Tin Man: How Fragile
Title: How Fragile
Author: Vashti
Fandom: Tin Man
Character(s): Azkadellia
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The past is rarely as far away as we'd like it to be.
Length: 1771 words
Disclaimer: I don't know you. You don't know me. Let's keep it that way.
Dedication: tm_challenge
Notes: this was originally written for the tm_challenge Fall Picture 03 prompt. I got about 90% of it done and then life went a wee crazy just before the due date. Then the due date passed...then a few months passed...then last night I finally got up the gander and finished the last 10%. Here's to hoping it's semi-decent ;)
How Fragile
by Vashti
“Go ask your mother how it works. It looks like one of her things.”
Overhearing the comment, Azkadellia smiled at the box and wrapping paper lying at her feet. Your mother… Two words she’d never thought to hear and know that she was the person meant. They warmed her immeasurably.
Still, she looked up in mild surprise when her daughter stepped over the mounds of wasted wrapping paper-no matter what DG said, trying to wrap awkwardly sized gifts when she could hardly manage true squares was not “fun”-and into her line of sight. A soft smile softened her face. “Yes, dear heart?”
“I found this while Daddy was looking through all the old stuff in the big storage room.”
Azkadellia’s eyes drifted from her daughters face to the object in her hands. It was small and partially made of or covered in glass, but big enough-or fragile enough-that the girl held it with two hands. It was also dusty. “Let me guess…you found this all the way in the back.”
Her daughter nodded, curls dancing.
“Surrounded by dust and cobwebs.”
The girl’s curls danced and bounced more as she rocked on the balls of her feet.
“And guarded by actual live spiders!”
“No-o! Mother!” Giggling stopped her rocking, but her curls, long and loose and honey-brown, jiggled and bounced harder than ever.
Grinning, Azkadellia leaned across the chasm of paper and oblong quadrangles to tug on one springy curl. “I forgot. Your father scared all the spiders away.”
“There were never any spiders!”
“Is that so?”
The girl nodded fervently. “Remember, we scared them all away when we first came.”
Azkadellia’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling. “How could I forget. It was a very noisy moving in process. We’re lucky the mice stayed.”
“There are no mice!” the girl insisted, grin widening.
“That’s right. The snakes ate them.”
“Nor snakes!”
“What about the ones in Ambrose’s lab.”
She shrugged. “They’re different.”
“Yes. They keep the mice away.”
The girl pulled a face. “But, Mother, what about this? It won’t work for me.”
“Oh?” Azkadellia gently took the glass covered object, noting both the silky grittiness of the dust that covered it and its almost familiar weight. “Do you know what’s inside?”
“A doll. I think she’s supposed to dance.”
Azkadellia nearly dropped the thing. Smile frozen on her face, it was all she could do to keep from either crushing the glass in her hands or flinging at the far wall. The dust felt like poison seeping into her skin.
“Sweetheart,” she said in a more measured tone, hoping that she sounded thoughtful and not… “Please ask your father if he has something with which we can to clean the dust.”
“Sure th-”
“Yes,” she automatically corrected.
“Yes, Mother.”
Azkadellia looked up from the glass and flashed her a smile. “My girl.”
Her daughter glowed with the warmth of those two simple words as she lightly leapt over paper and boxes to attack her father.
Azkadellia didn’t need the rag or handkerchief or whatever it was her daughter was going to return with. She knew what was under the layers of dust, under the protective glass. It was silly to think that it had been hiding in that closet all along, waiting for her to be happy so that it could remind her that she was not “a woman to be trifled with.” She was not a woman at all. She was a Sorceress.
A fine tremor made her afraid to take the glass away, though that was the very reason why she had sent her daughter away. She didn’t want the girl to see-
“Mother.”
Too late.
“Daddy gave me this.”
Azkadellia took white handkerchief. “Did you tell him thank you?”
“She did.”
Azkadellia threw a sardonic look over her shoulder before turning back to her daughter. Having the child in front of her lent steadiness to her hands. If she could figure out a way to open the toy elsewhere, however-But hadn’t she said that the toy didn’t work for her?
It was with slightly more confidence that Azkadellia used the handkerchief to grasp the top of the glass and pull it away. She blindly handed the cloth to her daughter. “Wipe your hands on this, please, and not your dress.”
“I’m not wiping my hand on my dress.”
Azkadellia looked up from the tiny dancer, standing still on her wooden platform, to her daughter who did not lie very well at all. She spent too much time with DG. “There are smudges on your ribbons.”
“Oh.”
Azkadellia tried to muster a smile for her, but all her emotion was drawn to the dancer. Who was lovely and yet…
“What’s wrong with her, Az?”
Azkadellia jerked around so quickly that long tendrils of hair caught in her teeth. But, no, he was still in the closet, going through the things there. “She’s just a doll,” Azkadellia called out. “She doesn’t have any life of her own.”
