Spell and Spindle

by Michelle Schusterman

  They marched through the silent carnival hand in hand, past all the closed-up booths and vendors, stopping occasionally to read the signs pointing to various attractions. They passed the Ferris wheel and the fun house, the Tilt-A-Whirl and the spinning teacups. Constance’s favorite ride was the swings that rose high into the air and swung you in circles so fast you were almost parallel to the ground. Chance would insist that there was a possibility the chains could break, but he always rode them with her anyway.

  At last Howard squeezed her hand and pointed. “Look.”

  The puppeteer’s trailer sat beneath an elm tree, a few low-hanging branches nearly obscuring the sign. It was dark and still and silent, but the curtain was pulled up, revealing the cave scenery. And there was something hanging there, right in the middle of the stage.

  The Princess Penny marionette looked exactly as Constance remembered, only now she was in a princess gown and tiara. Her eyes glinted in the moonlight, and Constance’s heart leaped.

  “Chance.”

  She stepped forward, but Howard pulled her back. “How can you be sure that’s him? If the puppeteer swapped him once, he might have done it again.”

  Constance shook her head, her gaze still on the marionette. “I know my brother when I see him.”

  Howard glanced at the stage. “Even if it is him, this is obviously a trap. That…that puppet, it’s bait. We have to come up with a plan.”

  “A plan?” Constance repeated. “This was the plan. We come to the trailer, get my brother, and make Fortunato swap him back with Penny.”

  “Penny ran away!” Howard exclaimed. “Look, Constance, I hope you’re right and she does come back, but she’s not here now, and—”

  “You said you would do anything to get your brother back,” Constance cut in quietly. “Did you mean it?”

  Howard’s eyes flashed. “Yes.”

  “Then you understand,” Constance said. “My brother is on that stage. I know it’s deliberate. And I don’t care. I want the puppeteer to find me. I want to find him. I’m not going to hide or sneak around. I’m going to get my brother.” She pulled her hand from his, patted him gently on the arm to show she wasn’t mad, then turned and walked to the stage.

  The soft crunch of grass under her feet seemed amplified. The park was unnaturally quiet: no crickets chirping, no wind whistling through the leaves. It was as if a bubble surrounded the trailer and muted the outside world. Constance placed her hands on the stage and heaved herself up. When she faced the marionette at last, tears filled her eyes. This was no princess puppet. This was her brother, and she would recognize him anywhere.

  “Hi, Chance,” she whispered.

  She heard a distant shout just before the curtain fell behind her, leaving them in absolute darkness.

  One moment Chance was staring into his sister’s face—and she’d recognized him, she’d seen him—and the next moment, total blackness. A void, empty of all light and sound.

  It lasted for what seemed like eternity, or maybe it was only a few seconds. When the light returned, it blazed so bright that Chance briefly thought the trailer had exploded. Then it dimmed, and he gazed out of his marionette eyes in awe.

  He was no longer on the stage. In fact, he couldn’t be in the puppeteer’s trailer at all. A huge cast-iron stove sat cold and empty across from where Chance sat. There was no source of light that he could see—no lamp, no lantern, not even a candle—yet the room was lit. It was the cabinets, Chance realized. The cabinets made of patchwork wood, oak and cherry and cedar and pine, all emitting a soft glow. There were too many to count.

  The spinning wheel sat near one of the doors. Chance gazed at it, wondering why it had been moved from its cabinet in the puppeteer’s trailer. The one cabinet that had always seemed much, much larger on the inside, as if the darkness expanded far beyond what the logics of physics and space would allow.

  This was the spinning-wheel cabinet, Chance realized. No, it was more than that.

  This was the cabinetmaker’s legendary chambers.

  Questions surged through Chance’s mind, and he felt as though he could thread them together in a way that would provide answers if he tried hard enough. The puppeteer had told Fortunato the truth; the chambers had not been destroyed in the great fire. But Fortunato was the cabinetmaker’s adopted son—surely he would have inherited all of this. But instead, the puppeteer had the chambers. Why?

