It fit perfectly. The rift disappeared, flickered open, disappeared, flickered open again.
I could help with that. “Sticky squeeze goo for you!” I shouted.
Okay, it wasn’t much of a spell. A blob of glue shot out of my hand, landed on the rock in its hole, and sealed it into place. The flickering stopped, which is what’s important.
Charity looked over at me, really looked at me. “The hat!” she croaked, and staggered forward. Sandy grabbed her, and they wrestled, but they were wrestling toward me.
I backpedaled faster. Oh, my. Um. Magic? I just wasn’t good at this! Something to—
Soft weight, wielded violently, crashed into the back of my head. Pincushion whipped me around, shaking with one hand, tugging at the hat with the other, and yelling, “I took care of you! I saved your life! How could you do that to me!?”
I gave her the only answer I owed her, planting my foot against her chest and kicking her aside.
She’d distracted me for a moment. I looked up… to find that Charity and Sandy hadn’t gotten much closer. They were struggling together, but Sandy was trying to hold Charity back, rather than compete to get to me.
Not just hold her back. Sandy had kept her cool, and now she kicked Charity in the back of the legs, and heaved the princess backward. In a flurry of blue skirts, Charity landed on a big, square mirror.
On. Not in. She thumped onto her back with no sign of going through.
Sandy gaped. I think we all did.
Climbing back to her feet with a groan, Charity looked at the other human’s expression and smirked. “Oh. Yeah. I was keeping it a secret in case this happened. That’s not all my clothes over there. Do you think I’d trust puppets to keep me safe? I burned my socks and dumped the ashes in that river up on the wall between Here and There. I am never going back. Ever.”
Sandy stared, and I knew that shade of blank human expression. She was trying to calculate a new plan.
Lemon Drop reacted differently. The huge mass of gaudy, tied-up fabric and guards spasmed, jerking against the spear pinning it in place with no result. The tail that had looked dead leaped up and slapped Charity again.
It wasn’t much of a hit, but the human grimaced and snarled in sudden fury. Scooping up the same halberd that had been used to drag her out of the rift, she began chopping at Lemon Drop’s body. “Which means I don’t—have to put up—with you!”
Pincushion tackled me again. I’d been too wrapped up watching the humans. We tumbled to the ground, and she grabbed at the hat, pulled and shoved at me, and just… struggled. No plan, just violence. She had no chance of getting the hat, but she kept flailing and I couldn’t get her off of me.
Not that I needed to defend Lemon Drop. As angry as being slapped made Charity, seeing the monster hacked up made Sandy just as angry. She skipped past a pair of mirrors and grabbed the halberd’s handle as Charity lifted it again.
Charity swiveled in place. It had been a fake-out. She let go of the weapon, and Sandy fell back onto a—
—leg of Lemon Drop’s, which all the chopping had freed from the pile. It wasn’t much support, but it got between Sandy and the mirror waiting below her. My heroine spasmed forward, grabbing at loose fluff as she threw her weight onto the monster’s coiled body. Her hands found the halberd pinning Lemon Drop in place, but it came loose when she pulled, spilling uselessly to the floor.
Useless for Sandy, anyway. Lemon Drop wrapped their tail around the handle, and when that didn’t have enough strength left grabbed it with the free leg as well.
“Don’t hit her!” Sandy shouted, watching helplessly, half-buried in stuffing.
Charity snorted in disdain. “It can’t, Sandy. They’re just dolls. Watch.” She stepped back, folding her arms in contempt as Lemon Drop lifted the axe, took aim, and chopped downward.
“See?” said Charity as the blade turned aside at the last moment.
It smacked into the floor instead, on top of the chunk I’d glued back in. The piece of rock split in two, and gaped into a rift.
Not a big one. Much smaller, even than the rift we’d just closed up. But it opened under Charity’s feet.
Charity fell in so fast she barely made a squeak. Sandy screamed, flailing around, until Lemon Drop heaved her off, and she crawled up to the rift and stuck her arm inside, groping desperately.
