Excerpt: The Cloth Boy

Desistaire look up from her painting momentarily at the sound of the front door being slammed downstairs. Angry footsteps commenced, thumping in the direction of the stairs. Abruptly they stopped, followed by a very sweet "Good afternoon Mistress Gavintre." Desistaire's mother replied in a warm voice, not seeming to mind the cruel treatment of her front door, "Good afternoon. Desistaire's in her room, painting." A reply of "Thank you Mistress Gavintre" was once again issued very sweetly, followed by the hammer like pounding that resumed in the direction of the stairs. Desistaire's hands, meanwhile, went back to catching the minute details of the small daisy lying on her windowsill, while her ears counted the steps it takes to get from the stairs to the door of her room. 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... Desistaire timed it perfectly so that she opened her door at the very same instant her best friend's hand reached for her doorknob. Unlike her mother, Desistaire did mind the slamming of her door, for the very practical reason that it often caused her paints to fall over.
"Hello, Aradine. How are you, darling?" Desistaire greeted her best friend in a warm voice much like that of her mother's. She stepped aside to let Aradine in.
Desistaire had a very quaint little room, situated at the corner of the house, so that through one window she could see the bustling streets of the town, and if she squinted and looked very hard, she could see the blurred terraces of the palace far off in the distance. The other window overlooked the Gavintres' little yard, where Desistaire's mother was hanging up the wet laundry, while at the same time keeping an eye on the little baby boy playing in the shade of a nearby tree. Desistaire's room also served as her art studio, evidenced by the great rolls of parchment and canvases leaning against the wall, upon which she spent most of her free time painting and sketching. Packs of paints, brushes, and pencils lay in neat little compartments Desistaire's father had built into the beautiful little oak table he'd made just for her. It sat under the window overlooking the streets, so that Desistaire could look out and paint scenes of her little town. Master Gavintre was quite wealthy in the little town; he made his money building the most beautiful wood furniture and decoration pieces. Because of this, Desistaire's house had tile flooring, even up on the second floor. Over the tile, a beautifully rug woven by Mistress Gavintre for her daughter kept the floor warm. It lay by the bed, also built by Master Gavintre. At the head of the bed was a small matching bedside table, and at the foot of the bed stood a little stand that carried a basin of water. The walls of the room were covered by white wallpaper, decorated by Desistaire herself. Along the ceiling were pretty vines and flowers, cupids and butterflies. The wall that the bed was against had a portrait of Desistaire and Aradine laughing hand in hand, the features of each face captured masterfully.
"You know perfectly well how I am, Desi," Aradine growled as she fell onto Desistaire's bed and buried her face in the embroidered goose down pillow. "All the boys in this dump of a village are perfectly ghastly. I don't even know why I bother anymore. Will you believe what Eorun did today? After our picnic, he handed me a daffodil and tried to kiss me! A stupid, ugly daffodil and he thinks he gets a kiss for that!" She raised her face from the pillow in order to snort in a very unbecoming way. "Your two brothers are fine though," she added as an afterthought.
Desistaire wasn't inclined to give much sympathy. Aradine was the most beautiful girl in their town, and also the most beautiful and graceful dancer anyone had ever known. It was no wonder that all the boys drooled after her. Aradine was looking for her true love, and she couldn't abide these foolish naive boys who babbled or lost their ability of speech at the mere sight of her. Which most boys did. No, what Aradine needed was a real man, and she realized by now that what she looked for was not to be found in her minuscule village.

"Come on!" Aradine said to Desistaire impatiently and pulled her into the mass of merchant tents. She scanned the signs in front of each tent and found the one she was looking for.
"Mother says we shouldn't deal with hedge witches. They are very untrustworthy," Desistaire said uncertainly as they neared the hedge witch's tent, marked by the strange, swirly hedge witch's mark.
