Long, grey, fluffy ears stirred in the boat, poking up into view.
A flops! Those packages were full of food! “Excellent! I need only hide behind that tree and watch where they make the delivery. Worst comes to worst, I shall make up a cunning lie about my identity, and let the flops talk me into taking a box of food, which I will get a dancer to carry back to Sandy. This could— oh, my.”
Four hard digits closed around my cap, lifting me off my feet. Those fingers spun me around to face the pointy white mask of a shrivener.
“Oh, my,” I said again, because it seemed so appropriate.
Another clawed hand lifted from the white shroud. Its curved fingers reached past my glasses to touch my cracked eye at the top and bottom. Then it moved to the button eye. “You are unacceptably asymmetric.”
I reached up and pushed at those poky fingers. Useless. Shriveners had metal fingers, and cloth wasn’t going to budge them. I would have to attempt reason. “I am fully acceptably asymmetric! These are repairs!”
“You are seriously damaged.” The fingers measuring my eyes poked the crack in my original eye. How rude, and stingy!
I glared at him, and wobbled Sandy’s glasses where they were stitched to my nonexistent nose. “My repairs have restored me to greater than original function, so that doesn’t count.”
Thank goodness they had been stitched on, because he gave my glasses an immediate tug, and a harder tug when they didn’t come right off. His stiff, formal voice got a little more disapproving. “These are nonstandard issue. You are flaunting an unauthorized modification.”
Oh, he was not going to get me on this one. I gave him the most ferocious look I could manage. “A human gave them to me, and that is the most authorized a modification can get!”
The shrivener abandoned that argument immediately. As well he might! Imagine challenging Sandy’s right to change me however she wanted! Instead, he tugged at my repaired arm. “This limb is stiff. The repairs are below standard.”
“The stitching is a little tight, but the arm does work, and it’s better than being dead, thank you very much. Besides, I’ll be more mobile as soon as my cotton refluffs properly. Your city does not come with proper posted warnings or directions!”
He considered this, his head twisting to one side, and then the other. “This is a relevant point that I will present to committee. New standards may be required.”
A thrill went through me. Magic. I’d just done magic. Was this the power of being closely associated with a human? It must be. Little Miss Snippybritches had gained some of Princess Charity’s decision-making authority, after all.
While I marveled at what I’d just done, the shrivener went back to measuring me with his claws, checking the height and width of my skirt, and my plastic heart, and my repair patches. Finally, he decided, “You are ugly.”
Oops.
That, um… oh, my. I tried to look down, but since he held my head immobile, it was more that I tilted my body up into view. One of my arms wasn’t quite the size of the other, and mostly plaid. I had visibly stitched plaid patches in several places. He was right. It wasn’t even that I looked shabby, anymore. I looked like a monster from over There.
Now I couldn’t answer because the guilt and shame seized me up. After a pause for a refutation I couldn’t give, the shrivener said, “Judgment: You are unacceptably damaged and nonstandard. You do not belong Here. Your function will be determined and a replacement ordered. Since you are not needed for this process, you will be kept in quarantine so that your deformity does not corrupt other clothlings, until the first opportunity arises to ship you to the Trash Pile. There is no need for concern. Processing will be brief, and you will soon be where you belong, with the other broken and useless garbage.”
With me held distastefully at arm’s length, he walked off into the shifting streets of Port Rait, carrying me to prison.
Chapter Eleven
The shrivener dropped me in a jail cell, locked the door, and left the building with its white drape flapping around it. What was under those, anyway? They had mask faces and metal fingers, so maybe they were more orderly tinkers? Their bodies were certainly tough and solid, so maybe they were marionettes with fancy attachments? I’d had plenty of time to wonder about this while being detained, and found no answers.
Now I had a new question. What to do? Or perhaps something more basic. Where was I?
Well, a jail, obviously, but what did that mean? I’d been left in a big stone room, mostly separated into cells by walls made of vertical iron bars. The bars ran from the floors right to the ceiling, and each cell had a door that was basically the same as the cell walls, but with a top and bottom. The stone itself was grey, tough, and roughly textured enough to scratch my hands when I touched it.
