by Kim Newman
A motto popped into her mind… A precipice in front and wolves behind… That was written on the Coat of Arms of the Purple House… She did not know whether the Broken Doll was the precipice or the wolves… Was she close behind, gaining on A. as she tottered, tiny steps punching black sole outlines into the pink chalk? Or in waiting by the side of the path ahead, sharpening china finger-shards on iron-hard bark?
Worst of all, the Doll might be inside A. and swelling, evicting her from her own body… A bud of malice sprouting inside her skull, extending tendrils through the meat of her mind, stealing her thoughts for its own.
A. was not alone – would never be alone – in the woods… The masters and servants and dependents returned, not as themselves but as Broken Toys, playthings of the Broken Doll… John Nohj, Ogrette, the Oracle, the Lady Knight… and others, fresh to the Grave Game… the Girl Who Grew on a Tree, who had a flower for a face and branches for limbs… The Girl Who Takes and the Boy Who Gives, Twin Heirs of Hugo Ape… And the Assassin’s Small Daughter, new Mistress of the Purple House, who set the rules and chalked the lines.
The path she trod led back to Seaview Promontory… There, the Purple House stood high above Shark Shingles, propped and braced on iron poles and support girders added as the foundations crumbled… Old cellars were now open to wind and surf, as the cliff fell away rock by rock… Dreaded staircases were now exposed paths… Where maids once walked the chalk line, seabirds fought and fed and fouled.
Her crime haunted her.
A crime of omission… All her time at the Purple House, A. had been cautioned to keep mum… She was not to gossip or spread stories or volunteer information or even comment on the wallpaper or the food or the looks of that one particular under-footman with the curly hair and no nose… Like all the other maids – like her long-departed friend Millie – she had struggled against an instinct to chatter… but just once, when she should have spoken out, she had been silent… The chalk line was interrupted and she didn’t know where to walk.
She had seen the brave girl – John Nohj – walk ahead into peril, approaching the ghost of Princess Violet when the coal behind her eye was white hot… The Mad Spectre Princess bit off John Nohj’s hands and spat them out alive… A. knew this would happen, but called no warning… She had opened her mouth, but did not know what to say… no, she could have spoken, but chose not to… and John Nohj suffered for it.
With sharpened hooks instead of hands, John Nohj was on the track, intent on vengeance… Ogrette strode by John Nohj, bending branches out of the way so her small, angry friend could pass… Their tongues clicked in the insect language they had worked out between them.
The Lady Knight and the Oracle could not help. A. must take her medicine.
She stumbled across a long sign, fallen off its struts, and made out part of a name… UFFLER’s HAL… then ran down a cracked station platform, beside a railbed overgrown with eight-foot weeds… The Girl With Green Thumbs had passed this way – the Girl who was and yet was not the Girl Who Grew on a Tree… A stack of polished coffins were piled by the Lost Luggage Office… bat-crests on their sides like the coats of arms on the doors of a distinguished family’s best carriage… A Broken Railway Porter stood on a circular base, whistle raised but unblown because his head was missing – the buttons on his wooden uniform were fist-sized blobs of gold paint.
Beyond Uffler’s Hal was a meadow where night flowers bloomed… A. stumbled into fogbanks of heady perfume… moths the size of her apron flitted from flower to flower, spreading pollen… The stinging scent got into her nose and forehead and behind her eyes… She saw light bursts as she staggered through long, sharp grass that scraped her shins.
On the horizon was the Purple House.
Stationed by the front door Jimmy Wood, the Old Campaigner astride his charger… He was missing an arm and a leg and his horse’s head… An axe-cleft divided his helmet and opened his forehead… His wood flesh was green and a shrub sprouted from his wedge wound, sporting a concerned floral face and twigs waving a caution.
‘Amy, no,’ said the flower…
Amy? Who? A. for Amy?
Nearing the front door, A. looked at the face that had spoken… The flower was lovely, but the stunted little shrub was ugly and had a strange smell… a bitter, poison smell she could taste… She had tasted it before and not liked it…
‘Do not go in there,’ said the Girl Who Grew on a Tree. ‘She will hurt you.’
‘I am already hurt.’
‘She will hurt you more!’
