The Nutcracker Bleeds (7 page)

Further
down, on a raised pedestal that was comprised of books that were stacked to
form steps, two lovely dolls held long, colorful peacock feathers before the
throne, shielding the Sovereign from view.

The
soldier that had brought Anne into this makeshift castle walked forward
stiffly, stopping a safe distance before the monarch.

“Milady,”
the soldier addressed, stooping. “We found a girl who we are not sure is allied
with Her Majesty. We bring her to you, trusting you will know what should be
done.”

Anne
watched in bewilderment. Allied? What was
that
business about?

Before
she could think further on it, her bonds were cut, the tight band unwound. Anne
was pushed to the floor, forcing her to look reverent before the throne. She
raised her head to look on as the Lady was slowly revealed to her. When the
feathers were pulled back to expose the sacred ruler, Anne gasped.

Sitting
there on that throne–draped in an elaborate dress of blue and white, hair tied
back in a ribbon that was much too large and long–was Olivia.

“O–livia?”
Anne gasped, but she was promptly hit between the shoulder blades with the butt
of a wooden rifle.

“You’ll
not speak unless spoken too, filth!” a soldier informed her. “And you will
refer to the Lady Sovereign accordingly!”

Anne
watched the ruler tilt her head down, and when the girl’s eyes rested on her,
her brow furrowed considerably in annoyance.

“Anne!”
Olivia cried. “What are
you
doing here?”

Anne
opened her mouth, but wondered if it was alright to answer the question or not.
Would she catch another hit from the rifle? A shame; she was already being
trained like a dog in this new world.

“I’m
not quite sure,” Anne said finally, honestly. “I hoped you knew how we got this
way.”

“Nothing
that isn’t unpleasant needs an explanation,” the Lady, Olivia, replied. She
then added thoughtfully: “Yes, that’s a good one. Take that down, Theodore.”

The
nurse saw toys nodding to each other all around the room. Words to live by from
their Lady Sovereign. In the corner, the large bear turned slightly and drew a
small ‘6’ on the chalk board with a circle around it. Then he wrote out next to
it ‘
unpleasant: explanations; pleasant: no explanations
’. This fell
under what appeared to be a list of rules already started by the Lady,
including ‘
No stealing
’ and ‘
All allies of the rodents will be
executed
’. The woman with the grey eyes didn’t know what that last one
meant.

“Friend
or foe, Nanny Anne?” the Lady Sovereign asked.

“What?”
she asked, snapping to attention.

“Come,
come now. You can be honest. You should man up to your faults instead of
skittering away like a weasel.”

Again,
the toys nodded to one another. Anne saw now that a couple of them were taking
personal notes. The blonde woman wanted to shake her head at it all, and in
that moment she became quite defiant. She had been dealing with this girl for
several years. And Anne was neither man
nor
weasel.

“Friend,
of course,” she said reassuringly, knowing it to be the best response.

Olivia’s
blue eyes widened at the assertion as if her mind could not comprehend it.

“I
suppose you have no way of proving this?” she shot.

Anne
faltered. All eyes were on her. All the dark buttons and beady, painted eyes.
She could hardly concentrate.

“I
can be nothing else,” she said finally, heatedly. “I don’t know what else there
is!”

“Liar!”
the Lady proclaimed, standing. “You might just as well be a spy!” Olivia shook
her head. “You’ve always thought you could trick me, Anne.”

Clever
girl. The roles were reversed now and Anne understood the basis of this dream.
Olivia had once lived in Anne’s world and now Anne was in hers–the Lady
Sovereign’s kingdom. There were entirely different rules, and Anne had no idea
how to defend herself.

Olivia
stared at her for several moments. Then when Anne said nothing, she shook her
head once again.

“Imprison
her,” Olivia declared with a sigh, waving her hand dismissively.

“No!”
Anne protested loudly, shoving away one of the guns that had been thrust in her
direction.

“You
would try to prove your loyalty then?” Olivia asked with a taunting smile. “A
task?”

Anne
didn’t respond, clenching her hands that were becoming clammy. She pressed a
finger too tightly and the knuckle popped. What would she do? Of course, there
seemed only one obvious answer: accepting the task. Still, she hated that she
didn’t know what she might be getting herself into by this.

When
she was silent for too long, the soldiers moved to take hold of her again. She
held onto all of her self–restraint in order to keep herself from fighting back
this time. The lamp light flickered.

“Let
me prove my loyalty!” she cried out. “Give me a task. I’ll do whatever you
want, Lady Sovereign.”

