I had a dream that I was a doll, and another dream that seemed to continue it.
I was a porcelain doll with copper-toned skin, long coiled pigtails, and crimson eyes. I belonged to a young girl named Mimi, who I was made to look like, and she named me Wensie. She loved me, but also used me as a coping tool. The most common scenario was when her mother put her through the discomfort of getting dressed up for parties or gatherings and then she would reenact it with me.
One day she applied my makeup too forcefully, pushing a hole through my left eye. She started apologizing to me and crying softly, I remember being shocked that she showed so much sympathy toward a doll when no one did the same for her as an actual person. I couldn't figure out where she learned to be so kind.
The same night, Mimi read me a story about a toymaker who created beautiful dolls and gave them souls so they could always make their children smile. When she fell asleep, I slid out of her arms and to the floor. I decided to find the toymaker so I could ask her to fix my eye and give me a soul, that way Mimi would have a perfect doll and never cry again. With incredible effort, I managed to push open the bedroom window and slipped out. I didn't take anything with me but a tiny cotton purse Mimi had made for me.
This was my first time leaving Mimi's nursery, my first time seeing the snowy terrain of our country, and I knew nothing about anything. I didn't understand the concept of fear, so it was alright, but it took days to finally reach my goal. Days of trudging through a forest, of being whisked into the skies by a witch, of convincing the fae to help me. Eventually, I found and entered the toymaker's home.
The toymaker was a surprisingly demanding person. In exchange for fixing my eye and giving me a soul, she wanted me to kill a malevolent Faerie King that had been mistreating the forest folk for centuries. Blessed by ignorance, I accepted the task and headed into fae territory. The king had turned beastly, looking more like a troll than a faerie, and was so offended by my intrusion that he chased after me himself. As I ran through the trees, I recalled what the toymaker had said while sending me off.
I'll say as I've always said, "Why compare a faerie's greed to a man's greed when both obsess over shiny things?" and I mean every word when I say it! Equally horrific!
I hide in a bush as the king rushed past, then opened the little cotton purse I'd carried with me all that time. I treasured it dearly and now it would be what saved me. Inside the cotton purse was a bunch of plastic jewelry and miniature coins, all of them as shiny as a real dime. I set a trap over an icy pond. The king fell for it and scrambled out on to the ice, his weight forcing it to fall through. As the king struggled to stay above water, I reached over just far enough to snatch his crown and left him trapped in the freezing water.
The toymaker was happy to see that I'd succeeded. I was a little sad that I had lost all my belongings, but mostly excited to be fixed. The toymaker cleaned up my coat and boots, created a perfect replica of my eye, and even made new jewelry for my purse. I asked when she was going to give me a soul and the toymaker lifted me into the air, cheering and laughing and hollering. She kept spinning us around and around and around until I couldn't see the room anymore. Everything was so blurry I just shut my eyes...but opened them when I realized the toymaker's laughing had stopped.
Mimi was asleep in the nursery. I had opened my eyes and was standing in the middle of the room I had known all my life. I couldn't tell how long I had been gone, how many days Mimi had slept without her doll. I was glad to be home...but as I crawled up into the bed, I saw someone new. A blonde doll with rosy cheeks was wrapped in Mimi's arms, in an outfit like mine and with pigtails just like mine. Mimi had me replaced.
I was tired. I had travelled so far and done so much. I wanted to ask what I did wrong, but I didn't have the energy to return to the toymaker. With no other choice, I lowered myself off the bed and climbed to the the window again. I forced it open, slid outside, and sat in the snow. And there I stayed. Some nights, I would look at the moon and clasp my hands together like Mimi would do before bed. I asked the moon for a soul so that Mimi would love me again and come looking for me. I slept a lot, sometimes for days, hoping to recover my strength.
I was the same doll, living in a cottage near the pond where I had killed the Faerie King. I was a seamstress, I ran a shop out of my home called Wensie's Wears, I made winter clothes for the fae folk. My favorite client was Kori, the new king of the faeries. I was good friends with the toymaker and ran errands for her often. I was happy, it seemed like.
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