  Because he’d stolen them. Chance’s thoughts were racing now, snapping puzzle pieces into place with a speed possessed only by marionettes, who had nothing but time to think. The puppeteer had stolen the cabinetmaker’s chambers, just as the story said the cabinetmaker’s apprentice had stolen his magical tools…tools he’d used to make puppets that took the souls of children.

  The puppeteer was the cabinetmaker’s apprentice.

  It was so obvious, and yet impossible. Because even if that story was true, the real cabinetmaker had died decades ago at a ripe old age. Fortunato had been a little boy, and he was an old man now. If the cabinetmaker’s apprentice were still alive, he’d be ancient, a wrinkled, warty, white-haired, shriveled husk of a man.

  The puppeteer did not have a single wrinkle or wart.

  Because he sliced them off. But how was he able to do that without drawing so much as a drop of blood? And how, how had he lived this long?

  A distant voice interrupted Chance from these disturbing questions. It was too muffled for him to make out the words, but the voice was bright and strong and achingly familiar.

  Constance.

  Not being able to see her was beyond frustrating. The complacency Chance had begun to feel for his situation was gone, and now he felt exactly as he had in his first moments inside this marionette: terrified, paralyzed, desperately wanting to claw his way out of this prison.

  Maybe he could.

  Chance focused on the sound of his sister’s voice. He summoned all his energy, focused his whole mind on the idea of moving. Just an inch. A centimeter, even. It felt like trying to move fog, but he pushed, and pushed, and pushed.

  And then, covering the imperceptible distance of a hair, but a distance nonetheless…the marionette tilted forward.

  The shock of it broke Chance’s focus. He could see a bit more of the table below him now. On it lay the small black box the puppeteer had set out earlier. Inside was a coil of string. It was grayish and lacked the luster of the marionettes’ strings.

  This string isn’t string at all.

  Chance remembered the way Fortunato had shuddered when he peered inside the box. He remembered the way the spindle had helped him spin string out of seemingly nothing. He remembered the way the puppeteer would sit behind the spinning wheel, spinning and spinning as if expecting string to appear.

  A cabinet door slammed open and the walls shook. The marionette leaned forward an inch, and then another, and then it was in a free fall. Chance watched the coil of string barrel at him, and suddenly, with great clarity, the revelation he’d felt on the verge of a hundred times finally hit him, both literally and figuratively.

  The marionettes’ strings are their souls.

  He fell face-first onto the puppeteer’s dull gray strings—his soul—and in one horrifying instant, the real story of the cabinetmaker’s apprentice unfolded in Chance’s mind. And he knew, without a doubt, that there was no way to escape the fate this villain had in store for him.

  But Chance could still be a hero.

  There was once a cabinetmaker with an apprentice, and this apprentice was not a soul-thieving demon.

  Not at first.

  This boy worked hard to learn the skills that went into creating such wonderful cabinets. He knew the secret was in the cabinetmaker’s tools; each one, from the smallest screwdriver to the most ornate scroll saw, seemed weighted with magic, just like the objects in the fairy tales he’d loved wh
en he was very small. He spent countless happy hours with the cabinetmaker, learning the art of woodwork.

  But while he was an obedient assistant and eager student, he could not seem to master the craft. One day the cabinetmaker told him the true secret of his trade.

  “They are indeed good tools,” he said, placing a hand on his apprentice’s shoulder. “But the real magic comes from the hands that wield them. Trees are living things, and their wood contains their life energy. It’s not the tools that coax that energy out. The tree must give it willingly.”

  The apprentice frowned. “But how can I make them do that?”

  “You can’t make them,” the cabinetmaker replied with a gentle smile. “You must ask. That is the next step in your training.”

  But the apprentice was older now and far less patient. His cabinets were sturdy enough, and some were even beautiful, but none possessed the magical properties of the cabinetmaker’s.

