A story that's been in the works for quite a while, here is the story about how I first became a toymancer! This will almost certainly be continued later on. For now, please enjoy!
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Holidays were always a difficult thing for Azariah. The wolf was a bit of a loner, so he had very limited options when he wanted to do something with his friends. Quite often, he got to the end of his list of friends before he found something to do. Such was the case on this day, and so he decided to go driving in hopes of finding something interesting.
On this particular day, that interesting thing came in the form of a new carnival in town. It was reasonably well occupied and seemed to be well maintained, and so he decided to see what all the carnival had to offer.
Entry was not particularly cheap, but he was desperate to find something to do. Fortunately, the rides and attractions were quite good. Azariah entertained himself for quite a while going back and forth between a few favorites. He didn’t go into any of the tents at first, but after quite some time on the rides, he decided that he wanted to sit in a stationary seat for a little while, at least.
The tents were what you would expect in most cases. A fortune teller’s tent was reasonably popular, and another tent claimed to house the funniest show in the world. Still another advertised inhuman feats of strength, and one more housed a freak show. Still, none of them sounded as strange, or as entertaining as the tent near the edge of the carnival, its colorful letters proclaiming it as the domain of the Toymancer.
“Come see the greatest show on stage! See toys of all kinds brought to life, dancing to the magic of his very fingers!”
The wolf thought that such a show sounded interesting, and the price was affordable, so he entered the tent and took a seat.
The tent was disappointingly empty, and as Azariah took his seat, he discovered why. The magician, a rabbit wearing a worn top hat, was cavorting on the stage with obvious energy, but his marvelous tricks were clearly nothing but the work of strings, some of which could even be seen in the stage lights. The man’s energy was infectious, and the show did help restore some of Azariah’s energy, but he was disappointed in the lack of wonder in the show. At least most magicians managed to keep the audience guessing as to how they performed their clever deceptions.
Only a handful of people remained when the man took a bow. He was still energetic, but his face showed that he knew that his audience was not impressed. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief after his bow, only to hold up his hands as if to forestall the exodus of his small audience.
“Please, gentlefurs! You must stay to see my finest trick!” Few heeded his words, but Azariah was among them. He wanted to see if the man could redeem himself at all. “Using nothing but a set of strings,” he dangled them before the audience, “I will change one of you people from a man into a marionette! This trick is completely harmless, and will show the true extent of my power!”
A couple more people shuffled out at his proclamation, leaving Azariah in the audience with only a half dozen others at the most. None seemed to be volunteering, however, even as the magician implored them.
“Please, one of you people, allow me to demonstrate my full power!”
Azariah wasn’t completely certain, but even his tentative paw was the first, and only, volunteer that the magician received.
“Thank you! Please, come to the stage!” The man’s energy was back, and he danced to the side to meet Azariah at the stairs. He reached out and grasped the wolf’s paw in his own. “What’s your name, son?”
“It’s Azariah,” was the response. Then, suddenly, as their paws released, the wolf’s paw lifted up with the magician’s of its own accord! Startled, Azariah stared as his paw went limp, and attached to it, again visible in the stage lights, was a string!
“Hey, give Mister Hezekiah a big hand! What is the sound of one hand clapping, anyway?” With the wolf’s paw still attached to the string, he waved his own back and forth, making his volunteer act as though he were clapping with only one hand. Despite the small audience, the volume of the reaction was louder than even the boos had been during the main performance.
The young wolf might have corrected the rabbit’s pronunciation of his name, but the strange feelings and his inability to control his own hand distracted him too much. How was the man doing this? Surely, this unskilled magician could not have suddenly gained such talent in so short a time! As he was thinking, however, he felt a lightness to his head, and realized he couldn’t turn it on his own, either!
“Turn and face the audience, won’t you, sir?” A tug of the strings that now led to his head and his hand brought him around, and he found himself looking at the audience, a bewildered smile on his face. At least he could still control his expressions!
The magician pulled Azariah’s right paw about in front of him, and the wolf found himself sketching a simple bow for the audience. As he rose, his left paw was caught on another string, and he was no longer in control of his upper body. He wondered if he should feel concerned by this, but somehow the absolute impossibility of the situation overcame his misgivings. His legs were still his to command, but they felt like limp noodles. How could this be happening?
