A ragged seam stitched shut with yellow marked where the tear used to be. While we all watched in reverent silence, Sandy tapped a candlestick against the barely detectable iridescent line between stitches. The black metal pole did not fall in.
In a rippling wave, every bundlish in the room fell to their knees. “We swear ourselves to you, Dark Mistress Sandy, in the war to come.” Not a chant, but as if they all thought of the same words at the same time.
Her eyes went wide, and her arm tightened around me. Halting, she answered, “That… is… a bit more than I wanted. Um. Thank you. I did want your help. It wouldn’t have been right to ask before I fixed the tear, in case you thought you had to give me what I want to get me to help you.”
“Bid us, Queen of the Shadow Magics,” pleaded a particularly prostrate bundliss.
The bundlevich raised his masked face, and lifted a scarlet glove in front of it. Curling his fingers like claws, he declared, “My people shall be the gauntlet of your left hand, Witch Sandy. Our reach is long, and our love of the subtle and insidious arts true.”
Standing up on her arm, I whispered to Sandy, “The subtle arts are magic. I think the insidious arts are spying, duplicity, that kind of thing.” How did I know that? Threadbare had been a bundlish, and bundlish used to visit the picnic.
Little Miss Snippybritches’ hands gripped the side of my head tightly, and she shoved her face so close our mouths almost touched. Not that there was anything even slightly affectionate in her tone. “Attention. Eyes on mine, fluff-head. Magic. She means magic. She’s talking about magic. The bundlish like witchcraft, sorcery… nevermind, that’s too complicated for you. Magic. Just remember she means magic.”
Out of sight behind her, Grumpy Gus grumbled, “No nevermind to us whether she understands it or not.”
Little Miss Snippybritches growled in exasperation. “Making jokes about it stopped being funny the twentieth time it flew over her head. It takes desperate measures to get through stuffing packed that—”
Pincushion stopped, squinted, and asked, “Is that you? Again? I’m not asleep this time.”
The memory broke. Daydreams weren’t nearly as resilient as regular dreams. I ought to be more concerned with the prospect that there would be more magical conversations with Pincushion. Instead, I slipped a hand under my glasses, to touch my button eye. The contrast between Grumpy Gus and Little Miss Snippybritches stirred up emotions in me that, for the first time since I became intelligent, I couldn’t analyze.
Meanwhile, Sandy clasped her hands together and exclaimed in relief, “I would really appreciate that. If the rifts aren’t just along the Dotted Line, I need to track them down and close them as fast as possible before someone’s hurt.”
A deeply curtseying bundliss with, yes, a pointy, black witch hat said, “Our powers are poor, but we are steeped many years in cunning. Both are yours, Queen of Witches.”
Sandy smiled, and stepped up to the V of genuflecting bundlish. “You’re all so sweet. That will really help, but I came here for something specific. Um, but first, what’s that sound?”
We hurried outside. The noise in question came from the bundlish, standing in their doorways and hissing. The Bundleberg street stood empty except for a single shrivener, his white robes waving behind him as he headed for the forest in quick, perfectly even steps.
Sandy raised her hand. “Um, excuse me?”
He ignored her. Not a good sign. Putting a hand to my mouth, I shouted, “What are you doing?” No, of course that didn’t work. “I require explanation of your current actions to carry out sidekick-specific third tier sixteenth stage behavioral directive!”
The shrivener’s walk didn’t pause, but this time he answered. “The presence of the human Sandy Anywhere is a violation of standards, by order of Princess Charity, the true ruler of Here and There. Unable to exile or incarcerate her myself, I am reporting her presence to the proper authorities.”
“Please don’t—” Sandy started to say. Up close, I could see her pained, guilty expression harder even with those two words. Her magic was gathering for something stronger.
She didn’t have time. When the watching bundlish heard her, they all hunched, and at the word “don’t” let out a wild cacophany of laughter. Giggles, cackles, deep, booming laughs, they pulled out needles, shears, daggers, and bladed things that I couldn’t even name. Still laughing, they launched themselves at the shrivener as fast as each could run. Some did wear quite bulky clothes, after all. Even the slowest was faster than the shrivener, who never varied his gait.
