I am known not by name, but by the poppets I make. They are exquisite, their details as delicate as the finger bones I carve them from, but my current one is the finest yet. To the master I am simply “girl,” an honor to be acknowledged above the nameless dead that serve him. True recognition, though, that is bestowed on my sister, Dacia. The master calls her by name. It is a gift no other servant has received, and one few would want. In his house, all flesh has purpose—whether living or dead.
Our parents have such purpose. They are dead, lost to us but not to the house. No one escapes service. We see them daily, shuffling to and from the master’s bedchamber, collecting remnants from the previous night’s meal, chamber pots full to spilling, bedsheets stained dark with bodily fluids. Dacia is all I have. She cares for me, saves me food from her meals when mine have been withheld—and she keeps the eyes of the master on her, lest they linger too long on me.
I was carving poppets from scrap wood when our parents died, coarse little things lovingly adorned with Dacia’s hair. My mistress taunted me, said I wasn’t good enough to carve theirs, never would be. Said I was apprenticed to her only because of her father’s obsession with Dacia. My training in the art was her burden, and when my skills eventually surpassed hers, my punishment. The master came to prefer my poppets over hers, the liquid bodily movement they allowed the corpses was a beauty he craved. The dead were no longer brought back solely for labor, my skills opened possibilities previously unthinkable, and with those the master’s want of Dacia darkened.
The art of poppet making is not only in the carving, in the animating force one wills into it; it is in the selection of materials, in their preparation. Flesh must be uncorrupted, boiled off the bones then carefully cured. Vital essence must be breathed into them, the herbs for the smoker gathered under a waning moon. And the marrow we extract for the bonding infusion must be preserved in honey to keep it from turning foul, as that in turn fouls the corpse’s movement, and leaves a rancid taste on the tongue.
When first apprenticed, I was allowed only the most inelegant of bones to work. The femur had a mass suitable for my clumsy hands I was told. And the dead controlled by my thick poppets were equally clumsy—that they stumbled about was surely due to my lack of skill, rather than their badly damaged bodies, or their marrow, already rotted by the time I was given the corpse. The mistress would never allow me to refine my skill, so I took it on myself, hunted the rubbish heaps for wild dogs to practice on. There was an easy supply scavenging there, and they were hungry enough to ignore the unfamiliar taste of death cap mingled with raw meat. I later found street beggars to be just as forgiving of strange tastes in proffered food.
When the mistress discovered my pursuits, she took hold of my ear and without a word sliced it off. I still keep it in a little wooden box I carved, along with my early poppets—and a single, delicate finger bone. My pride had been my undoing. I gifted the master a poppet crafted from his favorite dog, killed during a hunt by wild boar. It imbued the corpse with a grace it never possessed in life. The master, so moved, made me his personal bone carver, and immediately set about challenging my skills; a corpse that could arch its legs backward over its head, one that could scuttle across the floor like a crab to his feet, another that could perform painful looking contortions while strapped to bedposts. As the number of poppets he indulged himself with increased, so did the number of servant girls who met untimely deaths.
I didn’t question. I had a ready supply of fresh corpses to work with. And I didn’t care that I recognized some of their faces, or that I would later be tasked with repairing their torn orifices when he returned them to me—until this morning. I found Dacia laid out on my worktable, her neck bent at an angle. I vomited on her naked body. I couldn’t bear the thought of committing her corpse to the same fate I had so many others, of the abuse I would later read in her wounds. I hid. Then when found, I feigned illness. Anything to delay long enough for Dacia’s corpse to foul, become useless to him.
The mistress had me dragged back to my workshop and held down as she cut a strip of flesh from my back.
“Don’t fidget dear,” she said, “it could be so much worse.” And to demonstrate, she cut out another strip. I relented, begged forgiveness, begged the mistress’s help in completing my task as the pain from my rightful punishment troubled my motions. I made a good show of it—until we were alone in the workshop.
I carefully removed and prepared the smallest finger, stitched the wound closed with a thread made of my hair. I carved Dacia’s likeness into the bone, her flaws, perfections, each detail an act of love. It wasn’t required for the bonding, but it was necessary. I bathed the body by hand. Dressed it as a bride. When the master called, I delivered the poppet, silk wrapped in a carved wooden box. I asked my leave of him, that awful chamber, but he made me stay to witness my handiwork. At his command, a veiled figure appeared at the door; her movement as exquisite as her state of bodily preservation, her left hand missing its smallest finger. I watched. He made her disrobe, cross the floor, then enter his bed. He saved the veil for last, lifted it with excited hands—then froze at the face of his daughter beneath.
Francesco Levato is a poet, professor, and writer of speculative fiction. Recent books include SCARLET; Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; and Elegy for Dead Languages. Recent speculative fiction appears in Savage Planets, Sci-Fi Shorts, and Tales to Terrify, among others. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a PhD in English Studies, and is an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos.
photo by Alvin Mahmudov and Noita Digital (via unsplash)
Crow & Cross Keys 