"Don't' be such a scaredy cat," Aradine said and stepped inside. Desistaire bit her lip, torn between her mother's warnings and her concern for her friend. Finally she lifted the tent flap and stepped inside, grumbling something about the connection between pigs and Aradine.
The inside of the tent was mostly shadowed, the darkness broken at intervals by cylindrical glass lamps. The lamps were completely sealed and each contained a small bright flame that bobbed within the glass as though floating on a breeze. Wooden tables were placed in a haphazard fashion, and Desistaire nearly tripped over three of them, all crowded near the entrance. Every table held three small basins of water, one on each end and the last in the very middle. Jars of the most random things were placed upon the shelves that lined the walls, and no two jars held the same contents. To Desistaire's relief, there was nothing overly scary or unusual in the jars, nothing like salamander tongues or moth tears or breath of wind. A few of the jar labels that she could read in the dim light read "Oak Leaves", "Northern Moss", and "Spring Water". The hedge witch herself stood beside a wooden table near the center of the room, chopping what looked like cilantro. She hummed a sweet little tune to herself as she worked and scooped the chopped cilantro into a great jar on the floor by the fire. The fire was in the very middle of the room, in a pit in the ground and lined by black, burnt bricks. It made the room a bit uncomfortably hot, but the hedge witch did not seem to mind, though she stood so close to the fire and was wrapped in many layers of shawls.
"Oh hello there, now what have we here?" the little old lady turned around and beamed at them.
Aradine bravely walked towards her. "I am looking for my true love," she announced.
"Oh, so a love potion for you then, sweet?" The hedge witch began reaching towards one of the shelves.
"No," Aradine said, and reached into her pocket, "I want you to help me turn...this...into a young man."
She held out the little cloth doll in her hand for the hedge witch to see. Desistaire gasped.
A few days before the Merchants' Faire, which was this day, Aradine had asked Desistaire to make for her a handsome cloth doll, but to give it no face. Desistaire had thought that Aradine wished to give her little sister a little gift. She had consented and made for Aradine a doll out of sparkly blue cloth, remembering that Aradine's sister liked the color blue best. She had painted the rest of him, like his hair, his clothes, his hands, only leaving out the face. He was painted so expertly one had to look closely to see the cloth-like texture and looked like he had real clothes from a distance.
Now, Desistaire hurried towards her best friend and dragged her away, giving the hedge witch a weak, apologetic smile.
"What do you think you're doing?" she hissed.
"There is to be a ball at the palace in two weeks, and I've been invited to be a dance," Aradine said happily, very pleased with herself.
"Oh," Desistaire gasped, truly happy for her friend. Then she frowned, "But I still don't understand why you would want a cloth boy to come alive. And he's got no face, like you told me to."
"I need someone to practice dancing with, silly," Aradine stated this as though Desistaire should have understood this without needing to be told. "And I'm going to dream about what my true love will look like because I know I will find him there at the ball. And we'll fall in love in an instant, and he'll be sweet and charming and strong and as soon as we meet he'll pull me away and ask me to marry him and we'll dance together forever." Her eyes became unfocused as she drifted off into her fantasy, a radiating smile playing on her lips, a bright sparkle in her eyes.
Desistaire stared at her open mouthed, sincerely believing that her friend had completely lost it. She hurriedly dragged Aradine out of the hedge witch's tent and back to her house.