“Oh, my,” I whispered.
Thank goodness Sandy had already summoned her power. Her voice boomed down the road, echoing from the buildings. “Capture him, but do not harm him!”
The bundlish clustered behind us with the bundlevich mumbled, “Aw.”
Sandy lowered her face and rubbed her hand over it. I leaned in, pressing myself into her fluffy hair to give her a reassuring hug.
“What’s one of those things—people, even doing here?” she asked.
Her quiet words didn’t seem to be addressed to anyone in specific. I had my guesses, but a bundliss behind us provided the official answer. “Always we have a shrivener lurking in our shadows, oh yes. They watch us with their tireless, remorseless eyes, judging every stitch and measure of the clothlings we create for Here.”
That produced a tight smile on Sandy’s face, which relieved me. Leaving the bundlevich and his entourage, she made her way over to the crowd of bundlish, who had packed themselves into a heap so that as many as possible could have a grip on the shrivener to hold him immobile. Along the way, she whispered to me, “That shrivener talk was brilliant, the kind of thing you think only humans can do.”
My heart glowed so brightly just the embarrassment would have made it impossible to speak.
A break in the heap let Sandy bend forward and examine the twitching shrivener. It didn’t protest, and couldn’t move more than that. One arm wrapped around her neck, I rubbed my other hand under her chin to help her look thoughtful as she said, “What are we going to do with you?”
“Tear him apart, link by link,” answered a bundler with a purring voice.
“Grind him to dust under the millstone!” suggested a bundliss.
“The furnace.”
That got a round of giggles and approving squeaks from the other bundlish. Sandy cleared her voice, and spoke slowly, carefully, and firmly. “I don’t want him killed.”
“Imprisonment, then,” said the bundlevich, hobbling up beside us.
“Seal him in concrete,” suggested one of his entourage, rubbing her hands together with glee.
One of the heap looked up with a face wrapped in so many layers of bandages that his voice came out muffled. “A lead coffin buried under a heap of stones. Let him scrape at the lid until the war is over and Here and There lie under the sway of the witch once more.”
The cold that had been creeping through my stuffing since the suggestions started reached a freezing point. Leaning into Sandy’s hair, I whispered, “Miss Sandy, I think they’re serious.”
I already felt her shoulder muscles bunched up through my bloomers, and her face took on that human expressionlessness as she asked the assemblage, “You’re just being dramatic, right? You’re saying it because you know I won’t order it.”
Stiff and wobbly as he was, the bundlevich dropped down to one knee. In a wave, all the other bundlish did as well, which forced the poor shrivener nearly face-down on the flagstones. Breathy with hope, the bundlevich told her, “We have waited so long, Witch Sandy. We are the oldest remaining race Anywhere.”
“There were china dolls before even bundlish,” corrected a bundliss in an extravagant blue gown.
The bundlevich demurred, “Each one individual, not a race.”
The crowd all nodded agreement.
His mask turning back to Sandy, and the longing tone returned. “Many children ago, a heroine bound us with her magic, sealing a
way our evil. Now a witch has come to reclaim her most loyal subjects. Release the spell. Let us be what we once were, we beg you.”
Sandy’s shoulder lifted and fell with her deep breaths. I’d stopped breathing at all. She took a long time to answer them. When she did, she laid a trembling hand on the bundlevich’s shoulder. “It is not time yet. Neither Here nor There are ready for you. I am not the child that will free you completely, but I can release one link of your chains. I need a monster.”
“Yesssssss,” the bundlevich whispered. The others joined in on the hiss, hunger and uncontrollable ecstasy combined.
Gaining confidence again, Sandy continued, now waving an arm to indicate all of the gathered bundlish, and the town itself. “You make clothlings for Here. I want you to sew me something bigger, something filled with witchcraft that can fight for me. In fact…”
Turning to the captured shrivener, she cupped her hand under the beak of his mask. “This looks like the face of a monster, doesn’t it? Killing or imprisoning him would be awful, so we’ll change him. Use his metal as underwire, his robe as fabric, and his mask as a face. I’ll turn him from a creature of order to a creature of chaos. That’s not too bad, right?”
