The Puppeteer's Apprentice by D. Anne Love

Author:D. Anne Love
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Goose Woman’s Tale

The coin box was empty, and they had long since used the last of the flour and salt. As May warmed into June, all that remained of their meager stores was a tin of barley, half a jar of honey, and a few wormy apples. The puppeteer said there was money to be made at the fair in Reedham, but that was still a fortnight away.

They were camped in a wild glade thick with birch and oak trees. Nearby was a narrow stream that provided fresh water and the occasional trout for their supper. Mouse had grown adept at snaring game. Usually, it was a hare she roasted on the spit or made into soup flavored with wild roots, but once she trapped a pheasant, and the puppeteer had been so pleased, she danced around the fire. Mouse gathered the wild berries ripening along the stream, and they ate them by the handful.

Mouse practiced her carving on a small block of ash wood kept in her pocket and continued working with the puppets. After their chores were finished, the puppeteer would bring out the sorcerer or the princess or Sir Alfred.

“Make him kneel,” she might say. And then she would watch, head tilted to one side in concentration, hands on her hips, while Mouse moved the strings ever so carefully till the knight was resting gracefully on one knee.

“Show me sadness,” said the puppeteer one afternoon while they were practicing the story of King Arthur and Guinevere. Mouse pulled the wire. Bridget’s head drooped.

“That will not do at all,” the puppeteer said. “Our princess looks more sleepy than sad. Try again.”

Mouse pulled another string to make the puppet’s hands cover her eyes.

“Think, Mouse!” the puppeteer directed. “Think of the worst thing you can possibly imagine. Then show me how it would make you feel, were it actually to happen.”

Mouse considered this. She had been sad to say good-bye to Alice, sad when Claire and Simon had left her in York, and sadder still when the puppeteer had left her on the road to Marlingford. But the worst thing? That was not hard to imagine. If she lost her puppeteer, if something happened to her puppets, she could not live. The thought of it opened up a black hole inside her.

She moved Bridget’s strings till the princess’s shoulders sagged and the puppet collapsed inward with a grief that seemed to fill the very air around them.

“Just so,” the puppeteer murmured. “Very good, Mouse. That is precisely how it feels.”

She shook her head as if to dislodge an unwanted thought. “Enough. We must repair our dragon’s tail. It is beginning to look most undragonly.”

“Yes,” Mouse said, setting Bridget carefully inside the trunk. “He said as much to me only yestermorn.”

The puppeteer laughed. “It is a good thing no one can hear us in this wood, for they would surely think us mad, speaking of our puppets as though they live.”

“They are alive to me,” Mouse said simply.

“Yes. And it pleases me that you love them so.

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