Voodootown

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Ribbon

Ribbon fell down from the bottom of the dresser with a small puff of dust and lint.  Light came in the west-facing window and she realized it was mid-afternoon.  She tried to roll over, but could barely turn her head.  She raised a hand, felt her face and the space where her left eye had been.  She let out a groan and lay there.

Her remaining eye looked at the rectangle of sunlight on the floor.  She wasn't sure what time it was, but it was late afternoon and school had to be out.  Shaunice should have been studying, or driving home.  Ribbon wondered how her human could be asleep so early in the day.  But then she began to remember the feeling she had just picked up from Shaunice.  It had been happiness, mixed with relief.

She tried to sit up, groaned again.  Behind her, from under the bed, there was the sound of cloth feet hitting the floor.  She turned, saw Blink duck his head under the edge of the dresser.  "Hey.  What are you doing up?" he asked.

All she could do was shake her head.  She watched as Blink wormed his way under the dresser.  She wondered why he didn't teleport in, and thought that he might not want to show off his power when she was so drained.  He had been kind to her when they had met in Voodootown several nights ago.  It seemed possible he was still being kind.

He sat beside her and she dropped her hands from her missing button eye.  He stroked her hair out of her face and Ribbon wished she could relax.  He was kind, had fought against the monster that had hurt her, and she even liked the strange pajama shirts he often wore.  She wondered if he might be her friend.  It wasn't something she got to wonder often.

"We can get Flow to make you a pirate eye patch til your new eye grows back.  Maybe a parrot to sit on your shoulder," he said. 

She laughed.  That was another thing.  He made her laugh, even when things were getting so bad.  "Sounds nice," she said.  She took his hand and was about to ask him about what color the parrot should be, but she remembered more of what Shaunice had felt.  The man had been there again.  She gripped Blink's hand.  "He was there.  The man I can't feel." 

For a moment, he was quiet.  "The same man who did that to you?"

She answered with a small nod.  "With Shaunice."

"Where?" he asked.

"I couldn't see.  I haven't been able to see through her for years.  He was there with her for just a minute before she...I don't know what Shaunice did," she said.

"Wait one second, okay?" Blink asked.  He let go of her and moved back a step, then looked at the wall.  He disappeared.  Ribbon began to count the seconds he was gone to try to distract herself from the ache in her head.  Before she got to six, Blink reappeared.

He landed sideways, stayed on the floor, shivering, until Ribbon reached out for him.  He looked up, nodded at her and put on half a smile.  "I hate that place," he said.

"You didn't find her?" she asked.

"No.  Straight to that void, just like if I was searching for one of the thralls," he said.  "I'm sorry.  He took her."

That might be what Ribbon wanted to believe, but she knew it wasn't true.  Shaunice hadn't been unhappy or afraid.  It hadn't felt like she was under any kind of threat.  Ribbon tried to keep still, to let more memories come back to her.  "He didn't take her.  He gave her something.  She wanted it."

"What do you mean?" Blink asked.

"She's gone.  I'm not connected to her at all." Ribbon felt her chest and abdomen searching for the link that had been cut.  "She wanted it that way.  It's what she's always wanted."

Next to her, Blink sat up, still shivering.  "No, don't think that," he said.

"We're not all like you and Ash, Blink," she said.  "You don't know."

He stared down at her.  He was kind and funny, but he didn't understand what it was like to have a human who didn't believe in anything she couldn't measure.  He was privileged.  He didn't know what it was like to be hungry.

She squeezed his hand.  "What did Flow call those dolls with the pins in their chests?  The ones who volunteered?" she asked.  When the others had returned from Voodootown, she had still been curled in a ball, but she had listened to what they told Root and Camo on the way to Danica's attic room.

"Kapos.  Like from the World War II concentration camps."

"Yeah," she said.  "She's a kapo, Blink.  Shaunice is a kapo."

Blink sat there, but then he shook his head.  "Listen.  I know I've only seen this guy twice and that I get kinda spacey, but I watched him, I listened to him.  He puts collars on dolls so he can make them do things."

"And those Kapos don't have collars.  Right?" she said.

"Not that kind.  But one of them didn't do what he wanted and he burned it with a snap of his fingers."  He squeezed her hand.  "He makes them do what he wants.  He's making Shaunice do what he wants."  Blink stopped.  He looked away and Ribbon wondered if he was having another one of his moments.  Maybe Ash was watching the cheerleaders practice after school.

But Blink's face scrunched up.  He was thinking.  "What?" she asked.

His cloth face twitched again.  "It's not about us."  He turned back to her.  "Camo said that guy just threw you to the ground.  Like he thought you didn't matter."

Ribbon nodded and he nodded back.

"He just sits there when we stick his thralls.  He burned one of his kapos without even thinking about it.  He doesn't care about us.  Not at all.  It's about the humans.  He wants to control them, not us."

Ribbon pushed up, propped herself up on her side.  "What does he want the humans for?"

Blink looked away again, then back to her.  "Nobody is safe.  Not anywhere."

Ribbon thought through it for a moment.  This human, the one she hadn't been able to sense with her ability, he was turning all the dolls he could find into slaves, and that left their humans vulnerable, open to any suggestion he might make.  Blink was right, the man had cut Shaunice off, had given the girl just what she'd wanted.  That showed he wasn't just after dolls.  There was something more that he wanted.  And with the portal, he could take what he wanted from the whole world.  Blink was right.  None of the humans were safe.

"We have to wake the others," she said.  "We have to stop him."