A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There

by Richard Roberts

  I shook my head during the space between reading. “It’s not that. Well, it’s sort of that. You see, I believe a human must have grown this forest. It’s not that it will do what you want, but that it will do what they want.”

  Sure enough, this path seemed to be unusually long, and we found out why when a lantern on a pole revealed not an intersection, but a house and yard. A few tombstones lurked in the back of the yard, but I dismissed them as decoration. Who would bury anyone out here?

  The building itself was small, made of uneven stone bricks with a wooden tile roof. The shape was almost an off-center triangle, higher on one side and sloping past the open doorway to the ground. Two small, rectangular windows with stone windowsills and that single doorway with its arched top broke the uneven stone monotony. Actually, no, through this door I could see another opening out the back. Although it was only big enough for one room, that room would be human sized.

  Her eyebrows raised and lips pulled up on one side, Sandy said, “And what would be the point of a spooky forest without spooky abandoned buildings? I’m only surprised it’s not a haunted mansion.”

  I shook my head again. “Too small to be haunted. Well, once you assume human scale as a standard. A resident monster would be appropriate, but I think you’d need only one door. The interior really has to be pitch black.”

  She made a ‘hmmm’ sound, her stare turning serious and thoughtful again. “There wouldn’t be any real monsters. Charity was right about one thing—Here and There are innocent. Come on. We’ll stay the night here.” She pulled me off of her shoulder, seating me in the crook of one arm. Sliding off the rocking horse, Sandy took its reins and paused.

  Crouching down, she brought herself eye level with the horse. I hadn’t had a good chance to see it before we left the Capitol, so maybe it wasn’t bigger. Certainly, he(?) was bulky now, especially across the back and shoulders, tightly padded and strong. Red embroidered lines streaked across a brown leather hide, to an equally red yarn tail.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask your name. I’m Sandy,” she told him. I decided now was not the time to clarify she’s a witch.

  “It’s a pleasure to be chosen as your steed, Your Sandiness,” he answered. Yes, definitely a ‘he’, with that solid, dignified, deep voice.

  Since he’d missed the implied question, Sandy asked it directly. “What’s your name?”

  “What would you like my name to be?”

  She looked into those black, alert, obedient eyes, then sighed and patted his cheek. Standing up, she reached with the reins toward a fencepost at the side of the path, but hesitated.

  The rocking horse swayed forward and back excitedly. “Tied up by the gate like a real war horse! It’s a dream come true!”

  The house did have a gate, of sorts. Grey There forest trees stood in a line like a fence blocking most of the lawn, with an opening right where a loosely cobbled path led to the front door. By that opening stood the bent lamp post, and a gate of wrought iron bars about three times my height used to block the gap. Now it lay, one hinge broken and the other bent, in the grass next to the path. It did have rusty black posts it used to attach to, and Sandy wrapped the reins around one of those.

  Holding me now in both arms, she left the horse behind, walking from rock to rock to the door of the house. It was dark enough outside. When we stood on the threshold, the interior took quite some time to become anything other than blotchy blackness.

  When it did, the results were surprisingly pleasant. Large cobwebs occupied a few corners, but the single room contained a dresser, a table with two chairs, a toy chest with comfortable looking straw at the bottom, and a few smaller junk items. A narrow but sturdy looking ladder led up to a wooden loft, where I could see a small human bed. One of the house’s two windows looked out from that loft area, right under the point of the roof. Did that make this a two-room house? An interesting but unanswerable and not actually important question.

  Sandy stepped over to the desk, studying one of the room’s pieces of shadowy debris. It turned out to be a clay jug. We leaned over to peer inside, she gave it a shake by the handle, and detected nothing, so she lifted it up and smashed it down against the wooden dresser top. Crudely fired clay broke, leaving her holding a few shards of handle around the smaller handle of a similar but more refined jug. She raised it for us to sniff. Water.

  Taking a drink, she wandered over to the toy chest and was about to stomp on a small box next to it when she changed her mind. Crouching down to pick it up, she slammed it against the stone wall instead until it shattered. Sticks fell out, and she snatched them out of the air, then lifted them to sniff.

