“He used the First Story to…what? To change the whole of Creativity?” The Sister of Monsters’ eyes caught sight of Sad Rain, a symbol who had worked with her on stories throughout the centuries. Sad Rain wasn’t crying like many of the other patrons; she wasn’t frenetically jerking her arms and head and eyes around in paranoid fear like so many others; she wasn’t…anything. She was simply sitting, her eyes devoid of even a glimmer of intent.
“We’ve been working on that, trying to figure out what’s been done. How to reverse it.” Baba Vedma waved to the Innkeeper, who immediately tapped two pint glasses and headed to the table.
“The Innkeeper?” The Sister of Monsters spoke the name as part-question, part-greeting.
“He just reappeared here,” Baba Vedma stated as she took her pint of beer and guzzled it down.
“It is so good to see you, my friend.” The Sister of Monsters took the glass from the Innkeeper, but she used both hands and held his for a long moment before releasing.
The Innkeeper smiled a grizzly, honest smile and nodded before he went back behind the bar.
“Right after the Woods became the City, the Innkeeper found himself in the Inn at the Edge of Woods, just as it had been.” Baba Vedma leaned over the table conspiratorially. “He just started working like he’s been doing for, well, ever. Then, one by one, the people started coming in. Some used the doors; some just appeared at a table. He’s been serving them, tending them, ever since.”
“But how?” The Sister of Monsters looked around and tried to recognize some pattern to the patrons, who they were, what they represented, but she could see no clear association.
“It seems that the First Story isn’t as all-powerful as we thought.” Baba Vedma held up her empty glass and nodded as if she had revealed the greatest secret ever told.
“No, that’s not it.” The Sister of Monsters watched as Baba Vedma’s smile turned to a grimace and quickly amended her tone. “Well, not entirely. I think you might be correct in assuming that the power is not as centralized as we were led to believe. That means there are other powerful forces at play, maybe trying to correct the damage.”
“Hmmm.” Baba Vedma’s grimace turned to a frown, then a pout; then she nodded. “I think you be right. So, all we need do is find these resisting powers, unite them, use them to reverse this curse, and presto! We be back to normal.”
The Sister of Monsters looked back at Sad Rain, who was as motionless as the tick between seconds on a dying clock, and wondered if anything would feel normal ever again. “The people just began showing up?”
“Aye.” Baba Vedma guzzled the new beer the Innkeeper had left for her.
“How did they know?”
“Know what?”
“Know the Inn was here.” The Sister of Monsters motioned to the door. “I had no idea until you woke me up. If I had awakened on my own, how would I have known where to go?”
“Hmm?” Baba Vedma wiped dribbles of beer off her chin. “I’m not sure. I just knew. When me head shook off what the Origamist tried to do to me—Betty, for Pete’s Sake. He named me Betty. I’m going to give him a proper slap for that one—me legs just started walking. Me head could feel a pull, a tug, deep inside. That tug led me here.”
“Do you think…?”
“Been looking for them.” Baba Vedma placed a withered hand on the Sister of Monster’s arm. “The rest of the Council, their stories have been changed so much that—”
“No, they are powerful. They’ll wake up. They’ll find us, and when the Council is together again, we will fight back.”
Baba Vedma nodded heartily. “That’s what me brain’s been needing, a good pep talk from the Sister of freakin’ Monsters.”
The Sister of Monsters smiled and looked back at the patrons, who were all looking at her again. This time, however, many of them were smiling and nodding themselves. Sad Rain tilted her head, and a glint of moisture appeared in her left eye.
Chapter 50
The Newlyweds
Thomas walked past the nursery for the fifth time, still incapable of walking inside the small cheerful-looking room. Instead, he stood at the door and took inventory. The crib was assembled, the walls were painted, the mobiles were hung, the toys were—the toys. He looked at the shelves overflowing with every kind of toy he could think of. There were stuffed animals and large plastic shapes for teething purposes. There were colorful, whimsically frivolous items of various shapes and sizes, trucks, buildings, exotic animals, planets. In the corner was a rocking chair. In the rocking chair, sitting daintily, prettily, a doll.