“Well, would you look at that? It seems our volunteer is shrinking to make working with him easier for me! How considerate. Hezekiah, you are a true gentleman!” Indeed, Azariah found that his footpaws were no longer touching the floor, and he flailed a bit before deciding to trust the magician with sustaining his weight. As he did, two more strings fell from the magician’s hands, and the wolf’s legs belonged to the toymancer as well.
“We’re almost there!” the magician proclaimed. The audience was reaching a fever pitch, and he had to shout over them. “Look, his tail’s wagging, I think he likes it!”
Indeed, Azariah found himself wagging his tail in pleasant surprise over how this impossible thing had happened! How could he suddenly have become a marionette in a magician’s hand? Even as he thought this, his tail was also caught by a string made especially for it, and the wagging was continued at the hands of the magician.
It was odd being unable to move of his own will. Honestly, he found it relaxing, far more relaxing than anything he had ever experienced before in his life. Even as he thought this, the magician began to parade him across the stage, skillfully working the strings of his new marionette in first a march, then a waltz, then a chicken dance. All throughout, Azariah found himself wishing that he could laugh. This was a fantastic trick!
Finally, the magician and the marionette each sketched their closing bows, and as the curtains closed, the few people in attendance went insane with loud ovations. The shouts of “encore” were easy to hear even through the material of the curtain, but the magician walked briskly backstage as soon as he was hidden. Azariah wondered when the trick would end but he followed along, unable to ask, as the magician carried him back.
The rabbit held the puppet in front of him, giving an odd sort of smile. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “You make an excellent marionette.”
With that, he lifted the paddles that now held the strings of the marionette named Azariah, and hung them from a pair of pegs intended for just that purpose. His ears wiggled for a moment, and then he left, leaving the wolf hanging on the wall, unable to move.
A mirror occupied the wall opposite the wolf, and he finally got a look at his current appearance. He looked the same as always, down to the clothing that he had worn to the performance, but even a quick inspection of his body showed that it was now made of wood! Mechanical joints had replaced his own, waiting to let arms, legs, and even tail bounce with the subtle movements of the strings.
The effect was incredible, but thoughts of concern were growing once again in his mind. He couldn’t move at all! He still seemed to be alive somehow, but the wooden body was now moved by strings, not by his will! What would become of him now? What if he never--?
“Don’t think that way.” The voice seemed to come from his own mind, but he knew the rebuke had not come from his thoughts. It had the sort of tone that made it difficult to discern whether it was male or female, but that consideration was not extraordinarily important. “Wasn’t it fun, performing and dancing on the stage?”
Azariah stared into the mirror, trying to see who was speaking, but his was the only image to be seen. “Yes, it was fun,” he responded. “But I can’t move anymore!”
“Yes, you can!” the voice insisted. “You just need the hands of a puppeteer, that’s all!”
“It isn’t the same,” the wolf puppet responded. “I’ve been able to move on my own as long as I can remember. Being a puppet is relaxing, and dancing at the end of strings is fun, but I need to be able to move!”
The voice did not respond for quite some time. Finally, it spoke again. “So, you don’t like being a marionette?”
Azariah hesitated. “No, I do like it,” he said at length. “It’s relaxing, and I would say it is fun to dance about on the strings. Still, it doesn’t stay fun forever. I need to be able to live, to move about freely.”
“What about this?” Suddenly, Azariah felt the tension in his strings relax, and then he realized with a start that he could move his body again. He flexed his arms and legs, grateful for their release, but looking down at them revealed that they still had a clear wood grain instead of his fur. The mirror agreed; he was able to move, but he was still a marionette.
“That’s better, but I still can’t live like this! My friends and family know me as a flesh-and-blood wolf. If I came to them as a puppet, they would be terrified!”
The voice said nothing, but Azariah detected a hint of sadness in his mind. “I cannot share a form with a flesh-and-blood.”
“You can’t what?” Azariah asked. “What are you, anyway?”
Suddenly, the wolf’s self-control was wrested away again, and he felt his body moving about at the ends of the strings again. He could see the paddles still hung from the pegs behind him, however; the strings were moving on their own, not affected by the paddles themselves. “I am the strings that this magician used to change your form,” came the response. As though to prove the point, they made the wolf dance through another, even more complex dance than the magician had managed.