A rustling across the meadow made A. turn…
Others were out of the woods and past Uffler’s Hal. Ogrette strode through the meadow, skirt slashed by scythe-grass… John Nohj hooked moths out of the air, skewering them… All Broken Toys had white masks, blanks without feature or imperfection… The Broken Doll hung back on the platform, wanting the shade of the awning and a vantage point for a view of what came next.
The grass was agitated like choppy water… Out of sight, dozens of small, clicking creatures scurried across the meadow.
The door of the Purple House opened.
A. had passed through the front door once before, a long time ago, when first sent to the kitchens… It was different now, reddish and rusted and Wrong.
She had no time to think.
Creatures scuttled out of the grass onto the gravel drive, eyestalks waving… A dozen little voodoo stares drove A. up the steps and through the door…
‘Amy,’ said Paquignet, ‘don’t.’
VII: In the Doll’s House
IT WAS THE Hour of the Broken Doll. A thin promise of night’s end pinked the wooded inland horizon.
After four steps and a jump into indoor gloom, Amy pranged her hip bone against a desk. Before her eyes adjusted she knew where she was. Windward Cottage. Electric lights came on. Seaview windows became midnight mirrors.
At this precipice, Amy must turn and face the wolves. In this classroom, she’d learn her lesson.
Had she run or flown from the Music Room?
She’d been dreaming but awake. There had been woods… the Purple House… and Broken Toys.
Seeing herself reflected darkly in the portholes, she realised she needed no mask. Her face was death’s head enough. Her wings were torn, scratched by claws or twigs. She was a fright.
Fleur Paquignet had switched the lights on. She’d told her not to go into Windward.
An army of Sleeping Bettys must be winding down in the dorms. Had anyone gone to bed last night?
Paquignet shut the door behind her and leaned against it.
‘That won’t hold long,’ she said.
Why was Paquignet talking to Amy as if they were best friends? The Ariel Fifth sat three desks away from her and was on intimate terms only with plants. She’d been acting out of character for weeks. Something was off about her flower-perfect face. A little too green?
‘What are you doing here?’ Amy asked.
‘You won’t believe this, but I’m trying to make it up to you.’
‘Make what up to me?’
‘Tell you later. We’ve other worries now.’
Amy wasn’t satisfied, but…
A scratching began. Rats chewing through the doorsill?
‘What is that?’
A chunk of wood was punched in, at the bottom of the door. At the same time, a window smashed. Two small, nippy creatures crawled into the classroom.
Speke’s hands.
On her wrists, they’d looked like crabs. On their own, they were disturbingly more like hands. Fast and determined. And after her.
Amy rose off the floor and swatted with her mentacles.
She made the hand-crabs feel it. She could now use her Talent as a big fist. When threatened, she responded. She developed Applications by instinct, more like remembering than learning. In a return bout with Stephen Swift, they’d be equally matched. Death’s Head Against Draycott’s Damsel. She’d settle Miss Steps’ lie about letting her win last
time. She’d break any Duck Press, Iron Maiden or Cosy Coffin. She’d put the Wrong ’Un in her place.
The hand-crabs scuttled in circles under Amy’s feet. At eighteen inches off the floor, she was out of scrabbling reach. Their finger-limbs pushed like grasshopper legs, and they leaped higher and higher. She took a few more steps up her imaginary staircase. The hand-crabs jumped and skittered, but couldn’t pinch her ankles.
Was it Speke who blamed Amy? Or her hands?
Those sharp-tipped fingers could gouge and slice.
The door was pushed in, knocking Paquignet over. She grunted in an unrefined, ungirlish manner.
Little stumped into the classroom like a coalman hauling a half-hundredweight bag. Frecks was slung over her stout shoulder. With an oof of relief, the Little Girl dumped her unresisting burden on the teacher’s desk. She was under the violet sway of…
Who?
Larry Laurence or the Broken Doll?
Larry floated through the doorway, legs dangling inside a skirt half again as long as she was.
Amy assumed a mid-air fighting stance. Larry couldn’t best her with stolen Abilities. She wouldn’t have the measure of them yet. But she had a Talent of her own and reached deep into her pocket for Applications. Like Amy, she was learning in the field, becoming more dangerous.
