Spell and Spindle

by Michelle Schusterman

“How did you know?” Penny whispered.

  The Storm took a few seconds to answer. “I met the puppeteer once,” he said at last. “At the carnival when I was a little boy. I didn’t have any family—none who wanted me, anyway—and after the show, I went up to the stage to look at the marionettes more closely. One in particular caught my attention. She had blue hair.” He smiled wistfully. “When I touched her strings and heard her voice, I was just…enchanted.”

  Penny shifted uncomfortably. She carefully avoided looking at Constance’s expression.

  Perhaps the Storm had read her mind, because he added: “I know, I know. The Cabinetmaker’s Apprentice has it all wrong. She was no soul thief.”

  He paused, and Penny squeezed her hands in her lap, silently willing him to continue.

  “It’s hard for me to explain, even now,” he went on softly. “I held her strings, and suddenly we were on a seesaw, tilting back and forth between child and puppet.” The Storm glanced at Penny. “Like I could lend a bit of my realness to her and borrow her puppetness in exchange. Does that make sense?”

  Penny nodded, picturing that moment when she and Chance had practiced in front of the mirror. She had felt almost alive, twirling of her own accord, while Chance’s eyes had gone glassy, his arms stiff.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Constance, however, was shaking her head. “But that sounds like she did steal your soul, or she was trying to.”

  “It wasn’t about taking,” the Storm replied. “It was about giving. And if anyone was a thief,” he added with a sigh, “it was me. The puppeteer frightened me, but I couldn’t bear to leave her behind…so I stole her. I stole her and ran away, and later I told everyone the puppeteer had given her to me. I lied.”

  Constance spoke through her fingers, which were pressed to her lips. “Did he come after you?”

  “I assume he did. But I found a place to hide for nearly a year. When I left, the carnival was in the city again, but the puppeteer was no longer a part of it. This summer is the first anyone’s seen of him since then.”

  Penny took a deep breath. She should not ask the next question. She should not, because she suspected she knew the answer. But she had to hear it.

  “Where is your marionette now?”

  The Storm glanced away. But not before Penny saw a flash of guilt in his eyes. And that was all the answer she needed. It didn’t matter if his marionette was packed away in a box or sitting on a dusty shelf. What mattered was that she was alone. Trapped in her puppet shell forever. A boy who’d once loved her so much that he’d stolen her from the puppeteer had grown up into a man who had no time for dolls.

  Terror seized Penny as she realized this would no doubt be her fate too. She wondered if that marionette ever regretted not keeping the body of A. P. Halls. She could have lived a real life, and no one would ever have known what she’d done.

  In that moment, Penny decided she would not make the same mistake.

  She struggled to stand, her decision weighing her down. “I have to use the bathroom,” she announced loudly, and both Mr. Halls and Constance looked surprised. “Will you excuse me, please?”

  Mr. Halls said, “Of course.” Constance stared questioningly at Penny. But Penny ignored her. She felt sure that if Constance looked her in the eyes for even a second, she would see what was in Penny’s heart right now.

  She would know that maybe Penny was a demon after all.

  Penny walked in the direction of the little washroom next to Fortunato’s office. Then she slipped behind a cabinet and scurried through the rows, staying at a crouch and making her way to the front door. She was almost there when a hand grabbed her shoulder, and she spun around with a gasp.

  Howard’s eyes were wide. “Where are you going?” he whispered. The thump-thump-thump of her heartbeat filled Penny’s ears. Shame coursed through her, but it wasn’t enough to make her change her mind.

  “I really hope you find your brother,” she said, her voice cracking. Then she pulled out of his grasp and took off sprinting down the street toward the park.

  The puppeteer had been in the spinning-wheel cabinet for hours. Fortunato was busying himself around the trailer, opening and closing drawers, examining tools, avoiding the accusatory gazes of the marionettes, which lined the shelf above him, strings deliberately separated. He’d closed the cabinet doors for a while, then opened them again, as if the guilt of shutting the marionettes up in the dark was too much to bear. The former museum owner seemed nervous and distracted, and after nearly an hour of poking around, he turned on the small portable radio he’d set on the table earlier.

  A woman’s voice filled the trailer, bright and peppy as she babbled about her favorite brand of soap. Chance only half heard the advertisement. The atmosphere was crackling with tension, as if something big were about to happen. It was all Chance could do to remember who Fortunato was, much less imagine what he might be planning. The process of thinking had become a trek through a swamp that grew deeper and murkier with every step. Sinking into it was inevitable, especially without the Brave Knight to help pull him through, and every few minutes Chance would decide there was no point in fighting. Then his gaze would refocus on Fortunato, and an echo of his earlier anger would give him the strength to take another step, and another.

  The advertisement ended, and a few familiar, eerie chords sounded from the radio.

  “A storm is brewing. Are YOU prepared for the worst?”

  Chance stopped thinking. He stood stock-still in his mind swamp, not sinking, not moving at all. This moment was achingly familiar…here with Fortunato as he worked, listening to Storm at Dawn. Only now he was on this shelf, watching. Just like Penny used to do.

