FicWad

But there were more pressing matters at the moment. She was going to be evicted in one month's time, and she didn't know if she could settle down again in another town. But there was a chance she could save herself and her shop . . . taking a deep breath, Beatrix set a determined smile on her face and marched back to her workshop.

Beatrix sat down at the thick, scarred work table in the small room, which was lit with mismatched gas lamps. Some of them had colored glass shades, throwing splashes of blue and yellow across the jumbled bins and crates containing doll making supplies. Feathers, fur, a rainbow of fabrics. Paint, dye, a forest of brushes. Lengths of ribbon. Endless tins and jars of little beads and bits of metal, a few blades for whittling, and stacked throughout the room, wood. A vast quantity of wood. An unbelievable quantity of wood.

She sat down and methodically cracked her knuckles, then pulled on a thin pair of canvas work gloves. An unfinished doll sat propped up against a large metal canister, its blank face staring down at the gouges in the work table. It was almost ready for paint – its body had been roughly carved and jointed, giving it the look of the wooden models artists used as a reference for proportions. Beatrix picked it up, cradling it gently in both hands, and checked the joints. A bit stiff, but that would work itself out with time and use. She rummaged around until she found a piece of rough sandpaper, then began to painstakingly smooth the doll’s limbs, body, and face. Each stroke seemed to bring more life to it, make it look like a human rather than a hunk of wood.

An hour and a half later, the doll’s surface was silk smooth. Beatrix pried open a tin of peach-colored paint and dipped a brush, then began to paint the doll in long, skilled strokes. Before long, the wood grain had vanished under a velvety imitation of skin. Then the face – two emerald eyes, with whispery thread eyelashes glued to the rims; a small, impish red mouth; rosy cheeks, blotted on with a small, soft sponge. Then came the hair, threaded through evenly spaced holes that Beatrix drilled into the scalp with a tiny awl. For this doll she chose coarse horse hair, dyed blinding scarlet.

Another hour and a half passed. Beatrix had fitted the wild-haired doll with clothes of jade green muslin. A little elf, with a cunning smile and feral eyes, red hair spilling into its miniature face. A perfect replica of a wood elf. The dollmaker held it at arm’s length, staring at it thoughtfully. Maybe . . .

“Animation,” she muttered under her breath. Something she had learned in her two years of magic education. Inanimate objects could not be given life – a soul could not be created, of course – but it could be animated, imprinted with a spell that gave it a certain set of movements; a skilled spellcaster could even give the object simple, repetitive speech.

“That’s it!” She jumped up from her chair and hugged the doll tightly, doing an awkward little dance of joy in the cramped workshop. “I’ll animate my dolls! Then no one will be able to resist buying you, my dears, and I can stay!” Her enthusiasm suddenly flickered out like an extinguished candle flame. “But . . . I don’t remember how . . .”

Well, something must have stuck, she thought stubbornly. Scooping up the doll, Beatrix went to her room, where she still had a few souvenirs of her short-lived time at The Academy.

The doll sat in front of her, propped against her nightstand, its crooked, wolfish grin now seeming almost mocking. She took a deep breath and placed her hands on the little toy, murmuring half-remembered spells under her breath.

CHHFOOOOOOM!

The doll promptly caught on fire. Beatrix let out a distressed little shriek and beat at it with a stray handkerchief she found on the floor, trying to put the flames out. When she did manage to rescue it, the doll was scorched too badly to be repainted; its arm fell off when she tried to pick it up.

“Oh, no. I’m sorry, little one. I’ll put your head on a different body, and you’ll be okay . . .” As if on cue, the head combusted. Panicked, Beatrix ran to the basin on her dresser and dunked the doll into the cool water. Sighing, she withdrew a very soggy, very damaged doll. “Okay . . . Maybe this won’t work out so easily.”

She continued to try. But, unlike a potter, who was only mildly disappointed when one of his pieces broke, and unlike a poet, who scrapped a verse if it didn’t flow, it broke her heart every time on of the dolls was inadvertently destroyed. A week passed, then three days. She had managed to get one doll to lift its arm about an inch before it burst into flames.

Frustrated, Beatrix dunked it in then bucket of water she now kept within arm’s reach and flopped on her bed, on the verge of angry tears. She was doing deep breathing exercises when the shop’s bell tinkled for the first time that day.

“Miss Gordon? Miss Gordon, it’s me. Leonard Flute. Are you there?”