by Lani Lenore
“This is very bad,” he mumbled to himself. “Very bad timing.”
He’d used up a great deal of his energy turning Clara into a lifeless doll and forcing Armand into a living nutcracker. He would need a great deal of rest before he could once again make his home impenetrable as he had done with Armand earlier, but what good would that truly do him? It would only be very curious and suspicious. If these men came inside, they would certainly arrest him for finding all his mysterious oddities–not even accounting for the blood on the floor.
Augustus knew he could not attempt to escape on foot, and there was no hope of making himself invisible. He hadn’t enough energy for that. The remaining skills at his disposal were destruction and transformation, as had been passed down through his family for years. He couldn’t very well kill all these men, for he would be found out or possibly even overwhelmed by their force.
So, perhaps there was only one option left.
He wasn’t quite ready for this yet, but he had been preparing it for quite some time. It was truer than he cared to admit; he had been more than a little jealous of Armand. Augustus was so much more powerful, and yet the one who would be king was a spoiled, arrogant man who hardly cared for the honored nature of his position. Perhaps this jealousy was why he loved Clara so much? No; Augustus refused to believe it, but he always knew that one day he would have a kingdom of his own. He would have his own world where he made every rule–and it would consist fully of toys and rodents. Yes. He would be all–powerful and they all would look to him for guidance. What bliss! What a perfect dream! Only, he’d not wanted it to happen this way.
Still, much better an early transformation than the noose or the flame.
He gathered all of his remaining strength and power, remembering the words that would make his dream a reality. He spoke nervously, clenching his eyes tight, silently hoping that he was not damning himself completely. He knew that the spell was not enough to make him invincible as a rodent, but it would allow him to keep a portion of his humanity so that he could speak and use his sorcery. Immortality–that was key. Hopefully, that would all be good enough, because, once done, it could not be reversed.
He felt himself shrinking; felt his bones cracking and shifting, but he ignored the pain. Augustus finished the curse upon himself. He clenched his teeth.
The man vanished into the folds of his dark robe which swallowed him completely.
9
The door of the toymaker’s house caved in, and three patrolmen burst inside. They had seen their prince tear off into the night without his horse, running into the woods like a madman. They had taken the initiative to pull their gear back on and follow him. His tracks had led them here. From outside, they’d heard the screams of pain and horror, but now all was silent and empty.
The men moved further into the house, stepping past caged rodents and into a room full of toys. The place had an odd feel to it, as if something wicked had transpired here. Every one of them could feel it.
Amongst the clutter, there were three very distinguishable clumps of clothing on the floor. One was a child’s dress; one, a dark–colored robe; and the other was what Armand had been wearing when he’d burst out of the castle. There were also a few blankets lying beside the fire. A great deal of blood stained the floor near one of the walls. It was warm, fresh.
Something had happened here, and the event was undoubtedly as evil as it looked.
“Keep searching the house,” one of the guards ordered. “We’re bound to turn up something.”
They searched. They found what they considered to be evidence of sorcery, but nothing more.
10
Armand awoke in the dark. His whole body ached as if he’d just put himself through a strenuous exercise. His eyes struggled through the darkness, but the thick nothing would not give. Wincing, he forced his arms to move upward into the dark, for he knew at least that he was lying down.
What had happened? A dream? Clara had been missing. He’d followed her trail through the woods and wound up inside the home of Augustus Fuchs. Then, agony. It had been such torture that he knew he could not have dreamed it.
Remembering this, his hands retracted from the darkness and touched his face. Something was not right with his skin. Instead of feeling the flesh of his cheeks, he felt something harder. His face was smooth and solid. Like wood…
Armand’s hand shot into the air along with the rest of him, stopping when they, as well as his head, collided with a wall just a short distance above him. He rested his head back and let his hands run over the lid that covered him. His hands found walls of a box surrounding him on all sides. A coffin? But he was not dead!
He was only made of wood.
He remembered things more clearly then, remembering seeing Clara as a tiny, lifeless doll. She’d rested in the hands of the man who had done this to them. Armand remembered his face. He remembered his name.
Augustus…
Rage took over Armand’s half–living body. He punched the lid that contained him and pried against it with his legs. It took a great deal of effort, but he was oblivious to his discomfort and pain. He had to get out! He had to fix things! How could he have let this happen? To be so naïve as to think that Clara would be safe when all those other girls had not been? How could he have been so negligent?
He could hear the wood begin to crack above him, and for a moment he wasn’t quite sure whether it was the lid over him or the breaking sound of his own arms and legs. Eventually, he began to see a ghost of light, and finally he was able to free himself.
Armand pulled himself from the wooden box, filling his lungs with air that was tainted with the smell of rat and mouse waste. The room he looked out on appeared considerably different to him now. The distorted size made him feel dizzy to look at it, but there were more important things than mourning over his shrunken state.
