It was only a game. Roderick would swear himself blind later insisting on this. Neither he nor Tommy had meant it to turn out like this. Caitlyn was always so sure on her feet, especially ever since she got her silk-and-china doll for her seventh birthday a few weeks ago. The doll was correctly considered to be the most expensive and luxurious toy in the entire town.

And now it was face down in a dirty puddle, said face smashed into nothingness against a smooth cobblestone.

Caitlyn was wailing. Roderick was counting the number of times and ways he was going to be thrashed when their parents’ found out. Tommy, eternally fussy and practical even in the face of disaster, was carefully picking up the remains of the doll’s face.

“You – killed – my dolly!!” screamed Caitlyn, making a run for the steps that led to her house. Roderick almost shrieked himself and managed to grab her around the waist.

“Nn – no – oh god!” He yelled. “It’s okay, Caitlyn, it’s alright!”

“You – killed – my – dolly!!”

“I – can – stop kicking – I can fix your dolly!”

Caitlyn instantly stilled, although Roderick half-wished she had continued kicking, because in their position he couldn’t kick himself.

“You can fix..?” she repeated suspiciously. Roderick tried a winning smile.

“Oh, ah, yes? Absolutely!” he assured her, carefully setting her down on the ground. Although he and Tommy were ten and Caitlyn was seven, the height difference between them was mournfully sparse.

“How?” demanded Caitlyn. Absent-mindedly she accepted her doll when it was pushed into her arms by a world-weary Tommy. She clutched it, and when she fingered the edge of the doll’s now concave face, her eyes filled with tears again. Roderick thought fast.

“The toy shop!” he exclaimed.

“The old man retired, and his son only sells them; doesn’t know whit about fixing toys,” Tommy vetoed.

“The Marionette Players!”

“Left town a week ago.” Tommy’s deadpan tone cut through any misconceptions Roderick had about a fair and just god.

Seeing Caitlyn begin to tear up again broke some kind of barrier inside of Roderick, and in desperation his mouth overtook his motor functions and threw out the last life-line he had.

“We – we could go to the, the puppet…maker..?”

His excited declaration faded with dawning horror as he and the other two children realised what he had just said. His breath hitched, and Caitlyn looked as though she were about to burst into tears once more.

“But…” she whispered, doll clutched tightly in her arms, shattered face turned inwards against her heart. “We can’t…the puppet maker…she eats people..! She eats people’s faces…”

“Why…why’d you have to go and say that, idiot?” Tommy muttered. Roderick swallowed; his was breath shaky. Clearly, no-one liked the avenue opened up by his suggestion. And it was with good reason, too. The Puppet Maker was famous in the town for all kinds of horrible things – body-snatching, alive or dead; bodies left hanging from her ceiling; cutting up trespassers to use as puppet model pieces…no-one except the bravest and the stupidest wandered down the dark side alley. Not even animals, especially not children. It was said her alley and house was smothered in hidden traps and poisons. The very day she had moved into her small house, the entire side street had cleared out. And no-one ever went back there again, unless they really, really, really had to.

Eyeing the inordinately expensive doll, and imagining the combined ferocity of three mothers and fathers when they found out what had happened to Caitlyn’s doll, and just who’s fault it was…Roderick was beginning to think there wasn’t much choice.

Not that he liked it. No, he didn’t like it one bit. But the only place he could think of in the town that would be able and willing to fix the doll and also be marginally less terrifying than the Puppet Maker herself were the Marionette Players who travelled around the country. But, as Tommy had so aptly pointed out, they had left a week ago. And they had been seen around the Puppet Maker’s area. So…

“Dammit!” exclaimed Roderick, using the worst curse he knew, the one his father sometimes used in the house when he thought no-one was listening. Strangely, the nervous energy expelled a tiny bit when he swore. So he did it again, and a third time, and on the fourth he turned on his heel and begin walking.

“Where are you going?” cried Caitlyn. Roderick heard a clink behind him and he knew, and was so grateful, that Tommy had picked up every last chip of china doll face and was carefully carrying it with him.

“She might not eat our faces,” he replied, marching forward and trying not to think too much, because if he thought too much about his direction, he knew he’d stop walking and probably never start up again. “But I know I’ll get a wallop if I go home and our parents’ find your doll like that.” Distantly he heard Caitlyn begin to sniffle. Or maybe it was Tommy. Or maybe it was him. Everything seemed very far off at that moment, as though his entire world was concentrated solely on putting one foot in front of the other and not collapsing in fear.

He was the oldest, after all.
Sometimes he really hated that.




