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.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 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-TwoThe 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]