Vidra comes home to a house that’s unusually cold, unlit, devoid of cooking smells, and sighs to herself.
“There you are,” she says, when she peers around the door of the study.
“Can’t talk,” the doll maid inside says, bent awkwardly over the desk; unthinkable to sit in the long-unused seat behind it. She is scratching away rapidly with quill and purloined paper. “Lost winding key.”
“It’s alright,” Vidra says mildly. “I’ll just—”
“Can’t talk,” the maid repeats sharply, neither looking up nor pausing in her writing. “Can’t complete housework. Lost key; not enough time.”
“I’ll just—”
“Tried to plan more efficiently,” the doll says. “Not enough time. Thinking not energy efficient. Writing instructions for when help comes.”
“Yes,” Vidra says dryly, and quietly walks up behind the doll. “I’ll just do this, I think,” and runs her fingers gently along the doll’s back, locates a spot to one side, and quietly draws her arm back. “Lift your pen a second?”
“No time,” the doll says, but nevertheless flexes its wrist up a fraction, just for a moment.
Vidra gives the maid a sharp, if finely judged, tap with her elbow. It jerks disproportionately, something inside making a sudden grinding noise.
“Oh,” it says. “Oh. V—Vidra? Is tha—tha—that you?” Clunk, clunk it goes; something whirrs, spinning up to speed. “You, you wound me this morning. And you keep the key next to the — the stove. My, my secondary memory jammed. Again?”
“That’s right,” Vidra says. “Are you okay now?”
The doll nods jerkily. “I need to — I didn’t finish the housework! I’ll light the fire and make you some tea.” It turns, and nods decisively, surreptitiously pushing the paper sideways off the desk behind it, to fall into the pristine wastepaper basket.
Vidra sighs and smiles. “Tea would be nice,” she says agreeably, waits until the doll has scurried out, and peers down at the discarded paper.
IMPORTANT it says at the top, underlined twice.
- please look after Vidra
- she needs a cup of tea first thing in the morning to wake up
- if she has tea later than an hour before sundown she won’t sleep properly
- the blue cup is her favourite
- she needs two plumped pillows and three blankets on her bed
- she will pick the vegetables out of her meals if you do not hide them
- do not let her get scurvy
- this one could not finish mopping the kitchen floor before making this list, please finish and move the bucket before Vidra falls over it—
She can’t see any more without moving the paper, and the doll will notice if she does. The list is very similar each time, in any case.
Vidra looks around at the spotless study and sighs, rubbing her sap-stained hands together. She’s never asked where the witch got to; the doll’s never said. One of the several moss-cloaked, uninscribed stones out near the overgrown edge of the once-garden, perhaps. She’s chopped and stacked enough firewood to last them a while longer; but when spring comes, she’ll carefully broach the topic of a journey over the hills to the nearest town. They might find someone who knows what to do about the doll’s ailing mechanisms, worn out by who-knows how many years of solitary housework before Vidra stumbled on the place.
The doll won’t listen to reason; it never has, terrified to leave even temporarily. But it’s worsening, she thinks, and perhaps — she sighs again — perhaps she can appeal to its attachment to her. What will she do, if it stops working?
Scurvy, she snorts to herself, and goes to change her sweat-stained shirt before dinner.
