A marionette hung by its strings from two hooks at the top of the cabinet. A girl, fair-haired, with storm-cloud eyes and cheeks as pink as if she’d just come inside from the cold. She was taller than Constance, and her white dress was an old-fashioned style, with a wide collar and a pale pink sash that hung low on her waist.
“Oh!”
Constance stepped aside when Fortunato appeared, one hand over his mouth. Howard hurried over too, eyes wide.
“Nicolette,” Fortunato whispered, gently lifting one string, then another, off their hooks. “I can’t believe it. At last…”
“Good,” Constance said, taking a step back. “We found your doll. Now can we—”
“This is no doll.” Fortunato’s voice was nearly reverent as he carefully removed the marionette from her cabinet. “This is my sister.”
“Your…what?”
Tears filled his eyes as he held her strings. “Yes, it’s me,” he whispered, and Constance realized he was talking to the marionette. With the marionette. “I’m so sorry, Nicolette. He took you while I was sleeping.”
Constance’s mouth opened and closed. “Okay,” she said at last, taking Howard’s hand. “Come on, we don’t need him.”
Blinking rapidly, Fortunato looked at Constance. He clutched Nicolette to his chest, and though it was absurd, Constance thought she actually saw a resemblance between them.
An awful image flashed in her mind. Herself, old and wrinkled like Fortunato, still searching for her lost brother trapped in a marionette. A fresh wave of adrenaline coursed through her veins at the thought. She had to get back to Chance. Now.
“We lost our parents to pneumonia when we were very little,” Fortunato was saying. “The cabinetmaker took us in, treated us like we were his own. Until…”
He closed his eyes, and Constance felt her patience snap.
“We don’t have time for this right now! We need to save Penny and Chance.”
“No, listen!” Fortunato stepped forward, his gray eyes now wide with alarm. “I can help both of you save your brothers. Yes, Jack, too,” he added to Howard, whose mouth was a round O of surprise. “But if we’re going to defeat the puppeteer, you need to know the truth about him.”
Constance and Howard shared a nervous look. Howard nodded, and Constance took a deep breath, fighting the instinct to sprint back to Chance as fast as she could. She couldn’t act rashly. She needed a plan.
“Tell us.”
Penny could not feel the flames just inches from her back, but she could hear them crackling. Her glass eyes were aimed right at Chance as he spun his soul away. She wanted to scream at him to stop, stop that right now. Why should both of their souls be trapped forever, when they could both be free? She willed Chance to understand this, to let the puppeteer throw her into the fire. But he just kept spinning.
He’s doing what he thinks is right, came the puppeteer’s voice in her mind. Just like you did, coming back here to save him. Sacrificing. Giving.
Penny did not respond. She focused on Chance.
His eyes were glazing over, his movements stiffening. He seemed mesmerized by the wheel. Penny understood why. There was something about the blur of the spokes. She’d been hypnotized by them too once before.
Wait, no, she hadn’t. She’d never sat behind that spinning wheel. But then why could she imagine it so vividly? Sinking into an emotionless fog, her pain and sadness ebbing away (What pain? What sadness? Lottie…), the magic of seeing that first shining bit of string appear out of nowhere…no, not out of nowhere, out of herself, spinning straw into gold, souls into strings…the joints of her fingers and wrists and elbows tautening, her brown skin hardening into wood, nicking her chin on that long, sharp spindle and barely feeling it…
Sounds like a fairy tale, the puppeteer said, jarring her from these thoughts. Just like Princess Penny, foolishly drinking the Evil Witch’s potion. She makes the wrong choice every time.
Because you force her to, Penny thought, the fog in her mind receding rapidly now. That’s the way you tell the story when you’re holding her strings. But that isn’t how it has to go. Lottie…Constance, Constance will stop you.
And just as she thought Constance’s name, the girl appeared. Penny could barely make her out from the corners of her glass eyes, edging around the outskirts of the chamber toward the entrance to the trailer. Howard was right behind her, his gaze locked on the puppeteer.