Pincushion stopped fighting, turning to watch. Would I have been able to do anything even if she hadn’t been wrestling with me?
For some reason, Charity’s princess crown hadn’t fallen through. It lay on the floor next to the rift, abandoned. There would be time to wonder about that later.
Sandy scooped up the halberd in both hands. “Hold me tight,” she ordered Lemon Drop. Despite its wounds, the monster obeyed, taking hold of her with the remains of its tail and some of its legs as she laid herself out on the floor, leaning into the rift and extending the handle in deep.
Time stretched on. No one grabbed it. Padding toward her over the now blank mirrors, I said in the gentlest tone I could, “Miss Sandy, she’s gone.”
Rapid clicking sounded behind me. Pincushion ran past, arms extended. I grabbed her around the middle, holding her back with my greater size and weight.
“My place is with her!” Pincushion squeaked. It wasn’t really a yell, and she didn’t fight very hard against my grip. She looked stunned, and half her pins had fallen out.
I held on. It was what I would do for any stranger.
Pale, trembling, Sandy’s voice still rang with power as she pointed at the little clothling. “I order you not to follow her. There is only one human Anywhere, and I say you do not belong to Charity anymore.”
Pincushion sagged, and I dropped her.
Sandy walked over the mirrors to me, and held out her hand, palm up. “Give me the hat.”
“It won’t work, Miss Sandy,” I told her quietly, even as I unwound the golden witch hat and held it up for her to take. Some things you didn’t need to be a witch to see.
Sandy didn’t answer. She just put the golden hat on her head and stood, feet apart and hands held out from her hips, in front of the rift.
The change rippled through the room the moment the hat touched her straw-colored hair. She glowed, not with the shine of a princess, but like a fire I couldn’t see flickered around her. I felt it. Heat rose in the room, and breezes gusted everywhere, plucking at Lemon Drop’s stuffing and Sandy’s clothes. They grew stronger, until one of them blew against my back and nearly knocked me over.
Sandy extended a hand over the rift, and commanded, “Return.”
She didn’t yell. She didn’t even raise her voice. The word echoed around the room anyway, and everything trembled.
Lemon Drop exploded, then imploded. That’s what it looked like. Their whole body uncurled, throwing stuffing and severed cloth and broken guards around, then the cloth and stuffing yanked back into place, healing them.
Guards got the same treatment, their bits jerked together. Bits of mirror flew off the ground, and while the boxy elite guards still had big chunks missing, they at least kicked feebly where they lay on the ground. They were alive.
With a clatter and rattle and scrape, crystals rolled to the center of the room from all sides, building on top of the broken-off stump until a statue of a human woman in a long dress stood intact near the center of the room. She held out two motionless arms, hands open.
Charity did not appear. The rift did not change, even a little. Small as it was, it wasn’t easy to see on the floor. If you didn’t look straight at it, you could forget it was there, but it was.
Slowly and carefully, I walked up next to Sandy and patted her leg. “You can’t bring someone back from Nowhere. I’m sorry. I wish I could lie to you, Miss Sandy, but I can’t. Miss Charity is gone forever, if Nowhere can even have an ‘ever.’”
Sandy’s hands clenched into fists, her lips parted in a grimace of pain, and tears welled up in the corner of her eyes. “No. I won’t accept that,” she
hissed through clenched teeth.
What I didn’t say was that even if Sandy found a way to bring Charity back, we would still have the problem that Charity could not be sent Elsewhere. That would never stop my heroine from saving a life.
The leg under my hand untensed. Sandy sagged, taking a slow breath, then lifted her face. She looked calm now. Stricken, maybe, but calm. “I know what to do. Hat or… crown. Crown would work better.” Bending down, she scooped up Charity’s lost crown and switched the witch hat for it. Instantly, she looked serene, confident, in command. She was already beautiful, but this turned her beauty sleek and flawless.
“Guards. Seal the rift,” she commanded.
