“Oh, no,” said the bundlish who’d brought us here, rubbing its hands together in delight and producing a scratchy, squeaky noise.
“We have great faith in the power of your stitching, Darkest of Witches,” said a bundless in an amazing dress embroidered with glittering dragons, most of which were covered by an apron.
Chuckling in the grip of ecstatic imagination, a bundler paused dragging over a tentacled footrest. “But if it fails, what a glorious terror and catastrophe it will be.”
“Oh, yes, very glorious,” agreed the aproned bundless.
“Glorious indeed,” said the clawed bundlish, nodding enthusiastically.
Sandy’s cheeks tightened and bulged, and her mouth wrinkled up. Setting me in the cup holder, she leaned over to whisper, “I love seeing them so happy.”
“Me, too,” I whispered back.
And then the most beautiful, magical thing happened.
Bundlish waiters brought us drinks, including three pots of tea, each one with a delightfully different aroma.
The rest of the evening blended together into drinking as much tea as I possibly could, with every sweetener the bundlish could put in front of me, and licking so many cookies I lost count.
I didn’t even stop to see how much Sandy ate, and afterward, in a luxurious silky bed in a luxuriously ornate bedroom, I fell asleep on Sandy’s bulging, gurgling stomach.
As one, the crowd embraced me. Heads lay against me, arms wrapped around every inch of my body, and they smiled as they squeezed me with open, simple affection. They didn’t care if I’d been ripped up and patched back together or not.
My heart lit up pink. That set off a chain of giggles and small cheers, which made it glow brighter.
“Hold her,” said Pincushion sharply. They already were, but everyone tightened their grip even as they gave her curious looks.
Struggling was impossible. Too many arms. The cold touch of a blade snipped my glasses free on the right side, on the left, and then slid up my face to cut the nose piece loose.
“Oh, my. I—I—what? Pincushion—what? Why?”
I was a fluff-head again.
She pushed her way up in front of me, forcing other clothlings out of the way. Hands gripped the collar of my dress, and her dark, shiny eyes looked into mine. Everyone went still when she let go, raised her arms, and asked the ceiling, “Does it always have to be a nightmare?”
“At least it’s not your nightmare,” I answered back, rather sharply.
She tilted her head, eyes half-closing in cynical disdain. “You think I enjoyed this?” Stepping back, she pushed the motionless, half-there dream dolls aside so she could stand on one foot and fold her fingers under her chin. She smiled blissfully, and in a chirpy, so-very-familiarly sarcastic tone continued, “Oh, thank you, Mistress! I’ve always wanted my owner to order me to burn alive my old sidekick, and the only happy link I have left to my previous life. What would make this extra-special is if I lied to you, who defines my very existence, and instead imprisoned my sweet but helpless best friend in the hope that by the time you found out, you wouldn’t care enough to punish either of us.”
Holding her arms out in front of her, she stared at her trembling hands. Suddenly breathing heavily, she whispered, “I can’t… I can’t believe I even did that. Maybe I should ask her to remake me again.”
“Oh, my. I don’t—I’m sorry. I’m not—” I patted my face. No glasses. No glasses, no thoughts. No good thoughts.
No. I’d been through this. I could think without glasses. What I should think is that I was still wearing Sandy’s glasses. They were still on my face, just not showing up in this dream.
That thought did lead me to cross my arms over my chest and give Pincushion a pout. “I appreciate the attempt to save my life, but was it strictly necessary to steal my intelligence?”
“Duh. Would you have sat still if I just asked?” She reached over and tapped my cap, pushing it halfway in. “Still soft and squishy in there.”
Oh, no, I wasn’t taking that. I held out a mitten, palm forward. “You didn’t even try. Saving me is one thing, but if you do care, don’t I deserve the respect of a chance to fight back?”
She gaped at me, the bow of her painted black lips in an O. “Uh, no? Since it was that or use the overwhelming force at my disposal to toss you into a fire? Like I was under orders to do? Orders that I defied because I’m soft in the head for someone even softer in the head? We had the fire ready and everything.”
I prodded her in the chest. “So, you’re saying the disrespect came from the top?”
