A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There

by Richard Roberts

  That gave Sandy pause, as well it might. Reaching up, she poked the tail of the wyrm where it helped block the boat. “If you are loyal to me, help us down. You don’t need to block anything.”

  Again, she got no response. The two monsters snarled, and bit each other on the neck. Huge hands lifted and grabbed, to be caught by tentacles. The wyrm’s thrashing tail still blocked the river, unfortunately.

  “Well, that is astonishing. This is the first thing your magic didn’t work on that wasn’t protected by Princess Charity’s,” I said, staring nervously up at the wrestling giants.

  Sandy licked the tip of her finger, and for a moment looked merely confused rather than anxious. That moment passed, and she got down to work. “If we can climb down by ourselves, they won’t have any reason to fight. Help me get us to the bank.”

  Oh my. I wasn’t sure how much I could do for that. The boat did have one oar, and I could barely lift it. I did, however, and aimed the paddle part toward the right-hand side of the boat. Sandy took it out of my hands, of course, and started rowing, but thanks to that positioning she was rowing us toward the Here bank.

  The boat tilted, but only slowly. Above us the guardians shouted, “Traitor!” and “Rebel!”

  “I think I can reach the edge now,” said Sandy, holding up her oar. She still looked doubtful.

  “Put me on the end of it,” I volunteered.

  “Heartfelt!” she gasped.

  Pushing my book into my bag and slipping it onto my back, I argued, “Getting wet hardly hurts me, Miss Sandy, and it’s what you were hoping I’d do.”

  My heart glowed at the look she gave me, the gratitude and admiration. When I took hold of the paddle end of the oar and she lifted me in the air, it felt more like flying. After a few seconds of careful jockeying, she laid me next to one of those jutting parapet things the wall has, like flat fangs. Trying very hard not to look down, I wedged the rounded paddle part into the corner, wrapped myself over it, and with my arms and legs pinned it into place.

  One thing I definitely am not is strong. Thankfully, I only had to be strong enough to keep the paddle stuck in the corner, while Sandy pulled the boat gently over to the edge. When the wood bumped into the stone wall, she reached an arm out to me and commanded, “Up.”

  I did not need urging! I locked all four limbs around her forearm and held on desperately. Holding onto Sandy felt secure, and with two giant dragons wrestling above me and a long drop on the side, nothing else…

  …wait.

  “Drop me over the side, Miss Sandy!” I yelled. Okay, squeaked.

  “You’ll break your glasses!” she argued back.

  Oh, my. She was right. So much for my “get out of her way so she has one less thing to deal with” plan. Okay, second plan: Keep holding onto her arm for dear life.

  “Tumbledown, come here! Tumbles?” She beckoned her other arm at the dargon.

  He stood on his tiptoes on the seat up front, tail straight and quivering, hands tucked into his mouth as he watched dragon battle wyrm above us.

  “Tumbles, I command you to escape with us right now!” she shouted.

  The tone of her voice made his whole body jerk, and the dargon fell backward into her reaching arm. “Hold onto her leg!” I ordered, and he did, with a stiff, mesmerized expression.

  Climbing out onto the parapet, Sandy looked down and grimaced. It took her two careful steps to reach the body of the wyrm where it pressed up against the wall…

  Ah, that was clever! No wonder she wanted me to grab just there. While Tumbles and I held on, Sandy wrapped her own arms and legs around its sinuous body, and slid all the way to the ground. Wise as well as powerful, she did not rest there, and staggered all the way to the path.

  Huffing, she peeled me off of her arm, and sat me on her shoulder instead. Tumbles took a little more effort to dislodge, and dropped to the hard, dusty surface with a loud thump—mainly due to the food box he had stuck to the spade of his tail. What a good dargon!

  While I pressed my face into her hair and took deep breaths to regain calm, Sandy asked, “So, who are you guys, and where do you stand on— oh. It’s you.”

  The disgust and anger in her voice made me snap back up to attention. Half a dozen people had been waiting for us on the ground. I hadn’t seen their like before, but they were obviously guards. They looked a little like metal bundlish. Very tall—taller than Sandy, even—all you could see was their armor, which since it was almost all round meant they looked a bit like a stack of pots. Each one carried a massive two-handed weapon.