  “Dried out box, dried out cottage, beef jerky,” she quipped.

  I sniffed the jug, wishing the water were tea. Pincushion was trying hard to make all of my recent tea memories bad, but I would not give in to such blandishments.

  It didn’t take long for Sandy to finish eating and climb up the ladder to the loft. The bed proved to be very low, not quite flat on the loft floor, basically a thick layer of straw on a frame with a sheet over it. Sandy collapsed onto it with a groan.

  Slipping off my book bag, I concluded very quickly that reading in this murk was impossible, and slid it down to the loft floor. With Sandy’s head already cushioned by a particularly thick straw lump, I draped myself over her chest.

  “There’s a candle on the windowsill. This would be a good time to have a dargon with us,” she said, voice quiet even in the stillness.

  I tried and failed not to remember shards of pumpkin rolling down the steps under the throne. Ugh.

  Still quiet, her voice took on a raw edge that hinted of tears. “Charity killed you and burned your friends, didn’t she?”

  I crawled farther up, stretching my arms around her neck and one of her shoulders for the biggest hug I could supply. “She’s your friend. You were so sure it was all a mistake. Even with the intelligence you gave me, Miss Sandy, I couldn’t figure out what to say, or whether I had the right to say it.”

  “Heartfelt, you’re not just a—” she started to say. When the words cut off, she wrapped her long, heavy arms over me instead, and pulled me up further so she could kiss my cap. “I’m so sorry. I should have realized, but I’d been Here less than an hour, and everything is different from Elsewhere. For all I knew— I just didn’t know anything.”

  I reached up to touch my mitten to her lips. “Miss Sandy, if you haven’t been perfect, you’ve been better to me than anyone has ever been, or I expect anyone to ever be.”

  She gave me an extra squeeze, and whispered, “I feel the same about you.”

  I don’t know which of us fell asleep first.

  Charity stepped out of the crushed remains of Teapot Princess. With the crown on, her anger rippled around her like a burning halo. Or maybe that was part of the dream, like being able to see clearly through my one cracked eye, or see anything at all with my fabric in three pieces and my stuffing scattered several feet away from the picnic blanket.

  All that was left was Little Miss Snippybritches. She sat across from my remains, propped on her hands behind her, snickering as she surveyed the destruction.

  Charity loomed over her. Sitting, Little Miss Snippybritches barely came up over a human’s ankle. Hands on her hips, Charity scowled down at the shiny little black and white doll with the carefully sewn smirk. “You don’t seem to care what happened to them.”

  Snippybritches looked up at her without the slightest budge in her smirk. “I was made to notice when people are being stupid. It’s what I am. Disrespecting a human and a princess? That was stupid.”

  Charity reached down, way, way down, and her hand closed around Little Miss Snippybritches’ torso. Lifting her up to look her in the eyes, Charity said, “You don’t seem very afraid of me.”

  The doll snickered. “Are you kidding? Look at my skirt. I’m so scared I’m unraveling. It wouldn’t help to cower, would it? You’re the new ruler of Here and There. Yo
u’re human. You can do anything, including whatever you want to me.”

  Charity poked Little Miss Snippybritches’ face with a finger, tugged at her hair, and pried the doll’s mouth open. I had always envied Snippybritches not only her painted-on lips, but a mouth sewn in that she could actually open and close. After that quick prodding, the evil princess said, half question and half challenge, “The others didn’t agree.”

  Little Miss Snippybritches rolled her eyes in exasperation. “And what a bunch of fluff-heads they were. I thought Teapot Princess would at least get it. I’ve heard a hundred stories about humans. If they’d been smart enough to hold back on their habits for five seconds, your will would have changed them and you wouldn’t have had to kill them.”

  Something caught my one eye. I leaned my head up on my deflated remaining arm, and squinted. In the way of a dream, my vision closed in on Little Miss Snippybritches, where the skirt of her dress hung below Charity’s fist. Threads poked out of the end in three places. She might not sound it, but she was being completely honest about being terrified.

