by Lani Lenore
A marionette with a large top hat, a doll in a green dress with blonde curls, a toy soldier with only one arm, and a small stuffed rabbit all participated in the insane ritual. The rabbit wielded a black crayon; the doll, a red one. With them, they drew small pictures and scribbles all over the bare, pure white of the ballerina’s body. Anne could see that a thick black line had been drawn across her eyes. The marionette held her tied and splayed with his strings while the soldier with one arm poked her inner legs with a pin that never penetrated her hard skin.
It was horror. The ballerina cried quietly, but there was no tears coming from her eyes. The other toys grinned and giggled. Anne backed away from the vent and from the sight–and when she bumped into the nutcracker behind her, she yelped shortly.
She jerked toward him and he tilted his face from the vent where he’d also been observing the ghastly situation. There was a difference between them though: he didn’t appear shaken at all.
“Aren’t you going to stop this?” she asked, wondering how he could just stand there. She understood that she couldn’t do much, but he was much larger than all of them. Surely he could.
The nutcracker did not even glance back toward the scene in consideration. Instead, he simply walked on past the light of the grate.
“Why would I?”
She couldn’t believe her ears! Then again, judging by what she’d seen of him so far, she didn’t know why she was surprised.
“What do you mean ‘why’?” she snapped at him. “You’re a soldier! It’s your job!”
He stopped but didn’t turn to face her.
“It would do nothing to stop it,” he said dully. “Moreover, she’s likely enjoying it.”
“What!” That was not Anne’s perception at all. “How can you say that?”
The soldier turned toward her halfway. He crossed his arms before him and the metal ridges clanked together unpleasantly.
“You’re not part of this world. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Well I’m simply dying to have it explained to me!” she insisted with a harsh look.
To her surprise, he obliged.
“Those toys have no concept of what it is to be normal or reserved–as you think of it. They have no restrictions to what they will do. They don’t understand her sobs, and she doesn’t understand them either–only that they’re coming forth. My interference would do nothing.”
“It would stop this!”
She was angry now, completely repulsed with him–even more so than when he’d eaten the termite wing.
“Would it make you feel better if I did?” he asked, his voice low and dark. “But why would you care? She’s only a toy.”
“This isn’t my world,” she admitted. “But she is your own kind and it’s absolutely disgusting for you to refuse her help.”
What is with you, Anne? she wondered to herself. Who are you preaching to?
“That doll isn’t like a human,” he growled, dropping his arms and turning fully. “She’s not like you. They’ll tire of her eventually and she’ll get up, polish the markings off her skin, put her costume back on, and dance away without much thought to it. Do you know why?”
“Of course I don’t!” she yelled, forgetting that she should be quiet.
“Because!” he shouted back, but then regained his low tone after that first word. “Though she might not think this is pleasant–which still remains to be seen–she has no idea that it’s wrong of them. Neither do they know what they are doing to her is wrong. They have no sense of morality, and this world is lawless.”
Anne’s anger retreated somewhat as she listened to him–truly listened and tried to comprehend.
“Granted,” he went on, “the child sovereign is attempting to develop some sort of order, but even those laws are miniscule at this point. She doesn’t truly understand how they think, because she’s not like them, so she cannot very well set standards. Judging by what I’ve seen, these toys have been alive for quite a while without any guidance. They were smart enough to build and create, but not to have laws. The toys are completely feral. They have feelings but don’t understand them and so they act spontaneously without thought to consequence. And yet there is no release.”
“You talk about ‘those toys’ as if you aren’t one,” she said, her voice gentle and quiet now. “You’re different? I admit; you do seem so.”
“I am,” he acknowledged. “I have principles and self–control. But still not much of a conscience.”
The sound of that made her feel somewhat uncomfortable, but before he shut her down, she managed another question.
“You said that these toys have been alive for quite a while. Does that mean that toys are not born alive…or, rather, they’re not alive when they’re created?”
If toys were alive–and had been alive beneath the noses of man this entire time–wouldn’t at least the makers of the toys have known? Wouldn’t someone like Euan have known? And was that why they created toys? Playing God? Was this why Euan had taken up for Olivia this whole time, insisting that she wasn’t insane when she heard her dolls talking to her?
“Only in this house,” the nutcracker replied, snapping her back. “They’ve never been alive elsewhere. I’ve never seen anything like this kingdom before.”
“You’ve…but…”
She tried to understand his contradiction. How could he possibly have known that toys were not always alive and that it was only happening in this house unless he’d been alive the entire time, seeing so many other places and knowing that this was unlike any other?
But he wouldn’t explain it, and she didn’t have time to ask. He shook his head dismissively.
“It’s the curse,” he said. “I don’t know the construction, I just know it exists.”
Anne’s heart jumped. “Curse? That’s absurd!”
He sighed in disappointment, perhaps having thought that she was competent enough to understand and accept all this. Apparently he’d been proven wrong.
“If you haven’t thought of any rational way to explain all this and what’s happened to you, don’t dismiss it.”