With a clatter and several blurted out, “Yes’m!”s, they scrambled to their feet, took hold of the heavy stone disk, and dragged it over to the barely visible hole in the floor. It did take a few extra seconds for the guard lying on top of the disk to realize he couldn’t help pull from there, but soon they had it in place. They twisted, and twisted some more, and after the second rotation the disk had sunk visibly into the floor. They couldn’t move it further.
Picking up a halberd again, Sandy dug the point in near the seal’s rim, and carved around the circle:
Here Is Imprisoned The Tyrant Charity, Until The Day She Rises Again To Threaten Here And There. May A True Hero Arrive On That Day To Defeat Her.
I stared, my eyes so wide they must have grown a little. A warning like that was also a prophecy. Someday, Charity would be back, and another child would be Here to stop her evil. We didn’t have to know the details.
Awed, I whispered, “You are very good at this, Miss Sandy. I suspect even most humans aren’t this good.”
She sighed, letting the halberd fall and rubbing her hands over her face instead. “Yes. Too good. I need to return to the Capitol, fix as much of the damage Charity and I did as possible, and then leave before I wreck Here and There myself.”
“But first…” she added, and bent down. Her hands closed around my waist in the most wonderfully familiar sensation, and she hoisted me up into the air, squeezing me against her shoulder in a tight hug.
I held onto her for a long, long time, and it was still too soon when she lifted me away to hold me up in front of her face and give me a sunny smile. Well, it started out sunny. Then she really looked at me, and gasped.
“What happened to your dress?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Should we cheer?” asked the pink-and-orange palace dargon in the tailcoat that dragged on the floor.
Card rubbed her frayed, gray-brown chin with an equally frayed, grey-brown hand. “I believe that is for investiture ceremonies, and this is not one.”
“Are you sure?” asked a cautious guard. “I mean, right, cheering hardly ever goes wrong.”
“Yaaaaay!” shouted the dargon, jumping up and down and clapping.
Several of the guards along the walls of the throne room clapped, setting up an uneven clanging like badly made bells. It all died down when Sandy raised her hand, and stood up from the throne. She hadn’t looked comfortable on it, and wore neither crown nor witch hat now, although probably I was the only person who noticed. I stood by her feet, with her other guests arranged in a line in front of the steps. The Head Archivist of the Wandering Librarians held Butterscotch Dream in his arms, with Card sitting on his shoulder. Brenda, or at least a tinker I assumed was Brenda because she’d answered the summons. One pile of tools can be quite hard to tell from another to an untechnical clothling like myself. A little tin can attached to a very long string echoed with Tumbles voice asked, “Can I go rar now?” Sandy’s horse rocked forward and back eagerly, now washed and brushed and restored to shining beauty. Girl Running did not stand in line, she sprinted pell-mell around the floor, walls, ceiling, carpets, and tapestries of the hall, although never touching the throne. Pincushion sat listlessly next to the empty space Girl Running couldn’t stay in, and next to her Just Right stood with his hands behind his back, almost at attention. He hadn’t been cleaned up. It would have been useless to try, really. Looking like a plastic, dull-featured version of a china doll in a simple bulgy dress, Barbie loomed over him in the next spot, and Belle Tower loomed over her, humming. With Lemon Drop at the end of the line chewing on itself, the assemblage was definitely lopsided.
Even Lemon Drop watched Sandy with one eye, now. This was the moment everyone had been waiting for.
This was the moment I’d been dreading.
A human-sized mirror was already waiting behind the throne, held up by two guards and showing the dingy brick room of Elsewhere.
“I owe you all a debt, and I’m not sure I can give any of you anything but my thanks,” Sandy told the group, with a flutter in her voice. Stepping up to the librarians, she took one of Butterscotch Dream’s hands in both of hers, patting it. “Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. If I could regrow the Library Tree I would, but even if I planted it now, it would need another child to come along and grow it.”
“You already paid us back with a new purpose, Greatest Witch,” said Butterscotch Dream with a china doll’s usual regal softness.
Reaching down into the Head Archivist’s jacket, Card pulled out a strange coverless book, flipping through it to show how each chapter was differently colored than the others. “And it is going well. As you can see, we are experimenting with magazines.”
Sandy rubbed the top of Card’s head, and said, “I am so proud of you.”
