Role

Chapter 2

Daddy's marionettes are beautiful. Their faces look like ours would if the
elder gods weren't so clumsy.

He made them all from wood. I was his first creation of flesh. Mommy helped a
little, but then she left me with him. She is free somewhere. She is running
fast through fields and gulping air, smelling moss and leaves in faraway
forests and lying in the grass watching the sunlight filter blood-orange
through her eyelids.

Meanwhile Daddy just carves in Evermoon. The marionettes are just dead little
things. Beautiful dead little things. He doesn't give them life. He doesn't
make them dance. He doesn't know how or want to know how. He gave me life and
that was more than enough for him. The little wooden ones, he just sells
them.

A strange man came by Daddy's stand and looked angry. They had an argument
and Daddy threatened the man with a knife. The man walked away but kept
looking back, looking mad.

At night I woke up tied to my bed and Daddy screamed. Then he went quiet and
the strange man dragged him into the room. He tied ropes around him and
hoisted him up to the rafters and tied it off on the leg of my bed. He made
Daddy into a marionette. Dancing, dangling, swinging. Still face, like wood.
Glass eyes staring down at me. Wad of paper in his mouth. Arms reaching,
tracing circles around my face.

When the guards found me they said I was safe because that kind of criminal
doesn't go after children. It was business. I asked what business was and
they just kept talking to each other. They gave me one of Daddy's marionettes
and put me in another room. They told me they'd find me a new family or maybe
just put me to work.

I played in my new room. I couldn't make Daddy move again, but I made my
marionette move. I love how it dances.

It makes me really happy.

"I know."

How do you know?

"Of course I know. You're pulling my strings after all."