Spell and Spindle

by Michelle Schusterman

  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 that he would not be selling the museum unless circumstances were dire. She figured he was probably experiencing what the Storm called “dread.”

  Dread, she imagined the Storm saying, the radio crackle a thin layer over his smooth voice, that cold snake that slithers up your spine, into your chest, wrapping around your heart and squeezing.

  Penny found this to be a very dramatic, and highly entertaining, description of that emotion. The Storm was always very dramatic. Sometimes she would try to imagine how he would describe other emotions.

  Excitement, that burst of bright gold fireworks that sets your whole world shimmering and sparkling.

  Sadness, that thundercloud behind your eyes that casts a shadow over your soul and dampens the warmth of your heart.

  Love…

  Penny could never come up with a decent description for love. It was certainly a topic that came up in radio programs and songs frequently enough, but none explained it in a way that helped her imagine it. Then again, it was possible she wasn’t imagining the others correctly either. After all, she’d never felt any of them.

  Wood could not feel.

  That never stopped Penny from trying, though. Just for fun. And sometimes she didn’t have to try very hard.

  When Fortunato’s apprentice opened the door to the museum, for example, it was easy for Penny to imagine feeling happy.

  Chance felt eyes on his back when he entered the museum. He paused in the doorway and looked over his shoulder.

  The mostly residential street had been run-down until the war, after which more affluent citizens began taking an interest in the area. The renovated brownstone apartments were deemed “charming,” and the neighborhood “booming.” The squat museum had clung to its crumbling gray facade, making it somewhat of an eyesore. Two gargoyles sat sentinel on either side of the roof, their leers perhaps not as fierce as they had once been now that their teeth were chipped, their mouths gaping. But the neighborhood around the museum thrived, with gleaming glass and steel quickly replacing brick and stone.

  Near the fancy hat shop at the intersection across from the park, Chance found the source of the staring. A tall, thin man in a dark gray cloak. The moment their eyes locked, the man vanished around the corner.

  Chance frowned. Even from a distance, the man’s face seemed odd. Smooth and sharp in an unnatural way.

  Clearly a villain. Or he would be if this were an episode of Storm at Dawn. Villains were always lurking around wearing cloaks. They were fairly predictable.

  At least in stories. Chance had never met a real-life villain.

  “Fortunato?” Chance called. He let the door close behind him, bells tinkling overhead.

  “Back here, my boy!” came the response.

  Chance picked up speed, expertly slipping between two cabinets showcasing old coins of dubious origins, then hopping over a petrified tortoise shell. “Hi.”

  The man looked up from his sweeping. He was all sorts of gray, but in a nice way: charcoal eyes over a salt-and-pepper beard, hair that shone silver under the lights. He smiled back at Chance.

  “I wasn’t expecting any help today! Don’t your parents have you busy packing?”

  “We’re almost finished,” Chance lied. “There’s a creepy-looking guy watching the museum.”

  Fortunato returned his attention to the dusty floor. “Is that so? How exciting.”

  Pushing his hair out of his eyes, Chance looked up at the marionette on the shelf behind Fortunato. “Hi, Penny.”

  The marionette stared back at him. Absolutely nothing about her ever changed. She was made of walnut wood, dark brown with a golden sheen, and her hair was black and curly. There was no flicker in her brown eyes, no twitch of her lips. But ever since the first time he saw her, Chance had had the strangest sensation that she was just dying to speak.

  When Fortunato wasn’t around, Chance talked to her. Marionettes were excellent listeners. They made good secret keepers, too.

  Fortunato tossed Chance a dustrag and turned up the radio. They worked without speaking, as they always did. But Chance noticed the worry lines around Fortunato’s eyes, the tightness in his smile: the expression adults wore when something was wrong but they felt the need to hide it. Chance’s parents often had the same tension in their forced happy expressions. They preferred to pretend that whatever was bothering them didn’t exist.

  Chance and Fortunato quickly settled into their comfortable routine of dusting and sweeping. Fortunato did not pay Chance to help out around the museum, but that was fine. Chance always enjoyed examining the curious objects, no matter how many times he’d seen them. His favorite was the brown steeple hat said to have been perched atop Rip Van Winkle’s head the whole two decades he had slept. Chance frequently attempted to open the great oak cabinet near Fortunato’s office, but it was sealed shut. It was beautifully crafted, and the wood gleamed in a way that shouldn’t have been possible, given the museum’s dim lighting. Chance had heard many museum visitors speculate that this was, in fact, the cabinet—the one that held the chambers. And while Fortunato never confirmed these rumors, he never denied them either. After all, the idea that the chambers might still exist couldn’t be bad for business.

