Spell and Spindle

There was once a cabinetmaker’s apprentice who built a marionette, and this marionette was not a soul-thieving demon.

Not at first.

The apprentice was an exceptionally talented woodworker, perhaps even more so than the cabinetmaker himself. But he was a lonely young boy, and as it does in so many stories, loneliness led to trouble.

He knew the cabinetmaker’s tools were enchanted with some strange magic. That was, after all, how the old man built such extraordinary cabinets. But the apprentice believed the tools might be used to build something even more extraordinary. Something right out of a fairy tale.

A life-size puppet so lifelike it was almost real.

He stole his master’s magical tools and set to work, carving and sculpting the wood, painting the face, painstakingly sewing hair strand by strand. When he finished, he stepped back to admire his handiwork. His marionette was a girl, and a very pretty one at that.

The apprentice stared into her glass eyes, amazed. She looked so alive.

The marionette stared back at the boy, equally amazed. He was so alive.

Something sparked inside her hollow wooden body. Envy, dark and wicked.

I’m so sad, she told the apprentice, her voice hypnotically sweet. I wish I had a soul like yours, a soul to make me truly alive instead of just lifelike. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

The apprentice agreed that, yes, it would be more than wonderful, for at last he would have a real friend. But no magical tool, no trick of the trade, nothing existed to help him create an actual soul. That did not stop him from trying, and the deeper he fell under the spell of this demon he had created, the more desperate his efforts became.

You cannot create a soul for me, the marionette said at last. But you can give me one. Will you?

The poor boy was so entranced by this soulless demon, he did not hesitate to reply.

Yes, he said, and he took up the cabinetmaker’s magical tools once more.

He would take out his own soul and give it to his pretty marionette. He just had to figure out how.

Just one block from the west lawn of the city’s largest park stood an unusual museum. In the many decades it had called this spot home, it had changed names frequently. Some of the city’s residents remembered it as the Miracle Rooms. A few elderly citizens swore it had been called the Memory Theater, while others argued it was actually the Hall of Wonders.

Its original owner was a famed cabinetmaker, a man rumored to have had the ability to draw magic from wood. He was said to have built one particularly magical cabinet to house all the others: chambers of infinite cabinets filled with his legendary collection of curiosities. The cabinet containing the chambers had been lost in the great fire that devoured much of the city half a century ago, but old-timers could often be heard spinning yarns about its vastness:

It was a beautiful oak cabinet, and inside was an endless maze of cabinets, all filled with the most bizarre things you’d ever laid eyes on.

Open one and you might find a display of Minotaur horns or scraps of wood from the Trojan horse. Open another and you’d be looking at a genuine fairy skeleton!

I was too young to remember, but my granddaddy said he was lost in there for weeks—ate his own socks before he found his way out!

Nowadays the little museum housed all that remained of the cabinetmaker’s collection. While children still listened with starry eyes to the tales of its former grandeur, adults merely shook their heads with a mixture of amusement and distaste. Because in this modern age, such dusty old artifacts were called oddities at best, and horrors at worst. As a compromise, the institution now bore the somewhat sardonic title of the Museum of the Peculiar Arts. But it wouldn’t for much longer, as it had recently been sold, and the new owner had other plans for the building.

An elderly man named Fortunato had inherited the museum from the cabinetmaker. Fortunato had been orphaned at a young age, and the old cabinetmaker had taken him in. Selling the museum had broken Fortunato’s heart, as it was all he had left of the man he’d called Papa.

Back when the city had been weak and struggling, poor citizens had been happy to drop a few coins for any form of entertainment. But one great war later, the city was different—a prosperous, booming beast, its ego constantly fed and fueled by its inhabitants, making it more glamorous (and more ghastly) than ever. Few were interested in spending their leisure time inspecting dusty oddities and cursed relics.

