Chapter the Last – The Doll

Oh god, it had eaten them. Five armed Merchants, and the thing had just...the red, wet, gaping, mouths...the crunching.

Emma ran, knowing she couldn't get away from the insane shapes, the tentacles, something that barked and could have been a dog's head. It was fast, too fast. She ducked into an entrance, tried the shop door. It was locked. Cowering behind the signs, pressing herself back into the few inches of concrete that served as a porch she prayed to Sophia, to anyone as she heard the heard the worst of it.

"Please hide, please stay quiet." The girl's voice begged from behind her. "I don't want to…," and the begging changed, deepened to a growl echoed by monsters as the malformed shadow moved into the street. "So hungry..."

Emma could hear the asphalt cracking under its bulk as it moved, the shuffling sounds of something enormous that filled the narrow street from side to side as a curtain of tentacles and twisted flesh pulled it forwards. Why was this happening to her? She was a survivor, she couldn't die here!

"I saved her from the muggers." Oh god, it ate them, ate them before they could - "Why won't you let her go?" This wasn't like Sophia's rescue, all clean and brutal and brilliant. Where was Shadow Stalker? She hadn't been at school, she wasn't here for the patrol they were going to do, she wasn't here, oh god, had this thing eaten her? No, she was a survivor. So was Emma, even if she couldn't breath. She was a survivor. It was going to kill her.

The girl's voice was back, begging, delirious, part of the monster, embedded up to her hips like a twisted decoration. If the thing ate her, ate Emma, would she be part of the amalgam as well, forever? She couldn't close her eyes as the shadow lengthened, as it made its shuffling, inexorable, way forward. The stink of the awful, twisted, body washed over her as she gagged.

"Stay hidden, please," the girl begged as the thing grew closer and closer to Emma's hiding place, driven by the huge hand that dug into the road and pushed the whole bulk forward. "If you can hear me, don't come near me. But I'm so hungry." The naked desperation roused Emma's contempt. Terror banished it as the voice quieted, became thoughtful. "Maybe one more then. One more, and then I won't be so hungry."

No, this couldn't be happening. Emma was a survivor. The shuffling was close, too close. Was it sniffling for her? She looked up, saw the first tips of a tentacle, saw the malformed dog's head that could eat her at a bite. She was going to die.

She broke, fled, one step, two. There was a roar behind her as the thing lunged, jaws gaping, it was too close, too impossibly fast, closing the distance even as her foot came down for the second time, as the front of the restaurant collapsed in masonry and concrete. Emma screamed.

She saw stars. Then nothing...

#

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl, and her name was Emma-Lee.

And she had a shop. It was a rather unusual shop because it didn't sell anything.

You see everything in that window was a thing that somebody had once lost, and Emma-Lee had found. And brought home to Bagpuss.

Emma-Lee's cat Bagpuss. The most important, the most beautiful, the most magical, saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world.

One day Emma-Lee found a thing and she brought it home to Bagpuss who was asleep in the shop window as usual. But then Emma-Lee said some magic words:

Bagpuss, oh Bagpuss, Big, fat, furry, catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring.
Wake up and bright, be golden and light.
Oh Bagpuss, hear what I sing.

And Bagpuss was wide awake. And when Bagpuss woke up, all his friends woke up too.

The mice on the Mouse Protector organ woke up and stretched.

Madeleine the Rag doll

Gabriel the toad

and last of all Professor Yaffle, a very distinguished old woodpecker. He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emma-Lee had brought.

It was a pile of bright cloth, a very large pile indeed, and it was all stitched together.

"Mya, mya, mya," he clicked. "I have no idea what this is. No idea at all."

"Can't you see," said Madeleine. "Why, it is a doll."

"A doll?" cried the mice. "But it is a very odd-shaped doll."

"Indeed," said Professor Yaffle, "A doll. But there's rather too much dress. You can hardly see the doll."

"I know a song about a dress" said Gabriel, strumming his guitar.

~"Once there was a Princess,
who had a very large dress
she tripped and fell
right down a well
and made her dress a mess."~

"That is not a song," said Professor Yaffle. "It is a limerick."

"I sung it, so it's a song," said Gabriel.

"Stop," said Madeleine, "Limericks can be sung, so they can be songs."

"Very well," said Professor Yaffle, "But what shall we do about the dress? There's simply far too much of it."

"Why, can't you see what is on its head, Professor?" asked Madeleine.

"It is a crown." said Professor Yaffle.

"It is a knitting crown," said Madeleine., and the mice clustered round the doll.

"A knitting crown? What's that? What's that?" asked the mice.

"Why its a crown on a doll that lets you knit with it. You can knit and knit for ever so long if you have wool," said Madeleine. Bagpuss was baffled.

"However does it work? I mean, wherever did it get it?"

"From it's owner," said Gabriel. "Only their owners dress up dolls."

"But why would its owner put a crown on it?" Bagpuss wanted to know.

"I have a story," said Madeleine. "Bagpuss, you need to think very hard,"

"Then I shall need a thinking hat," said Bagpuss. The mice pulled his thinking hat to Bagpuss and put it on his head. And Bagpuss thought, and he thought so hard his thoughts appeared like magic.

~ Once there was a Princess, who lived in the sky, and like all things in the sky she wore feathers. Because she was a princess, she wore a crown, but hers was made of crystal. It was a most unusual crown, for it was a knitting crown, but Princesses don't knit. They do tapestry. So the crown didn't knit.

