short, narrow cement hole in the ground with matching cement steps that led up to the overgrown lawn. The door was on the side of a small blue house near the back corner and was barely visible until you were almost on top of it. The house had seen better days and over all Morgan felt like it was a place where he was more likely to find drugs and hookers than the enigmatic Arthur. Of course it was always possible he would find all three.
Heaving a sigh, convinced he was being sent on a goose chase he rapped sharply on the door and waited. Someone inside let out what sounded like a muffled curse and something fell over. No one came to the door. Morgan pounded on the door with annoyance. “Arthur are you in there?” he called out.
The door swung open so suddenly that Morgan had his gun half out of the holster before realizing it was the man he was looking for. Dressed in old clothes covered by a leather apron, Arthur stood in the door with a wooden mallet and chisel clutched in one hand. It was quite the contrast between his normally well put together self, but he smiled switching the chisel into his free hand and waving Morgan in with it distractedly.
“Officer Morgan! Jumpy today aren't you?” he mused knowingly as he walked back into the house. Bright daylight spilled into the dimly lit interior. “Well come on in. We are divulging secrets today and I won't do it with the door open.”
The young man moved with a quick step and his voice was even more confident than before, though it had a more relaxed quality to it. It was the way a man spoke when in his own element, comfortable and relaxed but focused with little room for anything other than the task at hand. The change was refreshing, if more abrasive, to see than the finished face he had presented previously, this was more real.
Inside the basement apartment was dim, feeling more like a cave than a house. The first room was a moderately sized living room with a popcorn ceiling, unfinished walls and a door leading off to what he assumed was a bathroom. The place was very tidy, a few boxes here and there and a few pieces of clothing thrown on the sparse old furniture. Obviously Arthur hadn't lived there long and the most prolific sense of habitation was the technical manuals strewn over every table and most of the chairs. The living area led to a small kitchen and dining area with outdated appliances and mismatched chairs. Here more unpacked boxes had established a settlement under the table and there were fast food containers invading the top of the stove. There was nothing truly shocking or out of the ordinary.
“Come on!” Arthur called from behind the open of the two doors in the kitchen. Morgan followed the voice and found himself in a large bedroom.
A large bed took up most of the room, it had a small heavy wood side table against it and heavy curtains blocked out the light from the window. That was all to be expected. There were also a modest collection of mismatched wooden tables and work benches against every spare bit of wall space. These were piled with half carved pieces of wood, bolts of cloth, glass, porcelain and metal pieces. Each one organized into its own pile or container. There were tools as well, carving tools, dyes, screws and nails, a wood burner, clay, a Bunsen burner and any number of tools either too unusual or too exotic for Morgan to recognize. He even spotted an actual mortar and pestle in front of a strange dark liquid that gave off a sweet smell kept in an ampule. These things, familiar and strange alike however could not keep the officers attention.
At the foot of the overly large bed sat another table beside which Arthur perched on a strangely thin stool with his hammer and chisel in hand. He was surveying the face of a wooden head. It was the cracked and splintered face of a small girl with one blue eye that had no pupil. Morgan watched numbly as the face of the young girl he had saved at the industrial training building turned to him and spoke in an all too human manner.
“Hello Officer Morgan.” Her voice was the same small, young, calm and detached voice it had been last night. “It is good to see you again.”
Act II: The Dolls
“You can sit on the bed.” Arthur waved distractedly with his chisel in that direction.
Feeling dizzy and light headed, Morgan had followed the advice before it had finished being given. Of all the many things he had had to deal with lately, gangsters fleeing town and little girls fighting with swords, the small girls detached, wooden, talking head was too much.
“Are you well Officer Morgan?” The little girls head had turned to follow him. He noted in a detached way that the voice was the same, and that the cadence and stresses on her words were still off, but better than they were last night, less noticeable.
“Mei-mei if you keep moving this is going to take twice as long!” Arthur sighed with exasperation as he turned the head back to face him.
