Conjured

I told them every moment that I could remember. Every word spoken. Every sound heard. Everything I felt. As I talked, I remembered more and more until the memories were waves inside me, pounding at my skin, wanting to burst out. I let them—and out tumbled more memories, memories that weren’t even mine. The freshest were the memories of the Storyteller.

It was the Storyteller who had figured out how to drain magic from someone’s last dying breath. It was she who had crafted a doll that could hold that magic—it faded inside a human, but it stayed within her special doll. It was the Magician who had discovered how to siphon the magic from the doll into himself to use as he pleased. And it was he who had adapted the boxes into traps.

Together, they had joined the carnival and handpicked their victims—they targeted the young, the strong, and the unique magic users in each world. Together, the Magician and the Storyteller lured or trapped or chased them through forests or towns or fields and brought them to the wagon. Together, they drew the chalk symbols on the floor. Together, they killed.

At first they’d been devastated by guilt, and they had tried to find another way. But nothing else worked. And so, they’d learned to kill without remorse, and they’d learned that teenagers had the strongest magic.

I was with them for every death. Standing on the witness stand with the eyes of the families of the dead on me, I remembered them all.

I told them about how the Storyteller had recognized that I was becoming aware, how at first she’d fostered it but then she’d feared it. A doll who knew their secrets, who couldn’t be controlled, who was filled with bits and pieces of the magic and the memories and the knowledge of the people who had died … They’d built into me the magical equivalent of a failsafe—a trigger that caused me to lose consciousness whenever I used magic—but that only made them safe from my magic. They weren’t safe from my knowledge. I knew what they’d done, and I was beginning to think and, worse, to feel. The Storyteller resolved to make new dolls, replacements that wouldn’t have so much magic inside them and would never come alive. But she’d also loved me. She’d created me. I was hers and his, their sort-of child. So she’d set me free, hoping I’d never return, hoping to replace me with new, weaker dolls.

I was lost for a long time after that, going from world to world in a blur, until Malcolm found me. He’d been investigating this case for some time already and was looking for someone, or something, like me who could lead him to the killer. He saw me use magic that matched those of the victims, and he realized what I was—a receptacle for stolen power. He brought me here, initiated the surgeries, taught me how to function in a world beyond the carnival …

One of the lawyers interrupted me and submitted into evidence a series of recordings: videos of when I’d first arrived at the agency, of the surgeries, of the training. With the judge’s permission, he projected them onto a screen at the front of the courtroom.

Standing on the witness stand, I watched myself, stiff and halting, a doll who drifted in and out of rationality. On the screen, I saw Malcolm guide me into his office, where I sat in a leather chair, motionless and unblinking. I heard Aunt Nicki’s voice, thin through the speakers—she must have been holding the video camera. She called me Pinocchio, pronounced me a freaky thing, and told Malcolm if he wanted a pet, cats were much more appealing. But he knelt before me, looked into my green marble eyes and talked to me. Even then, he treated me as if I were a person.

He was with me as I was wheeled into the first of the surgeries. I reached out my hand to hold his, and I turned my cloth face to look at him with green-glass marble eyes, trusting him. The camera focused on our hands, my misshapen cloth fingers in his strong human ones.

Projected on the screen, the surgeries were a ghastly amalgam of medicine and magic. Veins were threaded inside me, skin was grafted onto me, and human eyes were transplanted onto my half-cloth, half-tattered-skin face—brown eyes in place of green glass. I forced myself to watch—each image causing memories to rise inside me, like bile rising in my throat.

Later, there was another video of me in Malcolm’s office. This time, I looked human but was still very doll-like in my movements, lurching through the office like a strangely detailed windup toy. He had to teach me how to eat, to pee, to sleep. As a doll, I’d done none of that.

Watching the videos, I remembered all of it. My memories, this time.

After it ended, I talked again. I told them everything from meeting Zach and working in the library to having lunch in the pizza parlor with Aidan, Topher, and Victoria. I omitted only their offer and their accusations against the agency, and the lawyer did not ask.