  We use wood from the same trees, the apprentice thought sourly. The magic isn’t in the wood after all—it’s in the tools. That’s why he wants to keep them for himself.

  And so one day, the apprentice left the cabinetmaker’s workshop with a sack filled with stolen tools and set out to create his own wonders.

  He refurnished an abandoned trailer to be his workshop, then began to create things he was certain would bring him fame and fortune, magical objects straight from fairy tales: staffs and axes, bows and arrows, wands and mirrors. Each, he assured his customers, contained astounding magical properties. But in truth, he could not coax the life energy from the trees. His creations were nothing but trinkets made of wood and glass and steel and not a single ounce of magic.

  Save for one.

  The apprentice set about building a spinning wheel out of the cabinetmaker’s tools, carving chisels into spokes and levels into pedals. He topped it off with a sliver of the cabinetmaker’s favorite saw, now a spindle that shone in a most entrancing way. He gave the wheel a spin and found himself spellbound. Excitement and pride bloomed in his chest, for at last he had built something that rivaled even the cabinetmaker’s work!

  But only, he realized, because he had used the tools he’d stolen from the cabinetmaker.

  An odd mix of emotions churned in his chest. The tools didn’t matter. Wasn’t that what the old man had always said? But this spinning wheel was magical—the puppeteer could feel it. Desperate to prove his former master a liar, he took his masterpiece to the cabinetmaker’s chambers and left it there for him to find.

  Unfortunately, the orphans found it first.

  Late that night, there came a pounding on the apprentice’s trailer door. He opened it to find the cabinetmaker, red-faced and sobbing with grief and anger.

  “How could you do that to her?” the old man wailed, thrusting the spinning wheel at the apprentice. “She was already so sad…so sad.” And before the apprentice could respond, his former master drew his last breath and collapsed.

  The apprentice did not know what to make of this. Until he paid a visit to the cabinetmaker’s chambers early the next morning and found the orphans curled up on the floor, asleep.

  No. The boy was asleep. The girl, though…

  Creeping closer as softly as possible, the apprentice stared at the girl in wonder. For she was no longer a girl at all. Gently, gently, the apprentice extracted the sleeping boy’s grip from his sister’s arms. He carried the boy to a nearby church, deposited him neatly on its doorstep, and then returned to the cabinetmaker’s chambers.

  His chambers now.

  But the apprentice was no longer interested in building cabinets or fairy-tale objects. This hollow shell of a girl, this perfect puppet with her shiny strings, this was his key to fame and fortune.

  The apprentice experimented with his spinning wheel for years and years. But try as he might, he could not figure out exactly how the orphaned girl had become a marionette. Then, when decades had passed and his skin was far more wrinkled than he would have liked, another girl arrived.

  This girl had recently experienced a great and terrible loss, and she was desperate for a place to hide from her miserable life. The apprentice noticed her lurking behind a tree when he left the chambers one morning, then slipping inside when she thought he was out of sight. She gazed around in awe at the cabinets filled with curiosities. But it was the spinning wheel that called to her.

  The girl knew all about spinning wheels from fairy tales. Stories filled with helpless damsels in distress. She was in great distress and had little hope that help would ever arrive. But she sat down behind the wheel and began to spin.

  She pedaled and pedaled, and though nothing happened, her sadness began to fade. And after some time, she noticed that string had appeared on the wheel. She spun faster and faster and watched as more string appeared, hypnotized by the sight of her soul unraveling.

  The apprentice, peering through a crack in the door, was hypnotized too.

  Soon a lifelike, life-size marionette slumped over the spinning wheel. Its chin had been nicked on the spindle, and a few severed fingers lay on the floor—now brittle and hard like twigs that had gotten caught in the spokes.

  The apprentice examined this new curiosity, marveling at the details. This puppet was as magical as the first. And now he understood the secret of the spinning wheel.

  She was so sad.

  The apprentice had lived a long life, and it was nearing its natural end. This wasn’t fair. At last he knew how to create the most incredible lifelike, life-size marionettes the world would ever see, just as death was on its way to greet him.

