The Puppetmaster's Apprentice Read online

  THE

  PUPPETMASTER’S

  APPRENTICE

  LISA DESELM

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  For my daughters,

  I love you, splinters and all. Always.

  PROLOGUE

  I’VE NEVER HAD A MOTHER, BUT I’VE ALWAYS HAD THE TREES. I hear them still: the joy of the beech bursting with buds, the oak’s relief at shedding fall’s heavy fortune, the anticipation of winter’s slumber with rugged skins bared to the frost. Their voices rise and fall on every twist of the wind, comforting, yet stern when danger draws near.

  Once, a widower walked among them, hunting for fresh wood. The puppetmaster liked to take his time, feeling the bark for smoothness, measuring width for usefulness. Assessing the health of each trunk, he only culled trees who had lived a good life already. He left behind those too young, or too warped by the strange forces of nature.

  At night, as he was taking his rest in a small clearing, a woman appeared at the rim of his firelight. She was old, old beyond old—with skin more leather than flesh. Uncertain whether she was human or a force of nature itself, the puppetmaster invited her to share the warmth of his fire. She accepted wordlessly, her legs folding to the ground as spryly as a child’s. He offered her his supper, though he hadn’t much. At last, sated by the meal, the woman began to speak.

  “You are a solitary man, Gephardt.”

  “Yes, milady.”

  She knew his name.

  “Your heart longs for a companion, a treasure beyond what you can make for yourself.”

  The old crone’s words pierced his heart. The puppetmaster was alone in the world, save for his creations. His parents were gone; his wife had died in childbirth years before, and the babe with her. He so longed for a companion, for a real family. That searing loneliness was his greatest pain.

  “Listen well. Soon, the blue moon, the rarest of all moons, will be on the rise,” the woman prophesied, her voice skittery as a spider’s. “At its waxing, offer up one of your creations, and by the moonlight they will be given breath. Choose wisely who to awaken.

  “First, make a cut; finger or hand will do. With a drop of your own blood, mark for the creature a new heart. By the moon’s power, the wood will become a living thing again, born of the earth and your blood. But to complete the change, you must say the words.”

  “Words, milady?” Gephardt stuttered, shocked at these wild suggestions. Such spells were outlawed, forbidden generations ago. Once, men and women sought to raise power from the earth, to bring wooden carvings to life or to entreat a heartbeat from sculpted clay. That age ended when a royal conjurer’s disastrous spell enabled a king to achieve the opposite: he turned the living to wood. Thanks to his blistering temper, more than a few wooden wives, sons, and stewards were lost to the burn pile. His regime finished in ruin, followed by a ruling heralded far and wide against elemental spells.

  In an attempt to safeguard the future of the monarchy, all books containing such magic spells were either sentenced to be kept under lock and key or flagrantly destroyed. The latter applied to those still living with magic words tucked within the pages of their memories. Anyone suspected of witchery or sorcery was hunted down and added to the smoking pyres aflame around the royal city. The old, elemental spells were lost, their legacy now mere whispered warnings from mothers’ lips. Or so the puppetmaster had thought.

  “These are the blue moon’s words,” the woman rasped. “Take heed now, for there’s always a cost, and I’ll not repeat myself.

  “Bitter moon and solemn blue,

  blood of earth and sap and dew,

  wake a second life anew.”

  “Wait, please! What—”

  She silenced him by snapping a twig-like finger to her lips. The woman stood and dusted her tattered skirts, which disintegrated toward her gnarled feet. Then she left, disappearing into the trunk of a broad oak.

  Stunned, Gephardt doused his fire and made his way home. He feared he’d imagined the whole thing. Had his loneliness driven him to madness? If anyone had seen what he’d seen, or heard those words, they were in danger of being pitched straight into a burn pile. And if he were to go so far as to make a living creature using such magic? If discovered, the creature would be burned as an abomination.

  Yet in the weeks that followed, he obeyed the old woman, scorned the law and made a girl: the daughter he and his wife had longed for. Selecting pieces of the finest linden, he forsook constructing anything else and worked tirelessly on her. He crafted her legs so that they would be sturdy but elegant, the shoulders even and strong. She emerged from the raw, a girl of about eleven years—the same as his own wee one, had she lived.

  When it came to her face, the puppetmaster swore his chisel was guided by another hand, the tools already knowing the way to the features sleeping in the wood. The dark hair, the slope of her nose, the wide eyes; she was always there, he claimed, waiting to be set free.

  When the rare blue moon rose, Gephardt remained sequestered at home, waiting for it to peak in power, fearful of returning to the forest to perform the rite in the open. He closed the shop early, bolting the doors and shuttering the windows. He paced wildly, wearing grooves in the planked floors. The marionette had been finished for two days. There was nothing else to do but look at her and hope, however outrageous and pitiful that seemed.

  He’d asked the old tailor next door to sew him a dress. A new pair of shoes were fashioned by the cobbler. Such requests were not unusual; the puppetmaster often relied on his fellow artisans to complete his work with their finery.

