Him. Of course.
He was a wooden puppet. Some kind of marionette, Marra thought, the kind that traveling performers used to entertain very young children. He had the carved hands and the clacking jaw, the articulated arms and legs. But the only string on him was a black cord that looped Miss Margaret’s throat, and the puppet held it in one hand.
He moved as they watched. It was a slow, considered movement, like a tortoise turning its head in the sun, and it set Marra’s nerves crawling.
“Oh, interesting,” said Agnes in a tone of professional curiosity. “That’s a curse-child, isn’t it?”
The puppet scowled. Bits of wood dragged down across his face. He yanked tightly on the string. The woman nodded, her eyes large and alarmed and clearly begging her visitors not to say more.
“Oh dear! I’m sorry,” said Agnes. “No offense meant. That was insensitive of me, wasn’t it?” She smiled gently at the woman, as if having a horrible piece of living wood on your shoulder was a perfectly normal sort of thing.
The puppet grudgingly loosened the string. Miss Margaret’s throat worked as she swallowed.
“Don’t worry,” said Agnes. “These things happen. I won’ttttt…”
Marra was close enough to see the color suddenly drain out of her face, as if she were a bottle that had been upended. Agnes blinked several times, looking very surprised. Then she said, eyes straight ahead, “Please take the chick, Marra. If I fall on it, I might hurt it.”
Marra snatched the handful of fluff out of Agnes’s hands, alarmed by the mortal calm in the godmother’s voice.
“Good,” said Agnes, and fainted.
She collapsed against the wall, rattling the boards, and then slid down into a neat heap. Fenris let out an oath and tried to grab her, but between Marra and Miss Margaret, there was no room in the hallway for another person, let alone one of his size. The chick peeped. Miss Margaret’s eyes were enormous.
“What did you do?!” cried Marra. “What did that thing do to her?”
“Nothing … nothing … I can’t … he can’t…” said the landlady, and then the cord at her throat was yanked tight and she choked.
“It’s not the curse-child,” said the dust-wife. “All of you, get out of the way! It’s the magic. She poured it right out to keep the blessing going and pushed herself right to fainting, the little fool.”
She looked up at Miss Margaret, ignoring the puppet entirely. “Take us to the rooms. She needs rest and tea and quiet.”
Miss Margaret nodded. The puppet’s eyes were fixed on the brown hen, whose red comb brushed the ceiling atop the staff. The hen glared down at the puppet and snapped her beak.
Their landlady turned slowly. The puppet shifted, keeping his balance. She led them up the stairs, the dust-wife following, Fenris behind her with Agnes in his arms, Bonedog at his heels, while Marra carried the chick and waited for the puppet to launch himself at someone’s face.
He didn’t. They climbed the stairs to a whitewashed hallway lined with doors. Miss Margaret stopped in front of one and gestured inside, eyes downcast. They crowded in.
“The next one, too,” rasped the landlady, opening another door. “There is one meal … one m-meal—” The puppet yanked on the cord. She stopped, putting a hand to her throat, and gave Marra a pleading look.
“One meal included?” asked Marra. Listen to how normal I sound. I am having a normal conversation with a woman being strangled by a wooden puppet and we are all acting as if the important thing is meals being included with the price of the room.
The landlady nodded and fled. Marra inched farther into the room and closed the door. Fenris had arranged Agnes on one of the beds and stepped back out of the way. The dust-wife sat on the other bed, managing to look both annoyed and concerned.
“We can’t stay here!” hissed Marra. “That puppet thing—you can’t tell me it won’t do something awful!”
“It’s done something awful to the landlady, certainly,” said the dust-wife. “But it won’t do anything to the rest of us. It can’t. It’s just a curse-child.”
“Just?” Marra had a hard time imagining that clacking puppet as just anything.
“Probably a sad story,” said the dust-wife. “They usually are. Somebody gives a lonely child a toy and they pour all their hopes and fears and problems into it. Do it long enough and intensely enough, and then it just needs a stray bit of bad luck and the toy wakes up. Of course, it knows that the only reason it’s alive is because of the child. A tiny personal god with one worshipper. It latches on and … well.” She clucked her tongue. “Normally you get them pried off and burned long before adolescence. Impressive that it lasted this long.”