Oh, she won’t know, the puppeteer assured her, too fixated on Chance to notice the others’ return. Once my soul has a new home, this body will no longer work. She’ll come in to find that Chance has triumphed—the puppeteer will be dead wood on the floor, and her brother will be returned to his normal state. We will all leave these chambers together, as I promised.
She’ll know, Penny told him. Constance and Howard had nearly reached the door, and she willed the puppeteer not to turn his head. Constance will know who you are the second she looks into her brother’s eyes. She did with me.
The puppeteer did not answer. Constance and Howard had vanished from Penny’s view, and she waited. They must have seen what Chance was doing; surely they had a plan to stop him, to save him.
Suddenly, music began playing on the other side of the door. Fortunato’s radio was turned on full blast, and Live from Club Heavenly Blues had begun. The singer’s voice, a bit hoarse from age but still sweet, filled Penny with yet another surge of emotions. And then, in her chest:
Thump.
Penny felt the puppeteer’s shock as much as she felt her own. He held her closer to the fire and yelled at Chance, “Spin faster!”
Thump-thump.
Her heart was beating.
You’re delusional, the puppeteer hissed. You’re a marionette; you don’t have a heart. You’re nothing but wood and a bit of string.
But his lies didn’t faze Penny. She’d spun out her soul once long ago, not because she was foolish, but because she was very, very sad and didn’t want to feel anything anymore. And then she’d forgotten who she was, almost entirely. But now she remembered.
Time slowed as Fortunato appeared, carrying a fair-haired marionette. Constance and Howard burst back into the chambers with the radio, music echoing around the cavernous hall. They were shouting something, saying Penny’s name. But Penny did not hear them. For a moment, she didn’t even see them.
She saw Lottie and Walter.
Walter, her brother who’d died in a war fought across the ocean. Lottie, who fell into a deep depression that made her a beloved singer but a neglectful sister. It was very, very long ago, but Penny remembered it all now. They’d lost their parents, but Walter and Lottie had raised her. They were musicians, they were happy, they were a family until the war changed everything, stole it all away. And so Penny had run off. Snuck into a trailer that glowed with promised magic. Sat behind an enchanted spinning wheel. Spun out her soul.
I want it back, Penny thought, and her chest went thump-thump. I want to spin my soul back in.
“You can’t,” the puppeteer snapped, loud and angry. “You need the cabinetmaker’s tools. Only the tools have the magic to—”
“It’s not the tools!” Fortunato yelled with a look of fury Penny had never seen on his kind face. “He told you that again and again, but you never listened.”
The puppeteer let out a harsh laugh. “Oh yes, the ridiculous idea that the magic was in the wood. A pathetic attempt to keep the secret of his success from his apprentice.”
But Fortunato was not looking at him. He was looking at Penny.
“The tools aren’t magical, Penny. They’re just tools.”
The tools are everything. The puppeteer spoke only in her mind, and he sounded desperate now. You’re just a puppet. A thief. A demon jealous of real children with souls.
No, Penny thought. I am not a thief. I am not a demon. The l
ove and sorrow she felt from the memories washing over her were agonizing, and she welcomed them. Her heart thumped and her lungs inhaled and her strings retracted and her mouth moved and she spoke.
“I am a person.”
The spinning wheel stopped spinning. Chance gazed at her, and already his eyes seemed less cloudy, as if he were coming out of a deep trance. Fortunato laughed triumphantly, still clutching Nicolette. Constance and Howard dropped the radio in shock, bringing the music to an abrupt end.
The puppeteer gripped Penny’s arms tighter than ever, his perfectly carved face contorted in rage.
“Flesh can burn as easily as wood,” he hissed, and pushed her at the oven door.
But Penny braced her legs against the iron and pushed back with all her strength. The flames from the oven licked her back, singeing her hair. All she could see was the puppeteer’s face, his nose nearly touching hers. Up close she could see all the strange little scars from where he’d carved his wrinkles away as decades passed.
