There is nothing for her to see as a large, gentle hand scoops her from the imagined warmth of the hole torn in Buttons chest. It had been almost like curling against his heart, burrowed within the safety of the cloth and fabric, surrendered wholly to the darkness that had found her when Nerissa’s new puppy had worn away the painted green of her eyes. But this darkness was so much better than the wreckage of broken pieces, shattered fragments of both Sparkle and her own severed indigo legs that branded itself against the forefront of her thoughts, her trembling memory. For a moment, suspended in a callused palm, the air feels too strong, too cold, too alive for Malis. She aches to return to her grave dug out of the chest of a former friend.
But the cold fades suddenly as if blocked by something, and the world is once more dull, quiet. She’s been tucked into a small, soft bag. The indigo plastic husk bounces slightly as the woman walks, shifting this way and that, but Malis hardly notices. She’s curled within herself, just a tiny molecule of thought and understanding, wholly used, wholly shattered. When the jostling stops and a new quiet settles, Malis hardly notices. Somewhere, wedged deep in the recesses of her thoughts, the slight change registers. But it isn’t enough to pull her from her catatonia. Time passes agonizingly slow, and it becomes quickly apparent that this bag is to be her new prison for a while. Despite being left alone, Malis doesn’t even try to move or speak or plot an escape. Instead she can feel her thoughts sweeping ever closer like a numbing wave, stealing away more and more with each pass. She thinks of home. Of her sisters. She thinks of her parents, wonders with hope prickling like a burr in her chest, if Makai has come back yet. She knows he hasn’t. She can still feel the weight of his eyes in that last moment like an unbearably heavy promise. The more time that passes, the further she drifts, finding a new solace in this new unending blackness.
Lonely isn’t so hard.
Suddenly the bag lurches and Malis struggles beneath the weight of her mind. But the sensation of being moved pulls at her and she follows that metaphorical flickering firefly light back to the surface where the world is black because her eyes have faded, not because she’s drowning under the weight of guilt and longing and cowardly surrender. The bag stops again and Malis feels that same hand reach in to pluck her out, those fingers unnervingly gentle as they explored every flaw in the once perfect toy. “Oh dear.” A kindly voice said, and there was something about it that reminded her of her mother. “Well let’s start with your eyes, little one, some say they are the window to your soul.”
Little one. Malis crumbled inwardly, feeling as though a hole had just been punched through her gut. It was impossible in that moment not to picture a ragged Buttons laying askew in a trash can full of stuffing and used tissue. The heart-that-wasn’t trembled in the hollow cavern of her pocked chest. But a moment later, after some soft pressure on her face, Malis felt the room start to take shape. No, not felt, saw. The kindly caretaker must’ve finished painting the eyes in because suddenly the world was awash in light and color. Malis reeled inwardly, though her plastic prison offered her no such compliance. Her stomach lurched as a hand picked her up and held her closer to the light, examining the damage with a frown that seemed to create a multitude of wrinkles and lines across the woman’s face. With a sigh she grabbed a sheet of something stiff, rubbing one side along Malis’ plastic skin over each pock mark. The paper reminded Malis of sand or stone, and it easily wore away each nub of hard plastic sticking out along the surface. The woman ran a hand over Malis, checking every nook and cranny, even smoothing out the grotesque seams between Malis’ body and Sparkle’s donated legs until the transition was as seamless as possible. With nimble fingers Malis watched as she plucked the piece of missing hind leg from her bag. In one hand she held a funny device, it smelled hot and strange, and it appeared to be anchored to the wall with a narrow white chord. In the other was the piece of plastic leg. She added a dab of something from the device, glue Malis thought- though she had no idea where the word came from or what it meant, and reattached the leg nub to the part of the leg still connected to the body. Then, and in a similar fashion, she filled each pock and hole with a bead of glue, set the glue-gun aside, and sanded the toy smooth again. The ears it seemed she had decided were too far past saving as she had smoothed down the nodules and then left them be.
