The Puppetmaster's Apprentice Read online

  “Well, I can’t complain,” I say sharply. “Papa needs me. We’ll come out all right. We always do.”

  Bran brushes his fingers against my arm in solidarity and my cheeks catch flame. That’s been happening a lot lately. Then he sneaks out of the wagon, just as skillfully as he came in.

  Bran’s words sting, but we can’t afford to balk at the Margrave’s requests. A year ago, when my father received the first grand commission for an order of life-size marionettes, our little shop was barely scraping by. My father is an artisan of the highest degree, but his beautifully carved dolls, toys and puppets aren’t quite enough to keep us out of patched socks and worn boots. We’ve always had just enough. Papa’s always been adamant that we stick to our craft, our calling to produce clever and delightful work regardless of how much money it brings us. So when orders started pouring in from Wolfspire Hall, we weren’t in a position to refuse. Gold is gold.

  Determined not to let the duke’s presence rattle me, I wipe the sweat from my hands and return to work. This time, I choose a common hearth tale about a greedy baker who refuses to sell his own bread. The baker gorges himself until he literally bursts from his gluttony—everyone’s favorite part. A tale without the slightest hint of magic or royal mockery, that no one could object to, be they peasant girl or duke.

  “I will be careful,” I confide to a grandmotherly marionette as I pluck her from the trunk. I find comfort in her softly bent back and wizened, nut-brown face. “But you and I know that careful is not the same as silent, is it, old one?”

  “Indeed,” she whispers back.

  CHAPTER 2

  HOME. THE PLACE WHERE I AWOKE TO A NEW BEGINNING, startled to find myself in sudden possession of a body and a beating heart and something else altogether foreign—a father. Inside Curio the air is spiced with glue and lacquer, the floor littered with curls of wood shavings that multiply no matter how often I sweep up.

  You can’t help but admire our shelves, stacked and layered like the best kind of birthday cake, overflowing with toys. Jaunty little wooden men with sticks glued to their backs to make them dance look down upon a menagerie of animals, each more splendid than the next. There are snarling tigers, mysterious elephants, galloping horses and the great beasts of the sea: the monstrous whale and fearsome squid. Intricate wooden puzzles are tucked into baskets, each piece smoothed to perfection, their mysteries ready to confound minds for many a pleasant evening. Brigades of tiny soldiers line up in rows, waiting for a battle-thirsty master to put them to work. My stomach sinks when I see the soldiers now; I wish the Margrave desired toy soldiers instead of the larger-than-life ones he demands.

  And all around, strung from the ceiling or sitting precariously on perches, hangs the pinnacle of his work: the marionettes for which my father is known far and wide. Waiting to spring to action are elegantly coiffed ladies, bashful gentlemen, brash sailors and sweet little shepherdesses. Some are as small as my hand, others as hefty as the wooden stool behind the counter. Creatures from every old hearth tale and fantastical childhood dream wait, poised for a player’s hands to give them voice and motion. I love the marionettes best of all.

  My father is a born maker. From the moment he first picked up a piece of wood and a knife as a young boy, Gephardt Leiter has been making the things he loves come to life. That love is evident in every nook and cranny of Curio.

  Several of the marionettes are my own creations. My father began training me as his apprentice as soon as he saw I had an inclination toward the work, once I proved myself capable of more than just sweeping up sawdust and sharpening tools. He taught me how to select the best pieces of wood, how to trace shapes onto a rough board of linden or halsa and then, bit by bit, how to transform those rough outlines into curves that speak of movement and expression. My tastes run toward the wild and wondrous: fairy folk and gnomes, lumbering giants and fleet-footed elves, creatures that haunt my daydreams and tiptoe around my nights. After almost seven years, I still find the process utterly thrilling.

  If they knew my past, some might think it odd that I am so drawn to carving up the very thing I used to be. But woodworking is my native tongue; I relish the grain against my hands and dust beneath my fingernails, the satisfaction of polishing a piece until it gleams. It connects me with the deepest part of myself, that secret history only Papa is privy to.

