Conjured

his face so I couldn’t see his blacker-than-black eyes, only his snowy beard, which he had braided with multicolored beads. I had forgotten the beads. I stared at the beads swinging from the tip of each braid. Some were glass; some were wood; some were bone. The bone ones had been carved with symbols and leaves.

His eyes fixed on the Storyteller first. “You’re free.”

“It’s her,” the Storyteller said. “They changed her body, but it’s still her in all the ways that matter. She came back.”

Then the Magician stared at me.

“Father?” I said.

“You’re alive,” he said. And joy lit up his face.

And then Zach worked magic: a blanket flew off a cot and wrapped around the Magician as tight as a strait- jacket. But I couldn’t make myself open the box. My father! Maybe the agents were wrong about him. Maybe the visions lied. Maybe he—

The dolls moved.

From both sides of the wagon, they lurched onto their feet. They swarmed over Zach. From behind me, two grabbed my arms. Their knitted hands squeezed like wire garrotes. My left hand was still plunged into my pocket, but I couldn’t move to draw the box out, though now I realized my mistake.

Across the wagon, his supply of magic gone, Zach struggled as four dolls held him fast. He was forced against the wall. The bottles shook from the impact. “Zach!” I cried. Without thinking, I threw magic at the dolls around us.

The dolls burst into flame.

And I collapsed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Storyteller dances the marionettes with ease. They leap and twirl at the twist of her gnarled fingers. She shouldn’t have such dexterity in her old hands, but she does. Children on the grass hill laugh and clap their hands.

“Once upon a time,” she says, “there was a boy and a girl lost in the woods …” She tells the story of Hansel and Gretel. A third marionette joins the others on the wooden stage. This one is dressed all in black, and her cloth face is pinched in false wrinkles. She looks like a cloth copy of the Storyteller. “Who is nibbling on my house?” The Storyteller tells of the witch pushed into the fire, and Hansel and Gretel locking the cast-iron door. She tells how they run out of the house into the forest, where they starve and die and their bodies are ravaged by wolves and then carrion birds and then crawled over and claimed by maggots and earthworms until they are nothing more than dirt and leaves on the forest floor.

She then beckons, and I dance on the stage between the dolls.

The click of needles was the only sound.

I opened my eyes and saw the Storyteller seated against the shuttered window. She was knitting an arm, a doll’s arm. The rest of the doll lay next to her, and a bag of scraps leaned against the shutters. The doll had black yarn hair and black button eyes. Its body was magenta, and it wore a crocheted white dress. The Storyteller had not yet given it a mouth.

The other dolls were missing.

Lifting my head, I looked for them—and I saw a pile of burned rags in the corner, a tangled mass of charred dolls. Arms and legs stuck out at awkward angles. Half a charred face stared sightlessly at me. I had burned them all.

“She’s awake,” the Magician said.

I jerked at the sound of his voice. After hearing him in my visions and memories for so long, his voice felt oddly disembodied outside my head. Bending over me, he peered at my face, only inches away. He raised my eyelids higher and examined my eyes. “Where’s Zach?” I asked.

He lifted my chin and turned it. With yarn pinning my arms to my sides, I couldn’t do anything but tilt my head back away from his hands. He pinched my cheeks, and I yelped. “Perfect teeth,” he said. “The details are magnificent.”

“Are you my father?” I asked him.

He looked amused. “Yes.”

“He is not,” the Storyteller said.

“I’m the closest she has.” The Magician didn’t look away from me. He stroked my cheek. “I thought I lost you, little one.”

“Freeing her was the humane approach,” the Storyteller said.

“Losing her was my worst nightmare,” the Magician said, an edge to his voice. I saw myself reflected in his eyes. His eyes were full of me, as if he were swallowing me whole.

“Once upon a time,” the Storyteller said, “there was a lion who was raised from infancy by a man and his wife. They bathed him in their tub, fed him from their plates, and slept with him in their bed. One night, they missed dinner, and as they slept peacefully beside their adopted leonine son … he ate them.”

“She’s a girl, not a lion.”

“You can’t keep her,” the Storyteller said.

His eyes stormy, he turned toward the Storyteller.

“I too felt joy when I first saw her. I even thought it would be all right if she simply left again.” Her voice was tinged with regret. “If she’d stayed away, it would be different, but …”

I interrupted. “I want to know what you’ve done with Zach, the boy who came with me.” I tried to keep my voice even and calm. I wouldn’t let them scare me, even though I was bound with yarn that felt like steel wire. It was wrapped around my ankles, torso, and arms, securing me to the cot.

“He’s safe.” The Magician waved his hand toward the boxes that hung on the ribbon, but he continued to glare at the Storyteller. I strained to see into the boxes, but from my cot, I couldn’t tell if they were empty or full. I imagined Zach, shrunken inside one, alone and afraid. But alive. At least he was alive! “If you’re a good girl, he’ll stay safe.”

The Storyteller laid her knitting to the side, and she rose. She hobbled across the wagon to stand by the Magician’s side, looking down at me. “She’s here to kill you.”

“She’s mine.” Leaning toward me, he inhaled, breathing in my breath, and then he smiled at me, fondly.

“She’s more dangerous than you begin to comprehend.” The Storyteller sat beside me and stroked my hair. Her fingers worked through knots in my hair, untangling it as she spoke. She then jerked her hands away as if she hadn’t meant to touch me. “Dangerous to both of us, as much as I wish it were otherwise.”

“She’s a miracle! She left us broken, and she came back perfect!”

Gently, the Storyteller looped yarn around my neck as if the yarn were a necklace. “She shouldn’t have come back. That fact seals her fate.” She pulled the yarn tighter, and it bit into my skin. The fibers felt like metal, cool and unyielding. “I’ll make it quick. You don’t have to watch.”

“Father!” I cried. I drew on my magic. But before I could release it, the Magician’s hand shot out, and he knocked her back with a rush of wind that flew from the palms of his hands.

Sailing across the room, the Storyteller knocked into the bench that lined the opposite wall. The wagon rocked. The boxes on the ribbon swayed. The skulls tapped against each other, and the bottles clinked.

She didn’t move.

He’s killed her, I thought. My heart began to thud faster and more wildly, as if it were a bird thrashing inside a bone cage.

But she spoke, soft at first. “Everything I have done has been for you. Everything. You felt alone; I gave you companionship. You felt old; I gave you youth. You felt weak; I gave you power. And you cast me aside. Imprison me. Strike me!” She rose, shaking. “But even if you despise me for it, I will protect you from yourself. I will destroy her—for you!”