Her dream arms moved as if she had worked puppets all her life. Like God in Heaven, she looked down from above. The puppets’ strings were swallowed in a shaft of sunlight, so the princess and the dragon appeared to be walking and talking on their own.

She spoke the princess’s words, but the dragon’s growl came from the man beside her; she could feel the pressure of his shoulder against hers and hear his gruff whisper as he flapped the dragon’s wings. “Buono,” he told her as the marionettes danced. “Molto buono. You are blessed with a great gift.”

Then the dream broke like a bubble, and she was no longer working the puppets; now she was one of them. She heard her silk skirts rustle and delighted in the green slippers that peeked daintily from underneath her hem. She laughed at the dragon’s roar and invited him to stop breathing fire and dance with her instead. They leaped and chased each other around the stage like playful squirrels, then bowed low as the sound of applause washed over them.

But as the clapping and stamping died down, she felt herself torn from the light and suddenly upended. She was left in the stillness behind musty stage curtains, her strings taut, her legs stretched awkwardly above her head. “Always hang them upside down,” she heard a deep voice caution. “Otherwise, they may come to life when you are not looking.”