The porcelain face, the frilly dress, and the tight curls of blonde hair were so…inappropriate. Everything about this doll screamed danger to an infant. He rushed in and headed straight to the rocking chair. He lifted the doll and…something. Something was wrong.
“What’re you doing?” Wilma asked from the doorway.
“This doll?” Thomas stared at the painted eyes and saw other eyes, large, bulbous, animalistic.
“It’s from my childhood,” Wilma offered. “I thought it would be nice to have it here. I wasn’t planning on putting it anywhere the baby could reach it.” Her hand went absentmindedly to her belly. She had a vague impression that there was nothing there. This was all a lie. “No, that’s not right. That’s not why I put the doll there.”
“What are you talking about?” Thomas turned and faced his wife, still holding the doll tenderly in both hands, a crooked, half-hearted smile etched on his face.
“I never had a doll,” Wilma admitted.
“Ever?”
“Ever.” Wilma stepped toward Thomas and eyed the doll with suspicion. “This is not my story.”
“How can you say that? We’re about to become parents.” Thomas grasped the doll tightly, afraid that letting go of the fragile thing would allow his entire world to crumble. The doll frightened him more than any toy had ever. Toys. The word struck some kind of chord with him, a chord so discordant that he shuddered. His fingers loosened their grip.
“This is not right.” Wilma was pacing around the small room, dashing about in frantic lines. “Something’s wrong.”
“Why did you put the doll here?” Thomas pointed to the chair.
“So that you would see it and—” Wilma stopped pacing and stared directly into Thomas’s searching eyes. “To challenge you.”
“Challenge me?”
“The baby is supposed to be a boy,” Wilma said. “You have chosen every toy that has a male gender expression. I put the doll here to challenge your gender expectations. It’s to introduce a theme. A modern theme. This story is being constructed around us—and without our input.”
“I felt that.” Thomas nodded and looked back at the rocking chair. “When I saw the doll, I felt that I should overreact to the gendered bias of the toy, but then I picked it up and…there’s something about toys in my past.”
“And that realization that you have a past having nothing to do with this present story made the whole thing feel wrong?”
“Yes.” Thomas looked at the room. “I don’t have a gender bias. If a boy wants to play with a doll or a girl with a truck, who cares?”
“Exactly.” Wilma stepped forward and reached for the doll.
Thomas hesitated. He wanted to grab the doll and throw it against the wall in a fit of rage, but only because he knew that was the expected, scripted response. Then he would feel guilty about his inability to get past gender expectations of society, and a lesson would be hanging thickly in the air as he bent to clean up the shards of porcelain. It was…it was the story they were here to tell. But there was another story just underneath that one, which was so very, very different. He held out the doll. Wilma curled her fingers around the doll’s waist, and Thomas saw a little girl in a frilly nightgown, blonde hair in pigtails.
“I’m leaving you,” he suddenly said without even a hint of forethought.
“What?” Wilma asked, rage rising in her chest. She tilted her hea
d and pondered the intense sensation of cold that seemed to be creeping along her extremities. Her heart felt solid, frozen, dead. She hated Thomas in that instant. She wanted to watch the life ebb out of his abandoned body. She wanted to see him alone and afraid, hopelessly lost, hopelessly afraid, hopeless. She jerked her head, disassociating the anger momentarily as confusion flared. “Why did you say that?”
“I’m…not sure.” Thomas pointed to the doll, now in Wilma’s hand. The doll was coated in ice, shimmering like diamonds under the overhead light. Wilma gasped and dropped the doll. It clattered to the hardwood floor, little ice chips dislodging and sliding in every direction.
“How did—” Wilma began but suddenly understood more than she had just a moment ago. “I’m not pregnant.”