“That explains it. I told you it was one of your mother’s things, sweetheart.”
“Mother…can you make her work again?”
Staring down at the dancer, in her champagne dress with its glittering beads that danced in time to Azkadellia’s trembling hand, she wasn’t sure that she could. Once upon a time The Dancer hadn’t needed very much magical prodding, but Azkadellia was afraid that her words were more true than either of the other two understood. She looked up at her daughter.
“I’ll try.” Even if she felt monstrous doing it.
Light suffused the wooden base cradled between her hands, flowing into the dancer until its skin glowed. And then more light until her hair began to shine. And then more light until the beads began to glow.
“Mother…”
“Az? What the heck is going-”
“Dad! Come look! Mother made it work! She’s dancing!”
Azkadellia felt a presence at her back and she could see her daughter bouncing just out of sight, but she was concentrating on the dancer in her hands, on infusing her with magic.
“Hey, looks like a fancy dance hall in here, Az.”
“Hmm?”
“Light shinin’ out of the beads on that doll? It’s making the whole place light up.”
“Daddy! Look, rainbows on the walls!”
Azkadellia heard the two of them wander towards the walls and the patterns of light thrown onto them. But she only had eyes for The Dancer. Who had no ability to return the gesture. She knew the moment when she had put as much magic as she could into The Dancer without destroying her. Cupping the wooden base in her hands, Azkadellia held it away from her body and willed it to move.
At first it took only a few creaking steps that hardly shifted the still glowing beads. She would have said it needed oil, if she hadn’t known better. But then The Dancer seemed to remember what it was that she was about as Azkadellia’s magic worked its way through the figure.
“Az, are you doing that?”
“Daddy, look!”
The Dancer had shaken off her lethargy and began her frenetic, joyful dancing. The beads of light jerked crazily against the walls.
“Honey, look at what your mother did.”
Azkadellia felt the joy radiating off her daughter as she bounded over the drift piles of gift wrap. “Mother she’s dancing!” Kneeling next to her mother’s legs, she studied The Dancer intently. “I’ve never seen anyone dance like that before.”
“That’s because it’s not the kind of dancing that’s common here in Central City,” Azkadellia answered, “or even much of the OZ.”
“So she’s exotic.”
Heart thudding in her chest, Azkadellia nodded. “Yes. Exotic. And very special.”
“Can I kee-May I keep her, Mother.” She turned from looking at the doll and the flashing beads. “Please, Mother!”
But Azkadellia was already shaking her head. She felt awful for doing even this much for the amusement of her daughter. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, allow the doll to remain a plaything.”
“But Mo-ther…”
“You heard your mother.”
Bounding up from the floor in a smooth motion, she hurried to her father’s side back in the storage closet. “But she didn’t say anything.”
Azkadellia slowly siphoned the magic away from The Dancer, found and gently replaced the glass case. “You can’t have her, dear heart,” she called over her shoulder. No one should.
§§§
In the privacy of her own bedroom, with her guards stationed outside and her daughter safely under lock and key in her own bedroom, Azkadellia could give The Dancer the inspection that was needed. She set it on the floor
With a word and a complex twisting of hands, she summoned magic she had not touched in over a decade. This particular game had bored her quickly and so she’d used the spell only a handful of times. All of her other victims had either been released or destroyed. But The Dancer…The Dancer had gotten lost.
Suddenly standing before her was not a five-inch high child’s amusement, but a fully formed woman. She was slender and short, reaching only up to Azkadellia’s shoulder, but she had dared to defy a Sorceress. And had paid for it with her freedom, then her life.
The woman before her was truly lifeless. Once vibrant green eyes were milky blue-white ruins. Glossy brown hair was thin and limp and had fallen out in places. Her skin was sallow and pocked instead of creamy and pristine. But her dress, in mocking contrast, seemed to glow in the dim room. Azkadellia recognized it as the effect of her magic-only to wonder what The Dancer, what Rosie, had looked like before Azkadellia had suffused her with magic.
She touched a yellowing cheek. It felt like paper under her hands. It even began to crack as if it would peel away.
“Oh Rosie. I only wanted you to dance at my fete,” she whispered to the dead woman. “You and your troop. It was the least onerous thing the Witch ever wanted. It was what I wanted.” She smiled. “But you defied us. She was happy you defied us. You were my first doll. You were…” Azkadellia felt her mouth twist and curl as she thought of that day. “…an object lesson. But for all those years, every time I took you out of your glass prison and made you dance, your eyes still spoke your defiance.
“I’m so sorry.”
She shrank The Dancer, Rosie, back into a doll with a flick of wrist. Then she tossed the whole thing-glass, base, and woman-into her fireplace and the fire.