It was the middle of the day, so Roderick couldn’t quite understand why all the light was gone. It was as though, the further they went inside the infamous side alley, the light stole away, so gradually that none of the children had noticed until they realised they were all blinking furiously to see the path ahead of them. Caitlyn began making small noises, her doll clutched to her chest like a shield. Roderick led the way with a grim determination, like he was leading a funeral march.

“Roderick,” said Tommy in a low voice. “What if…you know. This isn’t such a good idea.”

“I know that,” whispered Roderick. “But –”

Something big and black and noisy came out of no-where, banging around the alley and flapping madly against their faces, filling the alley with the smell of decay. After they had screamed the dust out of the walls, Roderick managed to scare away the gigantic crow with his jacket.

“She wants our eyes!” cried Caitlyn. “She sends the birds out to collect eyes!”

“That’s stupid, Caitlyn, our eyes are too small,” said Tommy firmly, although Roderick could tell that, like him, he was close to being sick from fright. Around them were thick dirty brick walls, jutting out rafters, tattered pieces of black cloth hanging from windows and floating in an invisible breeze. He walked a little further, and then a little more. Hearing the slow patter of feet behind him gave him the tiniest bit of strength that finally propelled him over a fallen piece of wood and around a corner.

That was when they saw the bodies, hung from the middle rafter; bodies swathed in black cloth and feet dangling in the air.

Roderick opened his mouth to scream, but he didn’t think any noise came out. Caitlyn had lungs enough for two and Tommy was helping. There was movement to their right and Roderick looked, unwilling but unable not to look.

A long, thin hand held another body by the throat while the other hand hooked a rope around the neck and hung it around her shoulders. A hood cloaked the face and the shadowed hollow turned to them while it was hanging the body, it looked at them and then said, in a low and deadly voice;

“Shut up.”

The strength and absurdity of the statement put a stopper in Caitlyn and Tommy’s screams. All three of their mouths clapped shut, the rest of their bodies frozen. Finally, after what seemed an age, the figure finished hooking the body and turned to them.

“Children,” she – it was a she, oh, there was no doubt now – said with some ferocity. “Ugh, children. What do you want?” She glanced at the point their gazes were directed – the bodies – and sighed. She walked over and flicked off one of the robes of black cloth, revealing a shiny dark wooden frame.

“They’re puppets, I’m the Puppet Maker,” she said, carefully repositioning the cloth. She turned back to them and pushed back her hood.

The Puppet Maker was tall, but not as tall as his mother, and the realisation made Roderick almost giddy. She was skinny like a starved crow and had a thick trail of black hair tied in lumps over each shoulder. She was wearing strange black clothes – pants and a vest, like a man but different, somehow, the make was different. Her face…it was her face that terrified him, it was her face that would haunt him in nightmares to come, it was her face that would leap out of every shadow he saw from that moment onwards…

Tommy made a choked sound – Roderick thought he made one too. Caitlyn’s mouth was open in a silent scream.

The Puppet Maker’s face was a mess of demonic whorls and lines, dark blackish-purple marks placed over eyes and lips and mouth in a seemingly random fashion. It looked like something inhuman out of a –

“It’s puppeteering make-up,” she said, sounding irritated. “What d’you want?”

Caitlyn began to cry, silently, though, as though noise might disturb the animal in front of her. The Puppet Maker sighed noisily and relaxed the load off of her back. The human body the three children had thought it was turned out to be made of wood.

A puppet. Just a puppet. Like the others. They were all just puppets.

Roderick could have giggled, but he didn’t think it was a good idea, considering the circumstances.

And those other bodies? Hanging from jutting beams? Freshly varnished puppets, waiting to dry. Oh god.

Roderick wanted to swear, but he only knew ‘dammit’, and it didn’t seem to fit the moment. In Tommy’s hands the doll’s face china went ‘clink’, so very, very softly. Roderick glanced at him and saw a stoic face but a nose that was running wildly out of control.

The dark lines above the Puppet Maker’s eyebrows quirked, and she bent down on her knees to them.

“What have you got there?” she asked. Up close she still didn’t smell human; she smelled like a puppet, varnish, wood, paint and the make-up was a strange thick smell that was completely new to him. No part of her skin was visible; she was wearing something flesh coloured underneath the vest. She could have been made of wood for all he knew.

She held out her hand, but none of them moved. Sighing again, she delicately reached forward and prised the doll from Caitlyn’s hands. Her face scrunched up in distaste when she saw the decrepit state it was it.

Caitlyn finally made a noise. “My dolly got killed,” she said in a teeny voice, barely audible. Her eyes were filled with tears that would at any moment spill over uncontrollably.