She had many pretty things, but what the Princess liked most of all was dolls. One day she saw a broken doll, so she swooped down and picked it up. And she mended with it and played with it and toyed with it, and had marvellous fun with it.

Because it had become her favourite doll, she put her knitting crown on it while she began a tapestry to make it a marvellous Princess dress like hers. But the doll was not a Princess, so the knitting crown began to knit. It knitted and knitted and knitted, and the dress got larger and larger. The dress got so large the Sky Princess had to hold her doll with both hands, and then she couldn't take the knitting crown off. It got so large that the Sky Princess could not hold the doll anymore because the clouds were too thin for the weight.

The doll fell all the way down from the sky onto earth. The Princess could see her doll had fallen back to where it came from, and there were people there who might be its owners, come to claim it. She thought that someone else might have fun with her doll, and that its owners would be glad to have it back, so she went on to other toys. But the knitting crown knitted and knitted and knitted and knitted, and the Princess had quite forgotten to stop it, and so it is still knitting to this day. ~

"But how do we make it stop?" asked Bagpuss.

"That is simple." said Professor Yaffle, "We shall need to take the knitting crown off. Mice, hold up the doll's head." The mice held the doll up and the Professor snapped the knitting crown off the doll's head. The mice patted the dress down.

"Why, it is a very pretty doll," said Madeleine.

"Nya, nya, nya, this is not a normal doll!" said Professor Yaffle. "It is an Echidna."

"What is an Echidna?" asked Bagpuss.

"It is a damaged doll that has many layers of dress instead of legs." said Professor Yaffle. The mice began to lift the Echidna towards the window. "No, no, no," said Professor Yaffle, and the mice stopped. "There is still entirely too much dress."

"The Professor is quite right," Madeleine said. "You must repair it first." The mice dropped the doll and set to work on it, cutting and clipping the Echidna.

"We will tend it, we will mend it,
We will make it a pretty sight,
We will sooth it and improve it,
We will make it all right, right, right."

Even the magic song couldn't fix the Echidna's legs, so the mice made new ones and then re-stuffed the Echidna so it was as good as new. There was quite a bit left over, so the mice put the scraps in Madeleine's workbox until the shop was neat and quite tidy again.

Then Bagpuss put the Echidna in the window so if the person who owned it saw it, they could come in to collect it.

And Bagpuss gave a great big yawn and settled down to sleep.

And when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too.

The mice were ornaments on the Mouse Protector organ.

Madeleine and Gabriel were just dolls.

Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.

Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep was just an old, saggy, cloth, cat. Baggy and a bit loose at the seams.

But Emma-Lee loved him.
#

"Noelle. Noelle?" Trickster was running through the streets, terrified he'd lost her. How the hell had she got out of the shipping crate before they'd even reached Coil? If she could have kept control for just one more day, she would have been safe. His phone chimed.

"Krouse, anything?" Mars sounded scared, two streets away.

"No. Keep looking." How had she vanished, before they'd even reached Coil and his promised cure? They couldn't afford another Boston, another Washington, not when they were so close to saving her. He swapped positions with a sign at the end of the street and kept going. "Noelle?"

"Krouse?" It was so quiet he barely heard it, and he stopped, pulling the top hat off and angling his head to hear better.

"Noelle?"

"Krouse? I'm over here."

"Keep talking!" Trickster swapped places with a wrecked motorbike, a fallen streetsign, circling the block in jumps as her voice grew louder.

In the wreck of a ruined shop, Noelle raised her head. Placed in the shattered window like a display, she was curled up naked on her side, shivering from the night's cold and surrounded by shards of broken glass. She was staring at her legs. Her legs.

"Noelle?" He barely breathed it.

"I'm fixed," She didn't look at him, still staring at her feet. The toes twitched. "I'm fixed?" Trickster rushed to the window, and swapped her out onto the pavement. Noelle faltered on her new legs and he caught her, pulling his coat off awkwardly. She froze, horrified, as he touched her arm. Nothing happened. "Krouse? Is this real?" She prodded her legs, flexing the toes. Cautiously, he reached down, tapped her knee. Nothing happened.

"Yes, yes it's real." He was crying. He didn't care. "How? Who?" If whoever had done this wanted anything, Krouse would get it to them. Whatever they wanted in return, it was theirs.

"I don't know." Noelle was absolutely baffled. "It felt like a dream. You know, when you just wake up and you can't quite remember it?"

"Noelle!" Mars shouted, running up to them. Nervously, she stopped, saw Krouse with his arm round Noelle's shoulders. Mars stared at Noelle's legs, beginning to raise her hands. Light grew between them. "Er...Krouse?"

"I don't make clones anymore!" Noelle said hurriedly.

"Someone fixed her," Krouse added at the same time, as Mars began to stammer questions.

"We need to get off the streets," Noelle said, over her. "It isn't safe." Krouse stilled, listening to the city noises, some of which were closer than he liked.

"We'd better get back to the hotel and tell the others," he decided.

"Aren't we meant to be working with Coil?" Mars asked, and Krouse looked at Noelle, his arm round her. She shook her head, falling back into old leadership habits.

"If we don't need to work with the villains, let's not," she said. Krouse shrugged. They were out of Accord's reach, and they hadn't even met Coil yet. They could go anywhere, even home, if she was really fixed. He smiled.

"Yeah. Screw Coil."