Fin[ite]
(If you like this, read the remix/prequel, "Childish Things" by saathi1013)
Author: Vashti
Fandom: Tin Man
Character(s): Azkadellia
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The past is rarely as far away as we'd like it to be.
Length: 1771 words
Disclaimer: I don't know you. You don't know me. Let's keep it that way.
Dedication: tm_challenge
Notes: this was originally written for the tm_challenge Fall Picture 03 prompt. I got about 90% of it done and then life went a wee crazy just before the due date. Then the due date passed...then a few months passed...then last night I finally got up the gander and finished the last 10%. Here's to hoping it's semi-decent ;)
How Fragile
by Vashti
“Go ask your mother how it works. It looks like one of her things.”
Overhearing the comment, Azkadellia smiled at the box and wrapping paper lying at her feet. Your mother… Two words she’d never thought to hear and know that she was the person meant. They warmed her immeasurably.
Still, she looked up in mild surprise when her daughter stepped over the mounds of wasted wrapping paper-no matter what DG said, trying to wrap awkwardly sized gifts when she could hardly manage true squares was not “fun”-and into her line of sight. A soft smile softened her face. “Yes, dear heart?”
“I found this while Daddy was looking through all the old stuff in the big storage room.”
Azkadellia’s eyes drifted from her daughters face to the object in her hands. It was small and partially made of or covered in glass, but big enough-or fragile enough-that the girl held it with two hands. It was also dusty. “Let me guess…you found this all the way in the back.”
Her daughter nodded, curls dancing.
“Surrounded by dust and cobwebs.”
The girl’s curls danced and bounced more as she rocked on the balls of her feet.
“And guarded by actual live spiders!”
“No-o! Mother!” Giggling stopped her rocking, but her curls, long and loose and honey-brown, jiggled and bounced harder than ever.
Grinning, Azkadellia leaned across the chasm of paper and oblong quadrangles to tug on one springy curl. “I forgot. Your father scared all the spiders away.”
“There were never any spiders!”
“Is that so?”
The girl nodded fervently. “Remember, we scared them all away when we first came.”
Azkadellia’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling. “How could I forget. It was a very noisy moving in process. We’re lucky the mice stayed.”
“There are no mice!” the girl insisted, grin widening.
“That’s right. The snakes ate them.”
“Nor snakes!”
“What about the ones in Ambrose’s lab.”
She shrugged. “They’re different.”
“Yes. They keep the mice away.”
The girl pulled a face. “But, Mother, what about this? It won’t work for me.”
“Oh?” Azkadellia gently took the glass covered object, noting both the silky grittiness of the dust that covered it and its almost familiar weight. “Do you know what’s inside?”
“A doll. I think she’s supposed to dance.”
Azkadellia nearly dropped the thing. Smile frozen on her face, it was all she could do to keep from either crushing the glass in her hands or flinging at the far wall. The dust felt like poison seeping into her skin.
“Sweetheart,” she said in a more measured tone, hoping that she sounded thoughtful and not… “Please ask your father if he has something with which we can to clean the dust.”
“Sure th-”
“Yes,” she automatically corrected.
“Yes, Mother.”
Azkadellia looked up from the glass and flashed her a smile. “My girl.”
Her daughter glowed with the warmth of those two simple words as she lightly leapt over paper and boxes to attack her father.
Azkadellia didn’t need the rag or handkerchief or whatever it was her daughter was going to return with. She knew what was under the layers of dust, under the protective glass. It was silly to think that it had been hiding in that closet all along, waiting for her to be happy so that it could remind her that she was not “a woman to be trifled with.” She was not a woman at all. She was a Sorceress.
A fine tremor made her afraid to take the glass away, though that was the very reason why she had sent her daughter away. She didn’t want the girl to see-
“Mother.”
Too late.
“Daddy gave me this.”
Azkadellia took white handkerchief. “Did you tell him thank you?”
“She did.”
Azkadellia threw a sardonic look over her shoulder before turning back to her daughter. Having the child in front of her lent steadiness to her hands. If she could figure out a way to open the toy elsewhere, however-But hadn’t she said that the toy didn’t work for her?
It was with slightly more confidence that Azkadellia used the handkerchief to grasp the top of the glass and pull it away. She blindly handed the cloth to her daughter. “Wipe your hands on this, please, and not your dress.”
“I’m not wiping my hand on my dress.”
Azkadellia looked up from the tiny dancer, standing still on her wooden platform, to her daughter who did not lie very well at all. She spent too much time with DG. “There are smudges on your ribbons.”
“Oh.”
Azkadellia tried to muster a smile for her, but all her emotion was drawn to the dancer. Who was lovely and yet…
“What’s wrong with her, Az?”
Azkadellia jerked around so quickly that long tendrils of hair caught in her teeth. But, no, he was still in the closet, going through the things there. “She’s just a doll,” Azkadellia called out. “She doesn’t have any life of her own.”