Fortunato lived above the museum, on the second floor. The Bonvillain family lived on the floor above him. Mr. Bonvillain was the museum’s accountant, and when Fortunato informed him the place was closing, he waited until the poor old man was out of sight before dancing a little jig. Mr. Bonvillain felt certain this was a sign that there was something better out there for him. And sure enough, within a week he landed a job at a brand-new bank in the shiny financial district and immediately bought a brand-new house in the suburbs to match. It was, he and his wife told their children, an opportunity to move up in the world.

Constance, his perpetually cheerful thirteen-year-old daughter, agreed. Like her parents, she believed all change could be good so long as you stayed positive about it. And besides, she had been raised to be an obedient young lady who always expressed agreement with her mouth, even if her brain and heart felt otherwise.

Eleven-year-old Chance was another story. He found his family’s relentless optimism to be a real downer. The suburbs sounded boring beyond belief, the opposite setting for the kind of action and adventure his heroes from comic books and television and radio experienced. He dreaded the thought of giving up his after-school job as Fortunato’s apprentice for something dull, like mowing lawns. Who in their right mind could possibly prefer pulling weeds in some stupid flower garden to handling fantastically grotesque and potentially dangerous objects in the quiet dark of a museum?

But Chance thought his father was right about one thing: the closing of the Museum of the Peculiar Arts was an opportunity.

An opportunity for Chance to finally have a real adventure of his own.

A natural-born pessimist, Chance was greatly misunderstood by his family, who had spent his entire life trying to cheer him up. They mistook his pessimism for sadness or anger. But really Chance was just preparing for the worst. Because at some point, he figured, the worst was bound to come for you.

Exactly one week before the big move, Chance turned on the family’s old radio and waited for his favorite program. The Bonvillains had a television, too, but Chance preferred imagining scenes playing out in his mind as he listened. Constance sat cross-legged on the carpet next to him, a brochure opened in her lap. Welcome to Daystar Meadows, it read over a photo of a smiling family of four standing in front of a blue house with white trim. Opening Summer 1952!

We’ll have a backyard, Constance said, turning the page. I could plant a garden. Ooh, look at those white picket fences—perfect for rosebushes!

Chance squinted at a photo of a street. The houses all look the same.

Not exactly, Constance pointed out. The paint jobs are different. Dad says ours is yellow.

So when it gets egged, it’ll blend in?

His sister giggled. Chance’s parents found his constant negativity worrisome, but Constance seemed to love him all the more for it. She was a good sister, he thought, though exhaustingly upbeat.

Constance flipped back to the picture of an empty grass lawn and started to list all the possibilities: a garden, a swing set, a pool. But Chance didn’t see what was so great about a backyard when you could have an entire city as your playground.

A storm is brewing, a crackly voice came through the radio speakers, and Chance hastily turned up the volume. Are YOU prepared for the worst?

Constance fell silent at once and closed the pamphlet. Storm at Dawn was a popular program, and Chance’s favorite. Most listeners—like Constance—found the Storm’s constant doomsday warnings to be more amusing than ominous. Chance, on the other hand, thought the character was wiser and braver than anyone he’d ever met in real life. He felt a deep kinship with the Storm and took every episode very seriously.

"Last time on Storm at Dawn, our fearless and mysterious hero, known only as the Storm, a man possessing the terrible gift of premonition, found himself once again in the face of grave danger as he fell under the hypnotic powers of his archenemy, Madam M, who was desperate to steal the Storm’s powers for herself…."

Chance leaned forward, listening intently. He had learned a lot from the Storm about what to do in dangerous situations, and he needed all the help he could get. Because in one week the Bonvillains were moving to Daystar Meadows. But Chance was not going with them.

He had bigger plans.

As a marionette, Penny had a bird’s-eye view of the interior of the Museum of the Peculiar Arts. She had sat on the top shelf of her curio cabinet for as long as she could remember, back to back with her own reflection, overlooking the maze of glass tables and shelves. She had long memorized the position of each and every oddity.

