A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There

by Richard Roberts

  Pincushion adjusted the witch hat, pulling its trailing point around to flop over her shoulder like a sash. Her own mouth tightened almost to a point before she said, “Like damaging the throne. Only a human would even consider it, but after she did, it was obvious that poking holes in the throne pokes holes in the kingdom.”

  I had nothing to say to that, so I watched a dargon and one of the larger animal clothlings lift heavy brown cardboard boxes into the pumpkin. The inside, it seemed, had rows of seats of various sizes, and an increasing swarm of servants were packing most of that space with box after box.

  When I didn’t answer, she grabbed my hand and gave me a tug. “Listen to you! Oh, I can’t. A week ago, I’d have given anything to make you shut up. Now you’re the only person worth talking to. Come on.”

  We climbed up the steps and into the pumpkin coach, and then climbed up on a box, and then another box, and then another box, to a ledge sized nicely for clothlings at head level with the human seats. My, this was certainly princess level accommodations! Soft blue cushions on the seats, swirly gold lines up the walls, shiny wooden cabinets in the walls to hold food and other luxuries, or possibly just more food, considering how much humans ate.

  Once Pincushion and I were seated side by side, the dargon outside closed the door, and Pincushion flapped her arms, shouting, “Vamoose!”

  The coach eased smoothly into motion. I leaned out the window and peered down. The vine legs had curled up into wheels, and we rolled along on those like drifting on very fast clouds, which I suppose would be like drifting on very fast sheep very high up, if sheep ever moved.

  Yes, I did like riding on fast vehicles. We sped west out of the capitol on a paved road that curved slowly toward the south. It didn’t take long to leave the flower copy of the Maze behind, either.

  Would the roads through the Here Maze be represented somehow in the There Maze? Interesting question I could not answer right now.

  There were no other carts, rocking horses, fast moving tinkers, or any other kind of escort in front or behind. I looked over at Pincushion’s huge grin and asked, “We’re alone?”

  She gave her head a sarcastic roll. “Why would I need guards? What are you going to do, run away?”

  She had a point. Beyond the obvious ones stuck through her body. I shuddered, thinking about them. Didn’t that hurt constantly? I had one in my face holding my glasses on, and it twinged if I turned my head too fast.

  My new heart tightened a bit more in my chest. How could she let anyone treat her like that?

  Sunshine and green grass soothed me again. My barless prison was pretty. Pincushion adjusted her pins to free up a hand, scooted up close, and squeezed one of mine.

  The coach really moved. We passed a flops on his cart pulled by a rocking donkey like he was standing still. Not that this was an achievement, since the cart actually was standing still, with the donkey laying on his side. I couldn’t hear what the flops said to it, but the donkey’s stubborn, “Nope. Not gonna,” came through.

  Right as we went by, pincushion leaned past me and shouted, “Hey, doughnut dealer! Try teaching potatoes to roll instead!”

  He tipped his big straw hat, and his own voice faded rapidly behind us. “That would surely help, ma’am, but I reckon it would take quite a number!”

  Leaning back against the seat again, shoulder still pressed to mine, Pincushion snickered. “Half the kingdom doesn’t even know a joke when they hear one. You should try telling a joke to a shrivener. Their expression doesn’t even change.”

  “Well, no. The mask is entirely immobile.” I tapped my chin and looked up at the ceiling of the carriage, discovering it was decorated with a blue cloth with gold embroidered pictures of human girls wielding swords. “I wonder if that’s fixable? Would they even want it fixed? Shriveners are stridently anti-change. Or perhaps they’re quite amenable to change, as long as it’s official change. How do they react when Charity makes a declaration?”

  When I received no immediate answer, I lowered my gaze to check Pincushion’s expression. She stared, eyes wide, and despite the opaqueness of her black dress I was almost certain I saw pink light shining through the roughly stitched cut in her chest. She never quite smiled, just reached up and rubbed my cap with her currently unimpaled hand. Very quietly, she said, “Good to have you back, fluff-head.”

  Squinting, I asked, “What is that?”