The nutcracker turned and walked away down the shaft, further toward the darkness. Anne sulked, peering out through the vent, though this time unfeelingly. The torture on the doll was continuing.
“It’s easy to explain,” she said under her breath. “This is all a dream.”
She imagined that he would ignore her if he even heard her at all, but he stopped abruptly. He turned back to look at her, his long hair sliding across his shoulder. Even in the dark, she could see the displeasure on his face.
“A dream?” he questioned, now seeming disgusted with her. “Would you like to hear a nightmare?”
He advanced toward her, footsteps steady and measured. This time, she backed away, but he did not stop moving toward her.
“I know you can hardly imagine, but do try as I paint the picture for you,” he menaced, then continued with his tale.
“Having always been something, I understand it must be difficult to imagine what it’s like to be nothing, so, instead, just imagine that you are in the most deep and peaceful kind of sleep. There are no dreams. Everything is darkness and you feel nothing but comfortable in it.”
She listened as she moved along the edge of the shaft, following the wall so she couldn’t trip as she traveled backward. Still, he gained ground on her.
“Suddenly, you open your eyes, and around you is a world you’ve never seen before. You realize that you’re alive and all at once, everything that it means to be alive hits you with the weight of a thousand bricks. You’re hungry. You’re thirsty. You have desires of the flesh. It’s only then that you realize that you don’t have flesh with which to devour or to satisfy your lusts. Any food that you manage to stuff inside your body, rots. Drink soaks through to your outer skin if you’re cloth–if not, it doesn’t run through you at all. There is no release. Some are better off than others. Like that ballerina. Clot
hing can be removed and she has a desirable shape. She gets attention from the others. But still, the general rules are the same.
“There is only one certainty, and that is that there are other larger living things around you, and you can’t let them see you move or hear you speak, or they will be on to you. Your world is still a part of theirs and they can’t know. You have absolutely no morals or understanding thereof, and the only one there to teach you is a disturbed little girl who doesn’t even know the answers herself–one who thinks that this is all a wonderful game and doesn’t understand that it’s very real. What do you think would happen to you?”
Anne had stopped, for somehow he had managed to back her into the wall as she’d listened to him in horror. Her face was pale and her breathing was unsteady but she forced herself to look at him. He was completely terrifying to her, but she believed everything he’d said.
“I’d be completely mad,” she couldn’t help but answer.
He gave a slight nod.
“Now, imagine that this has happened not only to you, but to an entire town. An entire country. And now you should know why everything around you is atrocious.”
“Oh my God,” Anne uttered as she realized it.
“There is no God here,” he said harshly. “Only Olivia.”
Out of all the things he’d told her, this scared her the most.
“And what about me?” she queried, nearly choking on her words. “I can’t be part of this curse. I’m not a doll!”
“You’re quite right about that,” he said. “About you and the girl, I’m not sure yet. But you need to remember that anything you may have used to your advantage in your other life will do nothing here.”
Other life?
The nutcracker moved very close. She could feel his hair blowing against her with the warm wind of the shaft. He smelled of wood and new paint, but the white hair had a different smell. Somehow, it smelled real, faintly like natural oil.
“It doesn’t matter how pretty you are…or how soft and warm your body is.”
He touched her face, feeling her skin beneath his fingers that were painted black to suggest gloves. She tried absently to move away from his touch, but he gripped her jaw and forced her to look up at him.
“Every toy desires the feel of flesh,” he said, tracing her lips. “It’s fairly obvious, I think, programmed deep within without awareness. They desire the Lady, but respect her too much to touch her. You, on the other hand, are not so lucky. Some in her court are repulsed by you, and so you have no problem walking around there freely. Elsewhere, however, I imagine you wouldn’t come out so cleanly. You’d best take care.”
She had nothing to say to that, and knowing he’d made his point and adequately put her in her place, the nutcracker walked away with no other words on his lips. At any other time, she might have been glad to be rid of him, but she had great concerns. Before he could get far, Anne gripped his arm, her hand against the metal ridge that had been warmed by the air.
“Am I ever going to get out of this?” she asked him, her eyes pleading, as if he had anything to do with it. “Or will I keep running for my life, surviving as long as I can until the day I am caught. Raped and tortured by some hideous and insane object or eaten alive by rodents?”
Armand did not tilt his head to look at her–didn’t have to consider at all.
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
Her hopes fell. Perhaps it was impossible to escape.
“But I suggest that if you want to find out, you grab onto whatever sanity you can grip and run forward with it as fast as you can.”
Anne stared into his hollow eyes, knowing that he was right. If she wanted to know the truths about all this, she couldn’t just curl up in a ball and cry. She couldn’t give up.
She was unsure how she felt about this wooden prince–whether her sentiment was complete fear or just strong dislike–but no matter how strange he was, she knew she had great respect for him alongside any other feelings.
Anne stood up a little straighter, and then gave a nod of agreement.
“That’s a good girl,” he said, though the sound of it wasn’t very affectionate. “Now let’s go.”
There were still many questions she could ask, but she was seized by his words and could not bother with the rest now. Move forward. Yes, that was good advice.