Three days later, Desistaire sat at her little table and was drawing absentmindedly. Slowly, beneath her pencil tip, a face emerged on her paper, a very handsome face, and very familiar also. As she sat staring at the face and feeling strangely peaceful, she suddenly realized that there was something very wrong with the scene outside her window, the one facing the town streets. All the usual busy commotion that should be present was completely absent. The people were out in the streets- the street vendors, the gossiping ladies, the mule cart drivers, but they had all ceased moving. Their mouths hung open as though some screw had come undone in their jaws, their eyes wondrous and staring as though they had seen a god descend from heaven, and they were all facing the same direction. And when Desistaire looked too, she saw the most beautiful scene, though her mind knew she should be horrified. Aradine was dancing in the streets in front of her house, under the shadow of the peach trees that lined the side of the streets there. Her eyes were closed, her face entirely serene, and her lips pulled into a smile so sweet it broke your heart. And leading her in her dance was a cloth boy. He was very obviously made of cloth, sparkling blue cloth to be exact, though he was three dimensional. He was dressed exactly the way Desistaire had painted him. His shoulder length brown hair was tinted blue and sparkled in the sunlight, as did his white and slightly puffy shirt. It was slightly red also along the bottom edge of the shirt where Desistaire had unsuccessfully tried to add red embroidery to his shirt. At his waist rested a woven belt, where Desistaire had added a small piece of blue glass to the center of the belt buckle. His black breeches extended to just past his knees, which was where his tall grey leather boots began. Desistaire had managed to make the boots appear as though made of leather by adding painting them with thick, heavy paint, and adding a bit of shadow to the insides and the backs. Amusingly, as the cloth boy danced now, the shadowing on his boots did not change. These were also the only part of him that didn't sparkle in the sun.
Desistaire realized that Aradine must have gone back to the hedge witch by herself after they parted ways that day. She felt a bit angry and hurt that her best friend had sneaked behind her back to do this. She also saw how bespelled Aradine looked as she danced and worried that the hedge witch might have put some spell on her. But these unhappy feelings slowly dissipated as she watch the couple dance without a care in the world, completely unaware of their riveted audience. As she watched the faceless cloth boy, in her mind's eye she saw there the face she had just drawn on her paper. She smiled, feeling deep within herself that that was his true face.
As Aradine danced with her cloth boy, she was imagining a completely different face on her dance partner. She imagined a strong confident face, with eyes that flooded with love for her, and lips that just beckoned her to kiss. Without thinking, she lifted her face towards the cloth boy and kissed him where his mouth would be. As soon as she kissed him, she felt the cloth boy gain a little more substance and feel a little less like cloth beneath her arms. Then her mind drifted off once again into her own happy little fantasies, her dance never stopping, as natural to her as breathing and making her as free as the wind.
Aradine and her cloth boy danced through the streets of their little town for seven days. The sun and moons and stars and clouds and air and trees and grass, the townspeople could feel the melody to which the couple danced just emanating from them. The little town did very little for that seven days. They went about their basic functions quietly, and spent the remainder of their time watching the dance in wonder.
Finally, on the seventh day, the spell was broken. The day of the ball at the palace was quickly approaching and the attending dignitaries had begun to arrive. Many of the guests passed through the quiet little town on their way to the palace in the capital. One of these guests was the second son of the king of the neighboring country. As he and his entourage rode in on their proud sleek horses, they noticed the strange atmosphere of the little town and almost immediately after, saw the strange couple dancing in the streets. The peach trees had been shedding their blossoms so that the streets were covered in a soft pink carpet wherever the dancers' feet trod. Though the trees should have long since run out of petals, they continued to drift gently through the air. The prince was transfixed by the sight of the beautiful Aradine moving gracefully through the curtain of soft peach blossoms and fell completely in love with this goddess of beauty. He glanced irritably at her partner and was taken aback when he noticed that he had no face. Upon closer examination he realized the boy was really made of cloth and not a real man at all. The prince smiled triumphantly at this and rode over to interrupt the dance. When Aradine awoke from her dream and laid her eyes upon the clear green eyes of the prince, she at once realized that she had found her true love, this man who was not cowed by her beauty. And when he extended his hand toward her, she willing took it and let him swing her onto his horse, and sat in front of him on the pommel. But as she settled onto the high horse, she realized that her cloth boy still held her hand, and that he had lost much of the human-like substance he had gained in the past seven days. Aradine felt a bit guilty at leaving the cloth boy like this and remembered that he had no name and no face yet. She slid down and and gently led him by the hand in the direction of Desistaire's house.
