Theodosia's House

"There was once a man who stuck needles in people."

Tock. Tock. Tock. Nina had hit the bamboo stick on the floor, three times. Her voice was level, flowing in a regular rhythm. Just before that, she'd excused herself for a breath of fresh air, peeking her head out the window and looking for her friend, assuming the dolls didn't react. 'Okay...? Okay?' She asked, struggling to see through the darkness. Her heart was beating too fast. Now, back in the middle of it all, dolls all around, she told her story.

"He didn't do it because he particularly enjoyed it, but this was what he'd been taught how to do, and he enjoyed being the best at what he did. People he stuck needles into might say that nothing was 'best' about it, but they weren't usually in a position to argue. The man lived inside a magic clock, and the clock fed on the suffering and pain he caused."

"There was once a traveler who got stuck inside the clock." Nina's voice was calm, but her gestures animated the story. "The man was annoyed, because it made his ordered world all messy. With a curved needle he stitched strings along her nerves, because otherwise she would have started dying all over the place, and he hadn't yet decided about that. And thus, part of the clock got stuck inside her. At this point the traveler kind of figured how things worked around here, so she asked for a sharp thing, hoping to end the man when he wasn't looking. He gave her a needle dagger, taught her how to use it, and teased her to kill him. She tried...again, and again, and again. But the man had lived for a long time, and he knew how this game was played." There was the briefest hint of a smile in the corner of her lips.

"There was once a fortune-teller who stuck needles into dolls. Her dolls weren't alive. They didn't argue. But with every seam lovingly stitched, with every sharp sting, they grew filled with her ideas, and ideas are always one step away from jumping from one's head and walking on their own.

One day, at the end of the world, the man met the fortune-teller (It should have been an epilogue, but stories are ever reluctant to end).

What happened then is a mystery. Perhaps an accident; perhaps a test, from a man who had forgotten that people aren't gears. They met in a dream, and in dreams ideas run the most free. Maybe the same is true for magic.

When the fortune-teller awakened, her dolls came alive.

The first thing they did was scare away the fortune-teller. Then they took up arms, needles and shards and other pokey bits, because that's what they had been taught was powerful, but they could feel something missing." Nina pressed a palm over her heart. "Perhaps each of them individually wouldn't have been able to grasp it, but together they could gradually shape this hollow in their midst and fill it with bits of cloth, fill it with bits of story.

And stories are always halfway to being alive anyway."

"Perhaps that's what it always had been about." Nina looked down at her feet and exhaled. "If the fortune-teller had meant the dolls simply to cause harm, they would have been destroyed or discarded long ago. I believe that, in her own way, she got attached to them. Perhaps they listened when no one else would. Perhaps they offered control when nothing else did. That was meaningful. The dolls wanted to keep that." For the briefest moment, Nina looked at the ceiling and shut her eyes.

"There was once a woman who was made of cloth. She was perfect in every way, kind and patient and a generous soul. She had been made that way. She had been crafted with love and care, out of nothing but love and care. But dolls hadn't been alive for a long time, so they didn't realise that in their search for perfection, they'd gone too far. They'd harmed. They built a reflection of the fortune-teller, with all the bad parts removed, but in doing so they lost her resilience, her cunning, the bravery which enabled her to face insurmountable odds. Even the lies she tells herself when she doesn't want to admit she cares for others," Nina added, remembering their first quest together. "Her memories. The woman the dolls made, she wasn't fully real. Perfect ideals are fragile in the real world, and the caretaker they crafted could still feel distress. And it is distressing when your whole world starts fraying at the edges." Just that once, Nina's voice faltered.

"They thought they would protect her; that they would hide the offending facts, knowledge, memories. But reality is too big for any single idea to face alone."

The ensuing silence felt like she'd heard a heart attack described.

"There was once a traveler who told the story. She's tired of trying to solve things by stabbing them. She..." Nina's head hung down, "...believes that if something can communicate, then they are someone and deserve to be listened." Her fingers fidgeted over the bamboos green surface. "I...want to help. To find a solution that works for everyone. Please...Let us talk."

