The Dollmage

She stood looking at me, hating me as much as she had loved me. I turned away from her and said, “Be Dollmage, Annakey. Love and lead your people, and make their stories with all the art of your hands, and make them true totems of promise.”

Annakey nodded.

Cries came, “But what of the broken promise?”

“Yes, Dollmage,” Greppa Lowmeadow said, “if Annakey is to be Dollmage, she must keep all her promises.” She put her arm around Renoa, who said nothing. She was clutching her promise doll so tightly that the thong dug into the flesh at her neck.

“That is so,” I said.

“Before you declare her Dollmage, you should see that she keep her promise to marry me,” Areth said.

“Dollmage,” Annakey said, “has God provided no way?”

I touched her shoulder. “God always provides a way. It is one of the things that makes me his friend,” I said.

Renoa’s face became gray. She released her grip on her promise doll.

“You, Hobblefoot. I know your secret,” she shrieked. “You yourself are a promise breaker, for I have seen your husband’s ghost wandering in the forests, and I have spoken to him. Now I will find him and bring him to you so you can die.” The crowd, utterly baffled and afraid, said nothing. Their eyes were more upon the ridge than upon me. She slipped away on bare feet. She did not see my husband, already amongst the crowd.

I said nothing to defend myself. The first promise broken leads to the next until there is no end.

“I have searched the Sacred dolls,” I said to Annakey. “As a villager, you can be released from your promise to marry Areth. The death of your heart the day that Areth hurt you is a fair enough price. But it is different for a Dollmage. Your promise can be broken only at the price of a death. If you are dead, however, you can keep none of your other promises. Areth must release you from your promise to him. Where is Areth?”

Areth was nowhere to be seen, and so some went to find him.

As I waited, I saw storm clouds on the horizon and hoped for rain, and sun by morning.

Now, Renoa had run away to the end of the valley. In the half-light she came to where the great trees hang down their long branches to pinch and scratch, to the place where there are eyes in every hole and under every leaf. She came to the place where the river runs out of the mountain, where the wild things come to wash their bloody whiskers in the water. Renoa came to Annakey’s secret place.

On the huge, flat rock she saw Annakey’s doll of Seekvalley, and beside it all the wild animals Annakey had formed of clay.

“So!” she said aloud and to no one.

She walked around the large, flat rock slowly, looking and looking but not touching. “So,” she said again, “Hobblefoot was right. This is why the village is no longer hidden by the sky blanket.”

Then Renoa thought of a way to destroy Annakey.

Why? you ask. Because those who would hurt others do not care for themselves. It is true for myself as well. I was unsure of my powers as a Dollmage. This made me feel less about myself. That made me want to have the powers of a Dollmage even more.Which made me angry when I thought that Annakey’s promise doll was not keeping its promise. Only to the extent that I despised myself could I despise Annakey.

Now my confession is almost full. I hope that makes God happy. It is my deep desire that we are friends.

Still smoldering in the secret bower was the little fire that Annakey had built before Manal found her. Renoa took the mosses and twigs and branches and bark that made the village, and dumped them into the fire. Quickly the moss caught fire, and soon the whole doll was in flames.

Then Renoa gathered the little wild animals into her apron and headed back to the village.

We were all still standing together in the village common, watching as more robber men gathered on the mountain ridge. They had begun to stamp their feet rhythmically, when Renoa came running to me.

“Look, Dollmage. Look what I have made,” Renoa called as she ran to me. She poured the clay animals, the treecats and the bears, the wolves and the panthers, all onto the ground from her apron. “Are they not wonderful? Can you not sense in them a power also? Name me Dollmage. Name me!”

“Renoa, my wild animals—,” Annakey said.

“Not yours,” Renoa said. “Mine. I made them. Dollmage, you sense the power in her Evil doll, but do you not remember that she made the doll? She has evil in her enough to lie. I made the animals.”

“Take them away from here,” Annakey said. She looked around frantically. “Give them to me, Renoa. I will take them to the edge of the wood.”

Renoa grasped them to her and backed away. “Leave me alone.You stole my birthright. I was to be the Dollmage. I was due to be born that day. Your mother was early. I have the smiling promise doll.”