The Dollmage

Chapter 11

Now who was the Dollmage? I ask you. Was it the one who made twin babies in the pregnancy doll? Twins were born. Or was it the one who made a baby boy? The boy lived. Now, some of you already feared Annakey. Had she, in her carelessness, caused the baby girl to die? Had she drowned Roily the cow and burned Follownot the sheep? Why was it something bad happened every time Annakey made a doll? And were the rumors true that she was a promise breaker? While Prim wailed her voice into a whimper and a whisper, the villagers conferred with me. They wanted me to name Renoa as Dollmage.

“Have I not been telling you all along?” I asked, but I said it without conviction. I said it, remembering the rubber boots and the bees in Wifebury’s potting shed. I said it, remembering the sheepcote. I said it, remembering that I had created your fear of Annakey.

“Dollmage,” said Annakey, “please. I have a plan. Only give me a little longer and I will chase away the robber people.” Her face was pale. She swallowed over and over.

“Hush,” I said. She thought I meant her, but I meant everyone. “Hush.The full moon is not until tonight. Annakey will have until moonrise to make her contest doll.”

There was a silence and then an outcry. I held up a hand and pointed to a high, treeless ridge. There stood a party of robber people, at least fifty strong. When the robber people organize enough to gather themselves, it is grave danger. The outcry ceased. A few women ran for their children. Wifebury put his finger and thumb into the sockets of his eyes, then looked again, blinking.

I spoke urgently to Annakey, in the hearing of all of you. “Until dusk I give you to make your contest doll.” I could hear muffled weeping somewhere in the village, and then more. It grew until it was a chorus of weeping.

“Tell them to be silent and brave, or they shall have my wrath,” I hissed to the men.

The crowd dispersed. Annakey ran away on silent feet.

“Stupid woman,” Renoa said to me. “Why cannot you make up your mind?”

It broke my heart to have her say so. I had let her be proud and venomous to others, and now she was spending her venom on me. “You speak to me so, Renoa?” I said haughtily-

“You know I am your successor,” she said.

“You are. So, do you have a plan, as Annakey does, to save the village from the robber people?”

“I have a plan. It is for you to give me all the relics of your power. I will move into your house, and it will be my house, and the dolls will be mine, and you will go away from me, where you cannot suck the magic out of me like an old leech. You are old, Dollmage. That is why the village is not safe. It is because you are old, and your powers are gone.”

Then I knew. It was as she was speaking to me that I knew how it was the robber people could find us, even when the village doll was hidden from them.

“The village doll is no longer making the story,” I said, more to myself than to Renoa. “I see it now. Annakey must have her own village doll somewhere. That is where she is going, even now.”

“She could not do it. She is not the Dollmage. I am.”

Annakey was indeed running to her secret place. If she made her contest doll and it did not win, she knew that she would be made to promise not to fashion any doll ever again. She touched the clay bear and the clay wildcat she had made. Perhaps an apronful of wild animal dolls could not win the contest. She decided then that if only she had time to do one thing, she would keep her second promise to save her people. As soon as she decided that, she found she had kept her first promise to her mother: that she would be happy.

Why did she desire above all to save you? I told you once it was because she loved you as a people for keeping your promises. That is only part of it. It was also because she saw that she must—that no one else could do it for you, that I was old and Renoa was careless, and all of you depended upon her ability to devise a plan. She wanted to save you because she could, and because her own life depended upon it.

Ail afternoon Annakey worked with clay and other things that her secret bower provided. This was her plan: Around her village doll on the large, flat rock, she would place dolls of the robber people. Then, around each of the dolls of the robber people, she would place clay bears and wildcats and wolves also. She would summon the wild animals with her dolls to chase away the robber people from our village. She would warn the villagers to stay in their houses for a few days, and when she was sure the robber people were all gone, she would remove the wild animals from around the village model.

She had worked a long time when she heard someone running through the forest. Manal burst upon her secret bower.

“Come,” he said. “Dollmage said I must fetch you.”

“Manal, I am not yet finished.”

“It is dusk, Annakey, the whole village is looking for you. The robber people have taken Oda Weedbridge. Even Dollmage is frightened. The wolves are baying, and cats are screaming from every mountain. Dollmage is standing on Weeper’s Stump, sending people farther and farther afield until you come. I am worried that someone will stray too close to the robber people looking for you, or be eaten by wild animals.”

Annakey shook. She glanced up at the sky. Had so much time passed? She had no contest doll, and she had not yet saved her people. Her only hope was to go to Dollmage, instruct the people to hide in their homes, and ask for a little more time. Manal and Annakey held hands as they rushed back to the village. The wolves were howling.

As she walked into the village, you who had been looking for her stopped your search and followed her. Almost the entire village was at Weeper’s Stump when Annakey arrived.

As soon as I saw Annakey, I raised my hand and the villagers fell silent. “The robber people have taken an old woman. Next time it will be a young woman, and then children. The people demand that I name my successor. We can wait no longer, Annakey. Where is your contest doll?”

Annakey held out her hands to me as if she were hoping a doll would appear there by magic. “Give me more time. Please.”

“No more time,” I said. “What have you been doing?”