For a moment, Nina held all the strings in her grasp. She was no bard, but somehow through the sheer force of her sincerity, the girl had managed to bridge her stream of consciousness to beings that hours before were not even alive. Countless button eyes watched. It was chilling and intoxicating, in the way same way as climbing an icy path along a precipice where every step can be your last. For a moment, Nina hoped.

Then Theodosia walked through the door. Nina winced. Strings snapped and slipped from her grip, while others, that she had tried to gently unravel, tensed and frayed. It was the worst possible time. She felt, against her soul, a shaking vibration, moving ever closer towards a breaking point.

‘Does she not understand?!’ Nina looked at her friend in cold shock. ‘How fragile this world of ideas is.’

Or perhaps that was the point.

‘Theodosia’ grabbed her hands, pleading for a reality that was more vital to her than the blood she didn’t have. Theodosia, behind her, was on point of getting swarmed by angry dolls. There was always a cost, Gray would say. There was always a choice. Sometimes the choice was between something and death.

Sometimes there was a choice between people.

“Hold on.” Nina pressed silken hands against her chest, trying to put in those words the whole force of her conviction. ‘Hold. On.’ Just as suddenly, she let go. To her surprise, she realized she fully meant her next words. “I know you’re real. There are no fakes in this room.”

As that quizzical remark left her lips, she was already running. There was something she’d realized about cloth-Theodosia, but did not have time to speak. She ran, and the bamboo stick thundered down on the doll army. But it damaged no one, not much more than someone rushing past in a busy street would do. Nina had simply used the stick to propel her leap over the horde, and place herself between them and Theodosia.

Something creaked in her ankle as she landed, and she folded down in a bundle of discomfort. But almost immediately she scampered up, well, half-kneeling to be closer to the level of the dolls, and turned to face them.

Palms raised. At first, they were simply pointed towards the attackers. Then, slowly, one turned to Theodosia, as if gesturing her to stand back too. Shall the dolls keep advancing, she would advise retreat. A step back, if needed.

The traveller reached out for the only semblance of control she had over the angry mob. A shaky, fraying thread woven with her remaining willpower:

“I have not finished my story.” She declared.

Another step back, if needed. If needed, she would claim whatever injury was headed Theodosia’s way, while trying to keep a hand free for sheltering her eyes.

“If you fight, I will be between you.” Nina said, and the flow of her words almost resembled a story. “I could not do otherwise. You are all friends,” she nodded back at Theodosia, “friends,” at cloth-Theodosia, “or friends of friends,” she said, her eyes brushing over the dolls, “of mine.”

There was always a cost. Nina simply let everyone know it. The one cost which she – could not bring herself to hope – was something all versions of Theodosia would mind.

Manipulative, perhaps; genuine, nevertheless.

“If a child is born unwanted,” Nina whispered over her shoulder to Theodosia, “by some, is that the fault of the child?”

She found it increasingly difficult to focus on soothing her friend's worries, with the danger of a doll swarm looming close enough to touch. If she moved her hand, she'd slice her palm open on a knife.

“You're not mad, but that doesn't mean you're right.” The girl eventually settled on. Her voice picked up, as if the doll's wordless chant was a war cry. Something joyful and grim sparked in her eyes. “You're not mad, but perhaps I have to be.” And before any argument could be made, Nina breathed the story back into existence.

“Once, the traveler asked the master of the clock:

'Why me?' ” And the traveler's voice run with an old pain, and her eyes looked through the dolls at a shadowy figure of her imagination.

“ 'You could have had almost any apprentice.' ” Nina pleaded. She wrung her hands. “ 'You could have raised a successor from a young age, so what I perceive as twisted would be their normal. Or, shall you wanted to avoid the difficult parts of childhood, you could have adopted a stray, a stray mage, even, someone who'd already been marked by the cruel decisions they had to make to stay alive.' The girl's voice was feeble, and it shook. At times it was almost drowned out by the ticking of weaponry against the floor. “ 'I'm not saying it would have been just, but it would have been simpler. Why do you insist on getting into my head and teasing my worldview when you know that the only way it would agree with you is if you break it?' ”

It was the voice of someone who was still expecting said breaking. Because it had happened before.

“The man looked at the traveler. He spoke, not in words, for he could be remarkably obscure even without trying.” Nina's irony slowly shifted to a colder, calmer tone. She shifted on her heels to watch the space she had just left.