  Often Fortunato would entertain Chance with greatly exaggerated stories about his famous papa, sometimes quoting directly from the old tale The Cabinetmaker’s Apprentice. Chance loved imagining the endless cabinets full of wonders, and when he was younger, the story of the apprentice’s evil puppet had given him many a nightmare. But Chance was too old for fairy tales now. And he could never decide whether Fortunato believed his own words. It was hard to tell with a man who owned a pair of silver-plated shears he claimed had once cut off a person’s shadow.

  Several times Chance had nearly asked Fortunato what he planned on doing with Penny, but then he’d stopped himself. It wasn’t his business, and the topic of the museum’s fate clearly bothered Fortunato.

  But he wondered. Because Penny was one of the last remaining lifelike, life-size marionettes from a puppet show that only the city’s oldest residents remembered. Whoever had built those marionettes had been inspired by The Cabinetmaker’s Apprentice, and rumors about them had been contorted and exaggerated until no one could separate fact from fiction. People said the marionettes weren’t just lifelike. They were alive. Or they wanted to be.

  And if given the opportunity, they woul
d steal a child’s soul for their own.

  Chance glanced at Penny again. She didn’t look like the soul-stealing type.

  He had often wondered why Fortunato never bothered to fix her up. Replace her missing fingers, smooth out the scratch on her chin. Her black pigtails were a bit matted too. But she was otherwise an impressively realistic puppet. The kind you couldn’t stop staring at. Selling her wouldn’t have been enough to save the museum, but surely Fortunato could use the money.

  The thought broke Chance’s heart a little bit, though he’d never admit it.

  “Do you want to take her?”

  Startled, Chance nearly dropped the glittering meteorite he’d been dusting. Fortunato, still sweeping, nodded at Penny.

  “What? I…no,” Chance said, flustered. “Unless…you don’t want her?”

  Fortunato studied the floor, though his broom had fallen still. “I’ve had her for a long time, but she’s yours, if you like. Consider it a thank-you and a going-away gift. Otherwise I’ll put her in storage.”

  He looked at Chance, his gray eyebrows knit like two scrunched-up caterpillars. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were not. In fact, Chance had the distinct impression that Fortunato wanted him to say no.

  But if that meant Penny would be packed away in a box…

  Chance nodded firmly. “Yes, please. I’d like to take her.”

  Fortunato closed his eyes briefly. “Good,” he whispered. “Good.” He nodded once, then pulled a ladder over to the cabinet. Chance watched as the museum owner climbed each rung until he stood at eye level with Penny. Carefully, he lifted her from the spot that had been her home for so long. A cloud of dust sparkled around her as Fortunato descended the ladder. Once on the floor, he hesitated before turning to Chance and holding out the puppet.

  Chance swallowed. Lifelike, life-size. But he’d never realized just how true those words were until he stood face to face with Penny. She was indeed nearly as tall as Chance, and though he was too old to believe in such things, he couldn’t help but think there was some magic involved in her design. Penny looked no more made of wood and paint than the petrified tortoise.

  “See here,” Fortunato said in hushed tones. He turned Penny around, and Chance saw the strings coming from her legs and arms, all coiled and tied neatly behind her neck. “Take great care with her strings, understand? That’s the secret of these marionettes, you know. Their strings.” He paused, gazing at Penny, and Chance noticed his eyes were shiny. “So…so take care with them.”

  “I will,” Chance promised.

  Fortunato held out the marionette, and Chance took her with both hands, staggering a bit under her weight. His fingers grazed the string running from her elbow to her neck, and at once an unfamiliar but pleasant voice spoke clearly in his mind.

  This probably isn’t what the Storm would do, Chance.

  Shock, that jolt of lightning that strikes you right at the core and shuts off your power.

  Penny had never been this close to Chance’s face. He was apparently frozen in surprise, so she now had the opportunity to notice features she hadn’t before. From her seat on the top shelf, she had observed that Chance’s eyes were bluish green and his hair was wavy and dark yellow, and if his skin were wood, it would be something extra-light, like birch or balsa. But she had not known about the pale freckles scattered across his cheeks, more on the right than on the left. Or the shadowy circles under his eyes.

  He was gaping at her like the petrified fish on the ceiling. Penny wasn’t sure why.

  At last Chance said, “What?”

  And Fortunato looked at him sharply. “What?”

  And Penny thought, What?

  And Chance dropped her.

  His face fell away, and now Penny was staring at the ceiling, and then the floor, and then Fortunato’s furrowed brows. “Careful, now,” the man said over Chance’s hasty apologies. But Penny didn’t mind. This was the most she’d moved in ages.

  Chance swung her upright again. Her toes dragged the floor. It was almost like dancing. Fortunato and Chance were still talking, but Penny wasn’t paying attention. Because Chance was still holding her, and now he was saying goodbye to the museum owner and walking carefully past the shelves to the door, and Penny was about to go outside.

  It seemed that storage was not her fate after all. At least not yet. If she were a real person, Penny imagined, she might feel excitement and gratitude.

