play now is an exercise in trust.
Trust. In each group I want one boy in the middle, the other four close
round him."
The squishy-faced boy nudged me into the center of our group. I looked at
him in surprise and he gave me an amiable, toothy grin, "Each of you in
the middle," Arby said, "shut your eyes, straighten your spine, turn yourself
into a broomstick. Then fall, stiff, like a stick. Those of you round him, save
him when he falls toward you, catch him gently, and gently push him
toward someone else. Fall. .. and catch . . . fall. . . and catch .. . This is all
about trust. The one falling must trust the catcher, the catcher must be
trusted to catch. Go!"
I wasn't too sure I liked this game, but I shut my eyes and leaned to one
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side, falling stiff as a rail. I found myself against someone's chest, his
hands touching my shoulders. For an instant my cheek was against his
face, and then he was pushing me—I thought: Stiff, stay stiff, Nat—and
like a pendulum I slanted toward the other side. And again hands stopped
me, and gently shoved me back again.
So it went, like music in its rhythm, and it was fun. The feeling of giving
yourself to other people, people you couldn't even see, flicked me back to
being a very little kid, when my mother was still alive. I couldn't remember
much about her, but I did remember how safe she made me feel.
The room was quiet; there was only the soft sound of hands brushing
clothes, and feet shuffling a little, and a murmur of pleased surprise
sometimes that must have come from the boys in the middle. Maybe from
me. Arby's deep voice was a soothing background: "Fall . . . and catch . . .
fall. . . and catch . . . Good, that's the way. Feel the trust..."
Then, falling, waiting for the reassuring hands to save me, I found myself
not saved but still falling, and I shouted in alarm and stumbled, clutching
for support, opening my eyes. I caught a look of mischievous glee on the
face of the pudgy boy, as he grabbed me up just before I could hit the
floor.
"Wow, sorry!" he said, grinning, mocking—and then his face crumpled into
shock as a thunderbolt hit him.
"Out!" Arby was shouting. "You—out of this company! Go home!"
"It was just a joke," said Pudding-face, appalled. "I didn't mean—"
"You meant exactly what you did—playing your own little trick. We don't
play tricks here, feller. Nothing is more important than the company,
nothing is more important than the play. You betrayed a trust and I don't
want you here. Out! Go pack your things!"
Pudding-face shambled out of the room, without a word. Someone told me
afterwards that he was a wonderful actor; Arby had recruited him from a
school in Cleveland, specially to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night's
Dream. But back to Cleveland he went, the very next day. We never saw
him again.
"Trust," Arby said softly, into the startled silence of the room. "Remember
it. Someone else in the center, now. Keep going."
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King of Shadows
He pushed small Eric gently into the center of our
group, in spite of his size, and Eric gulped, closed his eyes and stiffened
his back. The game went on.
There were twenty-four of us in the company altogether, if you counted
Arby, his partner Julia, Maisie the stage manager, and Rachel the voice
coach. The rest were all boys. The Company of Boys, chosen by Arby and
his committee from schools and youth theaters all over the United States.
We were all shapes and sizes and ages, up to eighteen. The only thing we
had in common was that by accident or experience or both, we all knew
how to act. Supposedly we were the best young stage actors in the
country.
We had one other thing in common, too. Most of us were pretty weird.
When you think about it, a normal kid wants to watch TV or movies, videos
or computer games: there's something odd about him if instead he's more
interested in the stage. And we were all crazy about it; crazy, and
confident that we had talent. Arby had made sure of that when he first
interviewed each of us, last winter.
Now it was summer. By bus or train or airplane, we'd all been brought to
this school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to rehearse two plays by
Shakespeare together. Some rich theater nut had left money in his will to
have Shakespeare's plays performed the way they were four hundred
years ago, when he first wrote them. There were no actresses in the
theater in those days; the women's parts were all played by boys whose
voices hadn't broken yet. Some of the theater companies were made up of
men and boys, some just of boys. Like ours.
And when we'd rehearsed for three weeks, the rich man's money was
going to fly us across the Atlantic to London, to perform at the new Globe,
a theater that was an exact copy of the one the plays were first acted in,
four centuries ago. We were going into a kind of time warp. My dad would
have thought that was really cool: he was a big Star Trek fan. But I try not
to think about my dad.
Arby called a break for lunch. That meant going down to the cafeteria of
the school zzz where we were working. Ferdie walked with me—not that
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he ever really walked, offstage; it was more a sort of spastic bouncing jive.
He draped one arm briefly over my shoulders.
"That was severe, man. If he chops guys for little things like that, he's
gonna have my ass in a week."
"I feel bad about it." I was remembering the horror on the pudgy boy's
face, as Arby banished him.
"He could've hurt you," said little Eric self-righteously, shadowing me.
"Could've broken your back, if you'd hit the ground."
"But he didn't let me hit the ground, he caught me. Just a bit late."
"Late is too late," said Gil Warmun, behind us. He towered over our heads
as we all went down the stairs. "The old man was right—nobody can mess
with trusting. You kids remember that."
"Okay, Dad," said Ferdie cheerfully.