Then she stepped up to Brenda, who didn’t even give her a chance to answer. Raising a collection of tableware fingers, the tinker declared, “This is a debt-free zone. All actions have been taken with the benefit of the tinker performing them in mind, and those benefits reaped in the assigned reaping areas.”
Next to Brenda, the tin can bounced and Tumbles’ voice asked, “Can I go rar now?”
Giggling, Sandy crouched down to give the tin can a hug. “You can go rar whenever you feel like, Tumbledown.”
“Rar!” echoed out of the can, which spat a tiny puff of green flame. Behind it, I could just distantly hear a more bellowing roar.
That done, Tumbles’ voice turned apologetic. “I wish I could be there in person, Miss Sandy, but I’m so big now that I get stuck if I’m not between mirrors. I’m so lucky to be the dargon whose wish you granted.”
By the throne, the pink-and-orange palace dargon nodded energetically. A couple of other dargons even leaned their heads in through side doors in the hall to add their nods.
Putting the can down, Sandy moved on to the rocking horse. Bending forward with her hands on her thighs, she asked him, “Did you ever come up with a name?”
He actually bounced into the air with excitement. “I’ve decided I don’t want one! I’m going to wander the roads, a lonesome and mysterious drifter who lends a helping handle wherever he goes.”
Sandy grinned, the biggest, most honest smile since the not-quite-ceremony had assembled. “That is wonderful, and good for you.”
Running her fingers through his mane as she stepped away, she stood in front of Girl Running’s empty space. Mouth open, she looked up to find the highly animated painting.
“Wheeeeeeeee!” shouted Girl Running as she ran past along the floor instead, then disappeared behind a tapestry.
Sandy gave up, and spread her hands. “I guess you’re happy, too.”
Crouching over Pincushion, she looked at the dejected doll and shook her head sadly. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do for you, but maybe you can.” Turning her gaze to Just Right, she said, “Take her back to the Endless Picnic and take care of her, please.”
He gathered Pincushion’s hand in his, and pulled the other clothling to her feet. With a gentle smile, he said, “She has a very good heart, even if it’s not hers. Maybe she’ll grow into it someday.”
With no further ado, he left the line and led Pincushion out through the doorway on the Here side of the hall.
That left Sandy looking
at the imposing and yet nervously fidgeting bulk of Belle Tower. This time Sandy stood up straighter, more serious, and asked in a solemn and commanding voice, “Well? Have you discovered your purpose?”
Her bell ringing softly, wood creaking, the tree bent guiltily forward a few inches. Her answer came in a whisper. “No, Queen of Witches.”
Wait, wasn’t someone missing? Well, there were a number of observers, and I was the only person in the room not happy, with the possible exception of Belle Tower. No doubt I’d noticed someone who now blended in.
Sandy at least pretended to be disapproving, her voice ringing and her body stiff with authority. “Then you get no reward, only an additional challenge. I give Lemon Drop to you. Teach her to be musical.”
She looked at the monster. Their beak face looked back up at her, while the rag doll face spun around in circles. Darkness crept around the room, and Belle Tower and Lemon Drop spun away from the rest of us into their own circle of light. The witch’s bell bonged loudly, and phantom brass instruments blared as she took the staring mask in her twig hands.
Let’s begin the music to fulfill our quest
Now you’re wire and fabric, but soon you’ll be the best
Lemon Drop’s feet pounded against the floor like drums, and their heads sang back.
I’m the saddest mishmash—hey, is that my tail?
Abandoning the song, it rolled over on top of itself, wriggling and gnawing.
Belle Tower slowly turned her knot eyes to my heroine, the shadows and backup band fading, and sighed. “I will also make you proud, but you surely must return from Elsewhere for me to see it, because by my dead leaves, this will take a while.”
Despite her hopeless tone, and not seeming to notice what she was doing, she swatted Lemon Drop’s body, causing their feet to stamp in a rhythm.
Sandy turned to look at me.
Everyone told me she would leave.
Sandy told me she would leave.
A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There Page 41