With a calm expression, Peony stepped forward and placed her two hands onto his cheeks. He still couldn’t move, but he could feel the warmth of her hands.
“Keo, come back,” she whispered, her green-eyed gaze catching his.
The ax fell from his hands and he took in a deep inhale, and then another, and another. “How … how do you know my name?” Gwendolyn had never once mentioned the name of her marionette to Peony, and he hadn’t stated it earlier when they had spoken for those brief moments.
“You told me earlier, remember?” She smiled and looked away. A lie.
“That isn’t the truth,” he said, but not moving away from her. “How were you able to command me to stop?”
Peony held up her hand and showed him a bundle of strands of dark hair resting in her palm. His hair. “I’ve been gathering them, but Gwendolyn’s enchantment on her bundle of your hair is incredibly strong.”
“Are you trying to command me to do something, too?” he asked in a wary tone.
Shaking her head, Peony leaned forward. “You were able to finally show yourself to me this afternoon—I’ve had to wait for that. Now I have a proposition for you. How would you like to go to a place where everything from your imagination has a chance of becoming a reality?”
Keo didn’t understand why this girl, Peony, wasn’t running for the hills or asking him more questions about how a wooden boy was alive. Then thoughts passed through his head, ones of having his own choices to do and be who he wanted to be. A place away from his mother. His mother… He remembered something.
“I can’t. I’m enchanted here.” His voice came out gentle and tinged with sadness.
“Not anymore,” Peony started. “With the enchantment I have on this one, as long as we keep our distance, you have nothing to worry about. What do you say?” Her expression looked almost wishful, but how could that be?
Hope stirred in his chest, poking out its timid head. Just as quickly, it was crushed by another thought: what if Peony was just like Gwendolyn? But if he went back home, it would be an endless life of being his mother’s personal executioner. He had to try, try something that would take him away.
And what if this way is worse, Keo? he questioned himself.
Then at least we can say we tried.
He locked his eyes with her green ones once more, struck anew by the familiarity he always felt when looking at her. Before he could haul the words back into his wooden throat, they slipped out. “Lead me anywhere, Flower.” Why had he said that?
Instead of frowning at him as he expected, she bowed her head and grinned. “That was just the answer I was searching for.” Not leaving Keo a chance to reply to her odd response, she spoke again, “Are you afraid of water? Since your wood might get wet.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m afraid of.” A sharp pain struck his stomach where a new small fissure had formed. He knew exactly what taunted him when he was asleep and when he was awake. Gwendolyn.
Pressing his hand to his abdomen, he followed Peony down the lengthy dirt path that led to the sea. The short journey didn’t take that long, because the sky still burned with stars and darkness when they arrived. He kept thinking that his body would turn around and go back home, but it never did. His mother must have been too far or Peony’s enchantment really was strong.
The sand made soft crunching noises as he stayed close to Peony. She pointed straight ahead and he squinted his eyes to try and see in the dark. As he crept closer, he could see a hidden outline of a raft with a large rectangular sail and human-made tree logs.
“I don’t think we will get far in this,” he said, stepping to the raft and running his hand against the rickety bottom.
“Keo, how do you think I made it here? It will sail for as long as I command it to.” If it were possible, he might have believed that boats had hair to command too, just as she could command him by his strands. He wanted to ask, but he kept his snide comments to himself.
Gripping the back of the raft, he helped Peony push it toward the sea. He hopped on right as it met the small crash of waves. Peony continued to shove it more before finally climbing onto the raft, the bottom portion of her clothing soaking wet. She didn’t complain, only stared up at the night sky.
After taking a seat, she reached around and dug through a pack hidden inside a small barrel connected to the pole of the sail.
“Why are you doing this?” Keo finally asked when neither of them laid down to rest. “You know nothing about me, yet you aren’t even frightened that I’m alive.”
“Why don’t you ask me this same question when we make it to the next shore.” She shrugged as if that answered everything, when in fact, it only made his head fill with even more questions. Instead of saying anything else, Peony focused on lighting a lantern that she had taken out of her bag earlier.
They sailed farther out into the dark, the lantern staying lit between the two of them. Closing his eyes, Keo leaned to the side and tried not to think of what he was leaving behind—which was nothing—but that was all that made up his dreams when he drifted off.
One memory, in particular, rose among all others, playing in his dream, turning it into a nightmare.
Giovanni had short-changed Gwendolyn money and refused to pay her the rest, said her yarn was already fraying. Keo’s mother grew furious, demanding retribution from Keo. That evening, she sent her marionette—executioner—to take care of Giovanni.
Inside the spacious cottage, it reeked of too-much wine from the bottles Giovanni had spent all his money on. As soon as Keo’s ax struck the wood, he knew Giovanni had awoken. He clumsily came to the door with a shotgun in his hand.
Giovanni was too drunk, and Keo was too fast. He slammed the ax against Giovanni’s neck and it easily sliced through. Blood flowed toward the surface as the body plummeted to the floor with a loud thump. Arms and legs came next. Slice. Slice. Slice. And slice. Each piece lay a few inches from the body where they were once connected.
Unwillingly, Keo placed the head the same way as if leaving it in a decoration for all to find. All the people he had killed, his enchanted body would leave them this way.
The yells coming from Keo never once stopped.
After standing back up from positioning the body parts, Keo came back to himself. His arms, chest, and face were splashed with scarlet, his hands shaking as he held the ax. He took off on a hard sprint, the opposite direction from his mother’s. But the enchantment she had placed on him called him back, causing his feet to lock onto the dirt path. Then, inch by inch, step by step, he was forced to turn around and head home—waiting to perform his next task.
Keo’s eyes cracked open to morning and a headful of short red curls. He sat up and stared out at the sea, away from Peony’s alluring face. The water was no longer blue, but a dark sparkling purple. He squinted his eyes to get a better look. It wasn’t the sea—it was sand. A booming splash sounded from behind him and he twisted his neck in the sea’s direction. Out in the distance, protruding from the middle of the sea, was a massive aquamarine beast poking its head above the water.
“That’s Charlie.” Peony leaped from the raft down to the lavender sand. “He protects our home now.”