Annakey looked up. “Dollmage, come and see. I have no contest doll, but if you see the work of my hands at a secret place of mine where I have devised a plan to repel the robber people—”

“No,” said Renoa.“The time is up. By her own admission, she has no contest doll.”

All of you murmured, as you remember well, and I held up my hand for silence.

“What secret place?” I asked.

“In the forest, where the river comes out of the mountain. I have made my own valley doll there, and a village doll in it. If only you will give me a little more time, I can rid us of the robber people.”

Again you murmured. Again I silenced you. It was as I suspected. “It is a long way for me to walk, but I must.” It was Annakey’s story, now. I was resigned.

Renoa strode forward. “No.”

“Out of envy you say so,” Manal said to Renoa.

“You think Annakey is good,” Renoa cried. “I will prove to you that she is evil. She made this!”

Then Renoa held up the Evil doll that Annakey had made.

It was hideous now, having been twice drowned and bitten by animals and burned and buried.

“I found it by the riverbank,” Renoa said. “Prim will witness that Annakey herself made this monstrosity.”

I stared at the doll, and all the village stared at the doll, and Annakey stared at the doll. For a long time, the only sound was that of the swans trumpeting on the river.

“Did you make this?” I asked at last.

Annakey looked at Renoa. She wanted to lie, but to lie is to break the promise of words, and Annakey would not do that. In that moment, her heart bled, wounded, and in her stomach the worm made her stomach sick. Her arms and legs were as heavy as deadwood, and a spider in her brain bit at the backs of her eyes so they ached and watered.

Greppa Lowmeadow stepped forward then. “It is the doll of Annakey’s heart, for she has broken her promise to marry my son, Areth. Deny it, if you can.”

She did not deny.

There was a general moaning and protestation from the crowd. Those of you who had refused to believe the gossip spoke out in disbelief. In all your lives you had never seen a promise broken. In the stories, those who did so ran away into the mountains and joined the robber people rather than be stoned.

I held up my hand.

Not taking my eyes from the doll, I asked, “Did you make this, Annakey?”

She did not hesitate. “Yes,” she said.

“What is this doll, Annakey? What does it mean?”

Annakey opened her mouth to speak, and closed it. She looked around at her people. For the first time, Annakey knew what the doll meant, who the doll was.

She had made it a vessel for the injustice done her, the hurts and the bad things that had happened to her. Now Annakey knew that the doll kept coming back to her because she was still holding all the anger and hurts inside her. Deep down, she knew now, was anger that her father, and then her mother, had left her. Deep down, in places behind her heart, were hates for Renoa and for Areth, and for me. Powerful hates. And Annakey knew now that they would eat at her brain like a spider and at her stomach like a worm until she rid herself of them. She knew her anger and hate would eat at her heart, bleeding it to death. She knew that she would be powerless and blind and voiceless unless she could rid herself of her hate.

“I call it ‘Evil doll’,” Annakey said, so quietly I could scarcely hear her.

“Evil doll,” I said, echoing her words in barely a whisper. I knew it was true. As I looked at it, I saw it was me, me, me, and then, looking ashamed into the eyes of all of you, I saw that each one of you saw it as yourself.

Then Annakey spoke into the silence. “Look carefully, Dollmage. Look. The doll is... me.”

All of you murmured in agreement. “Yes,” you said, “yes.” You wanted it to be Annakey and not yourselves.”

“Annakey,” she said. “The doll’s name is ‘Annakey.’”

“So I must be Dollmage,” Renoa said. “Declare it now, before all.”

Annakey looked at Manal, and he looked back and smiled comfortingly. The crowd began to jabber again as Manal began to lead Annakey away.

“Wait, Annakey!” I called.

Annakey waited.

I took the Evil doll from her and held it up to all of you. “There is evil in all of us,” I said. “The way to overcoming the evil in us is to recognize it, to draw it out before our eyes and examine it in the light of day. With this doll, Annakey has done just that. This doll has power. This doll shows more power than any doll I have made in my lifetime. It... it will be a Sacred doll.”

As soon as I said this, as soon as I let go of my pride, God spoke to me and opened my eyes and let me see my art.

I looked slowly around at you villagers. You need not use your memory dolls to remember what was said so shortly ago. “Annakey’s mother, Vilsa, was my cousin. Likely there was magic in her blood.” I said it to myself, but all of you heard. Your every eye was upon me, waiting. “If I had been better, I should have named her my successor years before my husband died. Now, I will tell you about Annakey’s promise doll. For the first time I understand, and I am not afraid of it. The hole in her promise doll signifies the hole the world makes in her heart, through which she feels the weight of the world every day. She must bear the weight of it, as a Dollmage does. If her heart had not been strong, the world would have pulled through, ripping the flesh like an earring torn from the ear. She would have died from a broken heart. Just as her doll hangs crookedly, so will the world be bent slant-a-ways just a little, because of her heart. It will not allow the world to hang like a heavy stone. Her heart will rock it side to side, tip it up on its end.

“Furthermore, the reason her promise doll frowns is not because she is destined to be unhappy, and not because she is not the Dollmage. It is because her promise doll does not always get its way. She will have power over her own destiny, and her destiny is that she will be happy. She will be Dollmage.

“Annakey, in the eyes of all these witnesses, you I name my successor. Annakey, you are Dollmage.”