by Lani Lenore
“As you, no doubt, have considered your own by even coming here and bringing those puppets with you!” shouted the red–haired soldier.
The nutcracker did not deny that the marionettes were his doing, even though they were certainly not under his command. It would have done no good. This soldier was ready for a fight.
Rivere reached into his coat and withdrew a long chain that unwrapped from around his upper body like a coiled snake. He smacked the end against the floor like a whip, his gaze not breaking from Armand. If one had looked close enough, they might have seen a smile on his glass mouth for the pending battle.
“Take the princess and go,” he instructed. “Both of you.”
“You’re going to face him alone?” Lakke asked, uncertain about it.
“I’ll be along shortly,” Rivere promised with arrogance.
“Rivere…” Pirlipat tried to reason, but she must have known the soldier wasn’t listening.
Brooke looked at Armand, nothing revealed on his face. He looked at Anne once again, and she was sure she saw something specific there this time. His eyes were speaking to her. It was too bad that she couldn’t hear them.
Taking the princess’s arm, the brown–haired soldier hurried off with her. The blond one followed.
Anne quietly and slowly backed herself into a corner. None but the brown–haired soldier had even seemed to notice her, and she would do well to keep it that way. She couldn’t protect herself in a fight like this. Best to let Armand handle it, and any way that she could stay out of his line of attack was the right way.
Rivere raised the chain. Armand gripped the screw–rapier. Anne pressed her back against the wall and held her breath.
4
Three pairs of feet–two of them wooden, one made of porcelain–moved through the dark, second–floor portion of the castle house. Within the sitting room filled with lovely couches, one of those pairs halted.
Princess Pirlipat peered back toward her lingering soldier, and the one who had been pulling her along stopped as well. Outside the walls, sounds of chaos touched her fearful ears. She was no longer sitting in her throne room, knowing that her kingdom was silently falling apart. Now it was crumbling in a different way, and the sound made her unable to ignore it. She was a brave princess, but now, she feared for her own life above all else.
Lakke had stopped in the midst of the room, looking back behind them in uncertainty. She wanted to demand what was wrong–to scold him for stopping when this was so serious!–but before she had the chance, he was speaking.
“We left him down there,” he said, seeming to just realize it. “Rivere is capable but that other soldier was larger in scale. Two of us would have meant a sure victory, but we left him!”
Uncertainty filled her eyes. She might lose her kingdom and her home, but she would not lose them. He was right about Rivere, but what if none of them could stand up to the mysterious assailant? Behind her, Brooke stood silently.
“I’m going back!” Lakke said without even turning to look at her. The soldier with the golden hair dashed through the room to the stairs.
“Lakke, don’t be a fool!” the princess screamed.
But then something else had happened. It was a flash of black and silver lightning rushing past her. It disturbed her hair and startled her into releasing a short scream. Brooke had darted past, and was immediately behind his fleeing brother.
Brooke! Pirlipat was about to insist he talk some sense into his brother Lakke–they could not go back–but she did not get the chance.
From within the sleeves of Brooke’s black coat, a pair of blades that had been removed from letter openers extended–his chosen weapons. Within a single moment, one of those blades had buried itself in the back of Lakke’s wooden head, not killing his brother, but making it impossible for him to move further away.
Lakke yelled in pain, Pirlipat covered her mouth, and a quick jerk flung the blond soldier off the blade and across the room.
Lakke hit against the wall, denting the soft wood and crashing to the floor on his back. The damage to his wooden skull disoriented him. The room spun and he could hardly focus on anything before him. He saw his princess. She was frightened. What had frightened her?
“What is the meaning of–!”
That was all that was able to exit Lakke’s mouth. One of Brooke’s blades had stabbed through the glass face of his brother, damaging the wood and cracking the countenance–that was very much like his own–into pieces. Lakke had once again returned to lifelessness.
Pirlipat did not understand. She was crying silently, and yet no tears were running down her cheeks.
“W–hy?” she managed to choke, hiding her face within her hands.
Retracting the blades back into his sleeves, Brooke looked over his shoulder at her with one brown eye–one that she had once seen warmness in. There was no warmth there now. There was nothing.
Pirlipat tried to flee from the sight, turning on her heels and sliding a bit, struggling to escape. Why had Brooke turned against them? He had been her hero once. Now he would be her slayer?
A firm grip on her long curls pulled her backward, and she screamed in pain and fear. Pirlipat knew then that it would end this way. There was no escaping.
Then, she heard his voice. It had become such a foreign sound.
“I’m sorry, my princess,” the dark–haired soldier said. Was that a faint note of sorrow in his voice? “But I must insist that you come with me.”
5
The entry room of the castle house had quickly become a wreck. Holes were knocked in the walls and floor from the vicious lashes of Rivere’s chain whip. Armand would have to admit that this soldier was much more impressive than he’d anticipated. The three of them together would be a force to reckon with, even possibly causing serious damage to the nutcracker. But they could not kill him. He was certain of that.
The princess’s soldier managed to dodge nearly every attack that Armand offered. Armand, likewise, averted his attempts as well. Together, they tore the room apart.