A small, sweet voice coaxed Malis further from her withdrawn state, and through restored eyes she watched as the delicate child stepped into view. “Lena,” the woman greeted her with a smile that seemed to light up her entire face, “we have a new guest.” In the next moment she had plucked Malis from the counter top and held her outstretched to the girl who merely looked on for a quiet moment, those soft brown eyes widening with gentle wonder and mingled delight. With small, careful hands Lena reached out and took the toy, looking at her for a moment before hugging the hunk of damaged indigo plastic to her chest. “Oh Mama,” she said breathlessly, and Malis could feel her heart trembling within her chest, “she is beautiful.”
It was strange, but despite what Nerissa had done to Malis and her friends, Malis couldn’t help but feel drawn to this other girl. Lena. She reminded Malis so much of her little sister Ilka, with that sweet, shy smile and eyes so soft and brown and full of gentle hope that you couldn’t help the smile that shaped the corners of your mouth. They had the same soul, the same heart. It made Malis miss her little sister even more.
“Lena,” Mama said, using her voice to pull those brown eyes up to her face, “let’s put her back on the table so we can finish fixing her up.” Ever so carefully Lena reached up to place Malis on the table top, safely back away from the edge, and then climbed up onto the stool beside her mother. A sudden trilling made both of them jump, and Mama leapt to her feet to answer the phone ringing in the other room. When she came back there was a look of apology written plainly across her kindly face. “I’m sorry Lena, they need me back at the main house for a little while. We can finish with her when I come back.” Lena’s face grew sad and solemn, but she didn’t argue as her mother grabbed her bag and coat and headed out the door.
For a long while Lena stayed on her stool at the table, her chin in her hands as she gazed at the toy Malis. Malis imagined she could feel the girl’s thoughts as they ran like curious fingers over the now smooth plastic and glue of her restored body. Lena must have made a decision, because suddenly she was sliding into her mother’s seat, reaching out to grab several containers of craft objects, and the still plugged-in glue gun. Fingering the short fringe of Malis’ mane, she frowned. Then, grabbing scissors to cut the few remaining tufts away for a sense of even balance, Lena smiled. Opening one of the containers, Lena reached over and spilled out the contents. Dozens of sparkling gems glittered like stars spattered in the sky, each one roughly the size of one of Lena’s small finger nails. Grabbing the gems and the glue gun, Lena glued matching gems back to back so that only the bright sparkly parts showed. Then with careful precision she squirted a line of glue down the ridge of Malis indigo neck. Moving quickly before it dried, she wedged the now double sided gems in the thin crack where the mane had been and glue now glistened. She stopped when she had finished, admiring her work with a bright smile and shining eyes. Where the mane had been, there was now a row of various shaped gems glittering and positioned like the plates found along the spine of a Stegosaurus.
Lena beamed.
A moment later she was back to work, digging through another container until she had found and removed three black pipe cleaners, folded them in half, and stuck the folded end of each one into the hole where Malis’ tail had been. Then, after gluing about a dozen random gems to the fuzzy pipe cleaners in varying places, Lena used the metal thread inside all the fluff of the pipe cleaners to shape a tail as naturally as she could. Admittedly, she fell short. This time she didn’t even pause to admire her work. Instead she reached for what appeared to be a linked chain of a dozen tiny color cups, and a small brush laying just to the side of them. Opening the cap of a color that looked to be just a slightly dark shade of indigo than Malis was, she dipped the brush in and set to work painting in all the smoothed out glue spots and scuff marks. It wasn’t perfect and the toy didn’t look like it would have if Mama had painted her, but Lena didn’t care. Instead she could feel pride welling in her chest like a bubble ready to burst. Biting back a smile, she uncapped a few more colors, touching up the black band Nerissa had painted like a blindfold around, but not over, her flat green eyes. In a few places she had tried mixing colors to better match the raw indigo, but had little success. In a flash Lena had put the caps back on the paint, scooped the decorations into their respective containers, and dropped the freshly rinsed paintbrush into the sink basin. When she hurried back to where Malis stood propped up and drying, a warmth radiated from her heart through those kind brown eyes and Malis could feel herself uncurling from the depths of this plastic prison. A small finger stretched out to stroke a line from Malis forehead to her nose. If she could have, Malis would have flinched. It didn’t matter how much this child reminded her of Ilka, the damage Nerissa had done couldn’t be undone in a single day of kindness. But it was a start.