Where was that man he was going to kill?
A movement down below caught his attention, and his eyes led him to view a dark robe that was gathered on the floor. He recognized it easily as the one Augustus had just been wearing.
It was moving.
A head emerged from that cloth, rising up into the air and peering out over the room. The hairy face was hideous; quite unlike any normal rat that had been placed upon the earth. After it had looked around suitably, the beast rose up and walked away on two legs. Its upper body was broad and powerful with long arms that presented hand–like claws. Armand knew instantly that the rat was the new form of his enemy.
The enormous rodent crept through the house, bypassing the men who were inside searching. Armand, now a mere nutcracker, made his way down from the workbench that the box had been on and followed the rat out into the snow.
11
Augustus would admit, the transformation had gone over better than he’d expected. Though he didn’t look much like a normal rat, he thought that perhaps the way he’d turned out was better. his appearance certainly set him apart and made him look more like a master of rodents. He didn’t quite feel as tired as he thought he would either, but he was still going to rest. He would find himself a nice haven in the trees and rest until the King’s men had left his house. They would surely be back to burn it later, but that would at least give him enough time to get back in and set his destined followers free from their cages–and in the toys’ cases: free them from lifeless slumber.
He would finally have the kingdom that he wanted, and he would have his darling Clara by his side. She wouldn’t be the same girl anymore–would awaken with a new consciousness–but with a bit of nurturing, she could become like his precious dear. Even though things had transpired a bit earlier than he’d planned, everything would turn out fine.
“Put us back!” The sound of a shout behind him pulled him out of his thoughts.
Augustus turned his fur–covered head to see a wooden toy rushing at him with the speed of a wild mustang. It hardly had trouble moving through the snow, and it was completely full of rage. Aug
ustus saw the emptiness in the nutcracker’s hollow eye sockets. The rat felt a chill run through his body that was even colder than the wind.
Armand… Such brilliant circumstances…
The newly–formed, living nutcracker was upon Augustus before he even had time to hiss through his rat teeth. Wooden fists were beating away at his face of flesh and bone, each blow jarring him closer and closer to unconsciousness.
The rat did the only thing he knew to do in order to preserve himself. He grew another head.
The second head emerged from his neck, damp with blood and pus. Armand battered the first head into oblivion and then began straight away on the second, hardly seeming to noticing the unnatural way it had appeared.
Augustus’s rat hands, no matter how strong they were, did little to get a hold on Armand. The rat was larger, but was weak. Armand was angry and nigh indestructible. Perhaps Augustus had miscalculated everything…
In the ears of his second head, he heard the nutcracker speak.
“Reverse what you’ve done!” he commanded with a tinge of desperation in his voice.
“It can’t be reversed, fool!” the rat’s third head spoke as it emerged. Armand broke the second head’s jaw. “That was one of the conditions!”
“Lies!”
The iron ridges cracked down on the third head, crushing its brains even as a fourth head emerged.
“Not lies,” the rat said, choking on his own blood, “but I do believe you’ve forgotten something.”
12
Armand’s fist halted in midair, lingering on the rat’s words. Forgotten? What could he have possibly forgotten?
Something hard struck the side of his face, and while he was distracted, the rat threw him off and sent him smashing into a tree. Augustus took that opportunity to raise himself off the ground, shaking off blood and freezing snow. Armand shook his head after the impact, peering in the direction of whatever the small object was that had struck his face, only to see the frills of a small dress and a bunch of curls dart away.
Clara… She was alive?
Armand had completely forgotten about the rat. The nutcracker pulled himself from the snow, running after the child who was trying to escape the scene. Perhaps Augustus’ words were truth. Perhaps this curse could not be removed, but if Armand could simply catch up with the doll that Clara was now–if he could be with her like this–perhaps it would make this body tolerable.
He pounded through the snow, chasing the girl who stayed in his sight in flashes through the trees.
“Clara!” he tried, but she did not stop.
The snow became deeper and he worked harder to fight it, finally coming to a stop when he saw that she had halted before a fallen tree , blocking her path.
“Clara…” he gasped, his lungs not seeming to hold as much air as they had once–or perhaps the air was freezing them.
Slowly, the child turned to look at him, but when her glass eyes met his so emotionlessly, he knew she was not his Clara any longer. There was distaste in her eyes, and it was as if she didn’t know him at all.
“He tells me he wants to give you a message,” the doll said in a mockery of his daughter’s voice, speaking the message of the Master. “He wants me to tell you ‘goodbye’.”
The words shocked him. Goodbye? This was simply a diversion?
Armand turned away from the false Clara and ran all the way back to where he had been beating the rat to a bloody pulp, only to find splotches of blood on the pure, white blanket–and three large, disgusting heads that had been left behind. Had they been shed because they had died? Whatever the case was, the rat was long gone into the woods without a trace.
