Malis did not have time to react as her box snapped shut and the aching blue sky framing Nerissa’s purpling face disappeared. It was eerily quiet in this skyless prison, this starless night. There were muffled shouts, a sense of vertigo as Lena hurriedly drew the music box back to her chest and whirled away from Nerissa. If she could have, Malis would have flinched against the sudden evening light washing in through the crack between the box base and its decorative lid. She would have flinched again when the small, warm hand slipped in through the crack and wrapped around her patchwork indigo torso. The glue held for a moment and then cracked as the metal frame came apart from her stomach. Malis was glad she could not feel it. Suddenly she found herself being pulled through the crack, that small hand tightening as she was tucked conspicuously into a pants pocket. Not a moment later Nerissa ripped the box from Lena’s hand.
“This was mine you little thief!” Nerissa hissed angrily, her voice climbing to a point of near hysteria. She only spent a second looking at the outside, tracing the familiar ‘N’ with her boiling gaze. Then she flipped the box open and that loathsome gaze locked on Lena. “WHERE IS IT?” Nerissa demanded, shaking the opened box in the other girls ever paling face. “I don’t know what you’re-” Lena tried, her brown eyes widening with panic as her hand closed around the indigo pony in her pocket. “DON’T PLAY DUMB WITH ME, LOONEY.” Nerissa shrieked, emboldened by the way Lena had faltered before and then flinched away at the cruel nickname. “Where is the ballerina?”
Oh!
Lena’s heart fluttered with a dangerous hope in her chest. “Nerissa,” she said carefully, releasing the toy and pulling her hand surreptitiously from her pocket, “there was never a ballerina when I had it, I think you broke it.” Nerissa’s face crumpled for a moment, resembling almost instantly a puffed up pug dog. She did not like when people felt the need to point out her mistakes. Her arm tensed and flexed, and the music box was launched against the pavement of the driveway. Lena watched in slow motion, imagining the box as a ship lost at sea. The wooden groaned and buckled and sighed and shrieked, the glue flaking apart with the impact. It hit once, the first time, with a crunch that loosed several pieces. Then each bounce after shed more. When the music box finally rolled to a stop, it was unrecognizable, the wood splintered, the metal piece that created the musical chimes dislodged and disappeared somewhere in the grass at the edge of the driveway.
The box was no more than a shipwrecked husk
Lena felt her stomach lurch.
But Nerissa remained undeterred. She was enraged, a hellhound intent on its prize. She did not care that she now remembered the shattered ballerina sitting in a toy box in her room – the same ballerina whose pieces had sawed Buttons free. In fact she did not care about the ballerina at all. Nerissa wanted to know how Lena had come to possess one of her briefly beloved belongings. “You little liar! You probably have it hidden inside!” Much to Lena’s dawning horror, Nerissa spun and raced to the door of the small cottage. She reached the door before Lena did, tore it open, and rushed inside.
Lena heard Nerissa gasp as she came up into the entryway behind her. It was a small home with three cramped rooms and a bathroom. One room was used as a bedroom, another for the kitchen and dining area, and the last was the craft room they stood in. It also housed every toy rescued from Nerissa’s wrath, and a few of Lena’s own. Shrieking like a stuck pig, Nerissa moved to the shelf and began systematically tearing everything down. Toys, a surprisingly small amount of pictures- most of them current, and a few things Nerissa did not recognize as formerly hers. She wasn’t picky, though. Everything hit the ground and shattered, and what did not shatter was retrieved and dutifully picked apart by Nerissa’s clawing fingers. She was leaving nothing untouched.
“Oh, stop. Please, stop.” Lena begged with shining damp eyes, her small hand reaching out to Nerissa’s shoulder. “Please if you just go now I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done.” Her hand had done nothing but these words spun Nerissa around so fast she was nearly a blur. “What I’VE done?” She said, hissed, her voice eerily low as she leaned menacingly over Lena. “You stupid little git. Your mother stole all of this from me. FROM ME.” She laughed, spittle glistening at the edges of her jeering mouth. “Go ahead, tell them that I broke all the toys your mother stole from me. Let’s see what happens.” There was a cruel glint in her deceivingly blue eyes. Nerissa once more turned her back on Lena, reaching for a picture in a plain black frame sitting on a nearby self.
Lena screamed.
Nerissa paused.
The picture had seemed unremarkable at first. It housed four smiling faces, though Nerissa only recognized two of them. Lena and her mom sat adjacent a man and another girl, and each was beaming at another. It was a summer day on a beach, sunny despite the multicolor umbrella over their heads, and they had clearly just finished a lumpy, asymmetrical sandcastle they seemed proud of. It was a nice picture. Nerissa moved to open the frame and rip it in half but was frozen by another plea from Lena. “NO!”It was an agonized sound, this plea. “Nerissa please, I will do anything. Please don’t ruin that picture. It’s the only one we have left.” Nerissa paused for a moment, remembering how her parents had gossiped about the new widowed housekeeper and her damaged daughter. How everything they had was lost in a fire before they had arrived here.
Nerissa grinned smugly. “Then. Give. Me. The. Horse.”
For a moment Lena was genuinely confused, disoriented with panic at seeing the picture frame in Nerissa’s hands. But she followed that gleaming blue-eyed gaze down to the soft bulge in Lena’s own pocket. “How did you know?” Lena asked tremulously, her hand dropping protectively to her pocket. “Because I’m not an idiot like you, Looney. I SAW you put her in your pocket.” When Lena didn’t budge, Nerissa’s attention fell back to the picture frame. “Wait!” Lena said quickly, her resolve crumbling like the sandcastle in the picture.
The protective dark of Lena’s pocket bled into light, and the world took shape swimmingly in Malis’ disoriented gaze. She now sat in Lena’s trembling palm while Nerissa looked on thoughtfully, a strange flatness in the cruelty of those blue eyes. “No. This won’t do.” Lena blinked up at the girl with uncertainty blossoming on her pale, tear-stained cheeks. “I want it like it was before.” Malis felt Lena’s hand waver uncertainly beneath her. “I –I tried to fix her but-” Lena said shakily before Nerissa interrupted her with a raised hand. “No, like how you found her. That’s the only way I’ll give this back.”
Lena gasped with understanding, though it was a look of horror that bled all the color from her ashen face. Without a word to Nerissa, she turned and walked to the craft table with Malis clutched to her shaking chest. “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She seemed to be stuck in her apology, even after she had sat down at the bench with a pair of scissors in hand. She cut the pipe-cleaner tail first, snapped off each gem of her glistening mane-ridge. It took a few hacking cuts to remove the glued on leg. Then she did her best to duplicate the pocks and scrapes by stabbing and slicing until her hands shook too hard with her sobs to continue. “I’m glad you aren’t real. I’m glad you’re just a toy.”
The words did nothing to soothe Malis who had once more crawled into the safety of the depths of her mind, nothing more than an already burned out star drifting in oblivion.
Lena thrust Malis at Nerissa who took the toy and examined it. She seemed satisfied, if her malicious smile was anything to judge by. “Fine.” She said, acting as though nothing in the last half hour had actually happened. She ignored Lena’s outstretched hands and tossed the picture frame in the pile of shattered objects at the center of the room, laughing when Lena rushed off to retrieve it. “Just so you know, if you ever tell anyone what happened today, I’ll have my parents have your mom arrested for stealing from me. So if I were you I’d have a great explanation ready for why you trashed this poor room! Such an unstable girl, Looney.”
With that Nerissa smirked and left, the indigo husk still clutched in her sweaty hand.
MALIS
makai x oksana