As if Lena could sense Malis’ apprehension, she disappeared to the far corner of the room and pulled a small, dusty box off of the shelf. It was painted pink and white with a curling ‘N’ sprawled across the top in gold. Once upon a time this too had been Nerissa’s. But in a fit of rage it had been thrown across the room and into a wall, and the porcelain ballerina inside had shattered, the musical gears dislodging. When Mama had found it, the porcelain pieces had already been removed. But the box had sat lonely in the garbage waiting for rescue. So Mama had brought it home and fixed it. With some new paint and several tries tinkering with the gears, it had been restored. But at its heart, on the track beneath the lid, it was still hollow and lonely without its ballerina.
But Lena had an idea.
She returned to the table and placed the box next to Malis, opening the lid so the stand on the spinning platform was exposed. On the platform was a short post with a small flat bracket. It was meant to support the ballerina, but now it would do as much for Malis instead. Lena picked up the indigo toy and the glue gun, her face darkening ever so slightly. “I’m sorry, but I have to glue you in. You can’t stand on your own anymore because that leg is so much shorter than the others now. But you’ll be safe in here because it’s a magical music box.” Leaning in, she gave Malis a soft kiss and then glued her into place. Malis knew this should have made her feel more trapped in a sense, but how much more trapped could you be when your mind was entombed in a broken husk of plastic that didn’t seem to have any life left in it. Was one prison worse than the next? Malis didn’t think so. She could feel herself drifting again, like a piece of broken shell caught in a tide being swept further and further from the shore.
Suddenly the room lurched- she hadn’t noticed Lena reaching for the box while she had drifted in self-pity. But before Malis could make sense of the room blurring around her, they were outside. All at once her world was familiar. Aching blue skies filled with tree-tops and clouds and birds, and below, grass as green as emeralds. Or her mother’s eyes. As if Lena had halved Malis at the seams, a torrent of emotion tore from her so strong, so unbearable, the weight threatened to crush her. But it wasn’t all bad. There was fear and grief, longing and loneliness, but there was also a strange warmth needling in her chest at the girl who had called her beautiful even when she was pocked and broken, who had restored her and returned her to the comfort of a world she knew intimately. One with a sky instead of ceilings, trees instead of walls. It wasn’t home, but it was better. Malis felt the walls around her heart tremble as great fissures rose in them, tearing huge cracks in her resolve.
“I thought you might like it here.” Lena said softly as if somehow she could feel Malis’ thoughts. “If you were Nerissa’s toy, you probably lived in a dark scary toy chest.” She set the opened music box down in the grass and laid down beside it on her back. “You probably have a name already too, so I won’t give you a new one.” Lena said again, seemingly completely unperturbed that she was having a conversation with an inanimate toy. Propping herself up on her elbow, she leaned over to the box, winding the knob so that the music played like a chorus of tiny bells, and the platform turned in a circle. It took a moment to get used to, but the movement made it possible for Malis to see every last inch of the yard they rested in. It settled her. Time lost all meaning as it passed, with Lena telling story after story, and Malis listening like a diligent friend. She still felt guarded, unable to let her walls down completely, but after hearing several stories where Lena had been personally victimized by Nerissa, it was impossible not to feel some strange sort of bond, a sense of kinship. Suddenly, though it wasn’t sudden at all, the sun had dropped in the sky and the day was drawing to a close.
There were footsteps approaching in the grass and Lena sat up and reached for the box without looking at who approached. “Oh Mama look what I made, look how beautiful!” But a small gasp, a sound like butterfly wings being torn in half, whistled through Lena’s open mouth. Having finally turned to face her mother with the box proffered like a gift in small outstretched hands, Lena realized her mistake. Standing before her with a face so red, so contorted with ugly rage and jealously, was none other than Nerissa.
Malis withered.
MALIS
makai x oksana