Conjured

  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!”

  Knitting needles flew at me, sharp and fast. Again before I could react, the Magician held up one hand, and the needles reversed—shooting back fast and straight. Two needles embedded themselves in the Storyteller’s heart.

  She clutched at them, and then she toppled forward onto her knees, hard.

  I heard screaming. My scream. It tore out of my throat and filled the air, and I couldn’t stop. Blood welled on her breast, staining her clothes.

  The Magician fell to his knees in front of her. “No! No, no, what have I done?” He cradled her as she slumped to the ground. Quickly, he lifted her and carried her to me. Her breathing was ragged. A drop of blood dotted the corner of her mouth.

  He slammed his lips onto mine and inhaled so deeply that it felt as if he were swallowing my scream. He broke away, my scream silenced, and he focused on her.

  Her face shifted, smoothing. Her white hair darkened and softened. Her eyes cleared, ivory whites and brown irises. I’d seen her with this face in my visions, her younger self. The Magician yanked the needles from her chest, and he pressed his hands over the wounds. They didn’t heal. He didn’t—I didn’t—have the power to heal so grave a wound.

  As he concentrated, her body shifted again: first, she became a dog; blood seeped into her short gray fur. Then she changed again, shrinking into a cat. Her wounds didn’t close. He changed her into a bird, a songbird that lay limp in his hands. Then an owl. Then a mouse. Pressing himself against me, he inhaled again. I saw tears bright in his eyes, unshed. Determined, he continued, trying to find some form that wouldn’t bear her wounds. He transformed her into a tree, rooted in the floor. Sap still leaked from gashes in her bark. “There, there, you’ll be all right, yes, yes.” He put his hand over the bark. “You won’t die. You can’t.” He changed her again, back to the woman with the silk black hair. She was paler now, her skin almost frostbitten. “No!” He changed her again—a stone. It was smooth and flawless. He transformed her back.

  She was still dying.

  No matter what form he chose, when he returned her to human, she was weaker than before. She put her hand, gnarled despite the youth of her face, on his wrist. “Enough,” she whispered. “We never … drained one … who could heal.”

  His voice was broken. “I am sorry.”

  “Do it. Don’t waste my strength.”

  I watched the color drain from his face. But he said nothing.

  The Magician found a stick of chalk. With shaking hands, he drew a circle on the floor of the wagon. He marked it with symbols—I’d seen the symbols before, both on his Tarot cards and on this same floor. I felt memories bubble inside of me. Those symbols … “You can’t!”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Please, not to her!” The Storyteller used to soothe me with stories as we traveled between worlds. Her stories had power of their own. They wrapped around you and forced you to listen. I remembered she used to do puppet shows for the children at the carnival, drawing her audience with her voice. Sometimes she’d use me in them. She’d tie strings around my wrists and ankles, and I’d dance on the stage. She’d praise me if I danced well, and I’d reveled in her praise.

  Her breathing was loud, ragged enough to drown out the soft inhales and exhales of the dolls. She coughed, and blood speckled the floor. She opened and closed her mouth as if she wanted to talk but couldn’t. Her hands, around the wounds, were red, and a pool of red spread across the wood, seeping toward the chalk circle.

  “She said she wasn?
??t my mother.” But she had to be. As mixed with nightmares as my memories of her were, she still felt like family. I couldn’t remember any other.

  “She wasn’t, and she was.” The Magician didn’t look at me. I saw he had tears staining his cheeks. He plucked boxes from the ribbon, all except for one, which I knew must hold Zach. As the Magician plucked each box, the ribbon shook and Zach’s box swayed.

  “Who are my parents?”

  “You have none.” The Magician drew a knife from within the folds of his conjurer’s robe. It had a black bone handle, and the blade was covered in writing and runes.

  “But where did I come from?”

  “From her,” he said shortly. He crossed to me and picked me up as if I were a pile of cloth. He dropped me down beside her, in the blood. My face was inches from the Storyteller’s. Her young brown eyes stared into mine. I didn’t think she saw me. The blood smelled acrid, and I felt its warm wetness seep through my shirt.

  I wanted to scream again.

  “Breathe,” he told me.

  And I remembered him saying that many, many times before. I remembered lying bound on the floor, facing eyes … green eyes, brown eyes, red eyes, cat eyes, black eyes, blue eyes.

  “Breathe in her magic. Don’t let it be wasted.”

  The Storyteller fixed her eyes on me. Milky eyes, old eyes again—her true eyes. I couldn’t look away. She was still alive, but only barely. Each breath was harder, slower. Her bloodstained hands lay limp across her chest.

  Gently, the Magician lifted her face and placed her mouth close to my lips. I shrank back as far as I could, but the steel-like yarn held me tight. I felt the Storyteller’s breath, tasted it in my mouth.

  And then I felt a rush of wind inside me.

  It was magic, her magic, filling me.

  She lay slack and still. Dead.

  He began to cut her body. The knife slid through her flesh, her muscle, and her bone as if they were soft cheese. Blood didn’t drip where the knife cut. He severed each limb, and he placed each in its own box. He was methodical and silent, crying as he cut. Last, he lovingly carved out her eyes one by one and placed them in boxes.

  He placed the rest of her in the final box and closed it. One by one, he strung the boxes on the colored string, and then he knelt next to me in the pool of blood. He leaned toward my lips. “Whisper sweet nothings to me,” he said.

  He breathed in. Leaning back, he closed his eyes. He then picked up the needles, stained red with blood, and he chose a ball of yarn. Eyes still closed, he began to knit.

  And I blacked out. But this time, it was the oblivion of darkness. There were no visions.

  When I woke, the blood was gone, and the chalk had been erased. I again lay on the cot, bound in the Storyteller’s unbreakable yarn. I smelled of dried blood.

  The Magician was seated across from me next to the unfinished doll. He was watching me.

  “What … what am I?” I asked.

  “You’re a doll,” the Magician said. “You were yarn and cloth and buttons and stitches. She made you to hold the magic we collected.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it.

  “No person can hold another’s magic. Not for more than a few hours. It fades. But you can. You can hold it forever, or at least as long as you exist. You were to be our power source—our battery, so to speak—to draw on whenever we pleased. She made you that way. Creating you was her magic.”

  It felt like truth, horrible and hideous.

  “We filled you with transformation magic, plant magic, flight, weather … so many different kinds of magic.”

  Except healing, I thought.

  “Over the years, the magic changed you,” he said. “You absorbed more than merely power. You absorbed the essence, the life spirit, of those people, and you … woke. With the others, the new ones, we’ve been careful. Only a little power, only a few thoughts, only a few bits of soul. But with you … You were our first. We didn’t know.”

  I remembered now. All of it. I was made from stolen bits of magic, comprised of bits of the thoughts and personalities of their victims. That’s what woke me up, made me alive—or at least lifelike.

  I closed my eyes.

  I’m not real, I thought. I am a patchwork doll made of leftover bits of the dead. The words repeated in my head. I’m not real. Not real. Not real. I am no one. I am nothing.

  “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 more human than he is, not less.”

  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 ma
gic, 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.