Pincushion lolled her head back, waggling her fingers, or at least moving them in a wave as if she could waggle them. “Oh, and your human is squeaky clean. Did you see the mess she caused with that riot in the Capitol? Besides, you were going to lose the glasses anyway. Your human wants to go home.”
I scowled now, the stitches in my mouth pulling tight. “Then I’ll give up my intellect when Sandy banishes Charity back to Elsewhere, not before.”
Standing up as tall as she could, which wasn’t very, Pincushion clenched her fists and growled up at me, “One human wants to stay. One human wants to leave. It’s not hard to figure out—”
She stopped, pulled a pin out of one arm, and with both hands jammed it into and through her head. I flinched at how painful that looked, but it left her breathing deeply and slowly, her expression softening with each second.
Very slowly, in an obvious and successful attempt not to spook me, she reached out and took one of my hands in both of hers. Squeezing it tenderly, she said, “I don’t want to argue about that right now. Here in our dreams is the only time we have to be friends again.”
I clasped my remaining hand atop hers, and my heart lit up enough to cast a pink glow on them all. “I agree.”
She looked up at me silently for a second, intent and searching. She jerked on our mutually clasped hands, pulling me toward her, and reached up to clasp my cheeks. Pulling my face down, she lifted hers, so close, so close that I could look into her eyes and wonder if that sparkle was glass, not plastic.
Her lips were almost touching mine.
Oh, my.
The dream went absolutely silent except for the sound of sniffing as she smelled my mouth. Her grip relaxed, not letting go, but letting me stand up fully again and returning our faces to a more natural distance. Hoarseness touched her voice as she said, “Well. At least your human is taking good care of you.”
Ah, yes. I smelled like tea right now. I’d practically sloshed when I went to sleep.
I leaned down and sniffed her face. Yep, butter-cream. “You must be eating well. The cook in the palace is a genius.”
That got an immediate smirk, black lips pulled sharply up on one side of her pale face. “She has to be. Have you seen how much humans eat?! Yeah, I know you’ve seen it by now, but were you paying attention?”
I couldn’t help a wry smile. “Keeping Sandy fed has been an adventure all by itself. We’ve learned to forage, but a human really needs a full flops delivery to get by.”
Pincushion snickered, and gave her head a quick shake. “We had a bundle of fun with food until I got Princess Charity to her palace. I made that a priority as soon as I realized how fragile humans are.”
“Immensely powerful, but they run down easily,” I agreed with a nod.
She took hold of me again, this time with one hand on my shoulder, and the other on my wrist—my left shoulder and left wrist, the arm that was mostly plaid flannel from Jack’s shirt now. Peering closely at the seams, she twisted and tugged gently at my arm. A disapproving, even worried frown replaced her grin. “Not doing as good a job taking care of you here, but I guess I should be grateful I have you back at all.”
Inspiration hit me. “We could—” I managed to choke the words off there. Yes, the bundlish could resew my seams more securely and less stiff, but despite this pleasant conversation I could not afford to give my reluctant enemy hints about Sandy’s lo
cation.
My self-correction wasn’t exactly subtle. Pincushion watched my face, so closely that, well, is it possible Sandy’s extreme expressiveness was rubbing off on me? After several awkward seconds of that, the smaller, finer clothling wrapped her arms around me and gave me a gentle hug. “I want to ask you about all your adventures, but I can’t ask you to betray your human.” Even with her face buried in my collar, she sounded bitter.
Several answers occurred to me, but one immediately presented itself as the most important. “Thank you.”
Her arms slipped away from me, and Pincushion stepped back. Her smirk returned, and with her hands propped on her black-skirted hips she said, “But there’s one thing I can ask you: Met any cute boys lately?”
My heart blazed, then flickered out. “Pincushion! That’s very—aren’t you at least a little ashamed of taking advantage of me in Port Rait?”
Apparently, she wasn’t, because she just tapped a finger against my heart and grinned wider. “Fluff-head, as long as I’ve known you—and that’s your entire life until we met these humans—you were interested in only two things, tea and boys. If you could have remembered either for more than five minutes, you’d have been a connoisseur. There’s no way I was the only one to turn your head these crazy last few days.”
