I wanted to scream again.

“Breathe,” he told me.

And I remembered him saying that many, many times before. I remembered lying bound on the floor, facing eyes … green eyes, brown eyes, red eyes, cat eyes, black eyes, blue eyes.

“Breathe in her magic. Don’t let it be wasted.”

The Storyteller fixed her eyes on me. Milky eyes, old eyes again—her true eyes. I couldn’t look away. She was still alive, but only barely. Each breath was harder, slower. Her bloodstained hands lay limp across her chest.

Gently, the Magician lifted her face and placed her mouth close to my lips. I shrank back as far as I could, but the steel-like yarn held me tight. I felt the Storyteller’s breath, tasted it in my mouth.

And then I felt a rush of wind inside me.

It was magic, her magic, filling me.

She lay slack and still. Dead.

He began to cut her body. The knife slid through her flesh, her muscle, and her bone as if they were soft cheese. Blood didn’t drip where the knife cut. He severed each limb, and he placed each in its own box. He was methodical and silent, crying as he cut. Last, he lovingly carved out her eyes one by one and placed them in boxes.

He placed the rest of her in the final box and closed it. One by one, he strung the boxes on the colored string, and then he knelt next to me in the pool of blood. He leaned toward my lips. “Whisper sweet nothings to me,” he said.

He breathed in. Leaning back, he closed his eyes. He then picked up the needles, stained red with blood, and he chose a ball of yarn. Eyes still closed, he began to knit.

And I blacked out. But this time, it was the oblivion of darkness. There were no visions.

When I woke, the blood was gone, and the chalk had been erased. I again lay on the cot, bound in the Storyteller’s unbreakable yarn. I smelled of dried blood.

The Magician was seated across from me next to the unfinished doll. He was watching me.

“What … what am I?” I asked.

“You’re a doll,” the Magician said. “You were yarn and cloth and buttons and stitches. She made you to hold the magic we collected.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it.

“No person can hold another’s magic. Not for more than a few hours. It fades. But you can. You can hold it forever, or at least as long as you exist. You were to be our power source—our battery, so to speak—to draw on whenever we pleased. She made you that way. Creating you was her magic.”

It felt like truth, horrible and hideous.

“We filled you with transformation magic, plant magic, flight, weather … so many different kinds of magic.”

Except healing, I thought.

“Over the years, the magic changed you,” he said. “You absorbed more than merely power. You absorbed the essence, the life spirit, of those people, and you … woke. With the others, the new ones, we’ve been careful. Only a little power, only a few thoughts, only a few bits of soul. But with you … You were our first. We didn’t know.”

I remembered now. All of it. I was made from stolen bits of magic, comprised of bits of the thoughts and personalities of their victims. That’s what woke me up, made me alive—or at least lifelike.

I closed my eyes.

I’m not real, I thought. I am a patchwork doll made of leftover bits of the dead. The words repeated in my head. I’m not real. Not real. Not real. I am no one. I am nothing.

“She and I … we were together for a very long time. A very long time. I did not intend to trade her for you. But now … it’s you and me. We’re together now.” I heard his footsteps as he crossed the wagon, and I opened my eyes. He was kneeling next to me. I shrank away as far as I could. His lips didn’t touch mine, but he drew a breath close to me. “You may look human, but it’s only an illusion. It’s time for you to be what you truly are, what she and I created you to be.”

I felt my body change, softening inside and out. I saw my hair, which lay splayed across my cheek and the cot, thicken into yarn. I knew without a mirror that my face was cloth, my eyes were green marbles, and my mouth was embroidered. My body shrank and changed as my skin reverted to cloth.

“Welcome home,” the Magician said.

The doll laid on the bench and counted the boxes on the ribbon, the silk scarves, the potion bottles, and the bird skulls. And then she counted them again.

Across the wagon, the boy wouldn’t stop talking. “I think each skull is from a different kind of bird. You can see the differences in the shapes. Hooked bills … they have to be raptors. And the ones in the corner must be seed eaters. Sparrows and such. I think most are songbirds. Don’t know if that means he likes songbirds or hates them. He must have practiced killing birds and worked his way up to humans. You know, a common sign of a disturbed kid is torturing animals—it’s a sign he or she lacks empathy. You don’t lack empathy, Eve. When the Magician walked through the door, you hesitated. You’re more human than he is, not less.”

The boy was tied to a cot on the opposite side of the wagon. The doll was tied to a bench with the same steel-like yarn. The Magician was asleep—or feigning sleep—in his cot. She knew better than to trust he was truly asleep.

After the transformation, while the Magician slept, she’d used magic to sever the yarn and had tried to reach the boy. The Magician had caught her before she’d crossed the wagon, and the vision had taken her. The vision had been full of death and screams, and when she had woken, the Magician had hurt the boy.

Next time, she’d waited until she was certain his breathing was deep and even, and she’d used her magic to free the boy. Awakening, the Magician had broken the boy’s fingers.

She’d tried once more, changing the Magician into a tree, hardening his body with bark and sealing his face with leaves, but she’d lost consciousness before she could reach the boy. When she woke, it was five days later, and the boy’s face was streaked with blood and bruises. That was when she’d stopped thinking of him by name.

The Magician released the boy from his bindings twice a day, and the doll lay on her bench while the boy ate, drank, and relieved himself in a pot. The Magician never released the doll. But he did allow the boy to talk to her.

At first, the doll thought this was a kindness. But after a while, she changed her mind. It was a constant reminder that the boy was here because of her and that she couldn’t save him. He chattered fast, like a magpie. The doll found that if she didn’t focus on individual words, she could let his voice swirl around her like birdsong.

Every few days, the wagon would move. The boxes and skulls would sway as the wagon lurched forward, and she’d listen to the clatter and clang and clink of the bottles and bones. When the wagon reached its next destination, the Magician would entrap her and the boy in separate boxes and leave. Sometimes she slept, though as a doll she didn’t need to. Sometimes she’d lie awake, curled into a ball of cloth, and try not to think.

She’d be jolted awake when the Magician released her from the box, took her magic, and then trapped her again while he performed another show. When he returned, he’d release her, secure her to a bench, and talk for hours. He’d tell her about the new world outside and how much the audience had loved his show. The carnival had been dying, he said, but now that she’d returned, his shows were full of magic again and his tent was full of people. The other dolls had been too weak, too new, too empty, to give him what he needed, but she was marvelous! He’d be giddy for a while, even kind, and then he’d fall silent again.

After a while, he grew more ambitious. He wanted his shows to have more magic, instill more wonder, and inspire more awe, but there were limits to how much magic he could inhale and how long it would last. He was efficient in his magic use—a single breath could sustain him for multiple tricks—but it wasn’t enough for him. So he began to train her. He fed her lines to say, and he positioned her to hold his hat, his cloak, his Tarot cards. He choreographed how he would siphon magic from her mid-show, a subtle breath here and a brush past there, so the audience wouldn’t notice. He practiced with her in the confines of the wagon, and then he’d leave to conduct his shows without her. He returned between sets to breathe in her magic.