Anne
nearly cringed as the words exited her mouth, but since she didn’t know what
imprisonment would entail, she decided she would rather avoid that–even though,
knowing Olivia, she would ask for something impossible.

The
Lady Sovereign put a small finger to her delicate lips, tilting her head away
from Anne.

“Hmmm…”
she considered, and Anne wondered briefly if the girl hadn’t already changed
her mind. “Though I suppose I can’t very well know that you won’t just run off
and tell the enemy whatever secrets you’ve uncovered as soon as I release you…”

Anne
was very near to losing her temper completely. She opened her mouth to loudly
insist that she knew
nothing
about this ‘enemy’ when a voice rose up
behind her.

“Let
her be in
my
charge.”

The
voice was unpleasant, an English glide that was running across glass shards. It
pitched high to low and back again within every few passing syllables.

Anne
turned her head and saw a familiar, leering grin set in a white face. A wild
suit made of black cloth. Curling shoes on extremely long feet. A hat that fell
behind him like dark rabbit ears. Dangling puppet strings. Sinister eyes. Anne
gasped.

The
jester doll.
Now fully as tall as she was.

He
wove his way past the soldiers with fluid movement, gripping her shoulders and
squeezing them slightly. Anne didn’t want him touching her, but was too shocked
to protest.

“I
shall make sure that she returns from her test and does not veer from me!” he
declared. “I will vouch for her character if only it pleases Her Ladyship.”

All
of the jester’s movements were exaggerated, including the bow and flourish he
threw in at the end. Anne stood appalled while Olivia was completely enamored.

The
Lady nodded. This proposal seemed satisfactory.

“That
will do, Quentin,” she bade, then directed her attention to the shocked nanny.
“Bring me the
cat’s eye
.”

“The…what?”
Anne asked, hardly hearing because her mind was trying to wrap around the ever
growing unpleasantness of her situation.

“That
will be all,” said the Lady Sovereign. “And fetch for her a pair of shoes, will
you? Can’t have her running about like that.”

Before
Anne could speak up, the feathers were lowered back in front of Olivia as a
dismissal.

It
wasn’t long before a female doll hurried in from the side, handing Anne a pair
of tall boots made out of black cloth. They were thick, and if nothing else,
they would keep her legs warm. She pulled them on.

“Come
now, Anne,” said the disagreeable tones of the jester puppet. He gripped her
shoulder once more and she cringed at his closeness. “The Lady will not wait
forever for the task to be completed.”

Anne
bit her lip and followed the puppet out of the book palace. She was hardly
making heads or tails of this and then Olivia had been thrown into the mix. By
this, her job–her very
life
–was threatened. Now, her path was laced with
a jester doll that grinned back at her largely with something going on within
his mind that she had no way of fathoming.

What
was going on? Who could be trusted? Did she even trust herself? Anne sighed
dejectedly, wrapping her arms around herself in a reassuring hug. It did little
to protect her from the cold.

1

In the
still of the freezing night, the lone sentinel moved through a passage between
the walls of the house. Painted boots pressed through dust that had settled in
the space like snow. Cobwebs decorated the braces that ran upward through the
wall until all that was visible transcended into darkness. He watched from
deep, slit sockets, through eyes that could not be seen. He had no joints
except at his shoulders, but he moved with the fluidity of a human. But he was
not
human.

He
was a nutcracker, made of decorated wood. Still, he searched.

Though
his face was not flesh, he could feel the long white hair brushing against it
as he walked. Adroit fingers stirred, anticipating an attack that he wasn’t
sure was coming. The metal ridges beneath his arms were simply
begging
for a skull to crack.

“You
knew I’d track you down eventually,” he whispered lowly in his native tongue
that few in this house would have understood. “It’s been a long time. Can you
taste the black bile? Do you fear death?”

He
stopped his calm pace to listen to all the sounds around him, and if he hadn’t
known better, he would have sworn he was the only living thing within the
confines of these walls.

“I
haven’t found my way around yet, but I
will
find you. I don’t know why
you hide. Are you man, or mouse?”

The
Lady Sovereign’s soldier didn’t even smirk at his own joke, but the humor was
not lost to him. He picked up his feet to move forward once again, memorizing
everything that he saw. There was still plenty of time on this night to track
down his adversary, and he was already certain that it would be fruitful.

Tonight,
there would be blood.

2

Beyond
the book fort, back in the free air of the room that stunk mildly of mothballs
and dust, eyes of red soldiers followed Anne as she passed. They looked on as
if batting one eyelash would give her the time she needed to destroy their
entire society–but in truth, they had no eyelashes at all. She moved along,
casting them scattered looks of annoyance. Her strange and terrifying new
companion waved to them as if on parade.