"I mean it. You feel bad about that guy, Nat? That's dumb. He's history
and he deserved it. Grow up."
"Grow up yourself," I said, stung.
Arby's big voice rang down the stairwell from above. The man was
everywhere, like God.
"Read-through of the Dream in forty-five minutes,
gentlemen," the voice said. "And just bear in mind—this is going to be the
most sublime six weeks of your lives, and the shittiest. In the theater, they
go together."
The first weeks were certainly that kind of mixture. Even that first day. It
wasn't literally the first day, because we'd had a rather muddled week of
"orientation," but it was the beginning of serious rehearsal.
For the reading, Arby went on with his game pattern. He had us all sit
cross-legged on the floor in a big circle, with our scripts, and he sat in the
middle with a soccer ball in his hands. He threw his ball at each of us in
turn, and when you caught it you had to say in a loud clear voice the name
of the characters you were playing, then your own name and where you
came from. Then everyone said hi to you. Then you threw the ball back.
We'd been through this whole exercise once already, on the day we
arrived, but I have to admit it was helpful to do it again.
The ball came at me, stinging my hand as I caught it.
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"I'm Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pindarus in Julius Caesar. Nat
Field, from Greenville, South Carolina."
It was Eric's turn.
"Eric Sawyer. From Camden, Maine. I'm Mustardseed in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, and Cinna the Poet in Julius Caesar"
We chorused, "Hi, Eric!"
"Character names first," Arby said. "They're more important than you are."
Little Eric flushed. Arby threw the ball at the next boy, a tall, brawny
character in a black tank top and black jeans.
"Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Brutus in Julius Caesar."
He had a voice as strong as Arby's. "I'm Ray Danza from Chicago."
"Hi, Ray!"
The boy next to him was tall too, but chubbier, with a mop of curly black
hair like a floppy Afro.
"Starveling in the Dream, Caesar in Julius Caesar. Hy Schwartz from Los
Angeles."
"Hi, Hy—" and we all broke up, it sounded so silly. Everyone laughed
except Arby.
"Get a haircut, Hy," he said, and he went on throwing the ball.
I was having a good time all afternoon until the middle of the read-through,
when Arby lit into me for going too fast. He'd already told me twice to slow
down, and I'd tried, but I guess I was nervous. We all were, of course.
Everyone had a crystal-clear memory of the sudden end of Pudding-face's
career.
It was in Act Three, when Puck has a long speech telling Oberon how his
queen, Titania, has fallen in love with a donkey. Oberon is pissed at
Titania because she's refused to let him have one of her servants, so
while she's sleeping in a wood, he squeezes the juice of a magic plant on
her eyes that'll make her totally obsessed with whatever person or
creature she sees when she wakes up. (Oberon and Titania aren't human,
they're the king and queen of the fairies—and if that makes you go "Haw-
haw-haw," you might as well stop reading my story right now.)
I started out:
"My mistress with a monster is in love! Near to her close and consecrated
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bower, While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, A crew of patches,
rude mechanicals—"
"Puck!" Arby boomed from across the circle. "I keep telling you, will you
slow down! We're acting this play in England! It's their language, it's called
English—you can't help sounding like an American, but at least you can
be in-tel-li-gi-ble.'"
"Sorry," I said.
"A southern drawl has a certain charm," Arby said. Everyone was looking
at him now. He smiled his famous warm smile at me, crinkling his
eyes—and then suddenly the smile dropped away and his face was sour.
It was as if a light had gone out. "But a southern gabble is hideous. Vile.
You sound like a cross between a monkey and a duck."
There were some muffled sniggers around the circle. I wanted to
disappear through the floor. From behind me a girl's calm voice said, "It's
okay, Arby—we'll work on it, Nat and I. Hey—you chose these guys for
their talent, not their accents."
It was Rachel Levin, and I could have hugged her. She was a student at
the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and she was attached to the
company as Arby's assistant and our voice coach; I guess they felt we'd
be able to relate to her because she was so young. They were right. I
glanced around at her and she shook her long hair back over her
shoulders and winked at me. The light glinted on the tiny diamond stud in
the side of her nose.
Arby looked at her expressionlessly for a moment; I was waiting for him to
yell at her. Rachel looked calmly back. Suddenly he grabbed up his soccer
ball, which was still beside him on the floor, and threw it violently right at
her.
Rachel caught it, smooth as silk, though it rocked her backward. She
smiled. "Voice coach and dragon's assistant," she said. "Rachel Levin,
from Cambridge, Mass." She tossed the ball back to Arby, gently, and the
rehearsal went on.
"He's so mean," Eric said. "He's mean to everyone. Is he always like
that?"
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Rachel was rummaging in her backpack. She laughed. "I don't think so.
He lives with Julia, and she's quite the liberated lady." She produced a
glossy green apple from the backpack, took a big noisy bite, and passed it
on to Gil Warmun.