  Ducking through a curtain, I find him in the workshop, the very heart of Curio. As he sands away at a soldier’s rigid torso, his spectacles ride dangerously low on his bulbous nose, and his shaggy gray hair brushes against the rims. I set down the paints I picked up on my way back from the marktplatz.

  “Was there enough, Pirouette?”

  “Yes, Papa. Just barely. I think we’re depleting the chromatist’s supply.”

  “Well, after nearly ninety-some soldiers-worth, I shouldn’t wonder,” he mutters, tossing a scrap into a jumbled corner behind his workbench.

  Back here, every table is overrun with tools and stubs of dark grease pencil. Pots of glue drip slowly and dust motes sail the air, thick as fog. I stop to run my fingers across an emerging face, staring skyward as the iron jaws of a vise lovingly grip its skull.

  With his big shoulders hunched to his ears, Papa concentrates on refining the chest of the soldier so that one of Tailor Soren’s uniforms will fit snugly as a second skin. The Margrave’s orders were very specific: the marionettes are to be as tall as a man, each outfitted with a uniform the tailor would supply. And the faces must be unique, no two alike. I’ve spent the last year toiling at Papa’s side on untold numbers of eyebrows, noses and lips, until my fingertips were stained and calloused. We’ve delivered dozens of the soldiers to the Margrave’s estate and just received an order for more.

  I sit down on an empty stool and poke at an abandoned, half-eaten apple. If I didn’t leave him bits of food scattered about, Papa would forget to eat; he’s been so focused on meeting the Margrave’s absurd deadlines.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, Poppet?”

  “Why does the Margrave really want the soldiers? Just when I think we’re done, a new order arrives.”

  My father halts the sanding block in his hands, nudging his spectacles up with a dirty shirtsleeve. I see the dazed look of a man getting far too little sleep.

  “I don’t know, Piro. I’ve pondered on it much myself. The young duke is still an avid collector of marionettes, so the steward says. He must grow restless, cooped up there as he’s always been. Perhaps they are his only source of amusement. I’m sure the Margrave placates the lad any way that he can.

  “Of course, it’s reckoned by some that the Margrave might prefer to name our Emmitt as heir, though I doubt we’ll ever see that come to pass. I can’t imagine the young duke would ever take kindly to his father’s bastard assuming his rightful seat. Though we all know who would make the better Margrave.” He muffles the last bit under his breath and resumes sanding.

  I am no stranger to the history of the Margrave’s two sons. Emmitt Schulze, the clockmaker, is a good friend and long-standing member of the Maker’s Guild, and the closest I’ve come to having a brother. He and his mother, Anke, have spent many an hour at our hearth.

  Years before the birth of the young duke in Wolfspire Hall, the Margrave forced a dalliance with Anke, a pretty widow who’d inherited the clock shop from her late husband. Though he never officially declared his first son, the Margrave never concealed Emmitt’s existence—much to the ire of his fragile Margravina back at home.

  “Whatever the reason for these soldiers, Poppet, it’s not our concern. We must be grateful for the work, for it’s buying you a new pair of boots and a dress, and me a much-needed saw blade. And then I intend to set some money aside for you. Seems like we never get caught up enough to put anything aside for tomorrow. And,” he pauses to blow a fresh pile of dust from the soldier’s body, “speaking of tomorrow, we must go gather more wood.”

  I want to let my father sink back into his work, but I worry what
will become of us after the Margrave’s commissions. I can’t keep it in, can’t help but give voice to the fear that’s been trickling into my mind for weeks.

  “Do you think, Papa, that the Margrave or the duke somehow knows? About me?”

  Papa jolts, dropping the sanding block on the soldier’s stomach. On his face, buried beneath the exhaustion and determination, I see something I have been desperately trying not to see these past months: denial laced with fear.

  “Surely not, Piro.” He lowers his voice to a terse whisper. “No one else in all of Tavia knows about the blue moon’s magic except me and you. And you have told no one?”

  “Never!”

  “Then, it’s impossible,” he says resolutely, returning to the soldier.

  “But … haven’t you wondered, Papa, about the timing of it all?”