“Disappointingly merciful and brilliantly evil at the same time,” said the bundlevich.
Sandy stomped her foot, and pointed up the street. “Then get to work. Your dark mistress commands it!”
Crawling forward over her shoulder, I looked down at the kneeling bundlevich and added, “And her sidekick commands comfortable lodging and full meals to be made for her. Show the Great Witch the luxury she deserves.” After using so much magic, my heroine had to be exhausted.
“And brew up some tea, please,” Sandy added.
I giggled, and my heart glowed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sewing a monster together takes quite some time, but the bundlish seemed to enjoy it. bundlesses sewed patches of cloth together with string and fabric brought in by the armful by jealous looking bundlers. At least, I thought they were jealous. Most bundlish have no expression at all, but they stared fixedly at the deftly moving gloves of the seamstresses.
Who would not be jealous of the power of creating life?
All I could tell for sure about the monster so far was that it would have a lot of appendages. Which were arms and which were legs I couldn’t yet guess.
Myself, I sat in Sandy’s lap against the pleasant fuzziness of her sweater, with her arms looped around me but not actually holding on. Sandy, in turn, sat on a pile of cushions in a big, dusty wooden room in a building across from the Town hall. Quite a large room, in fact. Not as big as the Town Hall’s, but it had room for us, exactly thirteen bundlesses, the fat, half-stuffed tubes they were working on, and their individual heaps of materials. The room was also impressively grey, and the wooden planks of the walls a tad splintery. The floor had a tinge of brown and had been worn smooth by endless feet, at least.
Well. This was a pleasant but not gripping moment. The best time I would get to ask a serious question. “Miss Sandy?”
She looked down at me with her eyebrows pressed together. “Yes? Is something wrong?”
I shook my head so fast my glasses rattled. “Oh, no. Well, not with me. At least, nothing that you haven’t already factored into our current situation, and in any case the problems I want to discuss are not mine and, hopefully, not yours.”
Her worried frown disappeared in a flurry of giggles, which only stopped when she clamped her hand over her mouth and held it shut. After a few seconds of that, she said through her fingers, “I’m sorry, Heartfelt. Please don’t think I was laughing at you. You’re just so charming.”
I smiled back, or at least smiled even more than I was smiling. “I understand completely, Miss Sandy. In fact, I fear I may be the one who needs to apologize, because I want to ask you about a very serious, and possibly depressing, matter. What could possibly have happened to drive Miss Charity mad?”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than a chill froze my fabric stiff, and I added hurriedly, “I’m sorry. Was asking questions like that about a human out of bounds?”
She stroked my hat soothingly, and the smile revealed by her retreating hand was small, a little sad, but definitely still a smile. “You should be free to question humans. You all should. I don’t think the last few children who came Here and went There did you any favors.”
Reassured and a bit more confident, I stood up straight in her lap and looked curiously into her eyes. “Oh. Well, then. My question stands.”
She kept patting, her own eyes distant, looking past me. “I wish I knew. We both had things pretty bad in school, although visiting Here and There has really given me perspective. Mostly other kids made fun of her name. We both had to deal with a lot of bullying. People saying bad things about us. That sort of thing. Her parents weren’t as understanding as my mom and dad, but I don’t think they were too much worse. At school, except for each other, we were very alone.”
That made me fidget, rubbing my mittens together. Well, Sandy did want me to be more direct about humans. “I am realizing that I was not treated very well at the Endless Picnic, but it didn’t hurt me like that because I wasn’t smart enough to understand or remember.”