My heart started to glow again. Since I couldn’t stop it, I held a mitten up to my mouth and giggled awkwardly. “Well… the one I liked the most, even more than your disguise, is your cook’s assistant. I don’t know if they’re a boy or a girl, and they’re certainly not pretty, but some people have something more. They’re deeper than everyone else, and you fall in.” I hesitated a moment. “Actually, that’s a confusing metaphor. I mean that the grease-stained clothling in your kitchen has an unexpected emotional and intellectual capacity, which showed in acts not merely of kindness, but of empathy and care. The effect was more compelling and attractive than even the most ruggedly carved marionette. Had circumstances been otherwise, I would have happily fallen in love.”
Pincushion rubbed her fingers from side to side beneath her mouth, the smile replaced temporarily by serious thought. “Really? That’s a high recommendation. Maybe he, she, or it deserves a promotion to more responsible duties. The palace needs intellects a lot more when there’s a ruler than when it’s waiting for one.”
I had something to say about that. Something pleased. And then she had something equally friendly to say in return. What they were, I didn’t remember. Maybe the magic part of the dream ended there, and we weren’t really talking, and that’s why it all became a blur. Whether real or not, it felt like we had a long, long conversation.
I woke up on the black silk covers of an ebony four poster bed in a room with black wallpaper and… well, that description might give the mistaken impression that the bedroom given to Sandy was monotone. Not true. Silvery scrollwork embroidery ran along the edges of the sheets, thin, greyed-out rose vine decorations crawled up the wallpaper from the wainscoting, and while the many paintings of bundlish were clearly painted in dark rooms, you could still make out the subjects. The room had touches of color.
Nevertheless, Sandy stood out like a golden doll amid all that. Bending over, her hair hung like a waterfall from a floating island. Was there a floating island surrounded by waterfalls? I would have to check my maps. Later. For now, Sandy was saying, “You talked in your sleep.”
Oh. “I did?” That seemed reasonable, considering I’d been dreaming of a conversation. “What did I say?” Maybe I could hear some of the parts I forgot!
“Mostly ‘oh, my’,” Sandy answered with a grin. Any suspicion I might have had she was making fun of me disappeared as she leaned down further, kissed my cap, and picked me up for a soft hug.
I pressed my face into her fuzzy sweater. Yes. So, so soft. She smelled good, too.
Apparently, my sniffing was less than discreet. Sandy’s grin widened. “The bundlish did my laundry while we were asleep. They even made me new socks.”
That made me frown. Hmmm. “Won’t you be unable to return home if you do that? My understanding was that nothing from Anywhere can go Elsewhere.”
She raised me higher to rub her face against my cap. As I giggled, she then tucked me under her arm, and we left the room, descending the staircase of… um, well, I wasn’t sure which bundlish mansion. I did drink quite a lot of tea last night.
Face-down, I watched Sandy’s feet descend creaky wooden steps, and listened to her voice. “You must be rubbing off on me, Heartfelt. I’ve been thinking about that. I bet the restriction isn’t as big as it sounds. Otherwise, it would be almost impossible to leave. I’m sure nothing from Anywhere goes Elsewhere, but that’s not the same as it stopping me from going through the mirror. When I fell through before, you couldn’t go through, but you’re a person, and I wouldn’t let you go.”
Wriggling an arm free, I tapped my chin, starting to think about this, but Sandy wasn’t done. “That’s why I want to ask a favor of you, Heartfelt.”
“Oh, my. A favor of me? You don’t have to ask. I’ll do anything you say!”
Her face was hidden above me, but now she sounded sad. “Yes, that’s why I’m asking. This is your decision.”
Shaking my head slowly, I said, “I’m not certain I can make decisions where you’re concerned, Miss Sandy. As much as I believe there is a hole in Princess Charity’s argument about the invalidity of our lives, she was accurate about the relative strength of our wills to a human’s.”