The gentle knocking on her front door seemed abnormally loud in the quiet of the little town. Desistaire had looked on at the little scene between the prince and Aradine, and protested silently in her heart, as had all the other townspeople, at the loss of their jewel, but, like they, had only watched quietly and not said a word. Now, she stared at the girl and boy standing on her doorstep, barely recognizing Aradine as the girl she had once been inseparable from and had loved with all her heart. She struggled to get out of her trance in order to understand what her friend was asking of her.
"I need to borrow some of your paints, Desistaire," Aradine said, in a voice of pure serenity. Once the paints were brought, she tried her best to paint the face she had most often envisioned upon the bluish cloth face as they danced.
"This is your face," she whispered to him, looking into soft brown eyes that sparkled with blue specks, "and Ciasphys is your name." And then she kissed him truly on his freshly painted red lips.
Then Aradine walked through the little town for the last time and rode away with her prince, forever.

Ciasphys huddled in a corner of the Gavintres' living room and refused to move, even when the little baby had tried to coax him out with an adorable, toothless smile. Desistaire looked at him worriedly, his face appearing quite sick to her. Of course, she had no way to be sure, and who could be sure when a blue cloth face looks healthy? What did a cloth boy need? Does he eat? Does he have emotions and feelings?
"Would you like to eat?" Desistaire asked kindly.
The cloth boy just stared at her mournfully. At the sight of his face, Desistaire had a strange feeling that there was something wrong with the way he looked, but she couldn't seem to put her finger on it. She merely dismissed the notion, and turned her attention back to the matter at hand.
Taking Ciasphys's hand, she gently tugged him towards the dining room, where at the sight of him, all movement stopped. Desistaire glared at her family pointedly, and they slowly resumed their activities, sneaking small glances at him occasionally. When the aromas of Mistress Gavintre's delicious cooking wafted towards them, the cloth boy stopped in his tracks and stared at the platters of chicken and lettuce hungrily.
Desistaire grinned, relieved that she had discovered some way to reach the strange boy, and sat him down beside her. The entire family, even the baby, participated in teaching him how to eat. Ciasphys was at first shy, but his ravenous appetite took the better of him and he was soon shoveling food into his mouth at a frightening speed.
Later, Desistaire sat in the chair in her room, facing the cloth boy who sat on her bed. She had no idea what to do with him as yet, and for now just took her time staring at the curious boy.
Ciasphys noticed the portrait of Aradine and Desistaire on the wall by the bed, and was transfixed. He reverently brushed his fingers over her still, laughing face and felt a strange lump in his throat. He turned back to the nice girl who was staring at him from across the room, his love's close friend, he knew. He opened his mouth and tried to create sound.
"Where did she go?" he asked her, his voice raspy from never having been used, but still soft and sweet, "Why didn't she want me?" He turned back towards the wall, feeling the pain of his lover's betrayal.
Desistaire sighed unhappily and crossed the room to sit beside Ciasphys.
"She did like you very much," she tried to explain to him, "but she liked the prince that took her away a bit better. And Aradine is, well, Aradine. Her fancies take flight like leaves upon a breeze and are as easily discarded. I'm sorry."
"Aradine," the cloth boy whispered. "Is that her name?" He lifted his eyes toward Aradine's frozen smile upon the wall again.
Desistaire nodded.
Ciasphys turned sparkling blue and brown eyes towards her as he asked thoughtfully, "What is your name?"
"Desistaire. Desistaire Gavintre."
"Desistaire," he repeated, trying out the word on his tongue. "My name is Ciasphys. Aradine gave it to me." He said this very proudly, just like a little child who had been praised by the teacher for excellent marks on a test.
Desistaire smiled at him like a doting mother. "And it's a wonderful name," she said.
He grinned happily, as sweetly as Desistaire's baby brother and announced, "I like you, Desistaire." Then he leaned forward and kissed her full on the mouth, just like Aradine had done with him.
Desistaire leaned into the kiss for half a second before, jumping off the bed, gasping.
