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Gehrman is silent as the doll wheels him through the garden. They make a slow circuit, lingering by the flowers, the old grave. Long ago he would have spoken to her as they went, painting pictures for her of a world she"ll never see and people she"ll never meet in that thin, rasping voice. At times, when his lucidity waned, he would even address her as an old friend. Even though his words aren"t intended for her those are the moments she cherishes the most, because they are the only times she has heard his voice grow warm with affection.
There is no trace of that warmth now. The man in the wheelchair is as cold and sharp as his blade. He turns his head away from her, pulling in a wheezing breath.
"What a relief."
His voice is faint, rough with disuse. The doll leans in, not because she cannot hear him, but because she wants him to know she"s listening. He reaches up to touch the tassels of her shawl as it drapes onto his shoulder, the way he sometimes would when he spoke to her like a friend. Yet this time he twists his fingers into the soft fabric, pulls until the threads warp and she is pitched over him, bracing herself against the wheelchair"s back.
She can see his face in profile. He is smiling, a strange and bitter expression.
"I"ve finally learned to hate you."
--
It"s been years but the old workshop is as dingy as she remembers it; its proprietor is, too. Maria watches dispassionately as Gehrman affixes the bloodstone to the base of her new blade.
"I said I wouldn"t need a weapon."
"You and I both know that isn"t true." His lips are pursed and brow drawn low, but he doesn"t look up from his work. "When it comes to this sort of work, research is just as dangerous as hunting beasts."
She cannot keep the bitterness out of her voice. "Yes, the work of transforming men into monsters."
At that Gehrman raises his head. For all that he"s been perfectly accommodating, welcoming even, there is a wariness in his eyes. It"s no surprise to Maria. Gehrman has known her for many years, but he has never understood her. Their time apart has only driven the wedge between them deeper.
He sets aside the weapon. The jagged edges of the bloodstone gleam dully from its hilt, reflecting the firelight in deep reds. "If you think that, then why did you come back?"
A question she still asks herself now. She supposes it has to do with the way her thoughts always turn inward when she is idle; falling, helplessly, down to the depths of her very worst memories. Some part of her never left that fishing hamlet down by the ocean. She can still recall it in vivid detail. How the air had made her hands clammy. The eyes of the inhabitants bulging in their skulls. The grey, oppressive sky, heavy with dark clouds that threatened a rain that refused to come. She had wished for it to fall at the end, as if it could wash away the sea of blood she had shed, or hide the tears on her cheeks.
She cannot forget; she cannot forgive herself; she cannot pretend to be the same.
"I had to know what it was all for," Maria says at last.
And Gehrman nods, uncomprehending.
--
As Gehrman grows more distant, the doll finds ways to pass the time on her own. She cannot begrudge him his hate, but neither can she understand it, and so she must accept it as it is. (To the doll, these things are quite simple; she supposes it is how she was made.) At first she occupies herself with tending to the garden and the little ones. But the pale flowers blossom with or without her interference, and the little ones so often leave the dream to seek out hunters along roads she cannot tread. She takes to standing idly along the path, then sitting, then sleeping.
Sleep brings troubled dreams that vanish into nothingness as soon as she wakes. They often go like this.
"Splish, splash... splish, splash..."
She descends the steps slowly, listening to the familiar voices of the Research Hall"s patients. Some sing, some speak to themselves under their breath, and a few of the more progressed cases talk of the sound of water… but recently, a few have begun to scream. That sound, as much terror as it is rage, is to her the surest sign that the research is bearing fruit.
It is the same sound that she heard all those years ago in that doomed hamlet by the sea.
She grips the bannister as the first piercing shriek starts up. The polished wood curves away beneath her palm, tracing out the rune of metamorphosis. Whe she had ascended the steps for the first time -- years ago now, when she still had enough hope to believe Laurence was sincere in making the experiments more humane -- she had gotten the uncanny feeling that tracing out the shape of the rune with her body was invoking a subtle sort of magic. That by walking up -- clockwise metamorphosis -- and then down -- anticlockwise metamorphosis -- she was changing, slowly, by increments she couldn"t quite see, into something unrecognizable. In retrospect, she had been right. Years of research have hewn what little kindness she still had out of her. More and more, she feels an empty shell of herself, a tree whose insides have already been hollowed out by rot unseen.
Her feet touch the bottom step. One more metamorphosis complete. She does not linger over this fact, just silently lets herself into Adeline"s room.
"Ah, Lady Maria?" The woman twists hopefully in her bindings. The soft flesh of her head wobbles on her shoulders, spongy and giving like a boil.
"It"s me." Despite how she tries to soften her voice, it comes out clipped.
Adeline reaches out her hands. She takes them carefully, running the pad of her thumb over the knobbly joints. When Adeline had volunteered many months ago she had been just on the side of heavyset, with a rosy complexion and a round, girlish face that gave away her every thought. It was a face that invited doting affection, gentle care. She had destroyed that face with her own hands. What"s left of Adeline is horrifically bony, her veins and skeleton standing out in sharp relief against her shriveled skin. She cups the faint warmth of Adeline"s palm in between her own hands and wonders at her own lack of remorse.
"Thank goodness you came. Lady Maria, I"ve started to hear it, I think." Adeline tries to grip her back, but her strength is failing, and her thin fingers shake. "The sound of waves -- that"s what you wanted, isn"t it? To hear the voice of the ocean."
"That"s very good," she says quietly. She doesn"t tell Adeline that she"s been intentionally slowing the woman"s progress. There are patients in the upper floors who have long degenerated into nothing more than a massive, bulbous head, whispering from somewhere within the watery flesh of seas and stars. Selfishly, she doesn"t want Adeline to become that way. Let her hold this hand just a few more times, and remember a kindness she no longer knows how to express.