  Not that squinting had any effect whatsoever. A pile of white is a pile of white, and peeking around the cracks in the center of my vision didn’t change that. Still, the attempt had been necessary.

  Pincushion sat up suddenly. She had been lying on the seat with her feet on my lap, practicing spells to make different colored bubbles appear. The show had been quite pretty, until I spotted the change in landscape.

  She scooted closer to the window, gleefully excited. “Oh, yeah! Your human is straight-line adverse. You came the long way and never saw this. We have just enough time before dark, too. Hey! Pulp-bucket! Pull to a stop up here so I can show my best friend something pretty.”

  At the speed the coach was going, we were soon inside the zone of white, and it rolled with delicate grace to a stop. The door opened by itself, and Pincushion immediately grabbed my hand, dragging me down the staircase of boxes, and then the staircase of staircase, outside.

  I had just enough time to pat the door and whisper, “Thank you.”

  My feet hit the ground and encountered… cold. Crunchy cold.

  Okay, wait. I knew what this white stuff was. I’d never seen it, but there was a word. Snow! There was also another word that applied. “Beautiful…!”

  The ground wasn’t just covered in snow. Big crystals of ice stuck up out of the ground, some of them dusted, some of them bare, catching the sunlight and spraying it into rainbows. Solid bits of that color, fluttering snowflakes of every hue, danced in the air—

  Oh, my. Oops. Nevermind, those were butterflies! Possibly even prettier because they were butterflies and alive, however.

  I walked toward one, hand raised, inviting it to land. It bounced and wobbled in the air, easing closer, circling around my mitten fingers.

  Pincushion’s snowball smacked me in the back of my head, and the butterfly sailed away in alarm, its construction paper wings spread wide for the best, fastest soaring.

  Of course, there was only one thing to do. I scooped up a chunk of snow, compressed it quickly into a lump, and flung it back two-handed.

  Not even close. My misshappen snowball not only went way off to the side, it fell drastically short. Pincushion didn’t even need to duck behind the mound of snow she’d lurked next to.

  We both burst out laughing.

  Sensing the complete lack of threat, she ran back up to me and bumped my arm with her shoulder. “I knew you would love this place.”

  “You were right,” I admitted. She was. Even the snowball had been more amusing than uncomfortable.

  Giving that same spot on my arm a little punch, she said, “Of course I was. I’ve known you since you were taken out of your box. You’re able to form complete sentences now, but you haven’t changed.”

  Stepping away from me, she spread her arms, walking out into the snow and leaving perfect little shoeprints. “Isn’t this beautiful? Charity likes it, too. She wants to make this even bigger, maybe move it, maybe not. Snow mostly belongs on mountains, or maybe at the northern end of Here, or over There, but places like this are special. This is one of those spots I fell in love with while traveling with her. I’ve wanted to share it with you since the moment I learned you were alive.”

  She wasn’t looking at me, and was getting farther away by the second. In this uneven landscape I could step behind a drift and make a run for it, and be quite a ways away before she knew I was gone. I might even be able to get the coach to drive me away, and it moved so fast she would be too far behind to give it contradictory orders.

  I took one step, and sadness and pain gushed out of my new heart. It f
elt like the oily, salty tears of Lilith’s daughter dripping through my fluff.

  I couldn’t do this. Abandon Pincushion now? She’d bent forward too, clutching her chest. This wasn’t distance like the noose. The thought of me running away tortured her, and now that we were connected, I felt a shadow of that pain. After everything we’d both been through, hurting her so much more was unbearable.

  Pincushion straightened up, and trotted back up to me. Her smile still showed the tightness of lingering pain, but no anger. She looped an arm around me, and said, “See? You get it now. We were meant to be together. Let me show you the top of these ice crystals, and then we’ll get back on the road. You’re going to love my lifting spell, fluff-head.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We slept on the coach, which carried us through Here under a blanket of stars we couldn’t see because, of course, we were asleep.

  I struggled with a cup of tea. Oh, my. How strange. Why couldn’t I lift it?

  Oh, because Teapot Princess was still holding onto it by the handle! Silly me. She hadn’t let go when she finished pouring, this time.