The
jester puppet that had volunteered to lead her had not given her a moment’s
peace since leaving. He went on and on, forming words with his horrible voice–
“You
may call me Jester, or Joker–or Quentin. Whichever you prefer.”
–that Anne
paid no attention to, recognizing them as the babblings of an idiot. She only
knew when he touched her; when he gripped her arm or squeezed her shoulders.
Then, she wanted to do anything she could to free herself.

Get
a hold on yourself, Anne
, she scolded inwardly.
Think about what’s at hand.
You have to complete a task in order to convince Olivia that she needs to stop
this madness and come with you. Yes, isn’t that how it works in dreams?

“So…do
you know exactly what we might be looking for?” she asked her companion,
interrupting whatever he was saying.

“Hm?”
he asked, dropping his arms from where they’d been waving about in the air as
he talked.

“This
‘cat’s eye’. Do you know where I might find it?”

They
stopped across the wooden floor where they’d been walking with seemingly no
destination. Anne still had her arms wrapped around herself as if she was cold,
but perhaps she actually thought that her own arms would keep herself
contained. In the quiet, she could hear the room creaking all around her.

“The
cat’s eye! Oh, of course! Everyone knows about that!”

He
started walking again, and Anne was left standing there behind him, wondering
what in Heaven’s name was wrong with this particular toy. The soldiers had seemed
competent enough–though soldiers only have their orders to guide them.

Perhaps
this jester was mad–or perhaps he had simply fallen to the curse of what it was
to be a fool.

“I’m
not exactly from around these parts,” Anne called to him, refusing to move on
until she made him understand.

“Oh
yes, I quite understand that,” the puppet barked. “You used to be much larger,
but things have changed accordingly! It was a good thing I found you before the
enemy though. They would have ripped your throat out proper!”

The
words made Anne touch her pale neck instantly. What sort of enemy was this? She
parted her lips to ask, but suddenly remembered waking up inside the strange
room that had been like a box–
was
a box. This jester placed claim on
putting her there, and she might have seen it fit to thank him if she’d not
been so stuck on the fact that she’d been naked when she’d awoken…

But
what can he tell about modesty? He’s only a doll.

“Since
you are made of flesh, I suppose that having your throat ripped out would be
most unpleasant,” the jester then commented thoughtfully, putting cloth fingers
supported by a wooden skeleton to his chin.

She
almost didn’t follow what he was saying, but then recalled that they’d been
discussing how the enemy surely would have mutilated her.

The
matter at hand, Anne
,
she reminded herself.

“What
I actually
meant
when I said that I wasn’t from around here was that I’m
not part of the ‘everyone’ who knows what the cat’s eye is.”

She
watched him a moment, wondering if it would sink into his cotton–threaded mind.
He stared at her blankly, his smile drooping until her meeting finally hit him.
He slapped his porcelain mask–face and there was a hard, smacking sound.

“Of
course! You have no idea what you’re looking for!”

Instead
of explaining, the puppet gripped her arm and jerked her into a run across the
large room. Other toys eyed them as they sped past, as they nearly ran into a
few of them. Anne didn’t want to be pulled, nor did she want to be led. She was
losing her mind. Where were they going again?

The
jester stopped his run abruptly near a bronze vent in the wall, and he’d been
pulling her along so fast that she plowed straight into him. She bounced off
the cloth of his back, stumbling back a few steps. The puppet shot a stretched
grin back at her and she cringed–both before they gave their attentions to the
wall grate. Warm air blew through it and teased a few loose strands of Anne’s
hair. The feeling was pleasant; she wanted to sleep.

She’d
never paid much attention to the intricate and curling designs within the
bronze grates of the house–or the amount of dust that was able to settle there,
blowing toward her in strings like ghostly arms. She saw the soldiers standing
on both sides of that vent, understanding finally what this was. It was a gate.
The house’s extensive ventilation shafts were the toys’ roadways. This gate was
the only way in or out of their little country.

“Passing
through,” the jester announced to them.

Anne
stood back, watching and trying to keep aware of everything around her. She
could hear whispering off to the side, though she couldn’t tell what those
voices were saying. The guards at the gate eyed her appraisingly with scowls.

“We
only prayed for the Lady Sovereign to be sent down to us,” one soldier muttered,
glowering in Anne’s direction. “Why was this one sent?”

“Hm?”
the unpleasant–looking puppet asked, turning back to glance at Anne as well.
Making no discovery, he then returned nothing to the guards but a shrug.