The room contained hardly any furniture. An almost human-sized desk sat near the door to the street, with its own chair and neatly stacked papers. Paperwork would be very important to shriveners, of course. Each cell contained a stool as tall as my head, and in my cell, a box.
I walked over to it, running my mittens over the battered white cardboard, with its blue and white roughly painted doll and a big pink heart in her center.
“Oh, my. An actual Heartfelt box. I wonder if it’s mine? I wonder what happened to mine?”
I barely remembered it, the comfortable darkness where I’d begun my life until being delivered to the Endless Picnic. No doubt the box had been given to a passing tinker or shrivener so that someone else could use it. I wasn’t exactly a fancy custom clothling. There could easily have been a dozen, even two dozen of me made. In this, the heart of their empire of order, it should be no surprise the shriveners had one of our boxes in handy storage.
I pulled myself up onto the wooden stool, wider than it was tall, and sat on the edge looking into the box. Just shadowy grey emptiness in there. It had been made to contain only one thing, after all: me.
The proper thing to do would be to climb in, fold up the lid, and wait for shipment. I was a hideous, damaged wreck of a clothling, after all.
However, I was Sandy’s hideous, damaged wreck of a clothling, and I didn’t need to be pretty. I certainly did not need to be obeying Princess Charity’s rules. In fact, Sandy was depending on me, and I didn’t even have time to brood. My heroine was hungry right now!
I gave the box a savage kick, and it actually fell over. Ha! Stuffing is stronger than cardboard!
Next up: Escape.
Hopping off the chair, I toddled over to look at the cell door. Even Sandy would find this room large, and the latch and lock were way over my head. No windows broke up the monotonous grey of the walls. This building had all of the efficiency shriveners loved, with none of the ornamentation. No doubt defectives like myself did not deserve it.
Okay, the lock. The shrivener had a key. I didn’t have a key, didn’t have a lockpick, and didn’t know how to pick locks. However, in this oversized prison, I could fit my hand entirely into that keyhole. Would I have the strength to turn the mechanism? Probably not, but I had to try.
Wrapping my arms and legs around a bar, I pulled with my hands and pushed with my feet, and got exactly nowhere. Not only was I not strong enough, fabric slid too easily against metal. I couldn’t get a grip!
I tried grabbing two bars, hoping that pulling from both directions would give me more leverage. Alas, no.
So vexing! I folded an arm over my heart and tapped my chin with the other. Perhaps I could move my stool? It didn’t seem tall enough. Or the huge chair over at the desk? I could squeeze between the bars and go get that.
“Really, Heartfelt,” I lectured myself, “That would be ridiculous. If I did that, I might as well just walk out, and that would defeat the entire purpose of a wall of bars.”
I shook my head, feeling the fluff rattle around and the heavy pull of my glasses. They had to be responsible for the thought which came next.
“Of course, defeating the purpose of a wall is exactly what escape means, a
nd Sandy is depending on me. I’m not actually doing anything wrong.”
So, feeling weird and uncomfortable, I folded my arms over my glasses to protect them and squeezed myself sideways between the bars. My head compressed a bit, and the arms of the glasses folded back with it, but I fit well enough.
I had just carefully extricated the other arm of my glasses and was about to step free of the jail cell entirely when a good-looking marionette walked in.
He was tall, maybe tall enough to come up to Sandy’s waist. Lean, but not thin, the pale blue paint on his upper half showed off the articulation of his joints. Dark blue on his hips and legs gave his walk a smooth, blending grace, each step jingling from little bells on the back of shiny brown boots. A golden half-cape, more of a mantle, really, draped around his shoulders, and his face… oh, my. Walnut, maybe? I had never seen such rugged wood grain. I could barely make out the features carved into it.