  Until recently, I’d assumed the Margrave was hardly aware we existed. He’d kept to himself for years, rarely entering village life to do more than wave a gloved hand in the square at yearly proclamations or parade the duke around in a carriage. There was little contact with the Maker’s Guild and the common folk, beyond the odd bit of tailoring and tinkering or the occasional request of a puppet for his son.

  “It’s been nearly seven years since the last blue moon. Do you think—”

  “Impossible.” My father growls low, ending any hope of further conversation. “Speak of it no more. You know better, Piro! Now, fetch me that spool of wire, I must attach these arms.”

  Pressing my lips into a tight line, I hunt for the spool and find it tipped against an empty jar of paint. I hand it over without speaking. Papa can be brusque, but he’s never brushed me off like this before. This is new. Along with the tremors in his hands and the drooping bend of his back. Each soldier built seems to sap a little more of his strength.

  I decide I will try his method: push down my reservations by working harder. All will be well, if we can just finish these orders on time. I sit on my worn stool with my small back against his mountainous one and dip a brush into some black lacquer. Though I’m weary of soldiers, it’s always a thrill to watch wooden eyes open for the first time, the fine fringe of eyelashes growing under my brush.

  When I begin to paint the lips, using the Margrave’s red, the soldier interrupts my concentration. Like the trees, marionette voices drift from their wooden cores to my ears, speaking in their faint echoes.

  “We know who you are,” he mutters darkly. “Sister. Carved of the same vein and forged in secret. We remember.”

  A thick drop of red escapes my brush and smudges against the corner of the soldier’s mouth, pasting him with a leering grin. Hurriedly, I grab a rag and wipe it away. But the damage is done, the stain too lurid for the rag to erase. I glare at the head, not yet attached to its body. Picking up my own sanding block, I take pleasure in roughly grinding the paint away. In my haste, the lips are gouged, leaving this soldier scarred.

  No matter. After all, the Margrave requested that the soldiers appear real. None of us escape becoming real without a few scars.

  CHAPTER 3

  “PIROUETTE! WAIT UP!” AN EAGER VOICE RISES ABOVE the din of wagon wheels on the cobblestones.

  Just near home, Bran catches up to me. I can’t help but smile at the sight of him. His face can scarcely be seen, buried beneath a mountainous armload of fabric. He grins at me sideways from behind the rich-hued bolts piled in his arms.

  “I see it was another good day for the theatrical arts,” he says, referencing the pots of fresh paint swinging in my arms after another market day.

  “I don’t think you can see anything of the sort, mostly because I don’t see how you can see anything at all.” I snort, watching as Bran’s shins meet an apple seller’s crate. He stumbles but catches himself, managing to keep hold of the bundle in his arms. As the tailor’s son and chief delivery boy of The Golden Needle, Bran Soren could almost navigate the village sight unseen. Almost.

  “You coming to the next Guild meeting?”

  I nod as we stop below a sign with CURIO etched in winding black script.

  “Planning on it.”

  Bran’s grin crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Save you a seat?”

  “Same as always.”

  “Always.” He winks conspiratorially and steps backwards into The Golden Needle without looking, the door swinging open to the tinkle of bells and a happy shriek from one of his younger sisters.

  “Bran’s back, Papa!”

  The Golden Needle nestles next to Curio in a long, leaning row of workshops that house their owners in narrow second floor quarters. The tailor, Benito Soren, moved in just two years ago, when I turned sixteen. He and his wife Gita opened The Golden Needle in the sunny space next door and suddenly a whole batch of Sorens, eight in total, overflowed like bunting from every window and door. This included Bran, the oldest, whose tiny attic room shares a wall with mine.

  I made the discovery one day when I opened my little cupboard beneath the rafters and saw strange objects mingling with my own. Inside lay a wooden box with a “B” carved upon the lid, a worn measuring tape used for learning the tailor’s trade, and oddities like shiny rocks rubbed smooth, a bird’s egg, a pocket watch whose face had been rearranged, an assortment of tiny tools and a bag of coins. A note, hastily scrawled on a scrap of receipt, read, “I see that this is a safe place for secrets. I’ll keep mine with yours, if you don’t mind. - Bran Soren”

  I did mind—and I told the new boy next door as much when I reached in and poked through what I previously thought was the back of the cupboard. It swung open to the foreign space of his room. He was crouched directly on the other side, as though he’d been waiting for me to open the door.

