“She and I … we were together for a very long time. A very long time. I did not intend to trade her for you. But now … it’s you and me. We’re together now.” I heard his footsteps as he crossed the wagon, and I opened my eyes. He was kneeling next to me. I shrank away as far as I could. His lips didn’t touch mine, but he drew a breath close to me. “You may look human, but it’s only an illusion. It’s time for you to be what you truly are, what she and I created you to be.”
I felt my body change, softening inside and out. I saw my hair, which lay splayed across my cheek and the cot, thicken into yarn. I knew without a mirror that my face was cloth, my eyes were green marbles, and my mouth was embroidered. My body shrank and changed as my skin reverted to cloth.
“Welcome home,” the Magician said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The doll laid on the bench and counted the boxes on the ribbon, the silk scarves, the potion bottles, and the bird skulls. And then she counted them again.
Across the wagon, the boy wouldn’t stop talking. “I think each skull is from a different kind of bird. You can see the differences in the shapes. Hooked bills … they have to be raptors. And the ones in the corner must be seed eaters. Sparrows and such. I think most are songbirds. Don’t know if that means he likes songbirds or hates them. He must have practiced killing birds and worked his way up to humans. You know, a common sign of a disturbed kid is torturing animals—it’s a sign he or she lacks empathy. You don’t lack empathy, Eve. When the Magician walked through the door, you hesitated. You’re
The boy was tied to a cot on the opposite side of the wagon. The doll was tied to a bench with the same steel-like yarn. The Magician was asleep—or feigning sleep—in his cot. She knew better than to trust he was truly asleep.
After the transformation, while the Magician slept, she’d used magic to sever the yarn and had tried to reach the boy. The Magician had caught her before she’d crossed the wagon, and the vision had taken her. The vision had been full of death and screams, and when she had woken, the Magician had hurt the boy.
Next time, she’d waited until she was certain his breathing was deep and even, and she’d used her magic to free the boy. Awakening, the Magician had broken the boy’s fingers.
She’d tried once more, changing the Magician into a tree, hardening his body with bark and sealing his face with leaves, but she’d lost consciousness before she could reach the boy. When she woke, it was five days later, and the boy’s face was streaked with blood and bruises. That was when she’d stopped thinking of him by name.
The Magician released the boy from his bindings twice a day, and the doll lay on her bench while the boy ate, drank, and relieved himself in a pot. The Magician never released the doll. But he did allow the boy to talk to her.
At first, the doll thought this was a kindness. But after a while, she changed her mind. It was a constant reminder that the boy was here because of her and that she couldn’t save him. He chattered fast, like a magpie. The doll found that if she didn’t focus on individual words, she could let his voice swirl around her like birdsong.
Every few days, the wagon would move. The boxes and skulls would sway as the wagon lurched forward, and she’d listen to the clatter and clang and clink of the bottles and bones. When the wagon reached its next destination, the Magician would entrap her and the boy in separate boxes and leave. Sometimes she slept, though as a doll she didn’t need to. Sometimes she’d lie awake, curled into a ball of cloth, and try not to think.
She’d be jolted awake when the Magician released her from the box, took her magic, and then trapped her again while he performed another show. When he returned, he’d release her, secure her to a bench, and talk for hours. He’d tell her about the new world outside and how much the audience had loved his show. The carnival had been dying, he said, but now that she’d returned, his shows were full of magic again and his tent was full of people. The other dolls had been too weak, too new, too empty, to give him what he needed, but she was marvelous! He’d be giddy for a while, even kind, and then he’d fall silent again.
After a while, he grew more ambitious. He wanted his shows to have more magic, instill more wonder, and inspire more awe, but there were limits to how much magic he could inhale and how long it would last. He was efficient in his magic use—a single breath could sustain him for multiple tricks—but it wasn’t enough for him. So he began to train her. He fed her lines to say, and he positioned her to hold his hat, his cloak, his Tarot cards. He choreographed how he would siphon magic from her mid-show, a subtle breath here and a brush past there, so the audience wouldn’t notice. He practiced with her in the confines of the wagon, and then he’d leave to conduct his shows without her. He returned between sets to breathe in her magic.
She woke one night with his sour breath in her face. She held still and wished she could stop breathing. He grinned when he saw her eyes open. His teeth were brilliant white, gleaming in the candlelight from the lantern that hung in the corner of the wagon. “I have a surprise for you,” he said.
The doll looked up at the shuttered windows. No light leaked in. It had to be night. She wondered how many days she’d been here, and then she squelched the thought. The boy was tied to a bench across the wagon. He was awake as well.
With a flourish, the Magician pulled a dress out of a paper bag. It had been sewn with hundreds of bird feathers and set with thousands of jewels. It fluttered and sparkled as he waved it through the air.
He pointed to a bucket in the corner. “Clean and dress yourself. You’ve accumulated filth from the road.” After untying the yarn that bound her, he yanked her to her feet. Her cotton-stuffed legs shook, and she caught herself on the wall of the wagon as the world tilted. It had been many hours since she had last stood, not since their last practice session. She stumbled to the corner of the room with the bucket.
The Magician paced through the wagon while the doll slowly peeled off the clothes that she had worn for days and days. She hadn’t sweat into them, of course—she couldn’t—but dust and dirt had seeped into the wagon and onto her. She found a sponge in the bucket, and she rubbed it over her cloth body. The fabric that was her skin soaked up the water. She scrubbed her green marble eyes, and she wet her yarn hair. The water in the bucket grayed, and a puddle formed around her fabric feet. She tried to dry herself with a towel, dabbing her body as best she could, and then she pulled on the dress. The feathers scraped and poked into her cotton. She fastened the buttons hidden within the feathers and jewels. For her yarn hair, the Magician presented a comb inlaid with clusters of the same starlight jewels, and for her feet, he had golden shoes.
“Lovely,” the Magician said. “You will enchant them.”
The boy was watching her. She wondered if she enchanted or repulsed him, and then she reminded herself not to think about him.
“Spin,” the Magician ordered.
Cloth legs wobbling, the doll turned in a circle. The skirt whispered around her, rising lightly into the air as if it would lift her higher and higher until she flew. She remembered she
Looking at him, she faltered.
The boy began to talk again, “He may call himself the Magician, but he’s a fraud. He has no magic of his own. He’s a parasite.”
The Magician plucked an empty box from the ribbon, and he clicked it open.
The boy shrank back, but he didn’t stop talking. “You’re the magic one, Eve. He has no magic. He steals it all from you. You’re the special one. You have to believe that.”
The Magician pressed the clasp to the boy’s skin, and the boy vanished into the box. The Magician shut the lid. “You may hold the magic, but you can’t use it, not without dropping into dreamland. We built that ‘quirk’ into you. A sensible precaution, as it turns out.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “Obey me in all things, and we will all three return here unharmed after the show. Disobey me, and you and I return alone.”
He held out his arm, bent at the elbow, as if to escort a lady. “Our audience awaits.”
