CHAPTER 3

Which was what caused Fran to stare blankly at her bookcases.
The anger was slowly rising now, a cold fury that could crack mountains.
She barely registered the knock on the door. Hannah's voice seemed thinner than mere wood should have allowed for.
"Er, Fran, are you all right in there? What are you doing?"
"Something pointless, cruel and vicious," replied Fran absently. No conscious thought was required to speak.
"That's my girl," called the older enchantress encouragingly. Her footsteps faded back as she went back to tending the baby.
Fran finally focused on something. One of her bookends had smashed years ago, to be replaced by a small wooden model, the simple human figures the size of a doll that allowed artists to pose limbs and gestures without tiring a human model. It was currently in the pose of pushing back an insurmountable weight, and since this was the shelf that contained Fran's collection of classic novels, it had some justification.
Fran picked up the model, slowly and deliberately, and began to force its head back between thumb and forefinger. Yes, it was starting to crack-
"Fran?"
Fran dropped the doll with a clatter.
"Fran?" Fynn's voice was slightly higher in its pitch. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, wonderful. What do you want?"
"Just to say… oh, hell, I don't know. Just that I love you, and I'm truly sorry. Really, you can't know how very sorry I am."
"Shut up, shut up, go away…" Fran couldn't bear his voice any more.
"And, and I'm here to swear it will never happen again. Not with anybody. I promise it. You can do what you like to me if I do, not that I will. Okay, you can send me away now."
"Go away."
"Going." The sounds of Fynn faded in their turn.
Fran was on the floor suddenly, with no memory of going down on her knees, scrabbling under the bed until she found the wooden model. If she could perhaps-
"No," she said aloud, and placed the model neatly on the bed. "Let him see the power of paper."
There was generally a pad of A4 paper lying around. Fran ripped off the topmost sheet, and told her fingers to fold.
It wasn't easy, giving her power free reign without her mind being involved, but Fran somehow managed it. Her hands were moving faster than they ever did under her full control, ripping more and more leaves from the pad, creasing folds into the paper in seemingly impossible dimensions that the eye couldn't focus properly on. She was whispering a mantra, under her breath.
"Shape the form. Shape the form. Shape the form…"
Fran's hands fell back into her lap. There was a human figure lying before her, made entirely of paper. She- yes, the contours were clear enough- was about Fran's height, but entirely white, apart from the lines that the pad came pre-ruled with. Despite that, she looked…potential. Not of anything in particular, but a potential in general. She could be anyone Fran set her out to be.
"Perfect. You have to perfect in Fynn's eyes." With a shock, Fran realized that she hated this doll for what her part in Fran's scheme was going to be.
"No. I'm not Victor Frankenstein, to create a creature from scratch and then abandon it at birth." Suddenly her voice was gentle. "I will care for you, and you will grow, and that will be an even brighter beauty. Now wake up."
A faint breeze ran over the doll's form, then it settled.
Fran sat back on her heels, disappointed. What was the proper name for one of these things, anyway? You can command anything, anything at all, so long as you knew it's true name. She sighed, and wandered over to the dictionaries.

In her crib, Amanda stirred uneasily. She wanted to tell someone. Wanted to tell them that there was a new creature in her house, that her mother had called something beautiful and spiteful into being. Wanted to warn her father he was about to fall into a trap of his own design.
Instead, she lay in silence, and watched it all unfold.

"Popitous, get up."
Another breeze rustled the paper, but this time the doll rose, awkwardly at first as it got used to the increasing creases of it's new joints. Features were hesitantly forming, mid-brown eyes and diluted blue eyes. The result was pale, and looked completely bloodless.
"Oh, said Fran aloud, "that won't do."
"Sorry to hear that," replied the paper woman, her voice sounding a little like Fran's, but to Fran's mind it was too high and heavily accented.
"Uh, Poppy, can you understand me?"
Poppy smiled, with lips that had been thinly penciled in. "I am you. You put yourself into me."
"Put- oh, I know what you need." Fran stuck her lower lip out, and drew a fingernail across it. She squeezed a few drops of blood into Poppy, and sat back.
The blood formed a lip-shaped splodge, which happened to have landed in approximately the right place. And from her suddenly human lips, colour flooded into Poppy's form. Fran watched, awed, as the textures quietly filled themselves in after the bright flood. Poppy's movement was easier too, as she lifted herself onto her elbow, mirroring Fran's pose.
"I know what I have to do," said Poppy calmly.
"If he breaks his word, he's mine. So go make him break it."
"I will."

© Naomi Claydon, 2000