  The unfairness of it all was too much to bear. The apprentice seethed. He screamed. He wept.

  Then he grabbed a pair of scissors, sat behind the wheel, and began to spin.

  His soul bled out in shiny wisps. He worked slowly, methodically, wrapping it around and around the spindle. He welcomed the numbness and descended into the fog, stopping frequently to regain his focus. He would not lose himself completely, as those stupid girls had done.

  When he had spun out as much as he could bear, he picked up the scissors and snipped the strings loose.

  They shimmered as they drifted to the floor, then turned a dull, muted gray. The apprentice locked them in a small black box. He studied his reflection in the mirror, pressed a knife tentatively to his wrinkled cheek, experimented with a small slice.

  He felt nothing.

  Once he’d carved his age away, he turned his attention to the broken-fingered marionette. Truly remarkable, he thought, setting it next to the other on a shelf. His key to fame and fortune, indeed. No puppet show would compare to his, not with life-size, lifelike marionettes as incredible as these, even if one was a bit damaged.

  Of course, to put on a proper show, he would need more than two puppets. But that wouldn’t be a problem, he knew. For there would always be children in the world who were sad.

  This was the moment he ceased to be an apprentice. He was the puppeteer, and he had a collection to build.

  Penny peered through the bushes at the puppeteer’s trailer. A shadowy figure darted around it, first checking the empty stage, then pushing on all the knobless doors. Not the puppeteer. A tall, familiar boy.

  “Howard?”

  The boy whirled around, hands up in the air as if she’d caught him stealing. He lowered them slowly as she approached, his expression a mix of relief and surprise.

  “You ran away.”

  He didn’t say it in a particularly accusatory way, but Penny still flinched. “I changed my mind.”

  Howard nodded slowly. “Constance was right. She said you’d come back.”

  You aren’t a demon. Penny squeezed her eyes closed briefly. She did not have much longer in this borrowed body, and she couldn’t return it to Chance with a wet face. “Where is Constance?”

  She list
ened as Howard explained how they had seen the marionette hanging over the stage, how Constance had climbed up to get it, how the curtain had fallen. Howard had hurried forward to pull it up, but they were gone. Like a magician’s vanishing act.

  “They’re in the trailer,” Penny said dully. The thrill of knowing she was so close to rescuing Chance, and the horror of knowing she would soon be returned to her marionette shell, seemed to have canceled one another out. A chill spread through Penny, numbing her insides. There was no point in feeling emotions right now, or ever again. She had to do the right thing, but she didn’t have to feel good or bad about it.

  “The doors are all locked.” Howard pushed on one for emphasis. Then he frowned and inspected it more closely. “Wait…this is painted on. How do we get in?”

  Penny didn’t answer, just walked around the trailer to the stage. She pulled herself up, then held out a hand to Howard. They looked at the backdrop, the field of painted flowers, the fake sun and blue sky.

  “What a pretty day,” Penny said under her breath. She had been on this stage before.

  Trailing her fingers along the screen, she followed it around to the darkness backstage. Howard stuck close behind her, accidentally kicking the backs of her shoes a few times. Penny stopped abruptly. They were sandwiched between the back of the screen and the wall of the trailer, with hardly enough room to turn around. Then, as her eyes adjusted, Penny saw the door. It was short and had no doorknob, but she could just make out the frame of it against the wall. Shuffling forward, Penny pressed her hand to the door and pushed.

  It swung open, and behind her, Howard sighed in relief. Penny ducked under first. She straightened up, blinking in the dim light coming from a lantern. Howard followed suit and immediately cried: “Constance!”

  At the sight of Constance’s kind smile, Penny’s eyes welled with tears. She hung her head, ashamed of herself for ever considering running off and stealing a body that was not hers. Perhaps she really was no better than a demon.

  Seconds later Constance’s arms were wrapped around her. “It’s okay,” she murmured, squeezing Penny tightly. “I knew you’d come back.”