  Everything slowed down as I zoomed in, until it stopped entirely. Charity, the clouds, drifting fragments of stuffing, it all stayed frozen when my perspective snapped back to where it ought to be. Well, sort of ought to be. I had been extremely dead when this happened in waking life.

  Only Snippybritches still moved. She wriggled and twisted, pulling herself free of Charity’s grip, then dropped to the ground. As neatly as she landed on her feet, with Charity no longer watching her, her arms visibly shook and her voice fluttered between anger and fear. “What are you doing in my dream, fluff-head?!”

  Having only one arm, all I could really do was watch her approach and talk. “I am moderately sure that this is my dream. I have made no attempt to invade yours, and can’t remember doing anything that might have prompted an accidental cross-over. Maybe it was a coincidence? This looks like a nightmare for both of us.”

  That got a pained smirk, and a quiet mutter of, “Got that right, at least.” Then she reached me, grabbed my cap, and gave me an angry shake. “Why couldn’t you have just kept quiet? Or stuck to your two favorite words? If you’d sat there and said ‘Oh, my!’ instead of trying to lecture a princess on being nice, we wouldn’t be enemies now.”

  “Well, we are. I don’t approve of how you betrayed—”

  She interrupted me, letting go of my cap to grab her forehead in furious exasperation. “Betrayed?! I am trying to keep you alive!” She let out an exasperated sigh, and switched to waving her hand, palm-outward, in front of my ravaged face. “I know, I know. You have to do what your human tells you to. That’s why we’re here. I told Princess Charity that we couldn’t track the rebel human using you, because you’re part of her and the trail would lead right back into the Maze. I guess the spell had a side effect.”

  “She says terrible things—”

  Little Miss Snippybritches—or should I call her Pincushion, even back before she changed? Wouldn’t the correct way to answer that be to ask her? I didn’t get the chance, because one name or another, she interrupted again. “Was she wrong? Was she wrong about any of it? I sat in one place and passed along gossip laced with snarky jokes my whole life, and I was the smart one.”

  Raising my voice a bit, I said sternly, “I would also appreciate it if you stopped talking over me.”

  That did make her pause, eyes wide in surprise, then flattening in anger, then turning up for a sly grin whose softness turned the mockery inward. Curling her fingers, she touched me with just one of them on the forehead, and told me quietly, “I’m not used to you having anything to say. It’s—oh, really? Do you know how much we have to talk about, now that she can talk and no one’s trying to kill us?”

  She directed that last to the sky, with her hands on her hips. The sky wasn’t the actual problem. I could feel it too, everything getting distant, the sights and sounds less clear. The change came quickly. By the time I figured out I was waking up, I’d woken up.

  Sandy’s hand massaged my cap, and she whispered, “Heartfelt, I think we have visitors.”

  Awake now, I lifted head away from the thumping and gurgling of Sandy’s chest, listening. Yes, voices were indeed talking outside.

  Laying me aside, she turned around onto her stomach, and crawled to the window facing out front. I grabbed my book satchel and joined her. A cart piled with clothlings, marionettes, and bundles of paper sat out by the broken gate, roped in several places to a rocking camel nearly as big as the cart. Aside from a stone giant, it might well be the largest living thing I’d ever seen. Although Belle Tower had been quite tall, and what if Tumbles had grown to match his reflection already? Or if I was wrong in my suspicions of the guardian statues being fake?

  Well, regardless of exactly where this camel stood on the relative size chart, it was a very big rocking camel indeed.

  The clothling holding the reins leaned over the side of the cart and spoke to Sandy’s presumably still nameless rocking horse. I couldn’t hear what they said. Sound traveled unpredictably in There’s spooky woods.

  “Does it seem odd to you that traveling librarians would show up where we’re spending the night?” Sandy whispered to me.

  Hmmm. “No, not odd at all. As much as There gives the impression of being abandoned, it’s quite populated. People travel these paths, and the direction options are much more limited than Here. Regularly encountering others is to be expected, you did send librarians here, and leaving your horse tied up out front gave them a reason to stop instead of our missing them when they passed by.”

  Sandy giggled, leaning down and kissing the top of my head. My heart lit up, and I had to lie flat to make sure the glow wasn’t visible in the window. Aw!

