The Rebirth of Wonder by Lawrence Watt-Evans Page A

were
a few items he didn't really recognize on a conscious level, but
they were old, heavily used baby things, and there could be little
doubt that they, too, had once been his. A pacifier still had part
of his name on it.
    What the hell was all this
stuff doing here? Who had put it here? Who had collected it
all? How had they
collected it all?
    It couldn't have anything to do with the
Bringers of Wonder; they wouldn't have known about any of this
stuff, or been able to find it.
    Had one of his parents found and saved all
these old things without telling him? Had his father put the box
down here for safekeeping, with the idea of hauling it out someday
for the sake of nostalgia?
    That didn't sound like his dad at all. He was
nostalgic enough, maybe, but he'd have kept everything in the
house, and he'd have told Art, he wouldn't have kept it a
secret.
    And whoever it was –
what right did
they have to muck around with Art's private past?
    There were things here
he'd have sworn were secret, that no one ever knew he even had –
the ragged copy of Bizarre Sex #9 he'd kept hidden behind his bureau when he was
ten, the foil-wrapped condom he'd picked up in the parking area on
Hilltop Drive when he was thirteen. How had anyone found
those?
    And why would anyone collect all this stuff
so indiscriminately?
    It was crazy. It made him nervous.
    He dumped everything back in the box, closed
the flaps, and started to carry it back to the high shelf – then
stopped.
    Why should he put it back
up there? After all, this was all his stuff. It didn't belong in the
theater at all!
    He took the box over to the door and set it
down. All those lost treasures were going home with him.
    So was one other item, he decided. He got the
bone-handled knife from the shelf where he'd left it and put it on
top of the box.
    That settled, he pulled out the next box, a
big one.
    For a moment, he hesitated before opening it.
What if this box held something else weird and mysterious? What if
it held more lost things – someone else's, perhaps? Or an entire
set of strange cutlery? Or something even more out of place?
    Well, what if it did? It wasn't going to jump
out and bite him.
    He lifted the flaps and
found a stack of cardboard imitations of Roman shields, a remnant
of a production of Julius Caesar some ten years back. Those went over near the
swords, of course.
    He found no other oddities that evening.
    It was about eleven when Maggie called him.
She was waiting at the top of the stairs when he came trudging up,
the box of lost treasures under his arm.
    “ What's that?” she
asked.
    “ Oh, found some
things I'd lost,” he replied.
    She blinked at him, then smiled broadly.
    “ Already?” she
said.
    He stared at her, puzzled and angry, as he
mounted the last few steps.
    “ What do you mean, 'already'?” he demanded. “What
do you know about it? Did you have anything to do with
this?”
    “ No, no,” she said,
“I didn't mean anything.”
    “ Then why'd you say
it?”
    “ Just... I don't
know. It popped out. I didn't mean anything.” She turned away,
toward the stage door.
    He glared at her back. So
the Bringers were involved after all – but how could they be?
    “ I've been meaning
to ask,” Art said, trying to hide his anger. “Where are you folks
all staying, while you're in town? You don't all live around here,
do you?”
    “ Live around here?”
Startled, she turned to look at him. “You mean
us?”
    “ Sure, you know, in
Concord or Bedford or wherever – I'm pretty sure none of you are
from Bampton, are you?”
    “ Oh, no, none of us
are local.” She managed an uneasy little laugh. “We came in from...
well, from all over.”
    “ That's what I
thought,” Art said with a nod. “So where are you
staying?”
    Maggie waved a hand vaguely. “Oh, different
places,” she said. “I'm rooming with some distant relatives, third
cousins or so.”
    “ Oh. Anyone I might
know?”
    “ I don't think
so.”
    “ In Bampton?”