Penny did not scream, but she heard cries of anger over the fire crackling in her ears. A pair of hands grabbed the puppeteer’s shoulders, another took his left arm, and another his right. Constance and Howard and Fortunato pulled as hard as they could, but the puppeteer was too strong. Penny’s calves were starting to burn from pressing against the hot iron, and her muscles, which had gone so long unused, would not last much longer. The puppeteer’s lips curled back in a sneer.
But Penny was not looking at him anymore. Because Chance was standing just behind him. Not pulling or yelling like the others. Just staring at Penny with a question in his eyes.
And even though it was impossible, because neither of them was a marionette anymore, Penny heard him ask:
What should I do?
And she answered him:
Push.
Chance did not hesitate. He shoved his shoulder into the puppeteer’s back just as Penny threw herself to the side with the last bit of strength she had. Fortunato stumbled away, and Constance and Howard let go of the puppeteer in surprise.
He flew face-first into the fire in a clatter of wooden limbs. Constance kicked the door closed, then covered her mouth with her hands, shocked by her own actions. The four children and the former museum owner stared at the oven.
They listened and listened, but the puppeteer did not scream.
Soft music crackled from the radio, filling the trailer with rhythmic swing and an upbeat melody. There were five people and five marionettes, and none of them were sure what to do next.
“There has to be a way to change them back,” Howard said, his palms resting on either side of Jack’s cheeks. He had not taken his eyes off his brother’s face since removing the knight’s helmet, which had kept it hidden.
Constance was busily cleaning the green paint off the witch’s face. “The puppeteer tricked them into forgetting who they are,” she said, lifting one of the witch’s strings. “She told me she doesn’t have a name. They all think they’re just these silly fairy-tale characters.”
Next to her, Chance carefully removed the white beard from the wizard’s face. “These two look alike,” he said. “Like brother and sister.”
“They could be,” Fortunato murmured, turning the black box that held the puppeteer’s strings over and over in his hands. “He was looking for children with brothers who would be willing to give up their souls to save their siblings. It takes a particularly powerful love to drive someone to make such a sacrifice.”
At this, Chance’s face went red as a beet, and he busied himself examining the white beard so closely it looked as though he were inspecting it for lice.
Penny, still dazed and unable to believe she was really standing here, moving and talking in her own body, stared at the coil of dull string on the table. It was all that remained of the puppeteer, and none of them knew what to do with it now. Penny had been the one to collect it off the spindle. When she’d touched it, there had been no voice in her head.
The door opened suddenly, and everyone turned to see A. P. Halls, out of breath and flustered-looking. His eyes traveled across their faces, and the faces of the marionettes.
“The puppeteer…,” he choked out, and Penny pointed wordlessly to the coil of string.
“Gone,” said Fortunato.
“As you can see, Mr. Halls,” Constance said primly, “it wasn’t too late after all.”
The young man’s face turned slightly pink. “Indeed.”
“Halls?” Chance yelped, and Penny couldn’t help but smile. His mouth was doing the fish thing again. “You’re…you’re the Storm!”
Constance muttered something under her breath that sounded like “Hardly.”
As Fortunato began to recount the incident in the chambers to Mr. Halls, Penny returned her attention to the Wise Wizard and the Evil Witch. Twins, she thought vaguely, and then her eyes moved to the Brave Knight, and to the Sheepherder, and to Fortunato’s sister. Sadness had led them to spin out their souls, and now they thought they were just marionettes. But it wasn’t too late. The real story was still inside each of them, lost somewhere in that fog. Penny had found her real story. She could help them find theirs.
“The marionettes are children?” Mr. Halls cried. His fish face was almost as funny as Chance’s. “But…but how do we help them?”
“Finally, the right question,” Constance said, but her expression had softened considerably. “And I think Penny might have the answer.”
Penny stood a little taller. “I think I might too.”
