Conjured

I shook my head. “I remember how to unlock it.” Rose, leaf, stem … I pushed on the carvings on the door, and they sank in, a hidden combination lock. Click, click, click—the door swung open. The smell of sage and cinnamon and copper rolled out and over me, and I swayed on the top step, surrounded by the taste of the air—the taste of home.

Breathing deeply, I stepped inside.

Inside was brightly painted with hundreds of tiny mirrors embedded in the walls. Feathers, talons, and bird skeletons hung from rafters, broad beams that curved like whale bones. Bottles lined the shelves on the wall— green, blue, and purple glittering glass bottles with labels written in swooping black ink. He sold those bottles, I remembered. Ointments and potions that he’d gathered from the worlds we’d traveled to. Some worked, and some didn’t. They were strapped to the shelves with leather belts to keep them from falling as the wagon lurched down a road.

And then of course there were the boxes. They were strung on a colored ribbon that stretched across the wagon. Silk scarves hung between them. Gathering my courage, I stepped closer to the first one and peered into it. Empty. All of them were empty.

“Do you remember this?” Zach asked.

“Yes.” Except that sometimes the boxes weren’t empty. But I didn’t say that. Instead I pointed to the dolls that filled the cots and benches: life-size with porcelain faces and cotton arms. Some were unfinished, their faces unpainted or their limbs not yet attached. Others were dressed in lace and jewels. “Except them. I don’t remember so many of them.”

In one vision that I’d had, a doll had been strapped beside me on the Ferris wheel. The Storyteller had made her out of stray bits of fabric and a porcelain masquerade mask. Clearly, she’d made more after I’d gone.

“Listen,” Zach whispered.

I held still.

There was breathing, soft and steady. It was so faint that I thought I was imagining it. It sounded as if it was coming from all around us. I scanned the wagon, looking for the source of the breathing. There weren’t any places to hide—

“It’s the dolls,” Zach said. “They’re breathing.”

He was right. Motionless, the dolls were breathing in unison. Now that I focused on the sound, it was all I could hear. The dolls stared sightlessly at us.

“Are they … alive?” Zach asked.

One of the dolls held a box, a match to the ones that hung from the string. I crossed to it. Inside the box, through the slats, an eye blinked. It was a filmy white-red eye, edged in wrinkles. I knew that eye. “She’s inside.”

“Who?” Zach asked.

Carefully, I lifted the box out of the doll’s hands. The doll’s fingers were rigid, posed to hold it. The doll stared glassily through me and didn’t move. Her lips were painted red and parted slightly. Her cheeks had been painted white with three black drops on each side, like a sad clown. Her eyes had painted eyelashes that curled an inch below and above her eyes, over her eyebrows. Her hair was black yarn. This close, I could hear her breathing, distinct from the others.

I held the box up to one of the lanterns. Inside, shrunken, the Storyteller was knitting a gray scarf. Her knees were jammed into her chest, and her feet were curled awkwardly under her, but she held her gnarled hands with her needles up by her face. I couldn’t hear the click-click of the needles, but I could imagine the sound. Kneeling, I placed the box on the floor and pulled at the clasp. It was rusted shut, as if it had been out in the rain. The Storyteller must have been inside for a long time. I chipped at the rust with my fingernails. “Help me,” I ordered. Zach’s hand closed over mine, and together we pulled at the clasp. It creaked and screamed as the metal bent and scraped against itself. “He’s punishing her. Maybe because of me. Maybe because she set me free.”

Zach helped me pull at the clasp. Suddenly it snapped, and the box fell open. Sitting on the floor of the wagon in the shards of the box, the Storyteller looked tiny, as if she were distant, and then suddenly huge, as if she were instantly close.

She matched my memory perfectly. The eyes, the wrinkles, the plump lips, the limp hair, the corseted dress, the gnarled hands, the pointed shoes, and the ever-present knitting on her lap. Deftly, the Storyteller lifted the box with one hand and closed the sides, the top, and then the clasp. She tossed the box from hand to hand as she smiled at us. She had few teeth left, and her gums were red and raw. “I thank you for freeing me.”

Her voice washed over me, and I shivered like a puppy quivering in anticipation of either praise or punishment. The Storyteller didn’t seem to recognize me. “Do you … do you know me?” I asked. I wanted to reach out and touch the wrinkles on her cheek. I wanted to curl against her and breathe in the smell of her, the smell of my childhood, the smell of my memory.

“You are the young adventurers who saved the wise old woman. I owe you a boon. Or advice. But I have nothing like that to give you.”

“I think you are my mother,” I burst out. After the words were out, I couldn’t breathe in more air. It was as if those words had taken all the oxygen out with them. I didn’t know where the idea had come from. My mother? Yes, of course, she had to be! Who else? I waited, breathless, for her response.

The Storyteller squinted at me. “I have no child.”

“I have pretty eyes.” I reached out to touch her—and then I stopped, not quite daring.

The Storyteller peered into my eyes, leaning closer and closer until I could smell her breath, rancid and sweet at the same time, and then she reeled back and laughed wildly, a dozen notes clashing together one after another, a cacophony of a hoot and caw and howl and giggle.

Zach gripped my arm to pull me backward. I stood firm. She didn’t frighten me. She’d cared for me, comforted me, freed me. She’d mothered me. “You cut the ropes,” I said. “You set me free.”

The Storyteller giggled. “And you blossomed into the princess that I always knew you could be.” She touched my face, tapped my shoulder, and tugged on my hair. “They did a finer job than I ever could.”

“Mother.” I tried out the word, letting it roll around my tongue. “I need to know—”

“I’m not your mother.” The Storyteller wasn’t laughing anymore, and there was sadness in her milky eyes. “You shouldn’t be here.”

The words felt like a blow to my stomach, and again I couldn’t breathe. “But I …”

“You never had a mother,” the Storyteller said.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I was … adopted. Abandoned? I remember you…. You told me stories … lullabies…. You were always there. You cared for me….” But I also remembered needles in my skin, ropes around my limbs. She hadn’t always been kind. “Did you steal me from someone? Where do I come from? Who am I?”

“You shouldn’t ask. And you shouldn’t have come back.” She bustled toward us, shooing us as if we were chickens. “You must leave. Leave before he sees you and never come back!” She herded us toward the door, but I dug my feet into the wood floor.

“Please! I need your help! I’ve lost my memories—”

The door clicked.

The Storyteller quit pushing me. “I’ve helped you more than I should have and less than I could have.” She retreated and sat heavily on a wooden bench between two unfinished dolls. “Once upon a time, a young witch fell in love with a boy who feared death … and it was beautiful. For a time.” She wrapped one arm around a doll. It fell limply against her shoulder. Its head sagged forward.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the box, hiding it behind my back. All I had to do was flip open the lid and touch him with the clasp—a simple plan. Ready, Zach waited behind the door. The Magician wouldn’t see him. I stood in front of the door and waited.

Click. Click, click.

The door swung open.

And I saw the Magician.

That is what the Magician’s hat is supposed to look like, I thought. It was crushed velvet with a white ribbon around its base. It was tattered and worn near the rim from years of use. It shadowed