“Ah
well. I don’t suppose it’s any of my business,” the soldier said dismissively.
“Password?”

The
jester spent a few moments clearing his throat in an exaggerated fashion, as if
he were a diva preparing for opera. Anne rolled her eyes. Much too
overdramatic.

When
the dark puppet had satisfied himself after many grunts and gags, he said:
“Sing a song of six–pence.”

Both
soldiers reached down–simultaneously, as if run by clockwork–and gripped the
bottom screws on each side of the rectangular grate. Anne saw that the top two
had been taken out previously. After the bottom two were removed, white yarn
was used to pull the covering open from the wall on one side wide enough for
them to pass.

“Thank
you very much, captain,” the jester said, bowing deeply in an extravagant show
of respect.

“Just
go on,” the wooden soldier said, motioning them forward. “Hurry up.”

The
puppet escort turned to usher Anne through the gate, but she’d already moved
past him. Still, the destination was unknown, but she greatly wanted to get
this over with.

The
Lady’s court jester moved swiftly through the gate as it had already begun to
close. Once they were both through, it was locked tightly from the inside. The
travelers were tossed out from the safety of the Lady Sovereign’s protected
kingdom and out into unknown stretches of the Ellington house.

3

The
shafts were full of darkness. Tiny holes had been cut along it to bring in a
bit of light, but it was still much too dim for Anne’s human eyes. The only time
plenty of illumination fell into the passage was when they passed by a grate.
That wasn’t very often.

Anne
moved along with one hand pushed slightly out in front of her, all the while
hoping she wouldn’t find herself caught in the tangles of a spider’s web with
an arachnid as large as her head. So far, the passages seemed to have been
cleared well enough. Perhaps the toys had some sense after all.

She
walked on silently for a while, leading the way even though she had no idea
where they were going. The warm air made her tired and weary, but the odd toy
that trailed along behind her made her much too apprehensive to even consider
sleep.

Anne
sent a glance back at the jester then, seeing that he was walking along at a
casual pace, hands tucked behind his back as he examined the dark walls of the
shaft. Was he letting her move on along the wrong path? Possible. But honestly,
she simply didn’t want to ask for the truth. If she asked, she would be forced
to hear his terrible–sounding reply.

What
other choice is there?
she asked herself.
Wander these dark shafts
forever with no aim?

She
spun around, surprised to find him closer to her than he’d been a moment
before. He stopped when she looked at him, summoning a wicked grin. Despite the
warmth of the shaft, Anne felt cold.

“Where
are we going?” she demanded, giving up.

“Ah!”
he declared, clasping his hands. “Sooooo glad you asked!”

But
didn’t I ask earlier?
Anne wondered, but kept it to herself.

“The
Lady has requested that you bring her the cat’s eye, which is in fact a very
sacred relic to our enemy. I’ve been around, you might say, and I just happen
to know where the enemy lair is and where the relic is kept!”

In
any other case, she should have been happy to hear this information, but had
gotten stuck on something else along the way. All this talk of enemies was
truly getting to her. This whole society made no sense! How could it even
exist? Thoughts of inconsistency and the unexplainable swelled within until she
couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“What
an annoying sort of dream!” she cried, stomping her foot like a whining child.
“Apparently there is some sort of order here as pertains to who is an enemy and
who is not. No one will tell me what it is!”

Her
outburst echoed briefly down the shaft and into the darkness.

“Well…have
you asked?” the jester inquired warily.

She
groaned in violent protest. The puppet grinned nervously and wrung his hands.
His eyes darted back and forth, and if he was capable of sweat, he might have
wiped his brow.

“Perhaps
you just need to sit down…”

“Don’t
treat me like a child!” she screamed, pointing a harsh finger toward his face.

Don’t
treat me like Olivia!

He
winced at her forceful tone, and Anne realized she might have gone on a tad too
much. She managed to calm herself down a bit, lowering her finger and gritting
her teeth to speak through them.

“I
just want to know who these ‘enemies’ are.”

She
clenched her hands together and took a deep breath. The jester watched her and
shook his head disappointedly.

“No
need to get so out of sorts, Anne,” he scolded, tossing up defensive hands.
“All you had to do was
ask
.”

The
woman crossed her arms in front of her, offering an annoyed glare.

“Ever
since we have been a nation, we have had enemies,” the puppet explained, pacing
about like a general before a line of troops. “Since the beginning, they tried
to conquer us, but the Lady Sovereign protected us. And now, she has been sent
to us! To guide us through the trials ahead!”

Anne
stared at him, just about to open her mouth and declare that he hadn’t answered
her question when he began to approach, wearing his leering grin.