Twelve years old is a strange age. Your body is unrecognizable as it reshapes itself into something new. You are still a child but expected to behave like an adult. But Patience could simply not grow up as she should. Her mother passed when she was only five years of age. Patience had been given a doll for her fifth birthday by her mother.
“Someone to share all your secrets with,” She had told her with a wink. She named her Justine and she was her constant companion ever since. Each night, she would brush the doll’s hair and tell her about her day. Her older sister Trinity made the doll a little dress identical to one Patience had and she would wear the dress so often it started to become ragged in appearance. When her nanny could no longer stand the sight of it, she threw it away to Patience’s despair.
“I want my dress back,” She cried to her doll that night. In the morning, a brand new dress lay out on a chair waiting for her. It had been adjusted to fit her growing body and small embellishments made it beautiful.
“How kind of Trinity!” She said but when asked Trinity denied having any part in it. She shrugged it off and soon forgot about the strange occurrence. But it wasn’t just the dress. Sweets appeared when she craved them. When she wished for sunshine, the rain cleared. A surprise visit from grandmother after telling Justine it was her greatest birthday wish. It was easy to explain it all away, until Josiah came.
Josiah was their cousin and he was only a year older than Patience. When he was ten years old, he spent the summer with them. The boy taunted her relentlessly. He pulled her hair, called her names and stole her toys. It was a game to him and Patience came to hate him.
“Why do you carry that doll around?” Josiah asked one day. “You are much too old for it.” He tried to take it from her but she fought back in a way she hadn’t before and fled.
“He’s a wicked boy,” She told Justine when they were safely away. “I wish he were punished.”
The next day, Josiah accidentally broke a vase. The Duke saw it happen and flew into an uncharacteristic rage. He grabbed his nephew and boxed his ears until the boy cried out. In a daze, the Duke let the boy go and walked away as if nothing had happened.
Patience watched this all with fascination. A coincidence, she told herself, nothing more. For a few days, Josiah was timid and well behaved but it did not last long. Soon he was back to terrorizing Patience with an even greater cruelty. He pushed her when no one was looking, he destroyed the toys he took, he hid in dark corners and took every opportunity to frighten her.
One day he pushed her too hard. She fell and cut her knee. He laughed as it bled through her stockings.
“I hate him,” She told Justine, “I wish he would get hurt like I did.”
The next day he fell down the stairs and broke his wrist. The rest of the summer passed peacefully for Patience as Josiah was confined to resting. But even a broken wrist could not keep him down for long. One afternoon, Patience was playing alone by a pond when she found a frog. She delighted in the tiny creature and clapped as he hopped around.
She did not notice Josiah creep up on them until he had snatched the frog away. His wrist was bandaged and his eyes shone with a fever.
“Is this your pet, Patience? What an ugly thing. But then again, you are an ugly girl.”
Before she could protest, he pulled out a hunting knife and with a sickening squish he drove it through the frog’s middle and pinned it to a tree. He laughed as he darted away while Patience shrieked and cried.
“You should have seen the poor little thing Justine,” She whispered that night. “How could anyone be so cruel? I wish he were gone.”
The next morning, Josiah went riding with some older boys. He was thrown from his horse and died instantly when his head connected with a boulder.
Patience couldn’t believe he was actually dead until she saw the body laid before her at the funeral. She felt sick with guilt and fear as she went to bed that night. Justine sat on a chair across the room, watching her. The doll that had brought her such comfort now frightened her more than anything else. Justine had caused Josiah’s death. The doll was evil and had to be destroyed. With tears running down her face, she grabbed her greatest companion and threw it into the fireplace. She watched as the porcelain melted and the little dress burned. The glass eyes stared up at her all the while.
She tried to forget Justine and her wicked deeds. Deeds she had committed for Patience. But no, it was the doll, not her, that had killed Josiah. She carried this thought with her like armor until a few days after her twelfth birthday.
Her sisters roused her from her sleep and brought her through the woods. Through an enchanted tree and into a magical clearing. They showed her their mother’s grimoire, passed down for decades from mother to daughter, sister to cousin. They were magic, they told her, it ran through her veins. Her sisters rejoiced and anointed her into their coven. Patience felt joy to finally be included in her sisters’ secrets but as she thought of the magic she possessed a terrible thought seized her.
Justine had just been a doll, nothing more. The dress, the sweets, the things that happened to Josiah. It hadn’t been Justine at all. It had been her.
Pieces of Viking pottery with traces of cat and dog paws, seen at the Musée de Normandie in Caen Castle
“So back in the day pets already ruined their owner’s artwork.” - My sis who took the photo
“ruined”? made better
It’s very humanizing to imagine some poor potter in the past screaming “nnnnooooooo bad kitty” somewhere in Scandinavia
If it was ruined, the artisan wouldn’t have baked it.
That’s… that’s a delightful point you just made.
This person chose to bake and keep their cat’s artistic contribution.
i was in spain once and there was a building with a tile that had been laid down in roman times: it had a dog’s paw print. and the thing was that after the dog did that print, the wet tile was dried, and then fired, and then shipped, and then laid, and for two thousand years every person who encountered that tile thought ‘aw! paw print!’ and kept it. this vast agreement by thousands of people over all these centuries, in memory of a dog only one of us could have met.
i loved that tile.
Every comment.
As anyone who has worked with wet clay knows, these pawprints could be removed with a dab more clay and a stroke of one hand.
That they weren’t, says all that needs said.
The hand was too busy stroking something furry that purred or wagged its tail.