“That explains it. I told you it was one of your mother’s things, sweetheart.”
“Mother…can you make her work again?”
Staring down at the dancer, in her champagne dress with its glittering beads that danced in time to Azkadellia’s trembling hand, she wasn’t sure that she could. Once upon a time The Dancer hadn’t needed very much magical prodding, but Azkadellia was afraid that her words were more true than either of the other two understood. She looked up at her daughter.
“I’ll try.” Even if she felt monstrous doing it.
Light suffused the wooden base cradled between her hands, flowing into the dancer until its skin glowed. And then more light until her hair began to shine. And then more light until the beads began to glow.
“Mother…”
“Az? What the heck is going-”
“Dad! Come look! Mother made it work! She’s dancing!”
Azkadellia felt a presence at her back and she could see her daughter bouncing just out of sight, but she was concentrating on the dancer in her hands, on infusing her with magic.
“Hey, looks like a fancy dance hall in here, Az.”
“Hmm?”
“Light shinin’ out of the beads on that doll? It’s making the whole place light up.”
“Daddy! Look, rainbows on the walls!”
Azkadellia heard the two of them wander towards the walls and the patterns of light thrown onto them. But she only had eyes for The Dancer. Who had no ability to return the gesture. She knew the moment when she had put as much magic as she could into The Dancer without destroying her. Cupping the wooden base in her hands, Azkadellia held it away from her body and willed it to move.
At first it took only a few creaking steps that hardly shifted the still glowing beads. She would have said it needed oil, if she hadn’t known better. But then The Dancer seemed to remember what it was that she was about as Azkadellia’s magic worked its way through the figure.
“Az, are you doing that?”
“Daddy, look!”
The Dancer had shaken off her lethargy and began her frenetic, joyful dancing. The beads of light jerked crazily against the walls.
“Honey, look at what your mother did.”
Azkadellia felt the joy radiating off her daughter as she bounded over the drift piles of gift wrap. “Mother she’s dancing!” Kneeling next to her mother’s legs, she studied The Dancer intently. “I’ve never seen anyone dance like that before.”
“That’s because it’s not the kind of dancing that’s common here in Central City,” Azkadellia answered, “or even much of the OZ.”
“So she’s exotic.”
Heart thudding in her chest, Azkadellia nodded. “Yes. Exotic. And very special.”
“Can I kee-May I keep her, Mother.” She turned from looking at the doll and the flashing beads. “Please, Mother!”
But Azkadellia was already shaking her head. She felt awful for doing even this much for the amusement of her daughter. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, allow the doll to remain a plaything.”
“But Mo-ther…”
“You heard your mother.”
Bounding up from the floor in a smooth motion, she hurried to her father’s side back in the storage closet. “But she didn’t say anything.”
Azkadellia slowly siphoned the magic away from The Dancer, found and gently replaced the glass case. “You can’t have her, dear heart,” she called over her shoulder. No one should.
§§§
In the privacy of her own bedroom, with her guards stationed outside and her daughter safely under lock and key in her own bedroom, Azkadellia could give The Dancer the inspection that was needed. She set it on the floor
With a word and a complex twisting of hands, she summoned magic she had not touched in over a decade. This particular game had bored her quickly and so she’d used the spell only a handful of times. All of her other victims had either been released or destroyed. But The Dancer…The Dancer had gotten lost.
Suddenly standing before her was not a five-inch high child’s amusement, but a fully formed woman. She was slender and short, reaching only up to Azkadellia’s shoulder, but she had dared to defy a Sorceress. And had paid for it with her freedom, then her life.
The woman before her was truly lifeless. Once vibrant green eyes were milky blue-white ruins. Glossy brown hair was thin and limp and had fallen out in places. Her skin was sallow and pocked instead of creamy and pristine. But her dress, in mocking contrast, seemed to glow in the dim room. Azkadellia recognized it as the effect of her magic-only to wonder what The Dancer, what Rosie, had looked like before Azkadellia had suffused her with magic.
She touched a yellowing cheek. It felt like paper under her hands. It even began to crack as if it would peel away.
“Oh Rosie. I only wanted you to dance at my fete,” she whispered to the dead woman. “You and your troop. It was the least onerous thing the Witch ever wanted. It was what I wanted.” She smiled. “But you defied us. She was happy you defied us. You were my first doll. You were…” Azkadellia felt her mouth twist and curl as she thought of that day. “…an object lesson. But for all those years, every time I took you out of your glass prison and made you dance, your eyes still spoke your defiance.
“I’m so sorry.”
She shrank The Dancer, Rosie, back into a doll with a flick of wrist. Then she tossed the whole thing-glass, base, and woman-into her fireplace and the fire.
Fin[ite]
(If you like this, read the remix/prequel, "Childish Things" by saathi1013)