  “Tonight, on Storm at Dawn, we’re broadcasting live from the recently closed Museum of the Peculiar Arts.”

  Fortunato froze, staring at the radio.

  “It’s a peculiar place indeed, filled with strange objects and stranger secrets. In fact, dear listeners, it’s the inspiration behind tonight’s tale, titled…‘The Thief of Souls.’ ”

  The door to the spinning-wheel cabinet burst open and slammed against the wall, sending a tremor through the trailer. The puppeteer stood framed in the doorway, breathing heavily, his perfectly carved face contorted in anger.

  “The villain I faced in this adventure was unlike any I’d encountered before. He was a gifted thief, one who could look you in the eyes as he stole your most valuable possession. How? Because you never realized he was taking it by force. In fact, he would convince you that you’d given it to him of your own free will…and then you would forget it was ever yours to begin with.”

  In three great strides, the puppeteer crossed the trailer and flipped the radio off. His shoulders rose and fell, and he massaged the spot on his neck where once there’d been a wart. There was no indentation now, no indication whatsoever that he’d violently hacked it off that morning.

  The seconds stretched on too long, silent and tense. Quietly the puppeteer closed the door to the spinning-wheel cabinet. He removed a small black box from his cloak pocket, which he set on the table. When he spoke at last, his voice was like the wind whistling through the tree branches outside.

  “She’ll be here soon. I’ll make sure of it.” He headed to the door, pulled it open, and looked back at Fortunato. “Have everything ready before I return.”

  He didn’t wait for Fortunato’s response before sweeping out the door. It clicked shut loudly. A moment later, Fortunato drew a long, shaky breath. He opened the small black box and peered inside. Chance could not see its contents, but Fortunato visibly shuddered. He pushed the box out of Chance’s sight, then turned the radio back on.

  “This was a dangerous enemy, to be certain. Because how can you fight for what is yours if you have no memory of it at all? One word, dear listeners: hope. When you—”

 
There was a distant cry and a shuffling sound. Fortunato stared at the radio, his expression as bewildered as Chance felt. Because this did not sound like part of the show. And then a girl’s voice came through the speakers. Teary but bright and full of optimism.

  Constance.

  “Chance, if you’re listening to this, I’m coming for you. I promise I’ll—”

  What happened next, Chance would later play over and over again in his mind.

  Emotions surged through him at the sound of his sister’s voice. Relief, and hope, and love—not a memory, but real. And though it was impossible, though he was nothing more than a soul trapped in wood, Chance instinctively tried to fling himself at the radio.

  Fortunato’s hip bumped the table, shaking the shelf. Chance toppled from his spot and sprawled on top of the radio, which was now emitting nothing but static silence. A few seconds passed. Then Fortunato picked him up with trembling hands and placed him back on the shelf. He straightened each of the other marionettes in turn, taking care not to touch any of their strings. He smoothed down his apron. Then he went back to digging around in cupboards and cabinets with greater fervor, as if he were looking for something important.

  He turned the radio off.

  Chance’s thoughts were racing faster than they had in days. His sister knew he was in trouble. She was coming for him. And that knowledge had given Chance the strength to do the impossible. Because Fortunato might have bumped the shelf, but the other marionettes had not fallen. And Chance knew why.

  He had moved.

  And if he could do it once, he could do it again.

  The sun had finally set, but the streets were by no means deserted. Penny darted from one block to the next, mimicking Constance’s zigzagging pattern from earlier that day. With every hour that passed, her guilt over running away grew stronger. But she ignored the twist in her gut. The logical part of her brain was in charge again. And it didn’t matter that Constance seemed to care for Penny. It didn’t matter that Chance had promised that Penny would never be packed away into storage. These were the facts:

  Once Chance and Penny swapped back, he and Constance would age. Penny would not. She would be a marionette forever. And adults, like the Storm, did not keep the promises they made to puppets when they were children, no matter how much they claimed to love them.

  Penny would never be in charge of her own future. Not unless she stole Chance’s body.

  She turned onto a quiet street and broke into a run, slowing only when a couple strolled out of a restaurant hand in hand. A block down to her right, Penny could see the edge of the park. Nodding to herself, she darted around the couple and turned left. She didn’t know the city like Constance did, but she was certain she was heading north. Back to the neighborhood where she and Constance had woken up that morning.

  Back to Club Heavenly Blues.

  It was ridiculously foolish to go back there. A child should not roam the city streets alone when night was falling, and the club was dozens of blocks away. A vision of Mrs. Goldstein’s concerned face flashed through Penny’s mind, and she felt another pang of guilt. She remembered the leering Thank-You Man, and the police chief who questioned them at the station, and the kind nun who clearly had not wanted to let them leave the church. Constance had gotten them out of all those situations with her quick thinking. She had not seemed afraid, not like Penny was right now.

  Puppets were completely dependent on their puppeteer. But right now Penny was more independent than she had ever been. Every decision, every move, was her choice.

  It was terrifying.

  It was wonderful.