“But this is what he said.

'The clockwork has worked as you say for many generations. It is immutable and perfect. Self-perfecting, even.' ” Nina snapped her fingers, and her back straightened. Her voice now flowed along with the ticking, a perfect, cruel melody. “ 'But perhaps...just perhaps...' ” Nina raised a finger. The first crack appeared. “ 'Being inside a system makes one blind to part of it. Maybe...just maybe...' ” And her voice moved faster now, still bound to the rhythm but shifting, somehow forcing it to follow instead of the other way round. Her expression held a cold fascination. “ 'if I keep you alive...If I give you the tools you need to survive without breaking you too badly, you will be able to make the choices that I myself could not.' ”

The girl found herself breathless. Her chest ached in the effort not to collapse into tears.

“Or perhaps...” Nina sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “The traveler just imagined that.”

Gray was terribly obscure, after all.

“But I will make my choice regardless.” She said, gritting her teeth.

“This is my trick.” She thrust out her arms, encompassing the room like a magician claiming her stage. “For the end of the story was never something I could decide on my own. It is something for all of us,” Nina spoke, and her smile beamed like a challenge. She tilted her head. “I am no fortune-teller, but...This is what I am seeing, if you'll indulge me a tad longer.”

“You all are afraid.” Nina said, with a tremor. For she was, too, afraid, not in the least because she wondered whether it was the Nina-way of caring about people which helped her, or the Gray-way of actually caring to understand them, and if one person was but a collage of everyone else they'd met. “You all want different things. I mean,” the girl corrected herself, “you want things that don't necessarily contradict each other.”

First, Theodosia. She half-turned to her friend, as if in a dance.

“Friend, you...you want your home back, and your place in the community. You want to be safe. Isn't that what you said?” She attempted. Her hand caught the fortune-teller's shoulder. She would acknowledge the answer, nod and note down the difficulties in her mind. “But there is always a cost. If the cost was treating every being in this room civilly, like the people they are, would that be an acceptable exchange?” Her eyes were serious. “Think on it.”

The dolls.

“You, doll-folk, want freedom from pain, from fear, and ideally someone to care for you and to care for. Am I...getting this right?” It was more of a challenge to read creatures who couldn't speak, but Nina did her best. “If I was to help you in that goal, would you stay your vengeance?”

Then, perhaps the most heartbreaking case, cloth-Theodosia. Nina didn't know whether she may have already been too late.

“And you...friend...what is it that you want?” She asked, gently, her eyes fully focused on the bundle on the couch. She carefully made her way through the horde, if it seemed quiet enough, her soles brushing against the floor, trusting the flesh-and-blood Theodosia to run if things got once again out of control. She knelt by the cloth woman, and put one hand on hers. Nina was going to spontaneously combust from all this physical contact, yes she was. “I know it's all shocking and painful right now, but... I said it, didn't I?” Sheepishly, she rubbed the back of her head. “There are two people held together by strings, and I am one of them. I would die without these wires. If you are not real, then neither am I.” She patted the inside of her wrist. For a moment she looked serious, then her face scrunched up in mock thought. “Honestly, I'm doing way too much work for not being real, I should ask for a pay-rise. And...I don't think you're a fake, a copy, or anything like that.” Her voice grew soft again. “Because, Theodosia,” she said, tilting her head towards the cloth-woman,“you are different enough from Theodosia,” - a head tilt back - “so as to be a new person. I know it must be terribly unsettling to...you know...everything...,” she said, flailing her arms, “but, honestly, cloth is not even the strangest material that I've seen a living person made from.” Think, Nina, think. How do you keep an idea alive? “And...even if your past is fragmented, you might still have a chance at a future.”

Maybe. Just maybe. Who knew how the magic was woven? Did the dolls know, even?

“Is...is life...is being a person...something that you wish to continue trying?” Nina cautiously asked. “It...It would have to be in a different place than here, for even if it wasn't already inhabited, the village might not be quite...quite as you remember.” Her voice cracked a bit. “But...In another place, you might be able to be you. To fully grow into you.” Perhaps. Just perhaps. Or would the cloth-woman be the living equivalent of a holiday greeting card, an eternal frozen moment getting more fragile and dusty as years go by? Would that life be any less meaningful? “I...I would be honored to help. And I'd visit.”