“I know,” Thomas said. “There was another potential story where you are hiding that information from me. It creates a tension and conflict that culminates in—”
“Either you stay, or you leave.” Wilma bent and picked up the doll. She knew it was cold, but she couldn’t feel it. She watched the rapidly melting ice drip into haphazard puddles at their feet. “I respond with desperation, indifference, or…there’s a possible tragic ending too.”
“These stories.” Thomas watched his wife’s face, Wilma’s face, this person’s face blur into an indistinct mist. “They aren’t our stories, are they?”
“Not even a little bit,” Wilma said, and her brown eyes faded to gray, then became as ethereal as fog in the early afternoon sun.
“You’re…” Thomas tried to conjure a name. The word sat just at the periphery of his conscious. He could feel it there, lurking in the shadows of memory, creeping through the corridors of imagination. It was so close, so very, very close. He tried to capture the name by gazing down at the doll. The doll’s lifeless eyes gazed back, but the petite, pretty, polite eyes were wrong. They should be the eyes of a predator, ominous, terrifying, like the eyes of a monster, or at least, the Sister of… “Frau Iver!” He shouted. “You’re Frau Iver, and this doll belongs to the Sister of Monsters, at least when she is in my stories…my stories…”
Frau Iver floated close. She lowered her vaporous visage and stared with insubstantial eyes. Thomas gazed back. He looked deep into the misty pools on Frau Iver’s face and saw it there, engulfed in chilled air and regrets, brightly blazing as a new bargain filled with expectation and justice. A question floated through all of these obscured answers. “What is your name?”
“I am the Toy Peddler.” Thomas, who was no longer Thomas, took the doll and impossibly slid it into his coat pocket. “We are two members of the Council of Aspects.”
Frau Iver’s face contorted suddenly, becoming indistinct, misty. Her features mimicked a sneer better than it had in years. Her anger rose as she rubbed her flat stomach and remembered.
Chapter 51
“Was that for my benefit?” Mrs. Hensley asked, breaking the spell that Matt had attempted to cast in the room. His words, the stories, the creativity, was working. He could feel John’s presence in the telling. He was in every story, every word.
“What do you mean?” Matt bent his head toward her, keeping his body pointed toward John.
“That story about gender expression.” Mrs. Hensley pointed to the open book in Matt’s lap, the book that held all of their stories and more. “John must have told you about the argument he and his father had over his…clothes.”
“And makeup,” Matt added too quickly before he thought twice. He meant to think twice, but he was so tired. The clock was tick, tick, ticking toward the mark but was still so very far away.
“Yes, and the makeup.” Mrs. Hensley sighed. “He wasn’t being mean, y’know? John’s father. He was being practical, realistic.”
“Intractable.” Matt tried to squeeze his mouth shut, but the added effort was too much.
“Maybe, but the world is not an easy place. There’s so many mean people. Intolerant people.” Mrs. Hensley held out a hand palm up as if physically offering a solution.
“The world is mean,” Matt said and could sense the words that would take his statement too far, but he couldn’t stop. He simply spoke. “So, your home should not be.”
“That is not fair.” Mrs. Hensley was standing now with the posture of someone obviously in the wrong, obviously feeling guilty, but refusing to back down for some incomprehensible need to maintain a semblance of moral integrity. “We did—do—the best we can.”
“With what you have. I know. I’ve heard the same speech at my house.” Matt felt the anger coming from the wounded mother, or maybe it was the anger coming from inside himself. He didn’t think it really mattered right now. “And you’re trying to understand. I get that too. I get that you want to protect your son. I get that there are so many stupid people out there, and I get it—I get it all. I don’t need—John doesn’t need to get it from his parents too.”
Mrs. Hensley opened her mouth, then closed it tight. Matt wondered if the ability to censor yourself when you’re tired gets stronger with age. Maybe. Or maybe she was just preparing something vicious that only someone who had lived longer could construct. A really good burn, a wounding stab to the teenage heart. It wouldn’t be that difficult. Not right now. She could easily destroy him, and he would feel it so intensely. He was far too tired to protect himself. She opened her mouth again. “You… I don’t want to argue. I don’t have the strength.”