  Bells tinkled overhead, and then Penny was out of the museum. She got the briefest glimpse of the street, the tidy brownstone apartments with flowers on the windowsills, before Chase turned to face a small door just to the left of the museum entrance. He dug in his pocket with one hand, his other arm awkwardly supporting Penny. Her face was buried in his shoulder.

  She sighed inwardly. Now I can’t see anything.

  “S-sorry,” Chance gasped. His fingers shook as he tried to fit his key into the lock.

  The door swung open to reveal a narrow staircase. Chance adjusted his hold on Penny, and now she could see again. She drank in all the details as Chance climbed the stairs. The short row of mailboxes near the door. The chipped pink paint on the walls. The creaky wooden stairs, the banister that looked as though one good pull could tear it right out of the wall. The fact that it was not the museum.

  It wasn’t the museum.

  Penny was not in the museum anymore. Not even the Storm had ever had a greater adventure.

  Now Chance stood in front of a door with the number plate 201 beneath the peephole. He twisted the doorknob, and Penny noticed that his hand was still shaking. Shaky hands meant nervousness, she remembered: the Storm often mentioned damsels in distress shaking and trembling when he encountered them. She wondered what Chance was so nervous about.

  “Sorry,” Chance whispered again. “It’s just that I didn’t know you could…”

  He trailed off, shifting the weight of her from one arm to the other. Penny thought that if she were a person, she would probably be experiencing surprise. Because it seemed as though Chance was responding to her.

  Could he hear her?

  They passed through a short hallway with bare walls and emerged into a living room. There was a cream-colored sofa and two matching chairs, all wrapped in plastic. The floor and coffee table were covered in boxes.

  Penny wished she could groan out loud. Maybe she hadn’t escaped her fate after all.

  “No, don’t worry,” Chance said, setting her down in one of the chairs. His eyes were wide; he was doing the fish face again. “I wouldn’t…I mean, I won’t let—”

  “Chance?”

  He jumped, backing away from the chair. Penny stared at the rest of the Bonvillain family up close for the first time. She saw Mr. Bonvillain nearly every day—or at least she had when he’d worked at the museum. He had yellow hair and light eyes and a very square jaw, and he wore a gray suit. Mrs. Bonvillain had brown hair and dark eyes and a pointy chin and nose, and she wore a dark blue dress. Constance Bonvillain looked like her mother, but with her father’s eyes. She wore a pink dress with a pattern of green flowers, a matching bow holding back her curls. All three had the same balsa-wood skin.

  They looked like dolls.

  Penny had never noticed that before. They were just so…polished. Perfect. Chance always looked like a person whose body was actually lived in. Cuts and scrapes, Band-Aids, grime around his sneakers, or a tear in his clothes. Perhaps that was because Penny had only ever seen him working and cleaning in the museum, but she suspected that Chance always wore a layer of reality. The other Bonvillains were ready to be shut away in a glass case, to be looked at but never played with.

  “Chance, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Bonvillain, her eyes never leaving Penny, “what is that?”

  Chance’s back stiffened as if he were bracing himself. “One of Fortunato’s marionettes. He gave
her to me as a thank-you present for helping him.”

  His parents looked at one another, then at Chance, then back at Penny. Then they laughed.

  Penny had heard lots of different types of laughs from people who visited the museum. Laughs could say all sorts of things. Trying to categorize them was a good way for a marionette to learn about emotions. The Storm was always decoding secret messages. Penny was good at decoding laughs.

  She recognized what Mr. and Mrs. Bonvillain’s laugh meant immediately: “This is confusing.”

  “Now, son,” said Mr. Bonvillain, “it was very nice of you to humor the poor man, but surely you don’t want to keep a…doll.”

  I’m a marionette, not a doll, Penny thought at him with no small degree of indignation. There was an important difference. Dolls did not have strings.

  “Yes, I do.” Chance sounded nervous. “I’m keeping her.”

  “But why, dear?”

  “Why not?” he replied. “Constance has dolls.”

  “Because she’s a girl!” Mrs. Bonvillain exclaimed. “You don’t see Constance asking for—for toy trucks or footballs.”

  She laughed again, and Penny decoded: “This is still confusing.”

  Mr. Bonvillain laughed too. “This is making me uncomfortable.”

  Constance giggled. “This is funny!” Then she stopped and tilted her head. “Wait. What’s so funny about that?”

  Her parents ignored her. So did Chance.

  “I know none of you are going to miss Fortunato and his museum, but I am,” he said loudly. “So I’m keeping Penny. And she’s not a doll; she’s a marionette.”

  With that, he picked Penny up and walked awkwardly out of the living room in a sort of two-step. Penny saw his parents clearly over his shoulder. They were deliberately looking at anything but her. She wondered if it was because of her scratched face and missing fingers.

  Chance entered another room and set Penny in a chair. This room had a bed and a desk and more boxes. She watched Chance attempt to close his door, then stumble back when Constance burst in wielding a hairbrush.