Too late.

Nina winced as she felt, in front of her, a weave of magic tearing itself asunder.

“Tonight, when you last woke up.” She answered. The divergence point. But perhaps it was one of those questions that didn't ask for an answer, but rather for emotions.

“I'm here. I'm here.” She repeated, holding cloth-Theodosia's hands. Emotions of that night bubbled up, and Nina sniffled and snorted in the ugly manner of one trying not to cry. She wiped her nose on the shoulder of her blouse. “I think...” She said. Her thumb moved to cover the tear in the stitching. “Well, if the elder Theodosia is like a richly spiced gingerbread, then you'd be something like...,” she mused, “honey cake. Fewer of the same ingredients to start with, but different and potentially equally lovely in its own way.” Except that she hadn't finished cooking. Might never do. “It's all getting very persychological, really.” Nina gasped, eyes glistening. “What defines a person? The body, the mind? If it's the mind, then in a way, you and I still share memories, although 'you' were in a different body at the time. It's not a lie for me. I...I don't know you very well, I admit. But-”

What could she tell her? What could she say to someone whom a few minutes ago she didn't even consider to be real?

“You're...someone whom I care about.” She settled on.

Perhaps one single human wasn't enough to act as an anchor for another's reality. Perhaps it wouldn't be right.

Perhaps her care was as much about the context as it was about the person. Cloth-Theodosia was someone who had been harmed by the Clocktower. That she had been brought to life in this unforgivably fragile form, that it hadn't even been premeditated, made it all the more disturbing. And above all, lingered the betrayal of the man lying on the glasshouse floor.

Nina pressed her forehead against her wrists. Her mind reached out for the threads and stitches of magic. It was more difficult when she couldn't physically touch them. But slowly she grasped them, at first the faint cobweb glow of simple senses, then the strings that pulled fingers and limbs. The strings coiled around each other in sturdier ropes as her focus shifted up cloth-Theodosia's arms, and then the light of the other's aura core enveloped her. It was like a tapestry, whitework embroidery encompassing hauntingly subtle designs as well as pieces hinting at missing colors. And it was breaking. Too complex for its own good, and also not enough. Too complicated for an easy magical fix, but perhaps lacking the structural strength to keep itself together. But beyond a pained glance, Nina's mind went further, sinking into the shadowy spaces between those bright threads, following down into the darkness the tick-tock pulse that also reverberated in her veins. She felt, like a web brushing against her face, the many connections to cloth-Theodosia's makers, the dolls. And in the space beyond, she tasted metal. In a space as far away from normal magic as a chivalric romance was from actual court life, the thread became a wire.

It was difficult to get the Clocktower to release something once it had claimed it, Nina knew. Redirecting it, however, was another matter. From its perspective, Nina was but another cog in its machinery. And so it did not react when the girl wove her own magic around the thread. She wove her magic into that connection, and it did not react, for it was but another gear locking teeth with another, regardless of any pretense at self-determination. With grim resolve, Nina spun her magic to trap any snapping threads. Used her own soul as a conduit. Whether the cloth woman lived or died, she will not go back to the Clocktower.

Tick, tock.

Could she do anything more, Nina wondered, looking up at the unsettling doll face. Should she? Thoughts rushed and stumbled. Would it be fair to ask Theodosia to live forever in fear of injuries, due to her link with the constructed woman? Would it be fair to ask cloth-Theodosia to die due to sheer inconvenience? She could use her magic to weave her back together, Nina knew, looking in her button eyes. Put her to sleep, and at least try to build in the resilience that the other now lacked. But that would make her as much Nina's creation as the doll's. That would kill whoever cloth-Theodosia now was just as well.

A simple fix, she would do, Nina decided. Not more.

And so, carrying on the guilt of not passing on a gift of wires and life that she was granted, even though part of her knew this to be different, Nina waited for the outcome.

“It's not fair. It's not fair.” Nina cried, fighting back tears. “You shouldn't have to hurt because someone played games with magic. It's not right.”

Tears fell down Nina's cheeks.

