Minuet

When the knife slips, cutting deep into the meat of the Craftsman’s hand below the thumb, he doesn’t notice the splash of blood that lands on his creation. By the time he returns from cursing into a box of bandages, the stain has vanished.

He doesn’t notice that he licks the tips of his brushes before using them. When he sings to himself, he doesn’t chart the path of his breath across his work. To his eyes, the fingerprints he leaves on the wood are invisible.

But when she opens the eyes he shaped for her, he sees it. When she scrunches the nose he carved, and parts the lips he painted to yawn, he knows she will need a name.

“What do I call you?” he asks, but she doesn’t have words yet. So he waits. Until she learns to smile. Until she learns to whistle. Until she learns to speak.

"My name is Minuet," she says.

“Hello, Minuet,” replies the Craftsman. And he tells her the rule. “No one can ever know you are real. This theatre is your home. But you must never go outside. Never speak to anyone but me. Never move unless we’re alone. You can never let anyone see that you are real.”

And she loves him, so she agrees.

From the beginning, Minuet likes holding the Craftsman’s hands. Likes the calluses put there by his work, that remind her of the knots in the wood grain of her own fingers. As if the two of them are made of the same stuff after all.

And from the beginning, she dances.

Her father makes a costume with strings so she can dance for the townsfolk, and they fall in love with her beauty without knowing what she is. Thinking her nothing but a puppet.

When she asks for the sky, he paints her one. When she asks for a garden he carves a tree into the wall of her room. But when she’s lonely and tries to hide it, he can do nothing.

Each night, behind her stage-light bars, she studies the townsfolk as she dances. Imagines their thoughts. Wonders at their splendour and their strangeness.

I am here to be seen, says the fat man in the red silk waistcoat.

I am here to see, says the woman with the black liquid eyes and the sleeping husband.

I am here, says the boy. And Minuet sees him.

Minuet draws the doors in her sketchbook. The theatre’s wide, double front doors. With their new pair of heavy gold handles, and their fresh coat of shining dark varnish.

When the Craftsman finds the book, he cries.

“Minuet,” he says, “they will be afraid and hate you. Please, Daughter. Never let anyone see that you are real.”

Minuet stops drawing the doors.

She draws the boy instead. With a fox’s hair and freckled cheeks, and long-fingered hands she knows must be warm because they are real.

Minuet is rehearsing when a man comes to buy her. She hears the sound of heavy doorhandles turning. She knows that sound. Dreams of it in her sleep. But she throws herself to the ground and keeps still because she isn’t wearing her strings.

“Where is the Master of this theatre, Crafter of puppets?” asks a man as big as the voice that fills the auditorium.

Minuet knows her father is in his workshop above the stage, but she says nothing. Lies unblinking. Unbreathing.

The man climbs the steps to the stage.

The boy is with him. He turns a book between his hands, running his fingers through the tassel on the bookmark. He looks ashamed.

“She isn’t for sale,” says her father’s voice. She can’t see his face. She can’t turn her head. Without her strings she is not real.

“People won’t always come to watch your puppet shows,” says the man. “No matter the beauty of your puppet. One day she’ll be for sale.”

“You can’t be for sale,” her father says later. “You don’t belong to me.”

“They don’t know that.”

“You know,” he says.

She’s standing in front of the doors when the boy comes back. Reaching for one of the handles when it turns before her hand.

Her head has been ringing with what she wants. The sky. The boy. The people, with their different faces and the mystery of their shifting thoughts. She feels a ghostly tug of strings at her back, though she isn’t wearing them.

And the handle turns without her touch.

She flees to a seat in the back row. Falls still, thinking wooden thoughts.

“Hello?” His voice isn’t as large as his father’s, but still she aches to stand and answer.

She doesn’t.

“I came alone,” he says. “I came to apologise.” The theatre is silent. Minuet doesn’t know where her father has gone.

“I’m sorry,” the boy says. He walks the aisle as he speaks, and though his eyes fall on her, he addresses the air.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “My father thinks the only thing to do with beauty is buy it.” He sighs, hands rising and falling at his sides. Hopeless, Minuet thinks. He stands so close she could reach out and touch his hand. And it feels as if all there is of her life is the one moment of taking his fingers in hers.

She stays unmoving.

She is not real.