Armand took the sword of glass into both his hands, slashing heavily instead of jabbing with the screw. Still, the soldier dodged, lashing out with his polished, silver whip.
The chain connected roughly with the side of the nutcracker’s head, biting harshly in its passing. Armand slumped over; Rivere smiled, pleased that he’d finally landed a hit. It was about bloody time!
When the assassin raised his angry gaze back to the princess’s soldier, peering through strands of long hair, Rivere’s green eyes saw the red substance running down the nutcracker’s face. It was impossible, and yet, it was.
Blood. A substance only known to humans.
“What the devil?” Rivere gasped, his eyes widening. Armand said nothing, raising a hand to wipe the fluid away, slinging it off his fingers and onto the floor.
The sudden sound of a crash rattled the tension, but did not shatter it. Rivere and Armand both averted their eyes from one another to inspect the new happening. They both found their search ended at the woman who stood in the room with them, nearly forgotten.
Shards of thin glass pelted Anne but did not slice her. Near her head, a metal spike had emerged into the house through the window at her back.
A window! She hadn’t seen any window! The marionettes were breaking through. Anne ducked down quickly and scrambled away across the floor. The puppets were reaching in with probing fingers and perceptive strings, and there were sounds of screams and laughter coming from the outside. How very hard it was to concentrate on two things at once! Stay out of the way of Armand and the soldier; move away from the window. She crawled across the floor, having let go of the marble in fear for her life. Near the stairs, she managed to pull herself back up.
Armand watched her move, then dashed forward quickly and chopped off the limbs of the groping marionettes with a single slash. They recoiled and moved away from the window. In that same instant, Rivere pulled his chain around Anne’s neck.
She’d held back her scream, but then the chain was helping her do so, cutting off breath. He pulled her in, thrilled with his catch. He pressed his face into her hair, smelling her.
“Very nice make,” he commented, feigning that he didn’t realize she was human.
The chain slid against her neck. It tightened. Anne was pulled back tighter against the cloth–covered wood of the soldier’s chest. She winced, and she could almost hear him sneering.
“Well, well. How the tables have turned. Your princess for mine. Where’s that confidence now?”
Anne clawed at the chain but couldn’t manage to get her fingers beneath it. It pressed against her windpipe, choking her, making her gag. She focused on Armand long enough to see that he was hesitant. He was surely searching for some opening, but the fiery–haired soldier kept her in front of him. Darkness was closing in.
“I see no reason why I shouldn’t just kill her,” Rivere said. “I could finish you after that. Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Air was cut off. Anne couldn’t breathe. She scratched at the chain–at the skin of her neck, leaving long, red marks. Armand considered, trying to remember how long it took for a human to die. He could try to strike the doll down, but there was no way to know that his opponent wouldn’t use the woman as a shield.
Rivere smiled, amused by the nutcracker’s confusion.
“It’s over,” he said easily, feeling the woman’s legs go limp.
“Not yet.”
Another voice had risen up in the room, and just as Anne nearly fell into unconsciousness, the soldier let go as a blade emerged from the soft wood of his neck. Pine; with the right force, it was easily damaged.
Rivere fell over when the blade retracted, looking up into the unfeeling eyes of his brother, Brooke. Betrayal? What was this? And had they ever known of such a notion toward one another? They had been a group, functioning only as a whole. So what was this pain that Rivere felt, not in his throat, but in his whole inner being?
“Why?” Rivere rasped, clenching his throat and trying to rise.
“If you were capable of understanding, you already would,” was Brooke’s reply.
The fallen soldier stared in disbelief, even as Armand gripped a handful of his red hair. His head was brought into the metal crook of Armand’s arm and with a solid crunch, Rivere’s glass head burst apart.
The nutcracker looked toward the other soldier that he’d expected to eventually kill. At his gaze, the momentary ally pulled his other hand forward, and onto the floor fell Princess Pirlipat, weak and sniffling.
Armand looked to the guardian again, both of them holding the same neutral expression.
“Her death be on your head,” the dark–haired soldier pronounced. Then he turned his gaze away.
To the side, Anne gasped for air, holding herself up on shaky arms. Her neck was sore. There would be bruising. A footstep gripped her attention, and Armand knelt down to her. She was very surprised to see him there.
He didn’t speak, simply looked into her eyes that were red and wet from strain. He tilted his head and put a hand on her shoulder lightly. Anne gave a short nod of confirmation. Yes, she was alright. She was alive, and in the end, that was all that really mattered.
“Stand up,” he told her then, helping her to do so.
He led her to the center of the room as if she was blind, stopping just before Princess Pirlipat as she grieved on the floor.
This would be it then? If one would call this simple, them his plan had been as simple as he’d said.
Armand gripped the royal doll’s arms and pulled her up without kindness. Anne stood away, watching intently with a feeling of mild dread at her core.
Why was he making her see this? Could he possibly have known that after she’d discovered he had a heartbeat, she’d actually come to wonder if there was more to all these toys than the nothing he claimed? Were they truly more alive than just animated? Still, she was more concerned about herself than any one of these others... But looking into the eyes of this princess, seeing her fear, made her doubt the most.
