Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The famous cousin arrives…

Haru could barely contain her glee. She wanted to join the family in rushing to greet Cousin Johan, but she could not – it would give away her secret. Sometimes she wondered if it would really be such a bad thing, if they found out, but then… no, better she not tell them.

"Who made the little glass girl? She is so beautiful."

Haru nearly blushed at the praise. Hiromi, Cousin Johan's new wife, was staring at her with such intensity – it made Haru want to hide her face in her hands, she was so shy all of a sudden.

"My Humbert made her for his masterpiece. He proposed to me the day he finished," Louise answered in a broken mixture of German and Japanese – both women were able to understand only this much of the other's language, so it worked out well for them. Their husbands were taking the von Jokingen children for ice cream. Never yet had a child grown out of a love for ice cream, and they wanted to spend time with their favourite relative.

"She looks alive… My father made a doll, a long time ago now, and sometimes, I would swear that I have seen him moving on his own."

There are others like me?

"I know what you mean – sometimes I feel as though I am being watched, but I am the only one in the room, apart from little Haru here…"

The conversation was cut off by the return of the husbands and children, and Louise moved to put Haru back on her shelf in the cabinet (she had been removed so that Hiromi could get a better look at her). The mother of five transferred the glass girl as carefully as she could, but she had not expected her youngest to suddenly hug her from behind. It almost knocked her over.

Haru suddenly realised she didn't have a choice. The family was going to find out about her, or she was going to end up a nasty mess of broken glass.

Jumping desperately from Louise's open hand, Haru made it to her shelf and scrambled up, puffing just a little from the fright of it all, then stood and resumed her frozen pose, once more in her proper place on the shelf.

It occurred to her slightly too late that what she had done might have been dismissed as a trick of the light if she had stayed on her side on she shelf, rather than standing upright. Oh well, it was too late now.

"I just saw my masterpiece move of her own volition…" Humbert said quietly, still in shock at what he had seen. What he could not possibly have seen…

"So did I," Johan said.

Hiromi nodded, unable to force sound from her mouth.

"I felt her jump out of my hand," Louise said, staring dumbly at the delicate, fey-like girl now standing on her shelf.

"Haru?" the eldest, Samson, a glassmaker just like his father, approached the girl tentatively. "Please wake up Haru."

A man his age should not be able to still do the puppy-eyes.

Haru sighed, and relented. Actually, it was quite nice, being involved in their conversations, rather than being separate from them.