Her hand stopped stroking, resting on my cap and picking at the fringe of my hair in back. The weight rather squished the top of my head in, but it wasn’t painful, so I didn’t say anything. Pretty soon, Sandy spoke again. “No, that’s not it. I mean, I don’t think there was some threshold of pain that made her hurt other people. Maybe it made her angrier, but that doesn’t make her think it’s right to hurt people with that anger. We’re powerful Here, the most powerful people in your world. It’s showing us who we are inside. I like this power, a lot. I’m also scared of it. It’s so easy to misuse. When I made a mistake in my world, maybe someone would be mad or get their feelings hurt. Here, I can destroy lives.”
“And save them, and create them,” I pointed out dutifully.
She nodded slowly, still withdrawn. “And that feels good. Hurting people doesn’t, but the power does. I guess deep down, Charity always liked hurting people, but I like this power and I’m trying to control myself.”
She took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. Lifting me up, Sandy’s strong arms squished me to her springily stuffed sweater. “If she just saw you all as people, maybe she would stop, but you saw her freak out when I tried to explain that. She just can’t see herself through other people’s eyes.”
“Perhaps she sees herself through the eyes of the people who hurt her, rather than the people she hurts,” I suggested.
Oh, my. What an odd thought. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and yet it made me sad at the same time. Pushing back against the pale fuzz filling my vision, I peeked down and checked that my heart hadn’t turned grey. No, still pink.
A shuffling figure in a robe loomed over us, blocking the light from the candle sconces on the walls. Bundlish liked candles. Possibly because Candlemas was so close?
Bowing, metal clawed fingers clasped together, the bundlish hissed, “It is time for the feast, Witch Sandy.”
She released her grip on me and looked up in surprise. “A feast? You already fed me. That apple cake was delicious.”
It liked that compliment, or at least its hiss sounded pleased, even smug. “A tidbit to quench your immediate needs. Now we wish to properly honor our mistress of the black arts.”
Sandy laughed, tucking me into the corner of her arm and standing up. “Okay, sure.”
She shook her head, grinning widely, all the way over to the Town Hall. We passed at least a dozen bundlish who bowed low and held out their arms to show us the way, then fell in behind us as an honor guard.
We were escorted all the way into the huge central hall, and…
Oh, my. Things had changed.
All the pews were gone, presumably dragged away. An absolutely huge wooden table filled most of the room, with elabo
rately carved wooden chairs lined up on either side. Not that I could tell what kind of carvings, since the gleaming brown varnish melded everything together, but all that lumpiness was definitely deliberate. Black, bat-winged metal candle sconces now lined the walls, casting the whole room in flickering light. The table looked downright intimidatingly solid, but still overburdened by the masses of food arranged down its length. Freshly cooked, from the smell.
Maybe the bundlish were lying about honoring Sandy, and in fact had been completely hornswaggled by the flops clan, and now were carrying out a fiendish plan to get rid of the excess.
Actually, from how we were getting to know the bundlish, that seemed likely.
On the other hand, no efforts were being spared in terms of honoring. As Sandy walked up to the head of the table, a bundlish dragged over a huge black throne. The throne at the center of Everywhere was barely more than a lump of rock. This thing had scowling, fanged faces molded into the sides, black serpents winding together up the corners and along the arm rests, claw feet, a taloned bird hand sticking off one side just perfectly sized and placed to hold a saucer and cup, heavily embroidered cushions, and a lot more along the same lines. All in black. In fact, I couldn’t make out exactly what was embroidered on the cushions, even when Sandy sat down and I got a close-up view. Shinier black on duller black traced out patterns that I guessed would be enthusiastically evil if I could make them out properly. I prodded a cushion, confirming that whatever it looked like, it had the most important trait of being pleasantly smooth and firmly padded.
As if that wasn’t enough, once Sandy was comfortably seated, the bundlish dragged in more decorations around her. Braziers kept our end of the hall much brighter than the rest. Metal dargon statues bared their teeth threateningly. Big spiked columns… uh, stood there spikily.
They might as well not have bothered. The scariest thing in the room hovered roughly a foot over the table itself. While I craned my head to get a better look—it was so hard to see straight on, after all—Sandy asked, “Do you think it’s wise having a feast right next to the tear?”
A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There Page 32