  She ran in short sprints, slowing to examine a rosebush or pick up a shiny coin. She leaped up onto a park bench and peered over the fence surrounding the park, then jumped off the bench, enjoying the shock that shot up through her knees when her feet smacked onto the pavement. She used the coin she’d found to buy a small bag of roasted nuts, which were sugary and salty and made her cry because taste was an amazing sense to possess.

  She hopped on one foot, then the other. She spun in circles until she was dizzy. She ran block after block until her sides ached and her lungs felt ready to burst, and it was glorious—almost glorious enough to distract her from the truth of what she was doing.

  But she could not outrun the guilt.

  It found her when she reached the north end of the park and turned onto 110th Street. Penny flew past a lamppost, then skidded to a halt so fast she nearly fell over. Panting, she stumbled back to the post and stared at the MISSING poster.

  This one wasn’t for Howard’s brother, Jack. It was for a boy and girl. Linda and Lyle Goldstein, according to the poster: twins, nine years old, white skin, blond hair, blue eyes. They were last seen near the park earlier in the spring.

  Goldstein? The kind older couple had said nothing about children, or grandchildren. And it was a common enough last name. But then Penny remembered how Mrs. Goldstein had been so concerned about her and Constance’s safety, how determined she’d been that they not wander off alone, how she’d gone right to a police officer….

  Penny’s breath was still coming in deep, shaky gasps. Howard’s brother, Jack, had gone missing near the park too. And hadn’t the police chief mentioned that Jack wasn’t the only child who’d disappeared? A sense of foreboding settled in her stomach like a stone at the bottom of a well. It was as if deep down she knew exactly what had happened to these children, but the truth was too dark and too terrible, and her mind refused to let her see it.

  Linda and Lyle were lost. So was Jack. There was little Penny could do about that.

  But she could do something about Chance.

  Penny squeezed her eyes closed, but not before a tear escaped, leaving a cold trail down her cheek. Constance would say there was always a bright side, and in Penny’s case, it was this:

  Once she was a marionette again, she wouldn’t have to feel sadness anymore. She wouldn’t feel anything.

  Nodding to herself, Penny opened her eyes. She squared her shoulders. And she marched into the park, heading south toward the closed-up carnival, oblivious to the dark figure that shadowed her.

  “That was crazy. That was really crazy, what you just did.”

  Constance grinned, because the way Howard said it sounded more like admiration than criticism. The two of them were just inside the park, leaning against a tree and trying to catch their breath.

  She supposed Howard was right. Her mother certainly wouldn’t have approved of what her daughter had just done. But right before his show began, Mr. Halls had pulled Constance aside and given her a piece of advice.

  “Stay away from the puppeteer. I know you think you can save your brother, but trust me—it’s too late.”

  Constance did not get angry very often, but those words had sparked a little red knot of fury she usually managed to contain, balled up tight in her chest. Only on rare occasions was it difficult for her to control. Like when strange men leered at her just to see her squirm, then forced her to thank them for “help” she’d never requested. Or when teachers wrote sweet disposition on her progress reports with no mention of her intelligence. Or when her parents didn’t recognize an impostor in place of their own son.

  Those moments, those people, they made Constance feel like a shell with nothing inside. She might as well have been a marionette.

  And then A. P. Halls, the Storm himself, her brother’s hero, had told her to leave Chance to his doom. To be a good girl and go home.

  She’d smiled politely and nodded and watched as Mr. Halls had sat behind the microphone and started talking about a villain he’d based on the puppeteer, a man who’d stolen her brother’s soul, and that little knot of fury had swelled and boiled and raged and, inevitably, exploded.

  Constance had snatched the microphone from Mr. Halls and shouted a message. Not just for her brother, bu
t for the Storm, and for Fortunato, and for the puppeteer, even though she had no way of knowing if they could hear. She shouted it for A. P. Halls, to show him how badly he’d misjudged her. She shouted it for herself, because maybe sometimes a girl just needed to be loud. Be heard.

  And then she ran.

  “Some people do bad things,” Constance told Howard now. “And some people think they’re good, but they turn their heads and allow those bad things to happen. So they’re just as bad, aren’t they?”

  Howard nodded fervently. “Yes. They are.”

  Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, Constance did a quick survey of the park. The city streets were nowhere near deserted, but the park was quiet and still. A few more steps in and the trees would block the sight of the surrounding skyscrapers.

  “We should get going,” Constance said. “Penny might be there already.”

  Now Howard looked troubled. He didn’t speak for nearly a full minute as they headed down the path that would take them to the carnival. Then he cleared his throat. “Constance, I…I really don’t think she’s coming. I think she ran away.”

  Constance smiled. “I know. But she’ll change her mind.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Howard gave her a sideways glance. “Not everyone does the right thing. Look at the Storm.”

  “True. But Penny will.”

  Constance could tell Howard didn’t believe her. But it didn’t matter. Penny was not like A. P. Halls. She might be frightened; she might even be angry—and she had every reason to be; but she was not the type who sacrificed others to save herself. Constance was absolutely sure of it.

  When they reached the wall that served as a border for the carnival, Constance led the way around until they found the empty ticket-taker booth. Howard gave her a boost, and she scrambled over the turnstile, then held out her hand to help him. Afterward neither of them let go.