Wintergreen

doll that got fucked so hard that it needs new elastics and joint re-tensioning as well as a hand wash in hot soapy water

it will be in a limp, sticky pile in the corner until then

clockwork doll with a mainspring wound so dangerously tight and a core RPM so consequently high that she's upright more due to gyro effects than her own chattering, overspeed thoughts

push her and she will not fall, but she may whimper, and keen, and wish she could

the reclusive doll knows far more about repair dollcraft than any other doll you've ever met.

"how did you learn all this?" you ask, pulling an opaque stocking up over a formerly shattered shin. if you look very closely, you might see the cracks, but that's better than you ever managed with just epoxy and your own fingers.

she takes a long sip of the pu-erh you brought her. (hard to get. you couldn't run from loss prevention, so you had to be perfect on the first try.) finally she says, "you really should try this."

it smells better than anything you've had this month, but you're paying her with the stuff, and you don't want to cut into her profits.

"thank you, but this doll drinks greens, mostly."

she shrugs. "your loss. so. i can tell you two stories… up to you what you want to believe."

the reclusive doll continues, "one is about a doll who figured dollcraft out by hard work. she can patch and sand and re-charm you like this, because a hundred other dolls came to her first, and got the best she could do for them then… and maybe a hundred dolls from now, she'll be even better; if you'd broken six months from now, there wouldn't even be a mark, who knows."

you notice that the china cup from which she's sipping tea has a thin crack. you wouldn't have noticed, but one of the roses only has three-quarters of a petal.

"and the other?"

"perhaps," she says, "she used to be a good doll, a real proper polite witch-toy. maybe the witch even had her help build new dolls, taught her a thing or two, just so the witch wouldn't have to do the boring parts, and what she can do now, that's just what she remembers. a few scraps from the witch's table, turned to mending instead of making."

you hear a very faint clatter, notice a judder in her hands that can't have been there earlier in the afternoon when her careful fingers were inside you. the teacup clattering ever so faintly against the saucer. only another doll would notice.

"that tea does smell quite good," you say. "perhaps just a sip?"

"oh, not a problem, let me pour you a fresh cup…" and her movements return to their normal grace.

old habits die hard, you suppose. if this was your place — if you had a place, hah, more like, if there was a place for you — you'd want to serve a guest too. so it goes.

it really is very good tea. □

it's just a preventative visit. you've been to see the reclusive doll before, damaged far worse than this. she'd taken your cake of stolen pu-erh, patched what could be patched, told you to come back in six months for a followup; she'd check that the epoxy and filler holding your shin together had stayed properly bonded.

you'd laughed at the time. six months for an ownerless doll? an unlikely eternity.

not long after, one gloomy middle-aged woman with a perpetually furrowed brow had noticed you casing her tea shop for the third time. she'd locked the door with a security remote before you could make a dash through it, and said, "i know what you are, but i'll bet not many else do. and you've been looking at the good stuff, which means you have decent taste. sit. let's talk about whether i call a friend of a friend, or whether you think you can pass for an employee."

and here you are, six months later in the reclusive doll's parlor, holding a small brown waxed-paper bag of milk oolong with the shop's logo imprinted on the front. it represents an uncomfortable fraction of what the shopkeeper had let you have recently; you weren't going to go dry, exactly, but you'd be running for a week or two on cheap bulk stuff pinched from orders that would never notice.

the door opens, but it is not the reclusive doll that comes out first.

"—do my best, but no promises i can't keep. anyway, that's what i got you for, yeah?"

the doll in the doorway is fascinating. you've never seen so many repairs on anyone still walking around. no more than three-quarters of her face is original porcelain, absolute maximum. the rest is patchwork replacement. there are shiny lines of solder bridging cracks, parallel to others filled with the dull matte epoxy that the reclusive doll uses, a cheek with a blue-white willow pattern that has to be a transplant from dining china, and her eye—

you look away as soon as she notices you staring, but her very eye is split by a gleaming gold lightning bolt of kintsugi work, holding the two unequal halves of her blue glass iris together.

"there's only so much i can do with hedge dollcraft, Calico! you're no Ship of Theseus. the original charms on your body will only stretch so far, and they'll only take so well on material like this."

her dress is just like her: it's a recognizable pattern, lacy but not entirely impractical. there are places where damaged fabric has been excised, patched, carefully replaced without changing the shape, but all done in black fabric. an image comes to mind: on the side of an abandoned building, burn scars.

"then you'll just have to get better, won't you? we both know that's what you want anyway."

"we can't always have what we want," the reclusive doll mutters, trailing the scarred doll into the parlor. then, "oh, you're here. Calico was just leaving."

Calico is in no hurry, apparently. she pauses in the middle of the parlor, turns, and gives you a slow look-over, mismatched glass eyes scanning hungrily for something.

"you said 'material like this'. what if we had better material?"

"we don't. and we can't get it."

"but what if we did?"

"then maybe. i don't know that it's been tried before."

"you'd try it."

the reclusive doll shrugs. "maybe. now get out. i have another patient."

"so you do," the scarred doll says, finally acknowledging your existence. "nice to meet you, another patient, however briefly. maybe we'll run into each other again, hmm?"

you move your free hand to cover the shop logo on the brown waxed-paper bag of oolong, but in your witch-crafted heart, you can feel — you know — you're absolutely sure — that you weren't fast enough. □