Puppet on a String
By Corvida-Margareth, or Esmeraldalazingara
"Up, Djali!" Esmeralda squealed, clapping her hands and hopping. Her sandals were wearing thin with holes, the last remnants of the boots she'd had at the beginning of the year barely clinging together.
The little girl didn't care about the state of her footwear. She was too amused by the goat she'd found to take notice of much else. She could even ignore that she hadn't had as much food recently as she'd gotten used to.
The goat kid, barely past the baby stage, bleated happily and pranced around with her.
"Okay," Esmeralda said, "now we dance!" She caught Djali by the front hooves and began to hum. She giggled through her humming as Djali threw his head back and bleated excitedly again.
"Gather round, everybody!" Clopin's voice rang through the hall of their refuge. He sounded so thrilled, Esmeralda squealed with delight and trotted through the tents and wagons toward the sound of Clopin's voice.
He was there with a man, whose red mop of hair flopped around a terrified, pale face. He wore a disheveled soldier's uniform, and men Esmeralda knew were shoving him about while Clopin gleefully pranced circles around him.
Someone was making a loop out of rope, high overhead where Clopin put on puppet shows.
"What's going on?" Esmeralda asked, tugging at the green-striped skirt of Magdalena, the midwife. "You've really never seen one of these before?" she asked.
"Maybe I don't remember," Esmeralda said, defensive of her admittedly lacking experience.
"Another spy dares to intrude on our territory!" Clopin exclaimed, though he sounded more giddy than enraged.
"A spy?" Esmeralda gasped in utter horror. "But how did he get in?"
"King Clopin will keep it from happening again, Muchacha."
Esmeralda still cringed up at Clopin and the spy. There were often spies in Clopin's puppet shows, and they were nasty, so bad they sometimes gave Esmeralda nightmares. She crawled into Clopin's bed and poked him awake for a better story, but they would always fall asleep in the middle.
So why was it that instead of the spy, right then she feared her new Papa, who had picked her off the streets and chosen to call her his family?
The spy looked utterly defeated, not dangerous, anymore, and his mouth was all covered up. What if he wanted to say sorry?
"But wait!" Clopin cried, clucking his tongue. "I cannot hang him unless I have first offered him to the ladies at court!" Peals of laughter resounded at those words, though the spy still lifted his head, hoping someone would take him.
"What's a lady gonna do with him?" Esmeralda asked, pulling on Magdalena's skirt again as the woman laughed along with the others.
"Hush, child, just watch."
"But I don't want to! What are they going to do?"
The women were shaking their heads, and pointing their thumbs scornfully at the ground.
"Ah, mon ami, it seems your fate is decided! Nobody wants to marry you, so you're going to hang!" Clopin said, his arm looped around the spy's shoulders. He pranced toward a lever, and while the spy struggled, Clopin took hold of it.
"Stop!" Esmeralda shrieked. She couldn't just watch this man die and not do anything!
Everyone turned to stare at her, but the eyes which focused on her the strongest were Clopin's and the spy's.
"Why?" Clopin asked, his mouth hanging open as he stared at her.
"Well… I mean…" Esmeralda stood in an open gap of people as they tried to comprehend what she was doing. She squared her shoulders and looked sternly up at Clopin. "I could marry him!"
This time, there was no laughter, but Clopin smiled dangerously at her, sitting on the edge of the scaffold. "Cherie, why would you do a thing like that?" he asked.
Esmeralda looked up at the spy. He was sweating; his eyes boring into her as if she were an angel come down from on high just for him. It made her stomach twist, hating how much was expected of her, and terrified she couldn't deliver it. "Well, so he won't die," Esmeralda explained.
Nobody laughed this time.
"He has to die, Cherie. You are too young to marry him, and even if you could marry him, I would kill him to keep you from him." Clopin said every word with the utmost seriousness.
Esmeralda shook her head helplessly, knowing that once Clopin had made a decision, dissuading him was nigh impossible.
Clopin grabbed the man by the face, distorting his features as Clopin forced him to look down at Esmeralda. "This is why you will die," said their king. "Because you will never hurt my family!" With that, he went jangling away with his long spindly legs until he reached the lever.
While the spy struggled, Clopin pulled the lever. A trap door opened under the spy, and he fell through it, kicking his legs frantically as if to find a foothold that didn't exist.
Clopin laughed, and tugged on the rope, making the man swing side to side as his frantic jig grew faster and then ended slowly, the whole body going slack. "My finest show yet!" Clopin exclaimed, but Esmeralda preferred the ones with cloth and wood puppets that made her laugh with their silly jokes. Those were funny, and charming, and nobody… died.
The scream which had been lodged in Esmeralda's throat escaped as she watched Clopin make the dead man dance, and she ran away, not pausing to see horror cross Clopin's features.
Nobody stopped her, though she almost tripped over Djali as she went back to her tent. She tied up the knots at the entrance and rolled herself up in her blankets, shaking and sobbing.
"Essie!" Clopin cried, from outside the tent. "Essie, I'm sorry, won't you let your Papa in?"
"You're not my Papa!" she shouted from inside the bundle. "Stay out there! You're just a big meanie!" There was a stronger word she should probably be using, but she didn't know what it was.
There was silence outside the tent, and tiny kid Djali bleated threateningly at Clopin, his hooves splayed out as if he were planning to charge, and his horns lowered for impact.
"Ma Cherie, you know why I had to do what I did! I had to protect you and everyone else here at court!"
"You're a liar! You were having fun up there!"
"It's fun to know I'm keeping danger away from my people!"
"Not that much fun! The spy couldn't be that scary!"
"But what he would have done is much worse than what I had to do. He would have gone back to his bosses and helped them find us. You don't want me to let someone come get everyone, do you?"
"No… but why did you have to kill him?"
"Nothing else was going to stop him." Clopin began to untie the knots on her tent, and she sat still, waiting for him to succeed. He climbed into her tent and sat cross-legged before her, peering down to her in her nest of blankets. "You know I would never let anything happen to you, don't you, Essie?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said, peeking out at him as the suspicion faded from her eyes. But she could still see it all so clearly. That man, straining for his life, and Clopin laughing…
Clopin sighed deeply, and removed his mask. His face behind it looked older, tired and a little lost. "Sometimes we have to put on faces so we survive," he said. "The things that happen to us, to our people, mean we have to be strong. Sometimes we even have to be a little scary. But that's what keeps us alive, Essie."
Esmeralda flipped back the blanket from her head, and looked at him again. He was a lot more like the man she trusted now, the man who'd kept her life from ending in loneliness. "People have to die so we can live?" she asked.
"Sometimes they do," Clopin said, nodding softly.
"So when do we know if we should kill 'em or if we should run away?"
"Only kill them if you can't run away," Clopin said, relaxing somewhat as she did. "That man found our home, Essie. There was nowhere left to run."
Esmeralda sighed, and her little shoulders shuddered. She climbed out of the blankets and trailed them along behind her, then crawled into Clopin's lap. "Are we safe now?" she asked.
"For a little while, ma Cherie," Clopin said, wrapping her up in the blankets. "That's all we can hope for, in this world."
"Someday that's going to change," Esmeralda told him.
"You keep hoping for that, Essie," Clopin said, exhaling as if he had been awake for hours.
"No, I mean it," she said, squeezing her eyes shut. "If one person can say something, maybe…"
"Hush, Essie. There's only so much you can do by dreaming."