  Down at their feet stood Little Miss Snippybritches, pins and gold cape and all. She scuttled back behind one of the soldiers, exclaiming, “I just want to talk! Don’t make me order my guards to attack!”

  “With what? Forks and spoons?” asked Sandy, waving a hand at the weapons which were, yes, forks and spoons. Large, threatening ones, however.

  Little Miss Snippybritches rolled her head in disgust and growled. “The princess three humans back ordered all the halberds turned into these. I don’t know why. Princess Charity is having them restored, but it takes time.”

  Up above us, the wyrm let out a roar. It and the dragon roared, their bodies thrashing as they tore at each other with their fangs. The wyrm’s coils shifted and slammed into the ground, bouncing everyone at least half an inch into the air.

  “Yaaaaah! Icy dicy fresh and freezy wooshy STOP!” shouted Snippybritches, waving one hand up at them in a decidedly mystic gesture, while her other hand pulled a pin out of her middle and… stuck it through her head. Ouch, that really looked painful.

  Painful or not, a snowy wind flew out of her hand, swirling and spiraling up the wyrm, across and down the dragon. Frost crackled as it grew over their surfaces, and they went completely still.

  Everyone, even the guards and Sandy, sighed in relief. “I want to talk to you too,” I said, pointing down at Snippybritches. As I wriggled around so I could slide down from Sandy’s shoulder, I whispered to her, “I just wish we had somewhere to run. We’re backed right up against the border of There!”

  Sandy extended her arms, but for the most part I dropped down them on my own power. Stomping up to the toweringly tall guards, I looked between their feet at my fellow clothling, former picnic-mate, and… well, friend, if under strained circumstances. “Little Miss Snippybritches, I am—”

  “Pincushion,” she hissed, squeezing her hands into fists and leaning forward.

  My marshaled arguments flew apart at the vehemence of her tone. Raising a hand to my mouth, I asked, “Is it really that big a deal? You’ve been Little Miss Snippybritches to me all our lives.”

  “Pincushion is the name Princess Charity gave me. That’s who I am now, and I don’t want to be anyone else. If she—” and a finger thrust past me at Sandy, “—gave you a new name, would you be happy if anyone called you by the old one?”

  I reached out toward the pin, itself nearly as long as my arm, sticking right through my friend’s face. “You don’t look like she’s taking very good care of you. How long can you poke holes in yourself without falling apart?”

  I wasn’t nearly close enough to actually touch the pin, but she leaned back anyway, shielding it with both hands. “You look like a nightmare that crawled out of There to eat my fluff, but you love the human who made you that way.”

  That wasn’t even a remotely fair argument. I was ugly as a side effect of Sandy literally saving my life after Charity ripped me apart.

  But… I didn’t know the context of those pins, either. And Pincushion was satisfied with it. More than satisfied.

  I sighed. Yes, “Pincushion” it would have to be. Whether I liked or hated the name was irrelevant. The decision was hers to make, not mine. That concession made, I regathered my arguments, and propped my hands on my hips. “I understand. What is not acceptable, no matter who you did it for, is manipulating me to try and expel Sandy. You know my heart better than anyone, and you… used me.”

  Her
shoulders rolled, and her badly punctured but otherwise immaculately tailored body slouched forward. Her arms hung straight down, and her voice got softer. “Yes. I’m sorry about that, fluff-head.”

  I took a few steps closer, and lowered my own voice. “I’ve changed, too. I know I used to be dumb, but I’m not anymore. Even if we’re on opposite sides, we can respect each other.”

  Straightening up, Pincushion took a couple of steps back, pulling her gold cape around like a shield. Oh my, but she did not want to be touched.

  The pins. It had to be the pins. They must hurt even more than they looked like…

  …which was not my place to judge.

  Once it was clear I wasn’t coming closer, she uncurled. Her voice rose again, so everyone could hear her. “Trying to do this respectfully is why I’m here. Raise the mirror, boys.”

  Mirror? There was, in fact, a bag lying very flat on the ground behind the guards. Clanking and clattering, one of them tilted it up, pulling the fabric off of a full-length mirror like the one back in Port Rait. It might even have been that… no, no, this one was thinner. This was merely a similar mirror she’d obtained elsewhere.