“I never want to fight,” Matt said and turned the page. He glanced at the clock. Six more hours. Just six more. He needed to focus on John. He didn’t have time to make Mrs. Hensley feel better. He was tired of making them all, all the adults, all the teachers, all the other students who weren’t necessarily bullies, feel better. It was okay that they didn’t understand. It wasn’t for them to understand. John didn’t need them to understand. John needed them to be decent human beings and trust that he knew more about his own life than they did. It was infuriating that they were always trying to understand instead of accepting. It was so frustrating that so many people lashed out at things they didn’t understand.
Mrs. Hensley sat back in the chair near the window. The wooden legs scraped the tiles with a high-pitched screeching noise. It made Matt think of the Puppeteer and the noises his old wooden body made. The clacking and scratching, the knocking, the soft click that accompanied his head turns. They didn’t seem important, these sounds, but they somehow made the character more substantial. He waited until even the memory of the chair’s screech was fading before he spoke.
“I’m sorry.” The image of the Puppeteer sitting alone at the dinner table, his father dead and no friends or companions, shone brilliantly in his head.
“What?” Mrs. Hensley wiped her face with the palms of her hands. There were no tears that Matt could see, not exactly, just a general moisture beneath her eyes, on her cheeks.
“I didn’t mean to be…” He thought of Frau Iver, freezing, killing, anyone she felt had wronged her.
Mrs. Hensley smiled a weak, timid, accepting smile, and she shook her head. The intent was clear enough. There was no need for apology. Not yet. She turned back to look out of the window. Matt saw her shoulders lower just a bit and knew she was feeling just a little better.
Chapter 52
The Conspirators
The Angler waited, his slicker dry for the first time in over a century, at the metal table he used to clean fish. He had to admit that the metal was much easier to clean than his old wooden one; at least, the Origamist had been right about that. The rest? He was still waiting to see.
The sun was high in the sky. He was still trying to adjust to the much longer days. Creativity had always been partly shrouded in a perpetual gloaming, but now, with all the changes… Was it too much light? Too much added time? He missed the twilight.
He heard the footsteps, too light for even the slight man they propelled. The door opened slowly, his new metal door that looked just like wood—except it didn’t look so wood-like when you examined it clo
sely.
“You took your time.” The Angler stood as his guest entered.
“I had a…complication.” The Origamist floated into the room, his feet obscured by his long white robe. He held his hands folded in front of him and thrust into opposite oversized sleeves that fluttered when he walked.
“Another complication.” The Angler took the shiny metal teapot and filled it with water from his porcelain sink. His craggy fingers turned the knob on his electric stove, and he set the pot over the invisible flame that he knew was warming the ceramic stove eye, but it still unnerved him that he couldn’t see the flame. “I hope you took care of this one better than the last complication.”
“That was just an oversight.” The Origamist floated to the polished wood table and flitted into a chair. “How was I to know the Council could resist the First Story so well?”
“Maybe because they are the Council of Aspects.” The Angler took the whistling teapot off the stove and poured two cups of tea. “They were elected to lead us for a reason, you know?”
“Well, they are safely in their new roles.” The Origamist took the teacup the Angler offered and sipped slowly before speaking again. “Mostly.”
The Angler slammed the metal teapot onto the table. The sound reverberated around the small room.
The Origamist closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and tilted his head to hide his ears against the harsh noise.
The Angler’s voice was nearly as painful. “I told you this would happen!”
“You did not.” The Origamist’s voice was soft but nonetheless forceful. “You simply whined and waffled. If I hadn’t pushed you, we would still be living in those rundown, antique trash heaps the Council saw fit to shackle us with.”
The Angler rubbed his new metal table beside the side door. “I miss the Gloaming. I miss the Woods.”
“I left you a bit of woods, just out back.”
“You know what I mean.” The Angler sighed and turned to face the Origamist. “Maybe this is too much. Maybe you should go back to just a few tweaks here and there. That would be enough, and the Council—”
The First Story Page 14