Not even a sunrise. Not even a dream. She had nothing to offer to the cloth-woman, only oblivion, and so, as the flow of aura started to break and more magic was flowing back to the Clocktower than coming in, she tightened her grip. And that was the end. It didn't feel like murder, at first, even as she sensed the life ending in her hands as intimately as if it was her own. She only felt pain and numbness. But then the dolls looked at her, and she looked at herself. And she knew.

Nina didn't react as the dolls mourned and gathered their things. Her eyes were locked on the smiling face of cloth, so out of place with the woman's sad end. It was when they started preparing to leave, that a shudder of guilt went through her. The cold, black opening of the door frightened her now. She thought of treacherous spines, unpredictable rapids, curious forest animals with gigantic teeth and of soft, fragile cloth.

“I-” Nina croaked, and spun on her knees to face them.

What could she tell them? 'I did all I could?' It would never be enough. She pressed her hands on her chest.

“I won't ask you to stay with me. I wasn't able to protect you...her...” Nina spoke, with that lilting voice of someone trying to force their tears back enough to speak. 'I know I cannot be trusted,' she thought. “I won't ask you not to hate me. But...Please-” Nina stretched out her hands, and in them glowed a single thread of magic, tangled around itself. For the magician of intricate details, even parting with this amount of aura was a challenge. She had hastily woven this one in a pattern that would last a bit longer. She gave this one perhaps a day, and hoped that the masterworkers who had crafted a life would be able to make it go even further. They would need any help they could get.

It was a dangerous world out there.

“There is a great tree on the coast right above my house.” Nina spoke, and there was something absent about her. “My house is on the shore in the direction of the sunset, and it has a glass roof. If the Clock talks to you, remember my story.” As if some part of her had stepped out, unable to bear the pain. “The tree has a hollow. Starting tomorrow I will leave there supplies, and you can take them without ever having to see me again.” Yet the pain lingered in her demeanor, for the part that remained was broken. “I will leave a flag, so you could signal if there is ever an emergency, and I will knot the flag if I'm ever gone for more than a couple of days.”

She bowed in goodbye, or tried to, but all she could manage was to press her forehead against her knees while she held her abdomen in an effort to stifle the sobs.

“Please. Take care.” She gasped.

When she opened her eyes again, the dolls were gone. For a moment, she but wallowed in the silence and the death, with that peculiar pressure of tears pressing against her ears and nose. Then, Theodosia's arms, the arms of the 'real', human Theodosia, wrapped around her. Nina heard words, but her mind couldn't make sense of them. She felt relief in those words, happiness, even, and that burned like a whip.

“Hypocrite.” Nina grumbled through gnashing teeth.

She shuddered, and halfheartedly twitched away.

“With Tressor I'm a murderer, a potential monster with a demon for a heart, but with her it's all thank you, Nina, good job Nina, here's a gold star Nina?” Her voice rose to a pitch just below a hysterical laughter.

“Do you even hear yourself?”

The image of the dolls watching her, at the end, was etched in her mind. Her fingers brushed against cloth-Theodosia's lifeless hand.

“Did you think I was lying?” She heard her own voice as if through layers of glass. “Did you think that I was trying to distract them while getting close enough to-” Her hands folded. She pressed her arms against her chest hard enough to force out air. “That's probably what they thought.” She said, and burst into tears.

She cried for a long, long time, unable to move away, at times unable to see because of the tears stinging her eyes, at others making the strange sounds of a marine mammal as she forgot to breathe and had to gasp for air, and pretty much constantly dripping snot on every part of her clothing that she could fold over her nose.

Thinking back at that moment, she realized that part of her had longed for the dolls to harm her. That the person she really wanted to shout at was not poor Theodosia, guilty of little more than ignorance and keeping bad friends, but herself.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't be getting angry at you. You weren't taught,” Nina sighed, in a small voice. “About people. Not in the same way I was.”

For what Gray surely hadn't expected, when finding someone to make different choices, is someone whose grandparents had taught her that some trees are people.

Not all, mind you.

“The funeral.” Nina said simply, once she had at least in part recovered her voice. “Do...do your people have any particular rites? Cloth-Theodosia...She shared your culture, at least in part.”

