The Moon Opera

Prologue

THE MOON OPERA

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P  R  O  L  O  G  U  E

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Above the city of Stardust loomed the opera houses.

Their spires twisted over the housetops, lanterns bobbing on their many liveried balconies. Lilting music poured from behind doors; light spilled from windows. The tinkling of wine glasses and laughter echoed off the cobblestones. The statesmen of the city of Stardust loved frittering their free evenings at the theatre. Each evening, from red-sky to purple, carriages lined the streets, halting the traffic for blocks and filling the streets with the scent of incense sticks smoked by those within. They weaved past storefronts and through squares, past lavish iron gates to the thresholds of marble steps.

The most highly esteemed performances were those written by Sir Theophilus Best. He owned the estate on Aria Lane. Its glittering marble dome, inlaid with looping veins of gold, cast all of the lower city in shadow. He was a renowned playwright, something of a legend among the upper-class crowd.

Each night, before curtain-rise, he would take his place centerstage.

Silence: a prick of light appeared on the velvet curtains. Slowly, it widened to a dazzling, dust-speckled beam. The stagehands in the rafters were trained well, under threat of extreme punishment; they carefully fanned the alchemical flames, directing them with mirrors and circular cut-outs. Then, a flourish! From the part in the curtains, he appeared: Theophilus, in all his portly, tweed glory.

"Welcome," he boomed, his voice echoing in the dome, "to Best's Playhouse!"

The audience erupted with applause, a cacophony of hundreds of silk-gloved hands coming together at once. Best's dimples deepened like puckered little knife points beneath his mustache's plumage.

As he always said: to cut a man's purse, you needed not a dagger or cloak... just a taste for theatrics.

"I built Best's Playhouse from nothing," he began. The flesh beneath his neck jiggled with the thrumming of his voice; it was his instrument, carefully tuned, mellifluous yet powerful, affected yet emotional, ostentatious yet refined. Scarcely a soul in the auditorium breathed.

"These very floorboards," Best continued, producing a handkerchief from his breast pocket with which to dab his eyes, "are drenched with the blood, sweat, and tears of a young lad with dreams too big for his head. A young man with little more to his name than a quill and his ambition. A young rapscallion whose paunch, I assume," he added with a wink, "was not quite so considerable!" The crowd rippled with laughter as Sir Best slapped his stomach.

In the dimness that was his view of the audience, the man's sharp eyes detected the glimmer of several knovikels cartwheeling through the air. It was the tradition to toss your coin into the silverpit, the trench that served the dual purpose of separating the actors from any patrons who might enjoy too many flutes of champagne and collecting their tips.

"Thank you, thank you," said Best, adopting a suitably chuffed, humble air. "My dear friends, what you see here today is the culmination of nearly a two decades' worth of hard work on my part—and my performers, of course. Two decades of laughs, of tears! Twenty full years of Stardust's appreciation and support, and the anniversary of our twenty-first is fast approaching! Believe you me, on the date of our establishment, there shall be a show the likes of which this playhouse has ever seen!