“What?” Azariah was amused by the dance, but still surprised. “How can strings be able to talk? How can they be alive?”
A tittering laugh bounced about in the wolf’s mind. “It takes a good bit of magic,” the strings explained. “I do not understand the reason why, but a wizard in eons past tried to bring me to life, but thought he had failed when I showed no signs of intelligence. As it was, I simply had no opportunity to learn. One day, I was used to create a marionette, and through the puppeteer’s hands I learned the secrets of movement. Since then, I have also discovered how to change a living creature into a marionette, but none so far have agreed to remain a puppet.” The hint of sadness returned, and Azariah felt a pang of sympathy.
“I am sorry,” he said earnestly. “For someone to go from a free creature to one of wood and strings, however? It would seem to them like a prison.”
The strings were quiet again, briefly this time. “A prison. That is what I suffer,” they said quietly. “Understand, I do not wish to inflict such a prison on another, but I cannot move without the aid of a companion, whether they be a puppeteer, or linked to me as a marionette. I need to find someone who would agree to remain a marionette in order to escape my own solace.”
Azariah felt truly sorry. Only minutes ago, he would have found it inconceivable to be sympathizing with a set of strings, but then he had not been a puppet at that time either. He wished that he could help, but he was unwilling to give up his life. How long would it be, though, until the strings would refuse to yield their control over their host from sheer desperation?
“I would never do such a thing!” Azariah had forgotten that the strings somehow heard his thoughts, and was surprised when they reacted to him. “I am desperate, but I am no monster.”
“I am sorry,” Azariah thought quietly. “Isn’t there some other way, though? Can’t you share a body somehow?”
The silence that followed was extremely protracted, a period so long that Azariah could swear that he saw the lights on the wall drift several inches between words. “It might be possible,” the voice finally said, sounding hopeful. “Perhaps…”
Slowly, Azariah began to feel different once more, but this time the direction had reversed. The feelings ceased to be muted as they were when he was a puppet, and resumed how it felt when he was a regular wolf. He dropped to the ground as the strings disappeared, and then found himself growing back to his original height.
“I can do it!” the voice proclaimed. “My magic... I have changed you back into your original self, and yet I am still here with you!”
Azariah stood up and looked into the mirror, turning this way and that, patting his arms up and down and looking for strings. “You will not find me,” they said. “I have completely concealed myself.” Indeed, Azariah’s body felt exactly as it should have.
Azariah sighed, and considered silently for a few moments. “I think,” he said at last,” that I will be willing to share my form with you, if you would allow me to remain as I am during my daily life. I would allow you to change me into a puppet at times, but I will need to live as normal most often.”
The strings agreed. “I cannot sustain this form for very long at present, however,” they warned.
“Then return me to the form of a moving marionette,” Azariah suggested.
The change was far less protracted this time, and he was a wooden wolf before he could even blink. He experimented with his joints again, and found them to be acceptably flexible. “What do you need to be able to sustain my human form?” he asked as he took a few paces about the room. Without him even noticing, the strings went lax, the paddles slipping into place on his back like the sheath of some greatsword. The strings then disappeared once more, leaving the wolf looking rather normal apart from the obvious wood grain of his skin.
“My power comes from the fun that people have. Whether they are puppeteer or puppet, I can absorb the power from either. Another performance or two, and I should easily be able to sustain you for a few days.”
Azariah nodded. “Actually, I think that an act sounds like a very good idea,” he mused. “I have an idea. Can you create more than one puppet at a time?”
* * *
A few minutes later, the wolf marionette was standing above the stage on a catwalk. The audience in the tent was large and electric; apparently, word had spread of the magician’s amazing trick. The man himself was about to step out onto the stage, and the wolf watched him curiously as he stood backstage. He seemed unhappy, and was clearly mumbling to himself.
“I think he thinks that you’re doomed to remain a puppet,” the strings suggested. “This was the first time he used me since he first discovered my power. He must have been desperate.”
The wolf nodded. “He seems like a good guy, and he was a very good performer when he transformed me,” Azariah mused. “I don’t want to punish him too harshly, but I do think he needs a little bit of comeuppance. Perhaps some relaxation, and certainly as little fun! I just hope I’m as good of a performer as he was.”
It was not long until the magician stepped on stage, his tall ears bobbing about in amusement as he addressed the crowd with his raucous, motor-mouthed introduction. Azariah let him get to an opportune point in his speech, and started to grin at the course of the monologue.