  For a moment, it reflected blue sky, green grass, blue and white statues, a brown path, and the grey shadows of There on the other side of the Dotted Line’s arch. Then it lined up with Sandy, and all that disappeared, replaced by the ugly brick room from last time.

  Looking at Sandy now, Pincushion said, “For the good of Somewhere, I am asking you— wait. The glasses. The glasses!”

  “Uh… yes?” I asked, reaching up to touch them.

  Pincushion stamped her foot. “You have to take them off and give them back to her!”

  Now I grabbed the earpieces in both hands, alarmed. “What?!”

  “I am not taking them away from Heartfelt! They’re hers now!” declared Sandy behind me.

  “You can’t go back to your own world without everything you took here, and nothing from Here or There will go with you,” Pincushion explained.

  Angry now, her face pinched in an echo of the rage she’d shown last night, Sandy said, “I told you, I won’t take her intelligence away.”

  Pincushion’s eyebrows, embroidered in thin black ridges rather than just dyed on, rose. She stared at Sandy for a second, and her voice turned softer. She lifted an arm toward me, hand raised, and said, “Charity will find her a new life, and I will make sure it is a happy one. I promise.”

  No one seemed to be asking the obvious question, and I couldn’t wait anymore. I held up my own hand. After a moment’s hesitation Pincushion yanked hers away, but I continued, because touching her had not been my intent anyway. “Excuse me, but how are you doing this with the mirror? Is this a spell? These magical powers you’ve picked up are truly impressive.”

  Pincushion shook her head. “No, no.” Looking past me again, she addressed the answer to Sandy. “You need to know this, in case you ever decide to do the right thing. Mirrors are how humans go back to Elsewhere. No spell is needed. If you want to go through, or someone wants to send you through, that’s enough. If you’re not carrying everything you brought, it won’t work, and everything else stays Here.”

  So, ironically, holding onto me had both been the reason Sandy could be pushed through the last mirror, and the reason she didn’t go all the way. Interesting. Presumably, if I burned, say, her socks and scattered the ashes widely enough— no, destroying anything from Elsewhere, ugh. The thought repelled me. Would it even be possible? Surely human creations were invulnerable to all but human power.

  While I considered the ramifications of all this, Sandy carried the argument at hand. “Good, then I know you can’t force me.” Admittedly, she sounded more defiant than confident.

  “Just let me try and convince you, please. I know I should have started out this way,” said Pincushion.

  Sandy gave her a puzzled, head-tilted stare. “You are the smartest person I’ve met Here, except maybe Heartfelt.” Suddenly guilty, she added, “Is… is that mean to say?”

  “I always had a cutting wit, and now I’m as sharp as a pin,” said Pincushion, patting the round knob at the end of the pin stuck through her face.

  Ah. Well, no wonder she didn’t want them removed.

  Sandy grimaced, twisting one of her feet against the path. After a couple of seconds, she let out a puffing sigh. “I guess if I don’t try to talk things out, I’m the bad guy. Why do you want me to leave so badly that I can’t even ask Charity about it first?”

  Pincushion’s chin tightened, which impressed me. My face certainly couldn’t do that. Emphatic, even impassioned, she said, “Because you are tearing Somewhere apart, just by being here.”

  “You’re the only one destroying anything, and I bet it’s because you didn’t ask Charity first,” snapped back Sandy, her anger returning.

  Pincushion didn’t flinch. “Look at them, Human Sandy. Look at the guardians.”

  Sandy, Tumbles, and I did. The coating of ice had melted, but the statues were still frozen, locked in their violent pose, teeth in each other’s throats.

  While we took in that grim display, Pincushion said, “That is starting to happen everywhere. There can only be one princess. You don’t even begin to understand the effect you have just being Here.”

  “No, I’ve noticed how everything I do… expands,” Sandy admitted.

  I folded my arms, leaping to her defense. Metaphorically. Folding my arms and actually leaping at the same time would be counterproductive. “That’s her magic, and it’s miraculous and amazing. We’re going to find out she’s a sorceress or goddess or something. Also, if the problem is two humans at the same time, I don’t see any reason other than your preference that Sandy is the one who should leave.”

