Nonny glared. Wrong rope, the glare said. She pointed more forcefully with the tip of her toe. Rownie pulled the next rope and felt the wagon shift under his feet. Flat, painted walls and towers unfolded to either side of the stage. The platform became a city.

“The moon is full,” Essa said onstage, looking up. It was night onstage, even though the sun was shining above them. Essa said it, so it became true, and everyone believed it.

The Iron Emperor was a ghost story. Rownie caught glimpses of the play around the curtain edge, between pulling whatever ropes and levers Nonny directed him to pull.

Essa played both the Princess and the Rightful Heir. Patch played the Wrongful Heir—unless both the Princess and the Rightful Heir needed to be onstage at the same time, in which case Patch and Essa swapped masks.

Semele was the ghost of the old Queen, and she made her entrances in bursts of blue smoke and blue fire. This was always impressive, even backstage, even when Rownie could see Semele crouched out of sight beforehand.

Nonny set off the smoke and fire herself. She clearly didn’t trust Rownie with any of the combustible effects. This was fine with Rownie. He worked the bellows on the music box instead. It played mournful, keening notes for Semele’s ghostly entrances, after the bursts of blue fire and smoke.

Rownie heard gasps of fear and surprise, as though it really were midnight and not the middle of the day with sunlight bright and cheerful, as though Semele really were a spirit of the dead with hair moving in the wind between worlds and not just wearing a mask with egg whites making the hair stick out in all directions. Semele’s high, commanding voice combined with music and smoke, and all of them together changed the shape of things.

Then everything went wrong.

First the music box broke. It broke loudly. It was supposed to give a long, mournful note, and instead it squawked like a peacock falling off a wall. This did not sound ghostly or mysterious. It did not sound like the wind between the worlds.

Nonny glared at Rownie. Rownie shrugged. He hadn’t done anything wrong. At least he didn’t think that he’d done anything wrong. Nonny pushed the unhappy music box aside, and the play went on.

They changed the scenery from city towers to the open sea. The sea was a blanket, gray and gauzy, and the two of them held opposite ends and flapped it up and down to make waves.

Then the waves caught fire.

One of the blue firecrackers went off, suddenly and all by itself. The sparks landed on the gauzy blanket, and the blanket burst into flames. Rownie and Nonny both dropped it.