"What are you doing?" she asked angrily.
Ciasphys looked frightened and thoroughly confused. "I like you. And Aradine... Aradine did that when she liked me," he said in the small, guilty voice of a child who broke his mother's pretty vase.
Desistaire sighed, her cheeks still warm from the unexpected kiss. She had to remember that though he may look her age, he had only been alive for a week, and was as naive as her baby brother. "Ciasphys, you can't just kiss every person that you like. A kiss means you love someone, and you should only kiss someone you really love. If you like someone, as a friend, you might give them a hug or just tell them that."
Ciasphys looked stricken at the thought that he had betrayed his love for Aradine by giving a kiss to someone else. The sparkles left his expression and once again, he lifted heartbroken eyes to the wall.
"What would you like to do now, Ciasphys?" Desistaire asked, trying to take his mind off of Aradine. Obviously he couldn't stay in her room, or he might spend all his time just staring at her wall.
What a strange question to ask, Ciasphys thought. "Well, do you want to dance with me?" he asked. Then he furrowed his brows. Was this also something that one could only do with one's true love?
"I would love to. You're such a beautiful dancer. But I don't know how to dance. That was Aradine's specialty. I'm an artist." She waved her hand around the room, indicating all the drawings, paintings, and art supplies scattered through the room.
Ciasphys thought that they were all very beautiful, though not as beautiful as the mural of Aradine on the wall, but he was horrified that this kind, beautiful girl couldn't dance. "Then I must teach you to dance, Desistaire," he told her gravely.
"I'm charmed by your offer," she smiled, "but not right now. If you're going to be a real person, you have to do more than dance. You have to get a job, earn money so that you can buy food and clothes. Other than dancing, what else do you know how to do?"
"I don't know. What's a job?" All these rules about being human that he never knew about. Maybe this was why his true love abandoned him to be with another person? That he wasn't human enough?
"That hedge witch certainly didn't do much of a job turning you human." She looked him over critically. "You're still more cloth than human."
The hedge witch! How could Desistaire have forgotten about her? Surely she would know what to do with Ciasphys. Then her face fell again. The hedge witch had come with all the other traveling merchants for the Merchants' Faire. After a week at Desistaire's little town, they had moved on, and wouldn't be back until the autumn.
Desistaire counted in her head. The merchants should have moved on from the next town by now, which means they would be in the capital. If she and Ciasphys took swift horses, they could ride to the capital and arrive in four days, just in time to catch the hedge witch before the merchants moved on again.
She smiled reassuringly at the cloth boy and told him, "I have a plan that we could try. How would you like to go and see the capital?"
Once they were downstairs, and Desistaire had gathered her family around the dinner table, she described her plan to all of them and Ciasphys. "If we leave as soon as possible, we could ride two fast horses to the capital and speak to the hedge witch before she leaves the capital."
"Are you sure this is necessary, Desistaire?" her mother asked worriedly.
"Well what else can Ciasphys do? He doesn't know how to do anything except dance, and he's still made out of cloth."
"He would live with us, share a room with your brothers. Your father could give him an apprenticeship at the workshop and teach him how to do woodwork." Desistaire's father nodded his agreement.
"But Ciasphys is a cloth boy. Think how hard a time he'll have fitting in. And after what happened with Aradine, do you think the townspeople could accept him as one of them so easily? The hedge witch might have a way of turning him truly human. Aradine left without telling me anything, and what if they had some sort of agreement we don't know about. What if there's something Ciasphys has to do?"
Ciasphys, who hadn't said anything yet, tugged at Desistaire's arm and whispered into her ear. "Would Aradine want me back if I were a real human?"
Desistaire looked into his hopeful, once again sparkling eyes, and didn't want to dash his hopes. "Maybe... But I think she is happy with her prince and won't really want to come back."
Hoever, Ciasphys was no longer listening. After Desistaire's reply of "Maybe", he had latched onto this sliver of hope of winning back his beloved from that dirty thief.
