Conjured

The room was filled with strangers. As I passed by the bailiffs, I recognized three faces in the audience: Aidan, Victoria, and Topher. Aidan wore an elaborate and exotic suit that made him look even more handsome. He had an entourage around him of men and women in uniform, which made his offer to me seem all the more real. These were the people from his government, the ones who wanted me to work for them, who wanted to use me as their weapon. Near them, Victoria was dressed in a floor-length gown, and her hair was arranged in dreadlocks that imitated snakes. They slithered over her shoulders as she watched me walk down the long aisle from the door to the front of the courtroom. Beside her, Topher was also in formal dress, a uniform-like suit with an orange sun on his chest. A man next to him carried a flag with the same symbol. None of them gave any hint that they knew me, but Topher looked at Aidan, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. I didn’t know what the exchange meant.

Zach was also in the audience. He had agents on either side of him. I couldn’t see well enough over the heads of the audience to tell whether or not he was bound. He was as far from me as possible, near an emergency exit door.

At the front, the jury box was full of men and women, not all human, in gray and black suits. The judge was a man with a neatly trimmed beard.

The witness stand was empty, waiting for me.

The Magician was in silver shackles at the front of the courtroom. He wore an orange jumpsuit. Without his tattered suit and hat, he looked wrong. I wanted to place a hat on his head, just so he’d look like he should. This way, he looked like an ordinary man, and that only made me feel more unnatural with my cloth skin, yarn hair, and marble eyes.

As I passed by him, I felt his eyes on me. Malcolm led me to the witness stand and then stepped back. I climbed the steps alone. It was only three steps, but my cotton feet felt heavy. I looked at the judge. His skin was tinged green, and the flaps of gills were visible beneath the wiry curls of his beard. The gills were closed. His expression was unreadable.

I looked at Malcolm. He held his expression still, and I knew that meant there were thoughts and emotions held in check underneath, though I didn’t know what they were. Outside the courtroom, in the moments before my entrance, Lou had lectured me about the importance of remembering everything. Remember what you heard. Remember what you saw. Remember where you were. Malcolm had only said one thing: “Remember who you have become.”

He didn’t speak now. He nodded to the judge, and then he left me at the witness stand and took a seat in the audience in a row of marshals. I noticed that Aunt Nicki wasn’t there. But the courtroom was packed with people. As I looked over them, I felt shivers crawl over my cloth skin. I didn’t know them, but I recognized bits of them. That man, he had the same eyes as the boy with tattoos. The woman with the tears streaking her cheeks had the same face as the girl with silvery hair. I saw a little boy with diamonds in his dreadlocks. Another woman, older, had antlers that budded from her gray curls. She sat between Victoria and a man with snakelike skin. These were their families, the families of the dead. I wondered what they saw when they looked at me, a living doll in a dress of jewels and feathers.

I couldn’t look at them anymore. Looking up at the iron chandeliers, I wished I were elsewhere. I wished Zach and I had run away from the marshals, found a mirror, and kept running. But it was too late for running now.

The judge was speaking. “… the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

I met the Magician’s eyes with my green marble eyes.

Then I laid my cloth hand on a book and said, “I swear.”

A lawyer rose. “Let’s start at the beginning …”

The beginning. What was the beginning? Was it when the Storyteller made me? Was it when I was first filled with magic? Was it when I began to hear, began to see, began to talk, began to think, began to feel? Or was it when I left the wagon and left the carnival behind? Was it when Malcolm found me? Was it when the doctors gave me a new body? Or when I walked into the house on Hall Avenue, believing I was an ordinary girl? Or when I kissed Zach and defied the marshals? Or was it when I was a bird in the wallpaper, suddenly realizing that I could choose what I did, said, felt, or thought? Or later, when I chose not to be what the Magician meant for me to be and decided to be real instead?

I testified for three days, with breaks for the judge and jury to eat, pee, and sleep. I didn’t need to do any of these things. On the breaks, I simply waited in a room beside the courtroom until it was time for the questions to begin again. Sometimes I repeated things; sometimes I backtracked. A woman with a shirt buttoned to her neck typed every word I said. She had four arms. She typed quickly and never looked at me. I didn’t stop talking.