I started to fall over, then stumbled from side to side, trying to keep my glasses protected from the bars. “It’s not what it looks like! Unless it looks like I’m escaping, in which case this is what it looks like, and come to think of it, what else could it have looked like anyway? It’s a great wall of bars, and I would be completely intimidated by it and feel trapped, and I’m so sorry, but I have a higher purpose! Extreme measures had to be taken! Oh my oh my, I must look like a fluff head right now, and also sound like one.”
Ka-chink. Ka-chink. Ka-chink. He walked over to the bars where I’d successfully twisted my own legs together, and now actually needed the bars to keep from completely falling over. Leaning forward, he held out a hand with five independently mobile fingers—including the thumb as a finger—and said, “There certainly has been a mistake. You can’t be the condemned clothling. You’re too pretty.”
My legs bent under me, and I sank down onto them, still caught between the bars. “Um. Ah ha. Ha. Hee. Yes, well. There’s the little matter of… I’m not in pristine condition, I mean, not like you…”
I was babbling. I was babbling like I’d never put on a pair of glasses. What must he think of me?
My hand met his, and he wrapped strong fingers around my padding, pulling me slowly, gently, but firmly up and free of the bars. Without letting go, he gave me a warm, encouraging smile. “You may not be in mint condition, but the repairs are what give you style and charm. You look like you’re full of love.”
There was no point in even trying to conceal the glow from the heart on my chest. It shone so bright, his paint gleamed with pink highlights. I tapped one of the earpieces stitched to my head. “And intelligence. It’s the glasses.”
A hint of chuckle made his voice flutter. “I can tell. Who would think of walking through a wall?”
“Well. I…” I flapped my free hand at the bars behind me. To be honest, it hadn’t even been a tight fit. The fattest parts of me barely touched two bars at once. If it wasn’t for my glasses, I could have just strolled through, and even this towering, powerful figure of a puppet might have been able to make the squeeze.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that, however, so instead I asked a very important question. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Sheriff Long Drink of Water. You can call me Long, Miss Heartfelt. Are you still a Heartfelt?”
Dumbly, I nodded, but thought is relentless, and after a few seconds I had to ask: “Excuse me, but if you’re the sheriff, shouldn’t you be more upset that I’m escaping? Not that I’m complaining, you understand, but why are you defying the shriveners?”
He gave his cape a dramatic little flick, and it sparkled in the light of my heart. “Well, pretty little Miss Heartfelt, they’re shriveners and I’m a sheriff. It’s their job to measure things, and they do it well. I’ve got a whole list on my desk of how long your seams are, what is and isn’t symmetrical, color values, and all that sort of thing. That’s their job. My job is to make sure Justice Is Done.”
“That’s very responsible,” I whispered, leaning quite hard against his still supportive hand. My legs felt like they might collapse again every time he said something in that deep voice.
He gave my hand a pat, serious and reassuring. “I’ll take you to the Southern Magistrate tomorrow, and you’ll be declared valuable and needed over Here. Then we’ll have a tag sewn onto you in case any shriveners get confused again.”
I rubbed at my yarn curls like poor Copperlocks used to. “Oh, my. Well, that’s very—wait! No, I’m terribly sorry, you’re very generous Sheriff Long—”
“Just call me Long, please,” he said, quite emphatically.
Was he trying to make me collapse in a puddle of fluff? He was certainly doing a good job!
However, my duties as a sidekick were more important. Striding past him to the door, I laid a hand on the jam and looked back at him over my shoulder. With any luck, my heart’s glow would render me suitably backlit. “I’m sorry, Long. I can’t wait. A human needs me.”
He stood up so straight that his back creaked. Taking a fistful of his cape, he held that hand reverently to his chest. “There’s nothing for it. Helping a human in trouble is just about the definition of justice.”
My smile turned wider and softer than usual, which takes considerable doing given the design of my face. “Thank you. There is a flops in town, and I need to know where his delivery went.”
Long waved a hand out into the darkness. “To the inn. Shriveners only eat on scheduled special occasions, but a flops can always find a weary traveler to ambush when they stop to rest in Port Rait.”
Ha! I pumped my fist in the air. “I knew there had to be an inn!”