Speke came in, towel wrapped around her stumps. She saw her disembodied hands. Returned from Larry’s pocket, they were more and more agile and dextrous. They sprang up onto desks and ran across the lids, jumping the chasms between them. For an instant, Speke was proud of her hand-crabs. A mother cat watching her kittens torment a shrew. Then she looked up at Amy, angry and hurt.
Couldn’t she at least try to blame Larry?
Or herself, for barging in?
No. Speke had saved Amy – if only temporarily – and bravery had cost her dearly. She couldn’t blame Amy as much as Amy would – given a few moments to reflect – blame herself.
The Broken Doll’s crown – a stiff horsehair wig – scraped the ceiling. Count DeVille’s cloak trailed on the floor. Larry was like a circus performer on stilts. Not a jolly-on-the-outside/crying-on-the-inside clown, but a punchinello with hot red coals of rage for eyes and three stilettos in each fist.
Little prodded Frecks, who was conscious but not properly awake. She groaned.
Amy wasn’t happy the Broken Doll had brought her best friend to Windward. Larry had a list of people she took issue with. Amy was at the top, of course. Frecks, who had scorned her worship, was on it too. Love turned to hate was merciless. Most crushes ended this way, but most girls didn’t respond to an offhand rebuff by turning into Lady Caliban.
Frecks’ coif was in her pocket not on her head. The mail had to be worn for the charm of protection to work. Having spiky hair for days would have been small price to pay for living past the dawn, but Frecks hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Larry alighted on a desk edge, cloak underfoot. Perfectly balanced, she steadied herself with mentacles. Amy had never thought to use her Talent to make a perch less precarious. Was Larry using her stolen Abilities more imaginatively than she did herself? That’d be irritating.
Larry put claw fingers against her stomach and prised her pocket open.
It was a rip – a wound! – in reality. Unpleasant to see. Worse to think about. Inside, fluorescent worm-things writhed and knotted obscenely.
Amy tensed to resist the pull of the Purple but Laurence didn’t repeat the trick.
Larry’s thin body was racked with spasms, as if she’d swallowed a jar of electric eels. She bent this way and that, Broken Doll fashion. Spurts of light came from her pocket. A chittering, chewing, clicking began… and grew louder and louder. Small objects popped out, one after another. Soft cannonballs shot from the void. Fist-sized rolled-up woodlice. They struck walls or the ceiling or the floor – or wary Paquignet, cringing Little and aghast Speke – then fell and scrabbled and righted themselves.
Purple duplicates of Speke’s hands. More crablike than the originals and marked by their maker. Their cracked carapaces were miniature doll faces. Blue flame-gems burned in eyeholes. More hostile display.
The torrent of hand-crabs continued.
Paquignet and Speke got up on desks, tucking their legs under them. Hand-crabs blanketed the floor. They hopped and climbed over each other to get up at the girls. Insect-swarm behaviour. One locust was a specimen. A hundred thousand were a plague. A sharp-nailed pinch would be painful. A hundred thousand might be fatal.
It wasn’t lost on Amy that Speke was afraid of the duplicates too.
Little was too big and clumsy to get up on a desk. She wore nightie and slippers. Her bare arms were goosefleshed and bluish from the pre-dawn chill. Hand-crabs nipped at her ankles. She grimaced and swallowed revulsion, too terrified to scream. Gillian Little would need a lot of kindness after this.
Larry convulsed and retched horde upon horde from her pocket. Her back arched as her pocket enlarged. Her cape-skirt rose primly from the floor to avoid being spattered with purple ichor. Amy hadn’t seen Larry disgorge anything with a semblance of life before. Was that her original Ability or a new Attribute? Larry almost doubled backwards, spine bent like a longbow. Cobweb cracks spread across her mask.
How much of Venetia Laurence was left? The skin of the Broken Doll wrapped her like a china shell. Her mind – its tangle of loves and grudges, joys and pains – was mulched for compost. The cold, cruel cuckoo thrived in her skull. Count DeVille’s cape sucked her marrow like ivy crumbling a stone wall. Hardy parasites smothering a weakling host. Child-brains swelling as the girl’s shrivelled to the size of a pea. This Doll was new-born, a nursery tyrant princess. She only knew small words and simple sentences.