“Please…please, I don’t understand!” Pirlipat cried, her eyes eternally dry. “Are these the Lady’s orders?”
The princess looked into the nutcracker’s eyes. There was nothing there, especially not compassion. It was the same thing Pirlipat had seen in Brooke’s eyes when he’d betrayed her.
“You don’t have to do this,” she pleaded. “I’ll go away! Please! I don’t want to die!”
“I’m so sorry, princess,” Armand said, the coldness of his voice even sending chills through Anne. “But you have no life to beg for.”
Anne thought she saw the pupils of the princess’s eyes shrink with her terror and realization, but the woman dismissed it as an illusion. The nutcracker did not hesitate. He took one hand to her throat and the other gripped the crown of the princess’s hair. She closed her eyes, muttering ‘please’ over and over again pitifully. Her pleads went unheard.
The nutcracker twisted, the princess screamed, and the head came off easily.
The sound of the scream was cut short when the head became detached, but the sound of it echoed on in Anne’s ears. Armand held up the limb body of the doll and at the same time turned to Anne, putting the doll’s head directly into her hands.
Anne stared down at it, her eyes roving over the unmoving face of the princess Pirlipat. There was certainly no life there. It was nothing but porcelain. The woman raised her eyes to the brown–haired soldier who had delivered his princess into their murdering hands. He would not watch.
Armand withdrew the glass sword, using it to rip open the princess’s headless body from the gut to the neck and, putting the sword away, he reached inside and griped handfuls of fluffy white cotton, jerking it out. It floated weightlessly to the floor.
“Nothing,” he said, illustrating his point by grabbing another handful. “Nothing.”
After much of it was on the floor, the nutcracker dropped the body of the doll and it fell without resistance. It was simply like any time that Anne had tossed a doll into the toy chest or onto Olivia’s bed. It was nothing; made of nothing. She understood. He’d made his point. And yet…
“I see,” she said hesitantly. The princess’s head fell from her hands, and the fragile porcelain shattered against the hard floor.
“You know for certain that this was not murder and that it was worth the reason we did it?”
Why was he asking her this? Of course she knew that. She’d been willing from the beginning.
So why are there still so many questions?
Anne nodded in acknowledgment. Soon, she was sure, the princess would be the furthest thing from her mind.
“Then let us go,” Armand said, starting past. “We’re done here.”
“Wait!”
Anne was not the only one who had said the word. She turned back to see the dark–haired soldier watching them. When her gaze met his, he knelt down before her.
“Allow me to come with you,” he requested.
The appeal shocked her. She looked back toward Armand for his certain refusal, but the nutcracker said nothing. Anne looked back at the soldier in the black and silver coat. She was unsure of what to say, but he spoke again before she had the chance.
“What your nutcracker friend has said is very true.” The soldier glanced briefly toward the remains of his princess. “She wasn’t real. I’m not real. I feel alive, but I know I’m hollow inside.”
He rose up off the floor, and Anne wondered how it was that he had come to feel that way about himself. On impulse, she thought it was terrible. Then she remembered. Nothing.
“If I’m going to be,” he went on. “I might as well make myself useful. I don’t care why you destroyed her. You’re not like the rest of us. For your need, it is acceptable. I’m a soldier, programmed only for a certain thing that I cannot deny. Let me come with you. I need something real to protect.”
Anne opened her mouth to speak, not sure
whether she was going to accept or deny his request, but the chance for either was taken from her by a great sound at the door. Something on the other side was pounding on the wood, and the blocked entrance was buckling.
Armand drew weapons, Anne stared at the wood that was beginning to crack, and something gripped her arm.
“We should go,” the soldier said, giving her a stern look that was similar to one she’d seen before.
She gazed into his eyes. She did not even know his name, but somehow she believed that he was sincere. Even so, she was not willing to take chances of this sort.
“No,” she refused with a short shake of her head.
“It’s only reasonable,” he insisted.
His grip on her arm was gentle, but it held nonetheless.
“What’s your name?”
This seemed to catch him by surprise. He appeared uncertain.
“It… I am called Brooke,” he told her finally.
“I’m sorry then, Brooke. But if you’re desire is to help me, you need to understand what I need most.”
Light was seeping through the door where it splintered. Armand stood ready for the break. Anne looked to him, making sure that Brooke followed her gaze and understood what she meant. She turned back.
I need to stay with the nutcracker.
“He can help me find out what I need to know. I’m not leaving without him.”
Brooke gave a short nod. He released her arm and headed past her.
“As you wish,” he relented.
The wood of the doors burst open. A swarm of marionettes flooded inside. The nutcracker blocked off the first line. Blades withdrew from Brooke’s sleeves, and he leapt fearlessly into the fray, just at her simple word.
Anne backed into the stairs, hugging herself. A wooden arm chopped from a marionette hit the wall near her. She gulped and watched the battle, seeing injured puppets fall and rise back up again. Armand and their new ally cut through the wooden frames.