The surface of the high ceiling was covered with mounted fossils: glimmering fish and delicate birds, pearly shells and bright corals, even an enormous crocodile, tail curved and mouth agape to show off rows of razor-sharp teeth. All the curio cabinets lining the walls were mirrored, as were the glass tables and shelves taking up much of the floor space, which gave the impression of an infinitely larger collection. There was a healthy mix of phony items with the real ones, though Penny suspected that Fortunato believed each to be genuine: the stuffed phoenix with its blood-red feathers, the locked case of unicorn horns and narwhal tusks, the preserved skeleton of what appeared to be a tiny fairy, its wing bones as fine as hair. The black pearl necklace said to darken the soul of its wearer often attracted the most attention from visitors, while the ancient diary bound in its former owner’s skin, with a lock made of jawbone and teeth, caused most to recoil in disgust.

Penny’s favorite curiosity was the functional mechanical heart that whistled and ticked and sped up when touched. She would stare at it for hours on end, imagining what it would feel like inside her chest.

Penny had only ever moved once, at least that she could clearly recall. Years ago a young museum visitor had stood on tiptoes to squint up at her.

‘Penny,’ she’d read, and that had been the moment when Penny realized there was a label bearing her name on the shelf. Then the girl had reached for Penny, accidentally knocking her off.

The ensuing free fall had been a thrilling few seconds. At least, Penny was sure she would have found it thrilling if she were capable of experiencing emotions. She had hit the floor in a clatter of wooden limbs, and Fortunato had cried:

Nicolette!

He’d scooped Penny up, examining her closely for signs of new damage. The flustered little girl, after apologizing, had hesitantly pointed out that her label said PENNY, not NICOLETTE.

Fortunato’s expression had gone odd. "Her name is Penny, he had told the girl, placing Penny back on her shelf. I misspoke. Here, have you seen the cursed necklace yet?"

He’d led the girl off, neither of them looking back at Penny.

She had held the name Nicolette in her mind ever since. Why had Fortunato called her that? Could there have been another life-size, lifelike marionette? What had happened to her? Something dreadful, surely.

Perhaps Penny had once known who Nicolette was. Perhaps Penny had known a lot of things once. Fog clouded her memories from before the museum, and she only caught them in glimpses here and there: a stage, a deep red curtain, long-fingered hands gripping her strings and making her dance. Penny loved to think about dancing.

But she did not like to think about the long-fingered hands that had held her strings.

Now that the Museum of the Peculiar Arts was closing, Penny’s time in her cabinet would soon become another memory swallowed in fog. She was certain that Fortunato was going to pack her up and put her in storage along with the rest of his collection. She didn’t particularly relish the thought of eternity in a dark box, but she was a practical puppet and had long anticipated this misfortune. It wasn’t as if anyone would put her in a puppet show, not now. She was too damaged. Her right hand was missing a pinkie, and her left, half a forefinger and a whole thumb. Also, her face was scratched, a small but deep gouge just above her chin.

Penny did not remember how she had sustained these injuries, but she strongly suspected that the man who had held her strings had something to do with it.

Perhaps storage wouldn’t be so bad. Although, she would no longer be able to hear the radio programs Fortunato put on after hours as he swept and dusted. She found the game shows and true-crime stories particularly entertaining, and she loved Storm at Dawn for its sensible message of preparing for the constant threat of doomsday.

But her favorite program came on after Storm. It was music broadcast live from Club Heavenly Blues. When the drums would kick in, with an upbeat bass line thumping beneath the reedy saxophone and the singer’s husky, beautiful voice, Penny wished she could dance.

Not because someone was pulling her strings. Just dancing, all on her own. Moving.

Penny did not know what that would be like. But music made her think about dancing, and feeling, and emotions. Songs with fast beats and cheerful melodies made her wonder what laughing felt like. Slower songs with mournful words made her wonder about crying, the strangeness of having your sadness leak from your eyes.

If water came out of Penny’s eyes, it might damage the wood. Her face would get soggy and rot. She imagined this often: warping, molding, termites eating their way out of her eye sockets.

She thought about this now as she watched Fortunato dusting the spines of his books. He looked like a weed, thin and slightly bent, as if bracing himself against a constant wind. Penny knew