Spell and Spindle

by Michelle Schusterman

  “Chance.”

  His mother knelt down in front of him. Chance blinked in surprise and dropped his arms.

  “I know what this is about,” Mrs. Bonvillain said softly. “Moving is hard. But believe me, it’s for the best. You’re going to love Daystar Meadows. We’ll have a backyard! And your new bedroom is twice the size of this one!”

  Chance chewed his lip. He didn’t care about backyards or bigger bedrooms, and he wasn’t going to Daystar Meadows. But now that the fuzzy feeling in his head was subsiding, the reality of his situation was beginning to dawn. His family was moving tomorrow, and he had to find Fortunato and get him to fix Penny before then. Chance couldn’t go to the carnival without her. In just one short week, they’d become friends. And though he hated to admit it, the idea of running away to the carnival was a bit more intimidating now that the time for action had nearly arrived. He wanted to be brave, but he needed Penny with him.

  His mother was still waiting for a response. Before Chance could open his mouth, his stomach growled loudly.

  “How about we get you some lunch, sleepyhead,” Mrs. Bonvillain said, ruffling his hair, “and we’ll figure out what can fit in the car afterward?”

  “Okay.”

  Chance followed her out of his room, squeezing the loose string in his hand. When he passed the front door, he heard a muffled click. “Mom, I think the mail’s here,” he said dully.

  “Can you get that for me, dear?”

  “Sure.”

  He grabbed his keys off the hook, then opened the door. There, at the bottom of the stairs, was the man who had been lurking near the museum earlier that week. The man with the sharp face.

  They locked eyes for a moment. Then the man took off.

  “Wait!” Chance ran down the stairs, tripping in his haste. He jumped the last three steps and burst outside, looking up and down the street frantically. But the man with the sharp face was gone.

  Heart pounding in his ears, Chance peered around more carefully. How could the man have vanished so quickly?

  More importantly, why had he been in the entrance to Chance’s apartment? And who was he?

  Chance allowed the door to swing shut as he stepped over to the mailboxes on the wall. He unlocked the Bonvillains’ mailbox, pondering the man’s face. It was all angles, but in the most peculiar way. He looked as if he’d been drawn by Mrs. Bonvillain’s favorite painter, whose subjects always came out looking jagged and abstract. His cheeks were hollowed out, his chin a sharp point, his nose so short it almost looked like a regular-size nose that had been shaved down to a squarish nub.

  It was a moment before Chance noticed the bright yellow envelope among all the bills. For a few seconds, Chance forgot all about the man with the sharp face. He raced up the stairs, tossed the other mail onto the coffee table, and sprinted to his room.

  Constance was there, fussing over Penny’s hair again.

  “Hey!” Chance cried. “You can’t just come into my room without knocking.”

  “I did knock,” Constance told him. “You weren’t here.”

  While his sister continued playing with Penny’s hair, Chance headed over to his dresser with the yellow envelope. At the end of every episode of Storm at Dawn, there was a message to decode. Listeners could then send their translations in to the show by postcard, and if they were correct, they would receive a prize. This was the sixth prize Chance had won. Most of them had been somewhat disappointing: cheap plastic whistles and rings. But Chance still sent in for them.

  He turned the envelope over and blinked. The Storm’s wax seal, which bore the mark of an eye narrowed in suspicion, was loose.

  Someone had opened his prize already.

  Is that what the man with the sharp face had been doing downstairs? But how would he have opened the mailbox without a key? In fact—Chance berated himself for not considering this sooner—how had the man unlocked the entrance to the stairwell? Only the Bonvillains and Fortunato had keys.

  Taking a deep breath, Chance set the envelope down. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? A mystery, an adventure complete with a villain. And a quest: his quest to fix Penny. An opportunity to be a hero. So how would the Storm handle this?