"If I could have a little more Brain Fluid, I"m sure that I could--"
"Haste is unseemly and breeds error." She tempers her words with a stroke of her fingers. "Do you still have the key I gave you?"
"Of course. I always keep it with me."
"Give it here. I"ll take you to the garden again; the air will do you good."
Adeline"s misshapen head wobbles in an approximation of a shake. "Ah, I don"t..."
She"s ready for this response. Adeline has been hesitant to leave her room since becoming blind. Leading her by the hand like a child is a bittersweet exercise, but she has long grown accustomed to bitterness.
"I"ll be at your side the entire time," she promises.
"I couldn"t possibly impose."
"It"s no imposition." She pauses, and then adds, "To be frank, I could do with a distraction."
"Oh, w-well, of course then..." Though faceless now, Adeline is as easy to read as ever. She squirms in her bindings, eager to please. "The garden is very pleasant, isn"t it? I"ll try to be good company."
She smiles at the woman uselessly. "I"ll untie you then."
The short walk to the balcony takes several long minutes. Adeline leans heavily against her shoulder, weak-kneed as a fawn. She sways from side to side as she walks, her frail body struggling to counterbalance the weight of her head, but their fingers stay entwined.
Then the grip on her hand suddenly tightens.
"Adeline?"
Something stabs through her palm. She looks down. The twig-like fingers in her hand have sprouted claws, and they are digging into her, prying the fragile construction of her hand apart. Her blood is milky white. When she looks up Adeline"s head is shrinking, the pulpy flesh firming and resolving itself into familiar features: a beakish nose, sagging brows, thin lips.
Gehrman glares down at her, his face twisted in fury. The doll blinks awake, the moonlight seeming over-bright and strangely alien.
"How do you know that name?" he demands. One of his hands is twisted in her collar, the other holds the handle of his whittling knife; its blade has pierced through her palm, pinning her left hand to the stone ledge she"s perched on.
He looks very upset. His body shakes with the effort of standing on his lame leg, and the longer she stays silent the more he begins to slide downward until he"s holding himself up with one knee braced against the ledge. She reaches out her free hand to cup his face, confused.
He slaps her away.
The dream has long evaporated under the moon"s gentle light. All that"s left is a sense of emptiness and the lingering warmth of a hand in hers. "Did I speak in my sleep?"
That response only serves to enrage him further.
"Don"t pretend. You said it... you said--" His eyes search her, desperate, grasping. "The name of that girl..."
He trails off, seeing that her incomprehension is genuine. He scrabbles at the stone beside her, bent over like a man gutted, scratching feebly, digging at nothing. At length he crumples to the ground, letting out a wounded, animal groan.
"...You are my punishment."
The doll plucks the knife from her palm and stands. She takes Gehrman around the middle and lifts him gently, keeping her mangled hand behind her back where it won"t stain his clothing. With care she replaces him on his wheelchair.
"If I am," she tells him kindly, righting his hat, "then it is because you made me so."
--
Her palm knits itself together while she isn"t looking, but the faint trace of warmth remains. She wonders at it for a time, rubbing the still-cold porcelain of her hand. Yet eventually, she learns to leave it be.
She decides that it"s a gift. Something from her other self, who resides in her elusive dreams.
--
When the ritual is complete, everything seems the same except that he is alone. The result isn"t entirely unexpected. Laurence had explained to Gehrman his role in the plan. Laurence has a way of speaking that gives the impression he is confiding a great secret, shedding light on some unearthed truth about the world -- in any case, it is difficult to forget anything he says.
"You are to be the anchor," is what he told Gehrman. "Every dream needs someone to dream it. It is a position of great power, but also of great loneliness. You will be stranded at the mercy of the presence in the moon. But you need only hold out until I have perfected the blood."
Laurence had gripped his arm then. Blazing, as he did, with fierce conviction. "Old friend -- you are the only one I can trust with this."
Gehrman paces around the workshop once, the echo of Laurence"s voice still clear in his mind. Everything is as he remembers it, or perhaps everything is as it is because he remembers it. He touches his tools, prods the coals in the fireplace. For a dream, it seems awfully real. The only thing out of place is the view out the window.
Where his old workshop had been dim and warm, nestled amidst the trees and only reached by the evening sun, this workshop is flooded with moonlight. The moon hangs overbearingly in the sky like a massive unblinking eye. Its pale light seems to leach color from the wooden furnishings. Gehrman imagines it cracking open like an egg. After all, according to Laurence, it is a Great One"s cradle.
He wonders what Laurence meant by being at the Great One"s mercy.
Just then the old workshop"s door opens. He reaches for his gun, but his fingers slip uselessly over the grip; the figure at the door has stepped straight out of his memories.
The past returns to him in a rush. Every color, every heartfelt emotion he had experienced on her return floods his mind in a cacophonous uproar: all his disbelief and worry, his bleeding affection. Against all odds -- for just a moment -- he believes.
"Maria?" he whispers.
The figure steps forward. The moonlight rolls over it and picks out the soft threads of clothing Maria never wore in life, the dully gleaming, too-wide eyes, and the seams in the porcelain joints. Gehrman recoils.
"Is that my name?" the doll asks. Her voice is like Maria"s in every way except for how she uses it. The real Maria had never sounded so gentle. "Maria?"
"No," Gehrman says quickly. He feels sick. It"s a dream, he tells himself, only a dream. A terribly real dream. He falls heavily back against the altar. "No, you aren"t her, you"re… you"re only a plain doll."
"I see." The doll"s eyelashes flutter in an expression he can"t read. She turns and regards the workshop blankly, taking in the saw-toothed weapons and mundane furniture with equal disregard. Then she smiles at him. That expression with Maria" face makes him queasy.
"Then, let this plain doll be at your service." She bows. "Welcome home."