The Dollmage

Vilsa was silent and still. Everyone stared at her, sorry for her but glad it had not happened to them. There were a few murmurs of sympathy, and a few people whispering all the reasons they thought Vilsa may have deserved what had happened. It is important to make people deserve what happens to them. If bad things can happen for no apparent reason, then bad things might happen to innocent us.

Vilsa then turned toward her fellow villagers, head held high, and did an unthinkable thing. Grasping her promise doll, she made a promise.

“I promise,” she said clearly, “that my child will be happy.”

The crowd fell utterly silent.

I was not sorry anymore. How dare she challenge my art! If I put a frown on her daughter’s doll, then frown she would.

“Fool!” I said to Vilsa before the whole village. “You make a promise for another’s life, and so it must come out of your own doll. If your daughter is happy, it will be because you are not.”

Vilsa bent her head and walked away.

My mother once told me that every tear I cause another to cry would be gathered by God, that one day he would boil the tears to their hottest point and drip them upon me one by one. When I was very young, I was cautious. As a youth, however, I knew that what she said was a lie, and I caused many tears to fall. In my old age, I know it is true. The single tear Vilsa shed as she walked proudly back to her house drips hot down my heart even now.

Chapter 3

Inscription on the Lore doll:

The mother of our people was not in

the mountains two months, but ten.

And not with maids only; but men.

Now, we are a people born into many promises. We promise to keep our promises, and we promise not to lie. That is enough for one life. But there are other promises! We promise to be the best friend of one other person in the world, and to be on his or her side whenever there is a side to be on. That is why, my people, if you will not free Annakey’s hands, I command you as Dollmage to let Manal give water to his Annakey, his best friend. Put down your rock, Manal. No one will hurt her until I have done speaking. It is the law. No? You will not? To look at Areth, I see that once again you are wise. Furthermore, the villagers do not soften their gaze, even to remember Annakey as an infant. How can they forget their hate when all around them is the consequence of her broken promise? Since the beginning we have been warned: One broken promise can a people break. Now we see it is true. Though I tell the story with great wit and talent, it may be required of you both to die this day

But you, Dantu, and you, Tawm, I see you have thrown your rocks away. Do you have the courage to loosen the ropes at Annakey’s wrists? There. There. A little longer and she would have lost her hands. Why this comforts me, I do not know. What matters hands if she is dead?

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, our other promises. We promise to feed our child and care for it until it becomes independent enough to be ungrateful. We promise to be inoffensive to others, which means we keep our bodies washed, our yards kept, our children quiet, and our outhouses downhill. These alone are enough promises to fill a whole day, every day. But there is more. We promise to bring peace and safety to our people by living wisely, working hard, and helping our neighbors. We promise to care for our old folk and to be faithful to our mates.

Our promises are what separate us from the robber people that infest the mountains around us. They beat and abuse their children, abandon the weak and old, leave their mates for any other that may come along, and love to live off the labor of others. Without the promise, we would be nothing more than they. It is what keeps us strong as a people. To break a promise is to bring weakness, sadness, even destruction to our people.

So you see why to grasp ones promise doll and make a promise before a congregation is a rash thing. To make a promise such as the one Vilsa made then was a danger.

It went according to my word. As if there were only so much happiness to be found in the world, all the happiness drained out of Vilsa’s life after that day so that it might be given to her daughter. She was more silent than before, more watchful for her husband who every day did not return.Year after year she did her work soberly so that I could not find fault. She also did the work of others in exchange for repairs to be done on her house. Year after year, she would stop in the middle of feeding the chickens or slopping the hog or weeding the garden, and she would stand and look past the grain fields to the deep and sunless woodland, and past the woodland to the uplands where only furze and bramble grew, until finally her eye would search the snowline. Never did she see a man come. Her eyes would go back to her work, dull with always searching and never seeing.