“I am sorry Arthur.” She apologized sincerely.
“And stop talking or you'll lose more of your lip!” he griped, but there was no sharp edges to his voice as he delicately placed his chisel next to a rut in her cheek and tapped it gently. Morgan looked away as his stomach threatened to rise against him.
“You're doing quite well Officer.” Arthur said after a few minutes of thickened silence previously only broken by the tapping of the hammer and scraping of the chisel.
“I kind of feel like throwing up.” Morgan admitted into the palms of his hands.
“Yes but you haven't tried to slap the chisel out of my hands or demanded 'what have you done to that poor girl!'” Arthur took the effort to pantomime outrage with his tool filled hands thrown into the air and affecting a feminine edge to his words as he spoke the last, actually making Morgan smile. “And then I have to get Mei-mei to hold you down which is traumatizing you for, annoying to me and highly uncomfortable for her.”
Morgan spied the little girls body standing as still as a statue against the wall between two tables and his smile fell away. Too distracted to notice it before, it was highly conspicuous to him now. He eyed it nervously and was fairly sure he already knew the answer to his next question. “She can move her body without her head?”
The wooden head, who was apparently Mei-mei, smiled and spoke, much to Arthur's exasperation. “I like him.” The body in the corner raised a small hand to wave and sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling over the large officer.
Arthur scolded her again but Morgan didn't really hear it. Instead he just buried his face in his hands and tried to process. The little girl was seemingly made of wood. She could walk and talk, even when not attached to her body and Arthur was carving out and repairing her face.
Morgan forced himself to his feet and took several large breaths. All in all it wasn't a difficult concept to simply accept, but it turned the way he viewed much of the world on his head and he wasn't sure how to deal with it. Every time he tried to tell himself to simply deal with it another 'but that means...' crept into his head and he had to wrestle it back down.
“What...” He started before losing his train of though. “How does...” the train derailed. “The 'Dolls' aren't just some gang or cult are they?” he finally managed to find a coherent question. It wasn't the most profound under the circumstances but it was a place to start.
Arthur glanced up with a small smile. “It's better just to go with it at first, eventually it will kinda make sense.” he went back to his work with a delicate hand as he spoke. He chipped away less and more carefully, tapping here and there. “As for your question no. Well they might be, but not the dolls you are dealing with.”
“So she...” The officer paused awkwardly “Mei-mei?” Arthur nodded. “Is a Doll?” he made the whole statement more of a question, an attempt to put out the car fires and get the train back on the tracks.
“Yes.”
“So, what is a Doll?”
Arthur didn't answer the question right away. Putting down the chisel and hammer he picked up a small speciality carving knife of some kind and closely inspected Mei-mei's face. He took long enough that Morgan almost asked again, but the man replied just before he did. “That is a very difficult question to answer.” He blew off some shavings and picked up the Doll's head. “A D
oll is a construct.” He spoke deliberately, picking and choosing his words with great care and sounding somewhat like he was reciting text. He never looked away from his work on the face though.
“Almost everything you encounter has a spirit of some sort in it. Every rock, every tree, pearl, river and burning ember has a sense of self and of the world around it.” Arthur paused and Morgan sat back down on the bed, trying to listen and absorb without over thinking or bursting in with questions. “Some of these spirits have a...” He paused, groping for the word before he went on. “Curiosity is the best way to describe it I suppose, about humans specifically, but about life in general. They have an ambition to move and talk and understand and change the world in more abstract ways. To affect things directly and live more like we do. With the right understanding and processes, one can take these things and give the spirits they contain, life. Or at least a semblance thereof."
Here he stopped to squint carefully at Mei-mei's head, delicately placing the blade against her cheek to change an angle or remove a splinter. Morgan couldn't help but watch with morbid fascination. “My father was a Dollmaker. As was his father. He taught me how to recognize these items, their spirits. He taught me how to carve and chisel, thread hair