  First and foremost, the Storm would exercise great caution when dealing with a mysterious package from an enemy. Chance glanced in the mirror to make sure Constance was still preoccupied with Penny. Then he grabbed two tissues to protect his hands. Carefully he picked up the envelope and turned it over. Something fell onto his dresser with a solid thunk.

  Chance leaned down to examine the odd object. This was not made of the same cheap plastic as his other toys from the Storm. It was an ornately carved disk roughly the size of Chance’s palm, made of whitish wood polished to such a shine that he couldn’t see the grain. Attached to the disk was a long, thick needle made of silver so light it almost appeared translucent. It looked very old-fashioned, but it also reminded Chance of the big blue sewing machine they’d gotten his mother for her last birthday. That machine had a similar piece on top. His mother would wrap thread around the thick needle to keep it from getting tangled, and the disk would feed the thread into the machine.

  Two thoughts popped into Chance’s head at the same time.

  First, the man with the sharp face had stolen his prize and replaced it with this thing.

  Second, Chance could use it to fix Penny.

  Was that what the man with the sharp face wanted him to do? For that matter, how would he have known Chance had Penny in the first place?

  Chance pictured him lurking outside the museum on Sunday and frowned. He could have been watching when Chance carried Penny into his apartment.

  But how could he possibly have known Penny was broken? Unless he was the one who had broken her…

  The Storm would never trust such a stranger who snuck and lurked. But Chance found himself entranced by the strange object. Besides, he was desperate.

  “Lunch is ready!” Mrs. Bonvillain called from the kitchen. Quickly Chance scooped up the object and turned around, keeping his hands behind his back.

  “Be right there!” he called.

  Constance stood and patted Penny on the head. “Doesn’t her hair look better now?” She pointed at the long, thick braid hanging down Penny’s back, curls pinned down with numerous bobby pins.

  “Sure,” Chance said, and Constance looked pleased.

  She headed to the door, then turned around. “Aren’t you coming?”

  Chance squeezed the object in his right hand. “In a minute.”

  “Okay.” Constance tilted her head, looking from him to Penny, then back again. “Is everything okay, Chance?”

  “What? Yes! Why?”

  His sister shrugged. “It’s just that you’ve been acting kind of weird about Penny. And, well…you remember what happened in The Cabinetmaker’s Apprentice, right? That marionette the apprentice built cast a spell on him and—”

  Chance shifted uncomfortably. “That’s just a stupid story, Constance. It’s not real.”

  His sister pressed her lips together. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “I’m just being silly.” But he noticed the way her eyes flickered one last time over to Penny before she closed the door.

  Chance didn’t waste a second. First, he took a small needle from his mother’s sewing kit, threaded Penny’s string through the eye, and knotted it carefully. Then he wound the length of string around the longer needle attached to the disk. The string wasn’t very long, and it struck Chance that this was both an unnecessary and an entirely unhelpful step. He’d already tried sewing, after all, and couldn’t even make a dent in Penny’s wooden head.

  But this object had an odd sheen that, as ridiculous as it sounded, made it like something from a fairy tale. An ordinary object with extraordinary magic. And Chance was willing to try an
ything.

  He knelt down at Penny’s side and gently prodded her scalp with the sewing needle. It sank right through her scalp.

  “Sorry!” Chance cried, although he wasn’t sure if she could even feel it, much less hear him. His heart raced, the strange object spinning in his hand as he tugged the needle and string through.

  Hang on, Penny, he thought, I’m coming for you, and that thought made no sense at all. And yet it did, because now Chance felt like he was descending, climbing down a rope into endless fog. The object shimmered and spun in his hand, and his hand shimmered too; his skin was practically glowing, and this was magic—Chance knew it for sure now—and it was going to work. He concentrated so hard his vision blurred as he sank deeper and deeper into the abyss.