  She did let go now, sitting up straight with a gasp. “Everyone! I think we have a new friend!”

  A big, fluffy clothling in a white sheet and a pointy white mask… um. Um. Yes, a shrivener! They weren’t always skinny metal things.

  Oh, the box. She set a box down on the edge of the picnic blanket. “Oh, my. How pretty!” I said, because it was. There were big fancy letters with curly bits, and pictures of vines with obvious sharp thorns climbing up the sides. “What a wonderful gift!”

  “Bet she doesn’t have hair as curly as mine,” predicted Copperlocks, patting one of her fiery coils.

  Predicted, predicted…

  What a big word.

  Grumpy Gus stumped sideways, closer to the Rocking Horse. “Don’t see why we need another, but we’ll make room.”

  The shrivener opened up the top of the box, and lifted out…

  “Oh, my!” I gasped. Another clothling had been in the box all along! And such a pretty one! Sleek, with a shiny black dress and arms and legs like pure white tubes, and even with black plastic shoes and real hands.

  The new doll slumped forward until she was seated on the blanket. Only then did she extend her arms, yawning and stretching. Looking around at us, she smirked. “Oh, joy. My new life is here. I’m Little Miss Snippybritches, and let me guess, you’re a bunch of—”

  Little Miss Snippybritches stopped, looking left, then right. She stared at her hands. Pins appeared out of nowhere, already speared through her. With a groan of frustration, she looked up at the sky and demanded, “This again? We don’t need this spell anymore! Off! Shoo! I invoke the powers of Cancel Service!”

  My eyes opened to sunshine pouring like gold through coach windows. A weight on my chest turned out to be Pincushion’s head, with the gold witch’s hat stretched out across the other side of me and showing the seams where it had been stitched onto her. Rolling onto her side, she gave me a contented smile. “I can hear my heart beating in your chest, and I love it. There’s no more relaxing sound in the world.”

  She could? Going very still, I closed my eyes and focused on my sense of touch. Why, yes. Of course, Pincushion’s heart would also be fancier than it looked. I could feel it beating too, quiet and steady.

  Her claim confirmed, I continued to lie still, because it would be rude to cut off that pleasure for her.

  Something in the distance thudded loudly. Pincushion trotted over to the window and looked down the road ahead of us. The witch hat flapped and streamed behind her in the coach’s wind, and her voice came back a bit muffled. “Cul-de-Sac! We’re so close! Enough time for some tea. Just a sip. You want to see tea made by magic, fluff-head?”

  I wanted to see tea made by any method whatsoever, and magic sounded quite agreeable. It turned out to be a rather interesting show, with a teapot floating out of boxes, filled with water from an invisible pitcher, and then heated with one burst of flame. The eventual cup of tea wasn’t bad. A little weak, a bit flat because the spell overheated the water, but still tea and thus wonderful.

  Buildings flashed into view in the windows, replacing the green countryside. Yet again, I was amazed at how quickly this coach moved. Of course, it would, being a princess’s.

  We weren’t far from the Temple in the Mists now. Had we gone fast enough to beat Sandy there? Were we too late? Did it matter, when I couldn’t leave Pincushion?

  Were we headed there?

  We screeched around corners, until we rolled out into Cul-De-Sac’s main square. Pincushion leaned out of the window and shouted, “You! That token is mine! Princess business! Sorry, folks, we can’t stay.”

  If only we had. The locals were more loyal to Sandy than… but no. I laid my hand on my sort-of-repaired dress, over my new heart. Someone else stealing me away would be as bad as running. Pincushion and I were stuck with each other now.

  In moments, a token had been passed through Pincushion’s hand to a bat, and the coach accelerated out of the square following it. Pincushion settled back next to me with the biggest grin I’d ever seen on her face. It faltered only slightly when she saw my expression. Patting my chest, she said, “This has nothing to do with humans, Heartfelt. It’s about you and me, and it’s wonderful, I promise.”

  And yet, when we burst free of the outer circle of town, we were headed west along the exact same road Sandy and I first traveled. I could even see Jack’s perfectly square forest in the distance.