…and he was still looking at me. Oh, my. Wait, should I be humiliated or ashamed? I settled for responsible. “Take me there, please. I’ve been sent to fetch my heroine food and drink.”
Now it was his turn to look guilty. “I will if I must, Miss Heartfelt, but the inn will be full of traveling shriveners. Without a tag, they’ll take you right back here for processing, and we’ll have to start over.”
Seeing my frown, he released his cape and held up his hand. “It’s easy enough to address. I will go fetch a big old pile of food, and bring it back here. Then you can finish your mission.”
There went my legs wobbling again. As he marched past me out the door, I said, “That’s very brave. Also, she likes root beer, so prioritize that over other refreshments if you can.”
With Long gone, I felt a bit steadier, and organized my thoughts. Obtaining the food was only half of my question. How would I get it back to Sandy?
Yes. I had an idea about that. Squeezing my way back into the cell, I tipped the Heartfelt box over, heaved up one leg of the chair, and with a lot of pushing and rubbing punched two holes in the box’s cardboard. Then I scrunched it up enough to pull through the bars. By the time both processes were complete, the box was completely wrinkled and ugly. Should I feel bad about that? I didn’t.
When Sheriff Long returned, I had the box waiting by the door. Goodness gracious, he was strong. He had a whole heaping pile practically his own size cupped in his cape! As he drifted through the night over to the jail, he walked across Port Rait’s moving platforms as if he could fly, as if he had lived here all his—oh, wait, he almost certainly had. Alright, then.
I patted the box. “In here, please, and then all I need is help finding the nearest dancer.”
He poured the food in, and wrapped his arms around the box, heaving it up off the floor. “I shall guard you with my body, Miss Heartfelt.”
After a line like that, I could see my way through the darkness just from the brightness of my heart. True to his admirably literal word, Long not only followed behind me, he scooted around using himself and the box to block all view of me from the better lit areas of the plaza where a shrivener might spot me.
When we reached one of the grooves the dancers slide down, I waved my arm along the line. “Now, when the next dancer comes past, hook the box onto its hand, I’ll grab hold, and we’ll ride
him or her around the city until I reach my heroine! If any shriveners do see me, they won’t have time to measure me. They can’t declare me faulty without a proper measurement first.”
Hee hee hee. How did I know this plan was perfect? Because it completely flabberghasted Sheriff Long. He just stared, slightly hunched forward and mouth open, for one… two… three seconds before he responded! “How did a—” He was so shocked, his voice even spiked, higher almost to the point of girlishness.
Of course, he regained his manly suavity immediately. He was just that kind of marionette. “That will work perfectly. I am deeply impressed, which makes my need to know all the fiercer: When can I see you again?”
“Oh. Ah. Well. I wish I could.” Oh, my, did I. “But I’ve been away from my heroine too long as it is, and she has to get out of town. Port Rait isn’t safe for her.”
He grabbed my hands in his, holding them up to his chest, which was nearly as high as I could reach. “Please. I can’t have you just appear and disappear from my life like this. Meet me at midnight. We’ll have tea, and I’ll help you get on a boat. Please?”
Oh, tea. I could absolutely die for a cup of tea. Only my duties had pushed that longing from my mind. Tea with Sheriff Long sounded like a fantasy someone wrote specifically for me.
When I didn’t answer immediately, he appealed to priorities higher than personal pleasure. “The shriveners are least active in the middle of the night. We’ll meet over there.” He pointed at a distant building, which even from here I could see had garish stripes over the front like a circus tent. “They hate that place, and won’t go near it. This is the safest way for Sandy to escape. Please?”
“Oh… ah… well… I’d love to.”
He let out of a sigh of relief. I looked up at his pink-lit face, until we both realized we had lost track of time. He released my hands and grabbed the box. “Here comes your ride.”
“Ready… ready… go!” I shouted as a tall plastic pangolin slid past. Long hooked the holes on the cardboard box over its fingers, and I jumped up and latched onto some scales. This was the perfect dancer for my purposes!
A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There Page 15