The Puppet Master glanced at Caitlyn, her face literally a smooth mask. Roderick wondered if it would have made things better if the woman had tried to smile comfortingly…no, probably not. But he was becoming less and less sure that they were all going to be carried off into the Puppet Maker’s lair and made into puppets for a wandering Marionette Show.

“She’s not dead,” the Puppet Maker replied. “They don’t die until you forget their names and abandon them. She’s just broken.” She fixed a dark eye on Tommy and Roderick. “And I think I can guess how she broke,” she added dryly, holding out her hand. Tommy carefully let each chunk and fleck of china fall until finally long fingers closed and dipped into a black pocket. They withdrew from the pocket holding something thin and white.

“Hold out your hand, boy,” she ordered Tommy, and, balancing the doll on her knees, she wrapped a bandage around the middle of his palm, where a jagged edge had cut the skin without him realising. She stood quickly when she had finished.

“Two things…” she said, glancing between the boys. “Don’t chase girls, don’t make them cry or fall. And you, girl, if you’re being chased and you don’t like it, turn around and chase them back. Hit them, or something. Bad things happen because of cowardice, and if bad things happen even when you’re brave, at least you tried.”

“My dolly…” faltered Caitlyn.

“Come back in a week,” replied the Puppet Maker shortly, turning back into her house and closing the door behind her.

Outside only the deep breathing of the three children could be heard. And if the puppets hanging like condemned men from rafters and odd beams clacked together and sounded a little bit like laughter, well, who could blame an over-active imagination?

Roderick coughed. “She said a week, right?”

“Right,” answered Tommy.

“Alright then, let’s go,” he said, and turned around. He stopped walking when he realised Caitlyn was lingering.

“Will dolly be safe, d’y’think?” she asked tentatively. Roderick sighed.

“She’s a dolly in house of puppets, Caitlyn,” he said. “There’s no place on earth safer for a doll. We’ll come back in a week, and you’ll see.”

Caitlyn nodded and with considerably less hesitation than they entered with, they left the side alley as quickly as they could.


Behind them the wind blew through the alley and a chorus of laughter filled the air, although it was more likely just the sound of wheels and gears and wood creaking gently in unison. No-one really knew much about the Puppet Maker’s puppets, after all…




A week later they went back, and quite without ceremony, the Puppet Maker handed back the perfectly repaired doll and then shut the door again without a word. But Roderick noticed Caitlyn thoughtfully fingering the doll’s face sometimes when she thought no-one was watching. He noticed her change, very slowly and almost imperceptibly, as she suddenly and steadfastly ignored other girls and boys her age, besides him and Tommy, and began to work almost obsessively with cloth and sowing. He noticed, and could hazard a guess why, she refused a new doll for her next birthday from her wealthy uncle, and continued to refuse a new doll until she was too old to be offered dolls. Then she began refusing new dresses, and started making her own clothes.

He had found her one day with a small doll spread out in pieces on the floor around her, and he had asked her what she was doing.

“Figuring it out,” she had replied. “I want to know how to fix a person.”

His eyes had strayed to the porcelain doll on her desk, still pristine after so many years. She followed his gaze.

“She fixed my doll,” said Caitlyn, as though that explained all of her behaviour. Then she turned back to the fragmented wooden doll and began putting it back together, piece by piece. Roderick left soon after, once the silence was certain it would not reveal anything more about his friend, and saw the beginnings of a new, tiny embroidered dress on the foot of her bed. Caitlyn was miles ahead of any fully grown woman when it came to stitching. She used to be miles behind.

Roderick knew then that something had happened between the Puppet Maker and Caitlyn back at that alley; something he had missed, probably because it hadn’t been something precious of his that had been broken and seemed impossible to fix. He knew it was important to her, and so he never commented on the smell of wood and varnish and something else odd and thick that always surrounded her, or at how she examined the face of her doll almost by reflex when she was thinking about something. He and Tommy always received carvings for gifts, sometimes even when there was no occasion.

He noticed, as the years went by and they all grew up and older, as Caitlyn disappeared some afternoons and no-one could say what had happened to her. He noticed how her handicrafts had vastly improved, at how the little carvings grew joints and fresh anatomy and realism, and also how she would never hear a bad word said in her presence about the reclusive Puppet Maker. He, and Tommy, noticed these things when no-one else did, and so weren’t at all surprised when Caitlyn, on her seventeenth birthday, broke her arranged betrothal and took up a trade instead.

The trade in question involved black clothing, face paint, and puppets. And when she left, her doll went with her.