Spot is a dog. Chase Spot. Hurt Spot. Break Spot.
Amy remembered the Russian Doll. The centipede in the middle – whatever that had been, lost to history and undiscovered even by Knowles – was the seed of the Broken Doll. Something new was added as each bulbous face slotted over the last. All earlier dolls were contained, but each onion layer had its own particular nastiness. This time, it was the cloak… and all that came with it, the powers and hunger and traces of Amy she’d let the thing steal. Over a week after she’d worn the cape for less than an hour, she still had the taste of blood on her tongue.
Amy is a girl. Chase Amy. Hurt Amy. Break Amy.
Speke’s white hands were lost in a raging sea of purple duplicates.
Amy tried to sweep them back with mentacles. It was her experiment with making holes in water again. If she concentrated, she stemmed the tide. A flicker of distraction and the hand-crabs swarmed back in.
A desk collapsed. The thorn-tips of a thousand fingers tore through metal and wood. The desks were still in use after all these years because they were almost indestructible. But only almost.
She picked her fight and flew across the room, landing in front of Little. The big, bare-legged First was in the most immediate danger. Amy didn’t dare look down at what crunched under her feet. Summoning every ounce of mentacle muscle, she extended her arms and held her palms out. She focused, imagining her own hostile display, a Death’s Head in the dark. Black flames wrapped around the skull. She swallowed coppery spit and tore through her own cocoon, emerging as something truly fearsome. She pushed – throwing back and turning aside surging waves of crab-hands.
Flipped on their backs, they scrabbled like real crabs. A few lifted off the ground, fingers dabbling like tiny galley oars. They only kept aloft for a few seconds before falling back into the crowd. Amy recognised more locust behaviour. The next fliers would be more skilled. Then the whole swarm would fill the air.
‘Larry, I’m who you want to punish,’ Amy said. ‘Please stop hurting the others.’
The Broken Doll didn’t hear. She floated from her perch, cloak-skirt flaring. Larry’s feet – in grubby bedsocks – dangled. Her legs were covered in recent bites and scratched scabs. The cloak’s scarlet silk lining was fresh and shiny.
>
Larry stopped spewing hand-crabs. The last two or three purple duplicates slipped through the pocket’s lips. The hand-crabs slid down the folds of the cloak and dropped onto the floor, where they got lost in the throng.
The more duplicates Larry made, the cruder they were. The fourth or fifth outpouring of hand-crabs were jellying already. Mask-marked shells came to pieces. Caught fingernails bent and snapped. Clayish meat sludged off the bone. Scratching, scrabbling things covered the floor.
Recovered, Larry snapped up straight. Her eyes fixed on Amy.
She floated over to the teacher’s desk. A flap of Count DeVille’s cloak slapped onto Frecks’ face like a wet flannel. The cape fit her features like an eyeless mask, undulating slightly. At its touch, Frecks woke. She tried to unpeel the stinging cloth. It wouldn’t come unstuck. The little hooks had her. She opened her mouth to catch her breath. That gave the cloak a wider hole to fill.
Speke, nearest to Frecks, reached to help… then froze. Seeing the ends of her arms as if for the first time, she let out a single, agonised sob.
That stabbed Amy. This was her own fool fault.
The Broken Doll stood in mid-air, voodoo stare exclusively for Amy. She didn’t even glance down at Frecks as the cape fed.
Amy took a mind-grip on the china mask.
Fluencing the cracked white china stung. Amy’s antennae prickled. Then spasms of pain shot through her forehead. She kept hold and increased pressure. Laurence’s mad eyes watered. The Doll’s face was still firmly attached to the girl’s skin. This parasite had hooks too, sunk deeply into the host. Amy couldn’t get the mask off without breaking Larry.
Was there a Larry left to break?
It would all be over if Amy just snapped her neck. The Broken Doll was a terror. The Broken-in-Bits Doll would be no such thing. A Death’s Head solution. Simple and final. Best for everyone. Frecks and the others saved. Even Larry would be thankful. She was no better off than Palgraive. No matter the provocation and the promises, Larry must regret opening the Wrong Door and inviting the Doll into her head. If Amy were in Laurence’s place, she’d be grateful – wouldn’t she?