"I would like to go find the hedge witch," he told the Gavintres, then was shy at once. "Please," he mumbled, his eyes downcast.
"I'll go talk to the stable master and get you some good horses," Desistaire's eldest brother stood up and went on his business.
Upon seeing their mother's still anxious expression, the second eldest brother rubbed her hands soothingly. "If it will let you rest easier, Mother, I could go with them, and look out for them."
Desistaire smiled, happy that her favorite brother would accompany her on her journey.
Mistress Gavintre looked from face to face around the table and realized that it was no use trying to convince her only daughter not to leave home. She smiled a little sadly, and gave everyone a peck on the cheek, even Ciasphys, before going into the kitchen to prepare packs for the travelers.

Early in the morning, Desistaire woke up and stared at her wall for a while. She was still hurt that her best friend hadn't thought to confide in her about Ciasphys. And then left him so brokenhearted after he had fulfilled the purpose she wanted him for. "We all cared about you, Aradine, and you've hurt all of us. How could you, when I have loved you like a sister for as long as I can remember, how could you have left me just like you left Ciasphys?" she whispered angrily at Aradine's painted image. She had had another reason for wanting to go the capital. Aradine had been headed there with her prince, and Desistaire hoped to be able to find her and talk to her before she was married and left the country forever. She didn't want to get Ciasphys's hopes up about getting Aradine back, however, which was why she hadn't mentioned this.
Sighing, she got up and put on the sturdy cotton dress her mother had made for her, tied a traveler's cloak to her shoulders, and laced on calfskin boots. She washed her hands and face in the basin of water at the foot of her bed and pinned her hair up as neatly as she could. Grabbing the pack that she'd put her paints and brushes in, she went downstairs. Her mother was busy putting bread and meats into neatly made oiled paper packages. Her father and her second brother, Merroan, were discussing last minute plans for the journey as well as the woodshop. Merroan was Father's apprentice, but now he would be gone for many days, and Father had had to find new help.
Desistaire's eldest brother looked up from his porridge and told her, "The horses are outside, and I've already saddled them for you."
When she saw Ciasphys playing with the baby absentmindedly, she felt a bit surprised, then admonished herself. Of course he would still be in the same clothes as always, he was a cloth boy, what else could he wear?
After a quick breakfast of porridge and hardboiled eggs, they finished packing the horses. There was a bag for Desistaire's paints and clothes, one for Merroan's necessities, another bag for the food their mother had packed as well as money and a map. Desistaire looked at the fourth bag. It was small and not very heavy, and something inside jingled prettily. She looked questioningly at Merroan, but he only shrugged.
"Goodbye, Papa," she said, hugging him tightly.
"You be good, sweet," he told her, and lifted her up, like he used to when she was little. "Listen to everything your brother tells you to do, and you come back to me exactly the way you are now, you hear?" He waggled heavy brows at her and gave her a giant kiss, tickling her with his soft beard.
"Papa," she squirmed, "put me down. I'll only be gone for a short while. I love you too."
"I'll miss you too, little Disaster," Desistaire's oldest brother told her, after she bid him farewell.
"Oh Mama, I'll miss you and I'll come back soon," she said hugging her mother close.
"Yes, and then we'll get you properly married, so you won't get such crazy ideas again," her mother joked. Then she leaned in close to Desistaire's ear and whispered, "There's a little bag with a pretty gown and some jewelry, so if you want to go see Aradine at the ball at the palace, you can."
"Thank you," Desistaire whispered back, feeling a lump in her throat at leaving home. Though the Gavintres had traveled many times to the capital, mostly to sell Father's goods, Desistaire had never gone anywhere without the rest of her family.

Pronunciation Key
Desistaire: Deh-zis-'stair
Aradine: 'Air-rah-deen
Ciasphys: 'Sigh-fis
Meroan: M-'row-an
Gavintre: Ga-'vin-truh
( ' = accent)