She could still hear the sounds of the crying doll though the grate, but she could better ignore it now. Anne led the nutcracker forward, concentrating on that and shutting all doubts from her mind.
Chapter Nine: To Each, His Own
1
The rest of the trek was silent for Anne and the nutcracker who followed her. She thought only of the directions, and he had nothing else to say. That was probably best. She didn’t need him to tell her any more harsh truths.
She took one wrong turn through the dark passages, but realized it early enough to turn back. The shaft had been getting warmer, moving closer to a fire. They should have been moving into the colder stretches if they wanted to get to the rodents’ lair.
Further on in the cold, still shafts, their feet began to crunch over termites that had lost their wings and died. Anne didn’t care much for that, but at least she was on top this time. Eventually she got them back on the correct path, and it took them straight to the place where she’d entered into the enemy realm. Anne had fulfilled her duty–
–except that the stinking, cavernous opening was no longer there.
The place where the entrance had been was walled up with mud and leaves and doll stuffing had been closed off. The entire square–foot of open space was gone.
“That was terribly fast,” she uttered in confusion as she stared at it.
It should have taken ages for mice to do such a job, yet it had only taken these a matter of minutes? Come to think of it, how long had it been since she’d been here with the jester and returned with the nutcracker?
“Are you certain this is it?” he asked, stepping forward to examine the wall.
“Yes,” she replied, still dumbfounded.
Armand moved to the wall, putting his hands on it to test how well it was packed. She stood back and watched him, confused until she realized that she ought to be relieved. The only entrance she knew of was gone. Now perhaps they could just leave.
As she stood in the chilling cold, growing more impatient by the moment, she had the sudden notion of a presence behind her. The feeling crept up her spine like spider legs. Everything was silent, but she sensed something edging close. She felt a warm breeze that smelled like the putrid breath of one who had devoured his own waste.
Anne didn’t want to look.
“A–Armand…” she said quietly, worriedly.
The nutcracker turned back to her, immediately catching sight of the thing looming behind her with its jaws outstretched.
“Verdammt,” he muttered in annoyance. “Get down!”
She did as he asked, and even as he was speaking, his fingers had found one of the needles strapped to his leg.
Not only had the soldier seen the diseased–looking mouse with the foaming lips, but the rodent had seen him. The creature’s beady eyes lit with recognition, and it might have turned to run if the needle hadn’t so swiftly found a place through its eye, wedging into its brain. The mouse didn’t even have time to screech before blood was seeping through its teeth and it was falling to the ground.
To her misfortune, the beast fell over onto Anne’s legs before she could get clear. She flailed and gasped, trying to pull herself out from beneath its warm, greasy weight. No sooner than she’d gotten free did Armand jerk her up roughly. Anne considered her behavior in the passing seconds, expecting to receive some sort of punishment from him, but the nutcracker gripped her arm that held the cat’s eye marble and forced her to hold it between her hands–one on the top, one on the bottom. With his own hand, he guided her fingers furiously in a back and forth motion across the surface of the glass, and before her eyes, the marb
le began to glow a green light that became stronger the more he forced her to make the motion. She was rubbing the marble like Aladdin’s lamp, and a genie of light had stirred.
Anne’s grey eyes widened. Curses? Magic marbles? This was ludicrous!
How…what…?
A dozen questions came into her mind that only promised to lead to another dozen. But before she got any one of them out, Armand slapped his hand across her mouth.
“Do you want to live, or die tonight like the rest?” he threatened quietly.
Her eyes grew wide at those words and from how harshly he gripped her face, but she obediently kept her mouth shut. In the silence that followed beneath the green light, the soldier listened.
His invisible eyes peered around–waiting. Anne looked around as well once he had removed his hand from her mouth. She saw nothing–
A large shape moved past. Before she could register that she’d jumped in surprise, the nutcracker had gripped the passing shadow, jerking it backward. Another mouse. He pulled the squirming rodent dressed in a ripped white shroud into the metal crook of his arm. In the most horrifying headlock she’d ever seen, the nutcracker crushed the mouse’s skull.
Blood trickled from the rodent’s nose and ears; the skin was pulled and distorted as Anne watched the creature fall to the ground. As a stench hit the air, she covered her mouth, suppressing sound or maybe even vomit. She clenched the marble to feel safe within the light. But she didn’t have long to calm herself before Armand had gripped her wrist again and was pulling her forward, not caring that he was hurting her.
The emerald gleam flooded over the area inch by inch, and when the nutcracker had finally decided that there had only been two mice in their midst, he released her. At the first mouse he’d slain, he reached down and jerked the needle from within the rodent’s eye, puss and blood covering it.
Anne examined the mouse’s corpse, sickened by the sight of the gore and thinking thoughts of disease. She was catching her breath, but the nutcracker didn’t seem to care. He gripped her collar and jerked her close to him. Could he not be so rough? She was capable of understanding words. Anne could see the clumps of bloody flesh and fur that were clinging to the metal of his arm.