  He pulled and pulled the string, and it took much longer than it should have for him to realize that the string had not been this long before; it had been only an arm’s length, but somehow now there was so much of it, and the object wasn’t spinning in his hand anymore—the whole room was spinning around it; in fact, the whole world was spinning, as if the object were the sun around which the entire galaxy revolved and Chance were a star with light spilling out of all five points, and the last thought he had before blackness swallowed him was This string isn’t string at all.

  Penny opened her eyes.

  Then she closed them.

  Then she opened them.

  She experimented with blinking. She appeared to be facedown on the carpet, which was beige and patterned like diamonds.

  It disappeared when she blinked. Beige diamonds. Black. Beige diamonds. Black.

  The carpet was scratchy. She could feel it on her skin, because she had skin now instead of wood. Her arms and face itched, and the sensation was delightful. Instinct kicked in, and Penny scratched her cheek with her right hand. Then a jolt of excitement ripped through her.

  She could move.

  Penny shot to her feet, swayed, and fell back onto the carpet. She laughed and heard her voice out loud. It sounded familiar, but nothing like the voice in her head. Chance’s bedroom spun around her, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the sensation to fade. But she couldn’t seem to stop moving. She wiggled her toes, knocked her knees together, rubbed the carpet with her fingers. She sneezed, and then she laughed again, because sneezes felt even more ridiculous than they sounded. Her right hand grazed some sort of fabric, and Penny clenched it tightly. When she opened her eyes, she saw she was holding on to her skirt.

  But she was not wearing it.

  A marionette was wearing it.

  Penny decided that the mind fog must have driven her mad at last. Because she was looking at herself, and it wasn’t a reflection. A marionette with curly black hair and dark eyes and walnut wood was slumped over next to her, wearing a pale yellow dress with a low-fitted sash. The only difference was that when Penny had seen herself in the mirror, her hair had been in pigtails. Now it was in a braid.

  Stretching out her arms, Penny studied her hands. This skin was white and freckled. This body was wearing rumpled pajamas. When she ran her fingers through her hair, she found it to be short and fine and wavy.

  “I don’t understand,” Penny said out loud, and now she knew why her voice didn’t sound the same as it did in her head. Because it wasn’t her voice at all.

  Slowly Penny stood and faced herself in the mirror. Chance’s reflection stared back at her.

  “Well,” said Penny. “This is interesting.”

  She flexed her arms and bounced up and down on her toes—his toes, technically. Moving was more wonderful than she’d imagined, muscles and bones and joints all responding to her brain’s commands instantly. Widening her eyes, she smiled as broadly as she could and watched Chance’s lips stretch. Then she felt an unpleasant, constricting feeling in her gut.

  Worry, those tiny termites gnawing their way out of your stomach.

  Kneeling down, Penny sat the marionette upright and leaned it against the chair. The string had been reattached to its head somehow. She touched it, and Chance’s voice filled her head.

  What happened? Why can’t I move?

  “Oh,” said Penny. “Oh dear.”

  He was trapped inside the marionette.

  Penny?

  Yes, Penny thought, then shook her head. “Yes,” she told him out loud. “I’m in your body. I don’t know how it happened.”

  I did it by accident. The pitch of his voice was higher than normal. Panic, Penny realized. That was what happened on Storm at Dawn when a character panicked. High voice, irrational decisions.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll switch us back. Just tell me how you did it.”

  Do you see a wooden disk? There’s a huge needle attached to it.

  Penny glanced around the carpet. Something silver glinted from under the chair, and she retrieved the object. “Here it is.” Studying the disk and needle more closely, Penny felt yet another new emotion, but it was one she couldn’t name. Was there a word for sensing familiarity in something you’d never seen before?

  “I know what this is,” she heard herself say. “It’s a spindle from a spinning wheel.” Kneeling, she touched the marionette’s string again. “Where did you get it?”

  There was a pause. And then Chance’s thoughts spilled out so fast Penny could barely keep up. She listened closely to every word.

  “The man with the sharp face came in through the window,” Penny informed him when he’d finished. “He cut the string off my head with scissors.”