I let him go. No. My enemy…
The nutcracker clenched his fists at his sides, grinding the wood together. He was too angry to scream; too hurt to cry. Silently, he vowed his revenge on the one who had done this to him, and he would not rest until it was had.
Picking up his wooden foot, Armand took the first step in a search that would last centuries–and finally end on a freezing night just like the one it had started on.
13
Shaken by the dream–the memory that had resurfaced–the nutcracker jolted in his sleep, hitting his head against the wall he was leaning back on. He was awake then. A few gentle notes rose into the air from the music box he was resting in. The high–pitched sounds were slow and lazy, and after four tones, all was silent once again.
A dream? How long had it been since he’d relived those things so vividly? Too long, and yet not long enough. Armand remembered where he was then. He was no longer in that former place.
He was warm.
Anne was resting against him, sitting on his lap with her head on his shoulder. She was there with him. She was safe, and he was swiftly overcome with relief. He hugged her, feeling her heat, but did not squeeze her so tightly that he woke her.
In the quiet, Armand thought about his story the way it had really happened as opposed to the way he had told it to her. Why had he lied? No, he didn’t have to question that. He knew why. There were many reasons, in fact.
It had been much simpler to spare the woman the greater details of his past, and being able to say that had made him feel better, even though he was helpless to stop it, he’d done everything right. It sounded better to say that once he had discovered Clara was gone, he’d known exactly where to look for her–that he was smart enough to already have known. He appeared so much more heroic to say that he had told others where he had been headed so that they could come look for him, and that he had actually remembered to take his sword–that he’d attacked the magician without hesitation and that he’d not seen what he’d seen through that frost–covered window. He’d been completely overwhelmed by that magic and not felt a thing through the whole process of his transformation into a nutcracker.
Yes; that was a much better, sweeter version.
Anne would never have to know the truth, though he wondered if that suited him now. Perhaps a simple confession would make all the difference in the world. But not at this moment. There was no rush anymore. He’d made a decision.
From this moment on, Anne and her needs came first. His revenge would have to be put behind that. Still, there was no doubt in Armand’s mind that the time was nigh when all the pains of his past would be resolved.
He sat within the empty music box, smiling with anticipation as tears of blood ran down his wooden face.
Chapter Thirty–One: The Toad Princess
Once upon a time,
There was a pretty, pretty princess.
She was far fairer than any other girl in the kingdom.
She fell in love with a soldier prince, strong and tall…
…but the soldier belonged to the queen.
One day, it so happened that the queen caught the two in their fornications.
So jealous was she,
That the queen had the pretty, pretty princess’s pretty head lopped off.
And the soldier prince went on alone
For he didn’t care one way or the other.
He had his own business.
But the pretty princess was not quite finished.
She took up her head and placed it back on, securing it with ribbon.
The princess returned to the soldier and he knew he’d made a mistake.
They embraced, and were happy.
Alone and forgotten, the queen who had also loved the soldier lost her own head.
And they all lived happily on without her.
True Love…
Is the world’s cruelest gift.
1
The sounds that woke her were sweet, lingering notes from a music box, but it had still taken Anne a few moments to fully rouse herself.
When she first opened her eyes in a very dim place, she saw Armand’s weapons lying on the floor a short distance away. The sword of red glass was there, and near to it was the screw rapier, the bundle of needles, and the straps that held them all on. Beside those was
a discarded wooden arm that she hardly recognized at that moment.
Her face was resting against cloth. Clothing. It took her only a moment after that realization to notice that there were arms wrapped around her. She stirred just a bit and felt a hand begin to stroke her hair easily. She remembered this from somewhere–perhaps once when she was very young. It felt like comfort. It felt like home.
She was back with Armand once again, though she only vaguely remembered her escape from the rodent’s lair. That dreadful rat had told her of all the terrible things he was going to do to her. That unusual dark–haired doll had saved her life, but claimed to have done it for his own purpose. That terrible jester had appeared once again. What had happened to it? She didn’t care. She was safe now.
For no reason at all, she reached up and gripped a lock of white hair that was hanging down Armand’s wooden chest, smoothing it gently between her fingers.
“I had a terrible nightmare,” Anne heard herself say, though her whispered words seemed so distant.
She felt the soldier take a deep breath, his intake a bit shaky.
“It’s over now,” he whispered back to her.
Anne battled her weariness and sat up. She rubbed her eyes to clear the blurriness before looking into Armand’s face. As she stared at him, her brow furrowed considerably until realization dawned.
“Oh…my,” she uttered.
Was Armand aware of the blood that had trickled from his eye sockets and rolled down his face, staining the wood? Before he could put a hand there to wipe it away, Anne lifted a portion of her skirt to remove the mess.
Blood spread through the white gossamer as she worked without words. Even though she managed to remove most of it, the wood held a dark shadow, permanently stained.