"Don't take it personally, Eric," Gil said. "Or you, Nat. He just wants
everyone to know who's the boss." He bit into Rachel's apple and held it
out to Eric. We were all sitting on the tired grass of the riverbank, beside
the Charles River that flows slow and brown through Cambridge and
Boston to the sea. Rachel had been hearing Gil and me do one of our
Puck-Oberon scenes, and Eric was there because, well, because he was
always there. It was a hot day, with only a whisper of breeze, and the air
felt thick as a blanket. Joggers pounded by on the path a few yards away,
glistening with sweat, and sometimes bicyclists whirred past them,
perilously close. On the river, long slender boats zipped up and down,
rowed by one oarsman or two, four or even eight; they were amazingly
quiet, and you heard only the small smack of oars against water as the
boats rushed by. Cambridge seemed to be a very competitive place.
I said, pointing, "Arby is like that!" A single oarsman was sculling furiously
upriver, very close to our bank. As he came by you could see the intensity
tight on his face, and hear the rhythmic gasps for breath.
"Obsessed," Gil said.
"Yeah."
"Nothing wrong with that, though. If he hadn't been obsessed with getting
a boys' company to London, he wouldn't have got the money from that
millionaire, and we wouldn't be going."
"It's not obsession," Rachel said. She reached out and took the apple back
from Eric, who was already into his second bite. "Not like crew. I know
people who row—if you want to be really good at that, it has to be like a
religion. But theater? It's not a sport, it's not about winning, it's about
people."
"And applause," Gil said, needling. "All those lovely hands clapping. That's
what we all like most."
"Not true," Rachel said.
He grinned at her. "An actor's not much use without an audience."
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"There you go then," said Rachel. "It's about people."
This wasn't a real argument though, it was cheerful bickering. We all knew
Gil was as obsessed as anyone could be—in his case, with Shakespeare.
He'd read every single one of the plays, and knew huge chunks of them by
heart.
"What I like best is the smell, backstage," I said. I was thinking of the little
theater back at home, where I'd played an evil little boy in a grown-up play
last summer. It had been our space, my space, a kind of home. "Theater
smell. Dusty. Safe."
"Good word," Gil said, sounding surprised. He reached out and gave me a
quick pat on the shoulder.
"Safe," Rachel said thoughtfully. On the brown water, a pair of mallard
ducks paddled slowly past us, and she threw one of them a piece of apple.
The duck looked at her scornfully, and paddled on.
Eric said, "My mom thinks theater's dangerous. My dad had to talk her into
letting me come."
Gil fingered his beard, looking at him deadpan. "She thought her beautiful
little boy'd get attacked by nasty molesters? Not with that hair, kid."
Eric looked uncomfortable. "She's . . . religious."
"Arby had to do some convincing, with the younger boys' parents," Rachel
said. "They couldn't understand why they couldn't go to London too."
"Why couldn't they?"
"This company is a family!" said Gil, in a perfect imitation of Arby's
booming voice. "Families only have one set of parents!"
Eric looked at me. "Did yours care?"
"My what?"
"Your parents, did they get on your case?"
Oh please. I came here to get away from this. I thought I could get away
from this.
I said, "I don't have any parents."
They all stared at me. Those faces stunned out of movement for an
instant, they always look the same. An eight slid past us on the river; I
could hear the rhythmic creaking of the oarlocks, and the small splash of
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the oars.
"Oh, Nat, I'm sorry," Rachel said.
"I live with my aunt. She didn't mind me coming, she thought it was a great
idea."
Don't ask me, please don't ask me.
Eric asked, direct, young, a hundred years younger than me: "Are they
dead?"
"Yeah." I got to my feet, quicker than any of them could say anything else.
"I gotta go pee—I'll see you back at the school."
And I was off, escaping, the way you always have to escape sooner or
later if you don't want to be clucked over and sympathized with and have
to listen to all that mush, or, worse, have to answer the next question and
the next and the next. If you have to answer questions every time, how are
you ever going to learn to forget?
It would be better in London, it would be better in the company; I wouldn't
be Nat there, I would be Puck.
TWO
I loved London. It wasn't like any of the American cities I'd seen: Atlanta,
New York, Boston, Cambridge. Looking down from the airplane, you saw a
sprawling city of red roofs and grey stone, scattered with green trees, with
the River Thames winding through the middle crisscrossed by bridge after
bridge. When the bus first drove us in from the airport, everything seemed
smaller than in the United States: the houses, so many of them joined
together in long rows; the cars; the highways. There were tall office
buildings, but not gigantic; there were supermarkets, but not the same
greedy sprawl. An English taxi-cab wasn't a regular yellow cab with a light
glowing on the roof; it was a boxy black car whose shape dated back, Arby
told us, to the days when it had to have enough room for a sitting-down
passenger wearing a top hat.
Arby was full of stuff like that. He mellowed, the moment he looked down
from the plane and saw all those lines and curves of little red-tiled roofs.
He'd lived in England once, though nobody knew when or why he'd come
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KingofShadowsKingofShadowsBySusanCooperThisisaPir8s4KidsScanPleasedonate25centstoachildren’scharityeachtimeyoureadthi\se-book.Thise-bookisprovidedasabackupforthebookyoualreadyown.Ifyo\udonotown“KingofShadows”youarenotallowedtoreadthise-book.ONETag.Thelittlekids'game,plainordinaryoldtag,that'swhatheh...

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