  Chance groaned. I shouldn’t have used that thing. I should have known better. The Storm would have never…

  Penny turned the spindle over in her hand. It looked as though it belonged on a shelf of oddities.

  “Well, it worked,” Penny pointed out, hoping to make Chance feel better. “The string is back in place. Us swapping like this is just a…side effect.”

  In the pause that followed, Penny could sense Chance’s confusion.

  “What?” she prompted.

  It’s just…you think we swapped? Swapped what?

  “Bodies,” Penny said. She thought that was perfectly obvious.

  Yes, but…that story about the apprentice’s marionette…

  Penny sighed. “That story is nonsense. I would never steal your soul. And I don’t know how to cast spells. Besides, you’re the one who used the spindle in the first place, not me.”

  Oh. That’s true.

  “And,” Penny continued rather defensively, “if I’d stolen your soul, I would have come alive, like in the story. But the marionette is still just a marionette.” She nudged its motionless wooden leg for emphasis.

  That’s a good point.

  “Thank you.” Penny held up the spindle and examined it. “Now. What did you do with this, exactly?”

  I wound the loose string around the disk thing—er, spindle—and used a needle to sew the string back onto your head, and…Another pause followed, filled with that mixed-up, jumbly sensation. I don’t know why, but suddenly it was like your head wasn’t made of wood anymore. It was soft. The needle didn’t work until I used the spindle, too, and then the needle went right in, and I pulled the string through, and then I kept pulling and I got dizzy, and right before I blacked out, I realized something.

  “What?”

  I…I don’t remember.

  “Hmm. So the spindle has some sort of magic?”

  Yeah, it must.

  Penny thought quickly. Because she had spent her whole life doing nothing but thinking, she was able to do so at an exceptionally fast speed. “I have an idea,” she told Chance when she had finished. “We don’t know who the man with the sharp face is, but Fortunato does, and—”

  He does?!

  “Yes, that man has visited the museum a lot in the last few weeks,” Penny said. “My point is that Fort
unato might know what he wants. In fact, he might even be able to help us swap back.”

  That’s a good idea.

  “Thank you.”

  Can we go right now? Chance’s voice was kind of high again. We don’t have much time. My family is moving tomorrow morning, and we have to—

  A voice from the doorway startled them both.

  “Chance.” Mrs. Bonvillain’s face was scrunched up in a strange way. She gazed at Penny the way some museum visitors gazed at the mechanical heart at the museum, with a mix of amusement and perplexity, as if they weren’t exactly sure what to make of the thing. “I’ve been calling you for five minutes to come to lunch.” Her brow furrowed even more. “Why are you holding the doll’s hand?”

  Penny glanced down at her hand, which was grasping the marionette’s wrist. Again she thought quickly. The truthful response was Because we swapped bodies, and the only way for me to talk to your son is by touching one of these strings. But she felt sure Mrs. Bonvillain would not appreciate that answer. Penny had to lie about why Chance was currently holding hands with the marionette. She pictured the many couples she’d seen come and go at the museum, fingers interlaced as they examined the artifacts.

  “Because we’re friends,” she told Mrs. Bonvillain. “Because we love each other.”

  Penny was proud of having thought of a perfectly plausible lie so quickly. But now Mrs. Bonvillain’s expression had contorted into one far more complicated. Penny was so busy trying to decode it, several seconds passed before she realized Chance was yelling in her head.

  LET GO! LET GO! LET GO!

  “Oh.” Penny dropped the marionette’s hand, and Chance’s voice vanished abruptly. “Sorry. I was…joking.”

  Mrs. Bonvillain’s expression cleared somewhat. “Oh. Very funny,” she said with a laugh that made it clear she did not find this in the least bit amusing. “Hurry up and eat your lunch now. We have work to do.”

  “Okay.” Penny cast one last glance at the marionette before following Mrs. Bonvillain out of the room. She would just have to take Chance down to Fortunato after lunch.