Page 68 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Five minutes,” you said through the speaker, not hiding the note of

incredulity in your voice. I spoke to the puppet in the looking-glass English that
my ghost friend speaks. I asked her if she was haunted or something worse. She
answered eagerly, as you do in a foreign country when you need assistance and
come upon someone who speaks your language: “Worse thingsome,” was her
answer. “Worse thingsome.” And if I help you now, you must help me later.
You won’t ask me to harm anyone? I asked.
Never.

Then I accept.
Good. Simply translate what I say. I will speak; don’t worry about the
controls, I will match your posture, it’ll look better.
She spoke the way that my ghost friend spoke—it cannot be that all ghosts
speak the same way, I knew that even then—and I translated. It didn’t take long:

I am not a haunted puppet, we said, I am living. My name is Gepetta and a
long time ago I was an apprentice to two puppeteers whose names are honored
in this place. I took care of the puppets in the workshop—I was a kind of nurse to
them, tending to their damage, and making sure that they lasted. Their masters
grew old and died, and I stayed with the puppets. They were not living, but one
step away from living, always one step away. They know when human life is near
them, and they need human life to be near them; it keeps them from going . . .

wrong.
I began to train others in the care of puppets. In my time it seemed such
knowledge was dying out . . . I trained a few boys and girls who wanted to learn,
but a plague came. Not a plague that revealed itself in the skin, this one crept
through the air. My apprentices died, and I would have too, but my puppet
charges forbade it.

Each puppet sacrificed something—a leg, an arm, torso, head, and so on . . .
you will replace these things when you are ready, they said.
They assembled a body, but didn’t join up the parts.
Look at your new body. You will go in, they said.
I said I would not, but it happened hour by hour; I would drowse a little and
when I woke another part of me had been replaced. It began with my left hand
and ended with my right foot. Think of it: looking down at your human foot out

of a pair of brass eyes. And then I grew smaller, and all of a piece, as I am
today. My name is Gepetta; long have I wanted to say this, but nobody would
help me to say it . . .