Amity's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Amity had one job, and today it ended. For fourteen years she had guarded Princess Rosalind's sleep, stitched from patchwork skin and dark thread by a witch who never told her why. Now the trunks stood packed in the corridor. The Princess was leaving, and Amity did not know what a doll was for once her girl was gone. Rosalind found her by the tall window, folding the last blue gown. "You're not packing your things," the Princess said. "I have no things," Amity answered. "I have only you." Rosalind set down the gown. She was eighteen now, her short brown curls pinned for travel, her voice steady in the way it got when she had decided something hard. "You had me when I was four and burning with fever. The witch made you so I wouldn't die alone in that bed. I lived." She took Amity's cold hand in her warm one. "You gave me every year since. I won't drag you across the kingdom to stand in a corner." Amity's brown eyes did not blink. They never needed to. "Then where do I stand?" "Wherever you choose I free you." Rosalind pressed something into her palm. It was a folded square of paper, worn soft at the creases. "I asked the guards. Years ago, a witch on the far ridge stitched living things. A month past the village. If anyone knows what you are, or how you were made, it's her." Amity opened the paper. A rough map, inked by a nervous hand. A tower drawn on a distant ridge. "I always thought I'd wonder about her forever," Amity said. "The one who made me." "Now you don’t have to." Rosalind's eyes filled. "You were never my servant, Amity. You were my best friend. Friends want each other free." Below, in the courtyard, the wedding party gathered. King Edmund raised a hand to help Queen Isolde into the carriage. Rosalind kissed Amity's stitched cheek. "Go find out if you can be more than thread." Then she was gone down the stairs, into the blue morning, into a life that no longer needed a doll. Amity stood alone in the emptied room. For fourteen years, purpose had been simple. Now the carriage rolled through the gates and did not stop. She listened to the wheels fade until the castle went silent around her. She looked at the map. She looked at her own patchwork hands, the seams the witch had sewn. Amity had never once left these walls. She had no purpose here anymore. But a month past the village stood the woman who had made her, and the only question worth walking toward: could a doll become real? She pulled on her black boots and started down the stairs.