  When the moon peaked that fateful night, it was full and lavishly blue, the same shade as the cerulean in the puppetmaster’s paint pots. Its light was a living, ghostly thing. He waited until the rays illuminated his far workshop window—the only one he dared crack open.

  He held the marionette gently, bathed in moonbeams, as he knelt on the floor. From his pocket he drew a small blade, a long-ago gift from his own father. With a whispered prayer and a deep slice across a scarred fingertip, he painted a heart in the place where a new one might grow.

  Then, he uttered the old woman’s clandestine words, the marionette’s first lullaby. “Bitter moon and solemn blue …”

  In a rush of joy and heartbreak, with a ripping breath that filled the marionette from the inside out, the wooden limbs became warm flesh. The cleverly fashioned joints on the arms and legs germinated from pins and wire to bones and sinew. A human heart hummed in the small chest. Gephardt’s blood spilled through newly strung veins, flooding the marionette’s cheeks and prodding her eyelids open. In wonderment, the puppetmaster and girl looked one another in the eyes for the first time.

  In those first moments, I was, perhaps, still more wood than girl. It’s hard to say. Since a tree cannot move about, the only way for it to travel is to stand through time, the pages of its story pressed deeper inside with each passing year. I keep the memories of these first moments tightly press
ed within. There are days when I wonder if you were to crack me open, could you still count my rings, each significant moment sealed in a new layer to protect it from the elements?

  My father claims I attempted to stand, but my wobbly legs stumbled in a willowy twirl few dancers would have been graceful enough to manage. Like a leaf fluttering to the forest floor. Then came the puppetmaster’s hearty laugh and the words that never fail to bring a flood of those early memories rushing back.

  “And so it was that I discovered your name: Pirouette.”

  CHAPTER 1

  TAVIA’S MARKTPLATZ IS NEARLY FULL BY THE TIME I HITCH Burl to our custom-fitted theater wagon and find an unoccupied corner of the square. Merchant tables and tents unfurl in a patchwork of every kind of ware, both common and exotic, that a Tavian might desire. Burl stands placidly, a bastion of calm among the shrieks and high-pitched chatter of those bargaining their way to fuller stomachs and emptier purses.

  “A puppet’s pull goes far beyond its strings,” Papa often reminds me. “Marionettes aren’t just for children. A story—a good one—will grip any audience, young or old.”

  I desperately hope the audience will be gripped today. I’m already sweating and hungry as I set up our little stage. The ridgepoles snap neatly together, and over them I hang a tailored shade to hide myself and the marionettes, sleeping in their trunk.

  I lower the side panel like a drawbridge, revealing rich velvet curtains dangling at the ready. The stage is eye-level for children, though as my father anticipated, adults linger in the back of the crowd to watch, too—a puppet show in the marktplatz is always a welcome diversion. Afterwards, the generous will show their appreciation by placing coins on a narrow ledge bordering the stage. On a good day, I scoop up francs by the handful before returning home. I need today to be one of those days—Papa needs more paint. Again.

  Inside the wagon, spools of canvas swing from the ceiling, backgrounds that I can lower and change depending on the story. My fingers stroll through the scenes, each one bearing the evidence of my father’s skilled brushstrokes. I select one with a familiar-looking tower in the distance. The crest on the tower’s banner is indistinguishable, but the flaming red color means only one thing to me: The Margrave.

  Tavia isn’t a particularly large territory. There’s the sprawling village and surrounding farms, then the inner district where the Maker’s Guild and other merchants live and work, all wrapped around the central marktplatz. The Margrave operates as overseer, ruling from his estate at Wolfspire Hall thanks to an ancient appointment of the von Eidle family bloodline. He answers only to King Nicos II, who rules our lands from a city I’ve only ever heard whispers of—Elinbruk. The king and his rules are so far from here they may as well not exist. Not for us. The Margrave is king here.

  With the stage set, I close the curtains ceremoniously, giving a sly wink to the gaggle of children already gathering at the theater’s edge. Anticipation builds in me each time I perform, like steam swirling in a teakettle. I settle myself on a three-legged stool and slide open the locks of the trunk with a satisfying chink.

  The marionettes I perform with are some of our best, each about the length of my arm, painstakingly carved and painted and fitted with costumes that rival any larger stage. Carefully, I lift each performer from the silk-lined depths of their resting place. I hang the ones I’ll need later from hooks to keep their strings from becoming tangled.

  I select a marionette I carved myself a few years ago, a peasant girl. She’s rough compared to the work I can do now, but the unrefined quality of her face suits her. Tassels of dark yarn escape the kerchief around her head and a smattering of freckles dance across her nose. I choose her companion for my opening scene: a gray donkey whose head bobs on its own string.

  It’s taken years of patient study to become a puppetmaster’s apprentice, to learn how to work with wood to produce the pieces I see in my mind’s eye. But putting on a show with marionettes, that comes as easy as breathing. I can almost feel myself slipping through the wooden controls, sliding down the strings into the armature. Voices bubble up out of their faces and, just like that, a story is born.

