Or memory.
Or something akin to how the world appeared when I was reading story threads.
I wore a black cloak. No, it was a coat. Mom’s shop coat.
I slid my hands down my front. They ended up in pockets lined with lint and crumbs. Tiny beads congregated in the corners. I leaned forward again, searching for the mirror. Metal clanked against the base of the stand.
Scissors. Mom always had a pair of scissors on a heavy ribbon looped around her neck. I patted my belly. Located the handles. Secured my thumb and fingers in the handles and heard the familiar sound of metal blades meeting.
Growing up, the sound of scissors cutting through fabric and snipping threads was ever-present background noise.
Something was cooking atop the long, narrow table set in the middle of the rectangular room. A few somethings. Bunsen burners, flasks, and retorts. Beside those were tools—tongs, pipettes, and droppers. A set of graduated mortars and pestles, evaporating dishes, and a crucible. The rack suspended above the table held clumps of dried herbs and flowers tied in bundles and labeled with handwritten tags. The walls were too shadowed for me to see what might be shelved or hanging there.
I cut a slip of paper. Rémy’s name was written at the top, followed by a list of ingredients. I held the paper close to my face and mouthed the words.
Comfrey leaves. Blessed thistle.
The floor beneath my feet lurched.
The room spun and spun. I grabbed at the corners of the table. The spinning stopped.
Now, I hummed as I gathered ingredients for a different project. Fresh rose petals. Beeswax candles. I sank three small, stuffed muslin dolls into a pink-tinged potion, pressing at the pliant bodies until they had absorbed all the liquid in the wide-mouthed beaker. Placed them side by side on a drying rack. Cut locks of my hair and draped them over the dolls.
Humming became a murmured lullaby as I placed a sprig of alder catkins on the first doll, a two-inch rod of golden beryl on the middle one, and a fragrant dried orange spiked with cloves on the third.
Alderose.
Beryl.
Clementine.
“Mom,” I whispered. “Mom. What are you doing?”
The arms floating in front of me hesitated. I spun again, startled by something in the room before returning to my task. The dolls had dried. I pricked the base of my thumb and drew a length of embroidery floss through fresh, red blood. Working with one doll at a time, I tacked down the lock of my hair, then cut a slit in the torso, inserted one of the objects, and stitched the cut closed. Reaching up, my fingers brushed another, thicker thread. This one was silk. I tugged, cut off a length, divided it into three, and tied one piece around the belly of each doll.
Satisfied with my work, I wrapped the dolls in separate squares of plain muslin and placed them in their waiting boxes.
Protected.
Forever.
Strong arms lifted me, holding me to an equally solid chest. My boots hit the doorjamb as I was carried out of the room. I felt us going up, closed my eyes when instructed, and welcomed the wet cloth across the top half of my face.
“Clemmie. Keep your eyes closed. Alderose is getting her bag. She’s got makeup remover. We’ve got to get this stuff off you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Of course it won’t hurt. It’s that hypoallergenic stuff she buys.”
“No, not that. The mascara. It doesn’t hurt. It helps.”
Beryl snorted. “We’ll see about that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, swiping at the water rolling down the sides of my cheeks.
“It took us…Goddess, I don’t know, half an hour to get you to put your arms down and stop babbling about Mom.”
I opened my eyes. Orderly rows of pressed tin tiles lined the ceiling. I was lying on one of the cutting tables in the ground floor shop. The tube of mascara I’d nabbed from the bathroom poked a sore spot near my spine. “What happened?” I asked.
“Well, you made a hole in the wall of the bathroom, Rosey used the ring to see if there was a secret door in there, and it turns out the entire bathroom is really an elevator which leads down to Mom’s secret laboratory in the cellar.” Alderose glared at me while Beryl recounted. “Oh, and your adventure with magical mascara cost us almost an hour.”
My oldest sister came closer and peered at my face. “Your skin looks fine and your eyelashes are intact.” She brushed a fingertip across my forehead. “But you’re not hydrating enough, and you may be only twenty-seven but it’s never too early to start using a serum at night.”
“Thanks for the grooming tip.”
“You’re welcome. Ready to tell us what happened so we can get back to work?”
“I found a tube of mascara in the medicine cabinet when I pulled it out of the wall.” I rolled to my side, sat up, and handed the tube to Alderose. “When we ended up in that laboratory, I saw the mirror, saw more tubes of mascara, and put some on. The next thing I knew I was—I was doing things as Mom. There was stuff cooking on Bunsen burners, there were dried plants hanging from some kind of rack, and I—” I had to pause and picture what exactly had come next. “Oh, and then I…Mom…did this thing with three dolls and her hair and then put the dolls into boxes like the ones we found upstairs. The ones she uses for her clients.”
“Anything unusual or memorable about the three dolls?”
“Uh.” I rubbed my forehead until my head cleared. “Yeah. I think they were meant to represent the three of us.” I recited every other detail I could recall and watched as worry lines