Her arm tightened, and she sounded almost angry. Disappointed? No, she wasn’t mad at me. Perhaps with Princess Charity. “That’s why I’m asking, so you have to decide. I have a selfish request. The bundlish have plenty of spare glasses. We could get you a pair all of your own. Would it be okay if you kept my glasses? To protect me from Charity?”
Spare glasses? A pair of my own?
The idea had never even occurred to me.
Sandy would not have offered if different glasses would make me less intelligent. The principle was the same. If it were different, the difference would be because of Sandy’s magic, and in the same spell that made her glasses make me smart was just extended to every other pair of glasses I might wear. Although really, it seemed entirely clear to me that wearing glasses made anyone smart without human intervention.
The actual question itself hit me.
Oh, my.
“I…” The words wouldn’t come. She didn’t want obedience. She didn’t want me to do it for her. How could I decide this?
By not deciding, and telling her the truth. “I am honored to wear your glasses. Not in the sense of doing it to serve you, although of course that’s something to be proud of, too. Because they’re yours, I like having them.”
She ruffled my cap. The wooden floor I could see staring straight down became flagstones of the Bundleberg street. Then they became flooring again.
I lifted my head in time to see bundlish on stepstools pack the end of a striped tail into the biggest cardboard box I had ever imagined. They let out squeaks of joy when they saw Sandy, and the rest of the bundlish seamstresses rushed over to bow over and over to her. The one in front put her hands together and said, “Most Potent of Witches, we have completed construction. The bundlevich is on his way to oversee the awakening ritual.”
Amusement filled Sandy’s voice as she said, “That won’t be necessary. I intend to fill this monster with my own power.”
The bundlish on the ladders began pawing at the box, and one croaked desperately, “Let us at least close the lid to create the tomb of uncertainty from which—”
That took rather a long time to say, and by then Sandy had walked right up to her. Taking me by the waist, she held me out with both hands and said, “No, thank you. If you want to help, fix the stitches on her glasses.”
“As—your will be done, Queen of Curses.”
The stammering bundless hobbled over to where the sewing supplies had been moved against the wall, sat down cross-legged, and sat
me in her lap. This was excellent. I could hold still, and watch Sandy work!
The bundless grumbled, “Look at these holes. You made a mess of your fabric doing this. I may need to sew on a patch.”
With that, I had an idea. Not a plan, but perhaps with the help of an expert I could make it one. “Can you sew on two patches, one over the top? That will make the glasses nice and secure, but removable and replaceable by a human with my cooperation and a certain amount of time and effort. Then, can you put in hidden buttons and sew it all closed as if the buttons weren’t there?”
The bundless cackled, if that was the appropriate word for, “Eeeheehee! Duplicity and misdirection. You are absorbing the ways of the witch as she makes you hers. Buttons would pop, my dear, but for you, a treasure left by Lilith herself. So proud, I, to make a secret weapon for my rightful tyrant.”
While we did all that, Sandy climbed the stepladders, and rooted around in the cardboard box. It was taller than her—much taller!
The bundless cut my glasses free. That’s okay. I didn’t need to think. Just watch.
Sandy lifted out the monster’s head. It did have the long, white bird mask of a shrivener on it, but also a wooden jaw underneath. Three shiny eyes, red, green, and orange were fixed into the puffy head itself, and behind it trailed a neck made of irregular scraps.
She kissed it right above the beak, between empty eye holes in its mask, and murmured, “Wake up, my beast of chaos.”
Colorful eyes rolled in their sockets. The head rose on a long, snakelike neck, until another head peeked out of the box. This one looked a little like mine, a regular old rag doll, but with a face bigger than Sandy’s and an open mouth rimmed with sharp teeth. They looked like they’d been snapped off the ends of scissors.
“Oh, my!” I exclaimed. So scary!
At the other end of the room, the bundlevich in his impressive robes arrived, accompanied by a small crowd of other bundlish. For the ritual, I guess. The monster took one look at him, and lunged forward. The box fell over, and so did Sandy as it pushed her aside. I let out a squeak, struggling to get to her despite the needle sewing up the side of my head, but the bundless held me in place.
A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There Page 33