“This evening, before your very eyes, I will change a man into a marionette!” he crowed. “On this stage, in this tent, this very evening! Who will it be? Will it be you, sir? Perhaps you, Madame? One of you?”
With a huge grin, Azariah dropped a few strings down from his perch, even as the magician swept both arms out in a wide arc. The confusion was clear on the rabbit’s face as he suddenly found his arms suspended by an unseen force, and his head stuck in place! Azariah jumped off of the catwalk from where he had perched, letting the strings connecting him to the magician pass over top of the walkway to suspend them both. As he began to drop into the audience’s view, the rabbit magician began to rise, despite clearly weighing far more than the wolf puppet.
“Or perhaps, the magician himself?” Azariah finished the man’s thought.
The crowd went insane. The stunt was amazing! Impossible! Magical! And as the audience reacted, the rabbit looked at the wolf in shock, and saw the puppet’s eye wink at him.
“Relax,” the toy whispered. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
And the rabbit gave a buck-toothed smile.
* * *
The performance was more than a smash. The reaction from within the tent drew dozens more visitors, until even the standing room was occupied. The rabbit magician, once he realized that the wolf was benign in his intentions, delivered a performance to beat the band. His very real shock had already made an impression with the audience, and he cleverly hammed his performance to the next level as he was overtaken by a smaller, more wooden form. Finally, once the change was complete, and Azariah had played with the seemingly inanimate puppet for a few moments, the rabbit slapped him playfully across the muzzle and demanded that he be allowed to participate in the act!
The two cavorted and played about the stage, turning their complete lack of preparation into an improv act to beat the band. Toys that had been intended for the cheap parlor tricks were used with new zest; the rabbit magician drove across the stage in a wooden truck, followed closely by a wolf, tied to the car by a string and riding a pair of matchbox cars like skates. A toy plane took a nosedive straight at the stage, only to be caught inches from its surface by a rabbit puppet wearing a gaudily colored cape. A plush bunny became the magician’s dancing party, while the toy wolf attempted to cut in several times, only to be turned away with increasingly ludicrous slapstick maneuvers from both dancers.
Time was lost on both performers and audience as the act rolled on, until the carnival officials actually had to come in and announce that the gates were closing for the evening. The groans of disappointment were overpowered only by the ovation that the performers received. Each bowed to the audience, and then to each other, and then the curtains closed on the most unexpected performance of the ages.
Backstage, the rabbit gave the wolf a huge embrace. “Thank you!” he exclaimed sincerely. “I thought I had done something horrible to you. You’ve cleared my conscience, and given me the best night of my life!”
The wolf chuckled. “You still did something very dangerous,” he scolded. “You didn’t know that I would find a way to move about. For all you knew, you might have killed me!”
The rabbit’s wooden ears drooped. “I’m sorry for that. I tried so hard to make a good act, but no one would stay to watch it!” He looked up at the wolf with a grateful expression. “Thank you for being one of the few that did.”
The wolf smiled kindly. “I hope this new form will help you out.”
The rabbit looked himself over with a wiggle of his wooden nose. “It does present some interesting possibilities,” he admitted. “Still, is there a way to change back?”
Azariah chuckled. “I’ll let you and the strings work those details out.” At the rabbit’s confused gaze, the wolf just laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.” He started to walk away.
“Wait!” the magician exclaimed. When Azariah turned, he found himself looking into the rabbit’s imploring eyes. “Could you maybe come help me with the show? You were great tonight!”
Azariah smiled. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sure that helping you out would be a lot of fun.”
The strings seemed to leap at the word, and began to talk excitedly in his mind as he walked out of the tent, already resuming his customary form. “That was so much fun!” they exclaimed. “I have so much power, I could sustain this form for weeks!”
Azariah nodded in agreement. “That was fun! Don’t worry, though. We’ll be helping the Toymancer out quite a bit in the near future. There will be plenty more fun where that came from.”
He could almost see the strings smiling. “Thank you,” they said. “I haven’t ever had such a good time since I was created. I can’t wait to see how much more we can do!”
Azariah agreed. Life spent as a puppet one moment and a wolf the next was going to be complicated, but after this experience he was certain that it would be well worth the confusion.