  Pincushion answered my question as if Sandy had asked it. “You don’t plan on staying Here forever, do you?”

  The question caught Sandy by surprise, and she caught her lip in her teeth. “Not… forever. School is really bad, but I would miss my parents too much. I’d be worried that they’re worried, but I’m pretty sure hardly any time will have passed when I go back.”

  “Princess Charity has nothing she wants to go back to. She’s staying here forever. You’re willing to go, and she isn’t. The choice is obvious.”

  I admit, I felt proud as my heroine paused, thought about this with a serious stare for several seconds, and then folded her arms decisively. “Not until I talk to Charity. We can clear this up together.”

  Pincushion threw her arms up in frustration. “Well, so much for that. Grab the human. Cut the glasses off the fluff-head.”

  I squealed in frustration, and started to backpedal, but the guards were so big! They just had to lean forward and reach.

  And then Sandy’s voice cut through everything. “JUST A MINUTE! WHAT IS THAT YOU’RE WEARING?”

  Guards, me, everyone stopped as Sandy stormed forward, finger pointed at Pincushion. My clothling estranged best friend had pulled out another pin, and was frozen in the act of tossing her gold scarf back into place around her neck.

  “That’s a hat! A human sized gold hat!” declared Sandy, sharp and accusing.

  I blinked, and looked again. Why, so it was. A very peculiar hat, with a long, pointy cap that Pincushion wore like a scarf, and a wide brim that she wore like a cape.

  Sandy went on, finger vibrating with indignation. “That’s a witch’s hat. My witch’s hat! There was supposed to be a gold item waiting for me at the temple to give me hero powers. You stole my magic!”

  “Eeeeee, everything Somewhere belongs to Princess Charity, get her get her get her!” squealed Pincushion, stumbling backward so fast she fell over and had to scoot backward instead.

  The guards started moving again, but this time Sandy was close enough to grab me by my cap, yanking me away before the nearest metal hand could grab me. Turning, she tucked me against her side and ran.

  “Spread out! Head her off!” yelled Pincushion behind us.

  Sandy d
idn’t even try to circle around. She sprinted straight down the path. “Sandy, you’re heading towards There!” I whimpered.

  “Is that bad?” she asked, between puffing breaths.

  Um. “Well, it’s… scary?” was all I could say.

  “Sounds good to me. Hold on tight, Tumbles!” As we passed the still motionless wyrm, Sandy bent down and scooped up Tumbledown and the box of food both without stopping. Metal bodies clanked and metal feet thumped on the dirt behind us as we ran under the stone arch of the Dotted Line.

  We came out the other side into darkness. Not complete, just the deep shadows of night time. I’d heard it was never daytime over There, although I had no idea when I’d heard that. The pleasant grass of Here turned to uglier scrubby weeds that looked like they had burrs. Ahead of us, the path passed through a gap in the cushion wall. On the other side, I saw scraggly, spiky trees.

  The pounding boot steps behind us ended in a crash and a clatter. I twisted around to look behind Sandy. The soldiers had crashed in a heap under the Dotted Line.

  Pincushion jumped up and down in frustration, yelling at them, “What are you doing? Go! Go get her!”

  “I’m not going There!

  It’s too scary!” complained the guards in the pile.

  Pincushion hopped another couple of times. “By order of Princess Charity, go!”

  “You’re not Princess Charity!” wailed a guard. In that heap, I couldn’t possibly tell them apart.

  Pincushion rubbed her hand over her face, hard enough to dent the cloth, and growled, “Am I the only one Here who really cares what Charity wants? Fine. Go tell her what you did. I have the magic. I’ll catch them myself!”

  At that point, Sandy passed between the piles of pillows, and I couldn’t see any more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We hurried through the gap in the fortress walls, leaving Pincushion’s voice behind. Cushions as big as Sandy, but thicker, were piled up on either side of us into imposing walls that loomed way over her head. Piled up towers guarded the entrance from Here, and I could see pillow ramps leading up them on the other side. This wasn’t just a gap, it was a gate.