The Dollmage

She stopped. She did not know anymore what to do with her hands when they were not working. Sometimes I saw her hands twitch and squeeze, but only for a few days did she forget to smile. Her persistent cheer was enough to make me take to my bed. Can you blame me for disliking the girl?

No, I see you do not blame me, you who think to punish Annakey for the fate that has come to our village. She broke her promise and brought Gods wrath upon us, you say. You refuse to loosen the ropes at her ankles, though they have become wet with blood. Only touch the memory dolls I gave you to your foreheads and you will remember that you liked her then.

I insisted that Annakey come to my house almost every day to do me some small service.

“If you had time for handwork, you have time to help an old woman,” I said.

She swept my floors, washed pots, dusted, scrubbed, and tidied. Her mother had taught her well. I forbade her to touch any of the doll stuff, but I could not stop her from looking. How she looked. How she strained to watch me a little if I was working. She would do anything to sneak peeks as I made dolls. For a time I suffered it, until one day she asked, “Dollmage, where is my father’s doll?”

It took the breath out of me, as if she had struck me.

Finally I said, “He is where he should be.” I bade her leave. She must have felt my anger, for she did not speak of it again.

One day in winter, when the mountain paths were snowed in, Renoa came into the house and began playing with the material on the table and in the baskets.

“Dollmage does not let us touch,” Annakey said, watching Renoa handle the doll stuff the way a starving mian watches bread being sliced and buttered.

“She lets me,” Renoa said. I was standing in the room and did not contradict Renoa. Annakey stood still a moment, the broom in her hand, watching as Renoa worked more earnestly with the doll stuff than she ever had before.

“Do you not have work to do?” I asked Annakey. I was pleased whenever Renoa showed an interest, even if it had begun as a desire to taunt Annakey.

“No, Dollmage, I am done,” she said. She was not smiling, and so my heart softened.

“Not done. Please sweep the room that houses the village doll, only you must not touch it ”

Annakey went about her work. As soon as Annakey was out of sight in the other room, Renoa ran away. I called out to her, but she did not listen. She ran to the feet of Mount Lair where she played as wild as a deer fawn. In a little while, Annakey came to me with the dustpan. She was staring into it.

“Look, Dollmage,” she said. “Look what I found on the floor.”

My stomach sickened at the sight. It was one of the men I had made for the new valley doll that I had broken and thrown away. It had been in a dusty corner of the room all these years, a little piece of a story I had not been able to make.

“Who is it?” Annakey asked.

“Never mind,” I said. “You should not have found this.” I took the man piece and threw it out the window to the chickens. “Now go away, and do not come back. I told you not to touch anything. And never tell your mother about this”.

Annakey stared out the window after the man doll, and then looked at me a long moment. Her arms hung still at her sides. Did she guess what I had done? Perhaps she hoped that her fears were for nothing.

“I will go,” she said. She made as if to walk away, then stopped. “Dollmage, you must let me come back.”

“Do not tell me what I must do,” I said, turning away from her.

“Dollmage, I have such longings inside me for the things of your art. I think of it all the time. I dream of things I could make, beautiful things....” She blushed to hear herself say it. Her voice lost its pleading edge. “The village is growing, the men say. Perhaps Renoa will need help when she is Dollmage. Perhaps there is some gift in my hands also.”

I did not answer. Still she was not discouraged. She stepped closer to me.

“Dollmage, I feel something in me.... As soon as I saw the Sacred dolls, I felt it.”

Her tone moved me to wonder if I had made an error. Renoa was wild and haughty. Annakey was skilled and kind. Then I remembered that around her neck hung the frowning promise doll. Suddenly, her presence pained me like a tooth that aches at sweets.

“If you revere the Sacred dolls, then listen to what they say, Annakey Rainsayer: There cannot be two Dollmages in a village. Never two.”

“Then perhaps I am the one.” She said it quietly, but as if she had wanted to say it all her life.

I sighed. “You must accept, Annakey. Your promise doll frowns.”

“But what if it means something else? Are you sure that the frowning doll means that I will not be Dollmage?”

Now she was behaving like her mother, questioning my art. “Would I not know the meaning of the work of my own hands?”

If she heard the edge in my voice it did not deter her. “Mother says there may be more than one meaning—”

“Enough.”

“She says we may make things mean what we will—”

“Leave!” I said. She started at the anger in my voice, as if it had not been there all along.