  Although actually, did we need to hide from these visitors? Almost certainly not, but that was Sandy’s decision, not mine.

  I learned her decision when she grabbed me by the middle, and my vision spun around as she yanked me into the air, then dropped down the ladder to the floor. At least I got to reorient and adjust my unfortunately loose glasses when she stepped outside. Chest out, head high, frowning regally, she swept across the path to confront the visitors.

  They did not share her mood. Half a dozen clothlings swarmed to the edge of the cart, holding up their arms in eager adoration. “Your Sandiness!”

  “Witch Sandy,” I corrected them, my heart glowing again because I loved seeing people give Sandy the love she deserved.

  I didn’t recognize any of these clothlings, but one in a very serious and stiff brown dress told the others with solemn authority, “A witch. It’s unfortunate Card isn’t here. This is important information that should be recorded and distributed.”

  A pink plush mouse with big buck teeth surfaced from the stacks, shoving papers aside with her head. “And Bufferskosh Fream!”

  “An inevitable conclusion whose enthusiasm I reciprocate,” agreed a clothling with a skinny body, a big round head, and simply enormous glasses bigger than my own.

  The clothing in the brown dress reached out, and patted Sandy’s hand where Sandy rested it against the side of the cart. “She will know soon enough. Since book production has been interrupted, we’ve gathered all the news everywhere we stop and shared it with whoever we meet.”

  “Ekf-fwelf the shivener and Fo Feew da Finger god tangew togeffer and wode tell adybody why!” squeaked the mouse, head bobbing with enthusiasm for the story.

  The clothling with the glasses nodded, a gesture that made her almost fall over. “Inextricably comingled, exceeding simple contorted attachment.”

  Pulling a pen out of the pile, the mouse began scribbling, her handwriting so bad I couldn’t read it upside down.

  “Explicate, murine associate,” commanded the big-headed librarian.

  “If I rife id down Bufferskosh Fream will know, Miff Fefauruf!”

  The librarian in charge gave the mouse a scowl of strained patience. “That only works for the Head Archivist, Gumbo.
”

  Ducking back into the pile, only her orange lump of hair and skinny tail sticking out, the mouse rooted around. Seconds later, she pulled out a single glasses lens on a strap. The brass frame clicked and rotated as she held it over the page, smoky green lens twitching.

  The brown-skirted librarian in command laid a mitten hand over her face, rubbing where her nose would be. “You stole one of the Head Archivist’s eyes.”

  Mouth drawn in a pained grimace, Miss—uh, Thesaurus asked her, “Lady Jane Bookworm, communicate elucidation of the authority concluding a kleptomaniac rodent accentuates our expedition?”

  Gumbo answered instead, with her characteristic eager squeak. “Bufferskosh Fream!”

  Miss Thesaurus blinked, a gesture magnified hugely by her glasses. “Ah. Veracious.”

  Mouth trembling, a particularly skinny marionette reached up to the cart and tugged on Lady Jane Bookworm’s dress. It had a voice like a badly oiled hinge, faint with timidity. “The rift?”

  Lady Jane Bookworm gasped. Miss Thesaurus pushed her glasses more tightly against the little bump of her nose and whispered, “Revelation!”

  Turning now to Sandy, the so very serious senior librarian got down on one knee, head bowed. “Great Witch Sandy. Knowing that your powers are magical makes this request even more—”

  “Pertinent! Relevant! Appropriate— oops. Apologies.” Miss Thesaurus’s interruption withered at a ferocious stare from Lady Jane Bookworm.

  Turning her head back to the ground, the clothling in the brown dress continued formally, “As we crossed the—”

  “Demarca—” Miss Thesaurus began, only to clap her hands over her own mouth.

  Lady Jane Bookworm continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted at all. “Dividing line between Here and There, it broke. A gap formed in both the air and ground, that could only be magical. Gumbo nearly fell in trying to scoop out a sample. Please, Witch Sandy, on behalf of the librarians who must pass that road, and all other travelers of Here and There, use your powers to fix it.”