The Dollmage

“It is your husband playing tricks on you.”

“My husband is dead.”

“I see his ghost sometimes.”

I smiled a fleeting smile. “In the woods you see him,” I said, “not in the village.”

She did not argue.

I fetched the feather and held it before her eyes. “We have been found,” I said.

I could see her remembering all the stories she had heard concerning the robber people. “Why have the robber people found us?” She said it shrilly. “It is your job as Dollmage to hide us.”

I covered my chin to hide my shame. “That is one reason why the village doll stays here, locked in this dark room, away from all eyes but mine. It is to hide us from the robber people. But they have found us. It is no secret that I am old and my power is worn out. Renoa, you must find within yourself the power to help us.”

“What can I do?” Renoa asked crossly. “You have not taught me well.”

“You blame me? You have not listened well.”

“You are boring.”

“You are lazy!”

Renoa was weeping with fear and rage now. “I can do nothing when you are around me. You draw all the power from me. I can only feel it when I am far away from you, high in the mountains....”

“You have not studied well. You have not been willing. Now something must be done, immediately.”

Annakey, so taken with the village doll, had scarcely been listening. Now, during a pause of silence in our bickering, she said, “If I had not given my sky blanket to Renoa, I would cover the village with it. I would put the sky side down so that we would still see the sun, and the fog side being up would hide our village from the robber people.”

It was a moment before I listened to what what my ears had heard. I turned slowly away from Renoa and looked at Annakey. Then I looked at the blanket. I looked at the village doll, and back again at the blanket. Renoa must have read my face, for she balled her sky blanket close to her heart.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“No!”

“Renoa,” I explained as patiently as I could, “do you want the robber people creeping around your bed at night? They steal more than axes and chickens, you know. Have you not heard the tales?”

“My sisters frightened me with tales when I was little. I am no longer little,” she said.

“No, you are not. Could you not do, then, as Annakey did, and give up something for the good of another? For the good of the village?” My voice was not so soft as Vilsa’s had been. Renoa did not move. “You will do as I say, Renoa. You will put the sky blanket on the village doll.”

Her eyes were as hard as the painted eyes of the Justice doll. At last, slowly, she put the blanket over the village doll. I looked to see if the same happiness that had been in Annakey’s eyes was in her own. I could not see it.

“There,” she said. “I have saved the village.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It might work. But if it does, it is Annakey that has saved the village, is it not? She made the blanket.” I said it to punish Renoa for resisting me.

Renoa glared at Annakey as if she had said those words, and not I. “In her hands is skill,” Renoa said, “but it is my hands that placed it over the village. In my hands is the power.”

Three days later, I knew it had worked. No one complained that they were missing anything, and I found no more black feathers. The blanket had changed the story of the village. The robber people might have forgotten about us, or been frightened off by some sign or omen, or perhaps the one who stole the ax died before he could bring it back to his people. In any case the sky blanket had saved our village for a time and had given me time to teach the young Dollmage.

I forbade Annakey to speak of anything she had seen in my house. Now I will tell you what I could not know if it were not that Annakey makes this story. When she arrived home, her mother asked her a question.

“Annakey, did you see the new valley doll that Dollmage made before you were born? Did you see it safe? Did you see the man doll in it? That is your father.”

Annakey obeyed my injunction not to speak, but remembered that she had seen nothing of a new valley doll. She never forgot about the man doll.

Renoa returned to her exploring and Annakey returned to her work. Vilsa was often weak and her mind adrift. It was for Annakey to milk the goat and churn the cream, to harvest the garden and dry it, to kill the chicken and roast it. She learned to card and spin, weave and knit, and tan hides. She could shear a sheep, deliver a lamb, and cook a mutton stew. Even so, she was often seen making shawls for old people, and mittens and hats for children. All were embroidered in the finest detail with birds and animals and flowers. In spite of her frowning promise doll, people regarded the embroidery with wonder and asked among themselves, “Can Renoa do such things with her hands?”

Finally I realized what was happening. “You must no longer embroider,” I told her.

“But what harm . . . ?”

“It is too much like the Dollmage’s art,” I said.