  “Masters and mistresses, girls and boys, I offer for your amusement a tale that is sure to charm and delight. A story that will make you laugh and weep. A myth that will stir your very soul—”

  “Oh, get on with it, ya laggard!” harps a man’s voice from beyond the curtain. “Before we’re all as old and gray as Wolfspire’s stones!”

  I pause and grin. Without fail, there’s a heckler in every crowd.

  While my audience cheers, I quickly draw the curtains closed. It’s important to never let them see the mess of props I must set to rights before the next show. “Hide the hands behind the strings,” as my father would say.

  According to the sound of coins filling the wagon ledge, my tale hit its mark. When I reach out to gather them up, I can’t ignore small pairs of hungry eyes tracking my penny francs like slices of hot bread. I motion to two hollow-looking faces to join me at the back of the wagon and tuck a few coins into each open palm. Squealing, the children run, slipping away into the crowd. The stand of maple trees at the edge of the marktplatz murmurs approvingly, their gold-tinged leaves rattling like treasure in a tinker’s coat.

  As I’m resetting the stage and carefully adjusting my puppets, four sharp taps sound at the wagon door.

  “Pirouette? It’s me.”

  Bran’s voice makes my pulse pick up. I unlatch the door, surprised to see his brown eyes flitting anxiously across the marktplatz. Instead of greeting me, he climbs right inside the wagon and snaps the door shut behind him. Though it’s only built for one puppeteer, there’s room enough for us both to crouch in the warm, dim interior if we squeeze together closely. I don’t mind.

  “You had quite an audience going there, Piro.”

  “Indeed.” I smile, shaking the bag of coins.

  Bran’s handsome face is not smiling. “They’re still out there.”

  “The little beggars?”

  “No. The duke and his guards,” he says pointedly. “And that big man who’s always shadowing the Margrave—the one who does all his dirty work.” He leans in, talking low. “I made a delivery and saw you had the whole square enraptured, including the duke. Von Eidle had such a strange look on his face. Like a man seeing the sun for the first time. I don’t like it.”

  “The duke is here?”

  That’s one downside of puppeteering; I can’t see the audience while I perform. I’ve only ever seen the Margrave’s son, Duke Laszlo von Eidle, from afar. I glimpsed him once riding in the carriage procession beside his father, a pale shadow of a boy in a man’s body. As a child, the duke was sickly, never going anywhere without a nurse and a rasping cough. Some sort of lung-wasting disease, they said, the same that killed his mother. The Margrave kept his son confined on their castle estate, bringing in tutors and the best doctors while keeping the rest of Tavia at bay. Though that was years ago, he’s still widely assumed to be too delicate to rub shoulders with commoners. The duke is rarely seen beyond Wolfspire Hall’s gates, let alone watching marionette shows at the marktplatz.

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, Bran! Father is so busy and I must buy more paint—” I whisper. “The wooden soldiers for the Margrave are bleeding us dry.”

  “I know, Piro.”

  A tight, stubborn shame spreads across my face, which was so triumphant just moments ago. “It was just a theatrical.”

  “I know,” Bran says sympathetically. “But you need to take care, Piro. Especially if you’re going to tell stories like that last one,” he adds, eyebrows raised.

  It’s true that my new story could easily be interpreted as satire; a selfish king’s rage turns him into a wolf, and in the end the wolf is struck down by the peasant girl’s well-aimed arrow. The crowd loved it.

  Bran pets the wolf’s shaggy gray head from atop a pile of marionettes. “It’s not as if the wolf didn’t deserve his end. It w
as a masterful tale.” He smirks. “But you know as well as I, the wrong ears listening …”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promise, pulling the wolf from his grasp.

  Shaken, I peer through the small space between the top of the stage and the curtain. If I tilt my head at just the right angle, I have a narrow view of the crowd. I make out a familiar dark shape across the square: Baldrik, the Margrave’s steward, hovering around the duke like a crow on a carcass. The duke, a fair-haired man with a red crest on his jacket, surveys the sights from in front of a posse of guards. He strolls the square, looking like a nobleman who knows his place: far above the rest of us. When his gaze turns to my wagon and its audience, though he can’t possibly see me, his eyes lock onto it with a strange air of possession. My stomach twists at the unwelcome sight.

  “The Margrave still keeping you hard at it?” Bran prods me with an elbow.

  “Still working on a new order,” I mumble, watching the duke’s men strut about. “Lately, it’s always wooden soldiers. More and more soldiers. Papa wears his fingers to the bone from dawn to dusk. Sometimes I think if I have to crack open another pot of von Eidle red, I’m going to scream.”

  A line of worry stitches itself above Bran’s nose. It only serves to make his face more distracting.

  “It’s business, Bran. What else can we do?” I sigh. “You and the tailor aren’t turning down requests for the marionettes’ uniforms, are you? What is it to us if the ruler of Tavia desires a collection of wooden soldiers?”

  “It’s beyond me to wonder why a grown man would want life-size toys. But I don’t like the way he’s driving you and Gep into the ground. You already work with your nose to your chisel entirely too much, Pirouette.”

  I shrug. “We’re makers. It’s what we do. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

  “Unless it’s squeezing your throat.”