When the tears got out, it felt like there was nothing left in.

Planning a funeral was almost an automatic sort of reaction; it was what people did, when somebody died. Nina was mostly just relieved that Theodosia hadn't suggested anything as crass as re-using the cloth. She listened to the other's words, nodding in places, while moving quietly around the room to close the door and window. She was putting more weight one one leg. For a long moment, the girl pressed one eye against a crack in the door before pulling it fully closed. It would have perhaps only increased Theodosia's fame if magic was known to happen at her place, but if anyone concerned by the noise came to check now, it didn't sound like this was something the fortune-teller would be comfortable sharing.

“Facts alone don't a story make,” Nina softly pointed out. “You could equally say that your family were masters at their art.” Con art, but art nevertheless. “That they traveled more lands than most people knew existed. They told and made fortunes. That due to their skill of predicting the future, they were often long gone when trouble came their way.” Nina supposed she couldn't exactly complain, as someone who was raised by pirates. Although the somewhat self-disparaging comments made the traveling girl look more closely at her friend, and wonder if it was possible that Theodosia might have not had a close relationship with her family. Or perhaps just a distrust of the that she so often misused. She filed that in for later.

“Besides, if you had been raised by desert nomads,” Nina added with a smile, “I doubt you'd have found it very special. Life has a way of feeling normal for most everyone who lives in it.” She thought back at being given real gems to play with, and rolling them around in ankle-deep carpets, following gold-thread maze patterns as if they were but marbles on paper. “You might complain about meals cooked on dung fires, about the bitter cold of night, and which ancestors was it again that decided that respect to elders meant being stuck in a wasteland where nothing grows and dying early?” Still with that quizzical smile on her face, Nina shrugged. “I'm not saying that there's no true wonder in the world. Far from it. It's just in the stories we tell ourselves and others, perspective matters.”

The girl looked back at the figure collapsed on the couch, this time with more acceptance. But the tear trails on her cheeks looked suspiciously fresh.

“Rites are a bit like that, too. They can't change that death happens, but I think they try to give it meaning. I'll think...” She choked. She clenched her fists.

'Of something fitting,' Nina meant to say, but she was already lost deep in thought. What would be fitting for a woman who had believed that her gift for magic came from the sky? That desert sands, somewhere, still rung with the steps of her ancestors? She thought of desert peoples she knew, of their resolve and celebrations. She thought of the orcs of the Wastelands, the warriors, single-minded in their loyalty to their lords, who would place a skull on the memorial of those who died in battle, and spit on the grave of weaklings. Of the human traders of the South, with their complex protocols both within and between caravans, where a funeral was but a long tea ceremony between the deceased, their close family, and the gods, not dissimilar in form from a high-value negotiation. It was, after all, negotiating passage. The higher the status of the deceased, the more was offered to the guardian-gods to carry it over to the afterlife, lest a remarkable soul attract evil gods to steal it from a rookie guardian-spirit. And so, it took a moment after Theodosia spoke for Nina to sense that something was wrong.

“Oh,” she said, as if she'd been struck in the temples.

There was blood ringing in her ears, and the day crashed upon her once again. Another harmed by the clock – or perhaps the catalyst of all that had gone wrong that night. Another misshapen being – another choice to be made – and Nina was all out of choices. Nina couldn't think right. The one thought that filled her mind was that she didn't want to kill, and that she may have to. So the girl delayed. She turned away, under the transparent pretense of checking for other dolls, but mostly because she didn't want Theodosia to see her face.

Then her friend spoke again.

“I think that is the best idea.” The beads in Nina's hair clinked, so abruptly she turned. Her face glowed. She looked like a woman that had been rescued from hell. She strode closer to Theodosia and the doll, and lightly caught the end of a tiny arm in a crook of her index finger. With her thumb, she patted the doll on the shoulder. There was a tiny cloak sewn around it – the only clue that the soft, simply-made creature had been modeled upon the terrible assassin. “I'll numb that area of their face so it – they – wouldn't be in pain. I'll check that their inner threads are all functioning right, too.” Something in Nina's voice brimmed with life. She lowered her head.

“Don't worry, young fellow. You'll be safe,” she said.