The others fell silent as she stepped forward. Gently she touched the string on the Brave Knight’s wrist.
Hello? came a boy’s voice.
“Hello, Jack,” Penny said. “I’m going to tell you the story of how you became a marionette.”
Early the next morning, the rain clouds that had hung so low over the city drifted away at last, and the sun rose bright and strong.
What a pretty day, thought Mrs. Goldstein, sipping bitter black coffee on her balcony. She enjoyed watching the city come to life this early in the morning and was grateful she and her husband had decided not to move to Daystar Meadows, no matter how many reminders their home held of what they’d lost. Just down the street, she noticed a boy and a girl dressed in silly costumes—a witch and a wizard—and she laughed to herself even as her heart constricted with sadness. Then the children saw her and waved and yelled and started to run, and Mrs. Goldstein knocked over her coffee mug in shock, and she screamed for Mr. Goldstein as she barreled through the apartment and down the stairs and down the street toward her grandchildren.
What a pretty day, thought Sister Maria Ignacia as the sunbeams shone through the stained-glass windows. She was once again the first to arrive for morning prayer, and she had been struck with déjà vu as soon as she’d entered the church. Instinctively, she glanced over at the first pew, and for a moment, she thought she was imagining the boy in brown robes curled up there, sound asleep. Sister Maria Ignacia had not been able to forget the brother and sister who had slept there the night before last, and she had added them to her prayers. But this was not the same boy. She knew this boy, and he was not lost anymore. “Gil?” she whispered, and her nephew opened his eyes and smiled, and Sister Maria Ignacia fell to her knees because this was the miracle she’d been praying for.
What a pretty day, thought Mrs. Pepperton as she picked up the newspaper on the orphanage’s porch. She skimmed the headlines with a sigh before rolling the paper up and sticking it under her arm. Across the street, a pair of boys emerged from the park. Mrs. Pepperton frowned, because she recognized Howard right away—the boy had snuck off again, heaven help her. Then she took a closer look at the smaller boy. He was wearing what appeared to be a suit of armor, a helmet tucked under his arm. He waved when he saw her, and he and Howard wore identical smiles. Mrs. Pepperton took an involuntary
step forward, hardly daring to believe her eyes. “Jack,” she murmured. “Oh, Jack. He found you.”
The chief of police had a busy morning. But it was one of those rare kinds of busy in a police station when the phone kept ringing with good news, not bad. The Goldsteins’ grandkids had returned. So had the missing Espinosa boy. Mrs. Pepperton was his third call, and she informed him, her voice thick with tears, that Howard had found his brother, Jack, as well.
Pleased but perplexed, the chief hung up the phone. He would have to question all these children later. They had each vanished without a trace, and now they were all back at the same time—it was too good to be true. And yet as he opened his office door, he couldn’t help but wish for one more stroke of luck.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. and Mrs. Bonvillain,” he said.
The couple stood, their hands clasped tightly. The chief took a deep breath. Their children had sat on that very bench just a day ago, and then they’d vanished as well. He’d had his officers out searching for them all night, with no luck. And now he had to deliver the bad news.
But just as he opened his mouth, the bells over the entrance jangled. The chief and the Bonvillains turned to look. And like something out of a fairy tale, the missing brother and sister walked right into the police station.
There were tears of relief and hugging and halfhearted threats of punishment that the chief felt sure would not be carried out. He watched the reunion with no small degree of incredulity. And then he noticed the others hanging back by the door. An elderly man with gray hair, holding the hand of a blond girl the chief assumed was his granddaughter. And a younger man, slim and well dressed, holding the hand of a blue-haired girl the chief assumed was his daughter.
There was a third girl too, but she was alone. She wore an old-fashioned dress smudged with what looked like soot. A scar marred her chin, and a few of her fingers were merely stubs. A tiara sat atop her head, and her dark curls were pulled into a messy, knotted braid. She was the saddest princess the police chief had ever seen.
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