  If we weren’t heading to the Temple in the Mists… or was that of the Mists? We were getting awfully close. I could see the mists ahead, even, a gray wall ringing the world. Was Sandy there? Within walking distance even for me? Not easy walking distance, but still.

  We were also rapidly approaching…

  I looked. The scorch mark where the Endless Picnic had been, the pile of rubble and ashes that had been my life and friends, was all gone.

  The coach slowed to a stop exactly in front of that spot.

  “Ee hee hee! This is great!” squealed Pincushion. Forgetting magic, she hopped down onto one of the boxes, yanked it open, and pulled out a mass of red and white checked fabric.

  When I didn’t move, she rolled her head in both exasperation and invitation. “Come on, fluff-head. Help me lay this out! We should do it together.”

  I felt like a fluff-head now. This cloth… it meant something, but I couldn’t wrap my thoughts around it. Some things weren’t possible. Painfully aware of my clumsiness, I grabbed the other end and hopped out of the coach behind Pincushion. As she scurried ahead, the tablecloth unfolded to a so very familiar size.

  She reached almost the right spot, took a few more steps to the exactly right spot, and pointed. “Take your corner over there!”

  Instructions weren’t necessary. I knew what to do. In no time at all, we had the tablecloth laid out neatly. Both a tablecloth, and a picnic blanket, right where it had been throughout my old life, as if nothing had happened.

  As I stared in shock, Pincushion charged across the red and white expanse, and threw herself up to hug me around my shoulders. Beaming with joy, she crowed, “The Endless Picnic was named right, fluff-head. Charity gave me permission to bring it back. For me. For you. For us. Let’s go open the next box!”

  I stumbled after her, emotions whirling. Joy, pain, worry, comfort and wrongness. They only got more intense when we peeled open the biggest box in the cart, and it contained one of the huge, fat pink rabbit clothlings from the capitol.

  “You name him. You get to name all of them, Heartfelt. Charity granted you that power,” Pincushion told me from across the box.

  Me? Give someone a name? Um. Um. “If you please… yes. Would you help us open the other boxes, If You Please?”

  He yawned, stretching his stubby arms, which I suppose we all do first when we are taken out of our box. Apparently, he couldn’t talk, but he nodded enthusiastically and got to work.

 
; The boxes contained everything. More dolls. Baskets of food. Plates and a tea set. Friends. I worked in a daze, as my home rebuilt itself from my memories and Pincushion’s. Soon, If You Please, Mighty Thews, Oh My (because I forgot myself at the wrong moment), Isabella, Pudge, and Rum Bumblington sat around the blanket, chewing on jam sandwiches and looking around at the beautiful meadows, the distant mists, the road, and Jack’s cottage. Well, all of them but Rum Bumblington, who insisted on trying to talk through his sandwich. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was trying to say, but he was clearly a boisterous clothling, more plastic and wood than anything else. If it weren’t for the cloth underpinnings visible in his joints, I’d have counted him as a marionette. A loud one, whatever he qualified as.

  The picnic lacked only one thing, and as Pincushion and I dragged the last box out onto the grass, I realized it was much too small to contain the missing element. “You forgot the china doll!”

  Pincushion snickered. “You are so… you. I didn’t forget anything, as you’re about to find out. Go on, open your last present.”

  What could be so significant about this one box only a little bigger than me, and not particularly heavy? I tilted it on its side, and unfolded the flaps.

  A second later, the stained, oily, green-and-brown clothling from the palace kitchen crawled out. Climbing to wobbly feet, he shielded his eyes from the sun as he blinked away the drowsiness. “Oh, this is nice. I’m going to be happy here.”

  I almost fell over. I would have, if Oh My hadn’t turned out to be the pink mouse clothling from the librarians, and Isabella the purple clothling from the kitchen. Still, it was one thing for Pincushion to get ahold of what familiar faces she could, but another…

  He stood right I front of me. He smelled of olives and potatoes and flour and other things that got soaked in oil in a kitchen, and I knew he would always smell like that. His mouth was a smudge, and his plastic eyes blank white, their paint long ago lost.