  “I do mind, you know,” I insisted, trying to dampen my curiosity at being afforded a window into a stranger’s room. It was the very mirror of mine, with a sloping ceiling and a small window resting above wooden slat floors. His bed was draped in a soft gray spread and I could see a pair of smart leather boots tipped over in its shadow.

  “Why?” asked the boy from the other side of the cupboard shelves.

  “Because this cupboard is mine,” I said defensively.

  “It seems to me that it is ours. It opens for both of us. Seems like we should share it,” he said confidently. “It is a cupboard with two doors.”

  I bristled. “I was here first.”

  “But not really,” he replied in a steady voice that made me want to linger in front of the cupboard, though I initially contemplated slamming it shut in his face. “Someone else was here long before us. Haven’t you ever wondered who they were?”

  “They?”

  “The person who built the cupboard. Or persons. Clearly they built it like this for a reason. I wonder if it was an old spinster, shut up in the attic, kept hidden by a vicious master to spin golden threads. Perhaps this cupboard was her only means of sending secret messages to the outside world, through the lonely housewife who took pity on her from next door.”

  “What?” I said, taken aback.

  “Or maybe it was built by a pirate, retired here after a life on the sea, a man now sadly bed-bound, his body ravaged by drink and overwork. He would give away his gold to his many illegitimate children next door, coin by coin, administered daily through the cupboard so that he might never have to touch them and thereby acknowledge all that he had squandered and lost.”

  I stared at the boy through the cupboard, mesmerized by his words and enthralling dreaminess. I had never imagined that my cupboard had other lives before me. Or that it would open a door to another world: Bran’s world.

  From that night on, I couldn’t close the cupboard door on him. After agreeing upon a secret knock to signal to one another, we began a series of hushed conversations through the cupboard. We would talk about our work, our lessons, or the mundane trifles of our day, sometimes traipsing into the more uncertain territory of the past and our dreams for the future. Despite our closeness, Bran didn’t know—and must neve
r know—the truth about me. No one could.

  Tonight, the cupboard is open while I lie on the floor, my head upon my pillow, bare feet tucked up against the wall where it slopes steeply into the roof. All I can see of Bran through the open shelves are his hands, fluidly stitching the long seam of a soldier’s stiff linen shirt, his needle moving like miniature flashes of lightning against a white sky. I love his hands—always so agile and sure. My own often feel at odds with themselves unless they have a chisel or a piece of wood beneath them.

  “You really should tell them,” I plead for the thousandth time, my voice drifting through the narrow space of the cupboard, where it meets Bran’s finely shaped ears and disappears in the light of his room.

  A sigh escapes through to my side.

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “You’ve been saying soon for months.”

  “Soon always comes quicker than we think, Pirouette.”

  “You have to give your parents time. To prepare.”

  “I know,” Bran says a little too roughly. “Emmitt says there’s no rush. In the meantime, I’ve sworn him to secrecy about my plans to apprentice with him. I’ll tell them when I’m ready.”

  It’s no secret that Tailor Soren hopes to pass The Golden Needle on to his eldest son. But Bran spends every moment he can spare at Schulze’s clock shop, reveling in the stable purr of ticking clocks and marching gears. Though lately, Emmitt spends most of his waking hours aloft in the high gables of the rathaus, charged by the Margrave with repairing the massive, two-storied glockenspiel gracing the town hall. The clockmaker has become Bran’s hero. His new choice of vocation will hit his parents hard, but with time, I’m sure they will come to accept it. Bran is not.

  Tired of trying to change his mind, I pluck a tiny, wooden dancer from the shelf in the cupboard. She’s the first toy the puppetmaster made for me, a little ballerina whose legs dangle with impossibly straight posture, her pointed toes shod in painted slippers lacing to her knees. Prima Ballerina, I named her then, delighted with this gift from the warm, gentle man who said I could call him father. Dark brown hair, the same shade as my own, dashes across her forehead, topped off by a wooden bead for a bun. I love her still.