They all gathered before dinner in the conservatory.
“Getting hungry, Vicky?” said the mother, watching her with the expression of amused surprise that never left her face.
“No, not really.”
“That’s just as well, because, as you know, there’s nothing in the house to eat. Yet here we sit, preparing to go into the dining room and sit there for no reason, staring idiotically at each other, all just so we can fit into your little scheme of how—”
“Will you get off!” cried Ganglia. “It’s my seat, I tell you!” She and Dandaroo were fighting over the little ottoman. He had been there first, but now she was sitting on the edge, trying to push him off. Stolidly, looking at the floor, he refused to move, while she kept banging herself against him until her arm was bent all out of shape.
“But I’m not making you do anything now,” Vicky said to the mother, raising her voice in order to be heard over Ganglia’s grunts and squeals.
“Yes, but one falls into patterns,” said the mother doll, with a little sigh of resignation. “Even if you didn’t come near us for a month, we’d still be doing this.”
“We would still be what you have made us,” the aunt said darkly.
“Yes, we would still be what you have made us,” agreed the mother, nodding, and several glinting hairs drifted down to the oriental rug. Everywhere she went she left little piles of her hair behind her; Vicky had never before noticed how thin it was on the top of her head. “Not,” the mother went on, “that I really mind being this way. I rather enjoy this streak of cruelty you’ve—Ganglia!” she shrieked suddenly, spinning around in her chair and knocking Ganglia to the floor with one quick swipe of her fat arm. “Will you shut up!”
“But he’s on my chair,” Ganglia wailed, writhing snakelike against the red and blue pattern on the rug.
“Well … ,” said the mother thoughtfully, “yes, I suppose he is.” Her voice became firm. “Dandaroo, get off her chair this instant.”
“But,” said Dandaroo in a thin, reedlike voice, “I
was here first, and she never decided whose chair was whose in this room.” He looked at Vicky.
“If Ganglia says it’s hers, it is hers,” declared the mother. She pointed at the door. “To your room.”
But as he left, still looking, strangely enough, right at her, Vicky almost thought she saw a flicker of expression cross his fading features. It was an expression of resentment, but mingled with pity. But who was he pitying? Could it be her?
What you have made us. The aunt’s words lingered in her mind as she followed the dolls downstairs to the dining room. She was beginning to understand. The rough and violent things she had made them do had become their personalities. She had created them, and now they were turned against her. She shivered on the dark stairway. What were they going to do to her? So far they hadn’t really done anything, but she could feel a crackle of anticipation in the air, as though some secret plan against her were evolving.
She stopped walking and, trembling slightly, stood on the stairs and considered running away from them again. But now she knew it would do no good. The only solution was to get out of the house, if only there were some way to do it. She felt tears springing to her eyes at the thought of being caught
here forever, but she quickly brushed them away, took a deep breath, and started after the dolls again.
It was the thought of the doorway at the top of the stairs that kept her from giving way to despair. The mother had said it wasn’t real, but she was almost sure she had heard it open and footsteps coming from it. When Ganglia had finally let her out of the bedroom, she had looked all over the house and found no one new who could have come out of the door.
So perhaps that was where Quimbee and Dandaroo had gone, and it was their footsteps she had heard. Somehow, she felt that something very important was beyond that door, and she was determined now to get through it. But she had to wait for the right moment. If she tried now, they would stop her, and she dreaded to think what they would do to her then.
The dining room was on the first floor. Just beyond it she could see her bedroom carpet, stretching hazily off into the distance in the fading afternoon light. Each thick strand was as high as her knee.
“So near and yet so far, eh Vicky?” said the mother, noticing her wistful glance. “You could always try just stepping out there, I suppose, if you wanted to spend the rest of your life the size of a
doll. It sounds rather amusing at first thought, doesn’t it? But you’d probably get quite tired of things like climbing those huge stairs and fending off cats, and come crawling back to us in the end, I expect.”
“There is a barrier,” said the aunt.
“Oh, yes, there is a barrier,” the mother agreed, sitting down languidly. “You may try getting through it if you like.” Her eyes came to rest on the turkey. “Ugh! How I hate that thing. So revoltingly naked.”
Vicky couldn’t resist. She was sure they were right about the barrier, but she could not see it, and the thought of getting away from them was unbearably tempting. Feeling their eyes on her, she stepped toward the edge. But at the threshold it became difficult to move forward, as though some great force were pushing against her. She struggled, using every bit of strength she had, but the force was so strong that, even leaning with all her weight against it, she did not move at all. When she turned back to the room, the pressure was suddenly gone.
Ganglia was giggling at her, one hand over her mouth. “Didn’t she look funny?” she said. “All panting and puffy. And look at her hair.”
Vicky brushed back her hair, which had fallen
into her eyes, and sat miserably down at the table. Ganglia’s taunts were hard to bear. Think of the door, she said to herself. Think of the door.
Getting through it might be difficult, however, for at least one of them was always watching her. As she sat at the table she studied each of the dolls’ faces in turn, trying to decide which of them, if any, might be persuaded to help her. For there was one other hopeful thing, and that was the power she would have over them when she did get out.
She could put a proposal to them all at once, that she would do anything any of them wanted; but that wouldn’t work because she was sure that each would selfishly want whatever she promised to someone else. They would never agree. And remembering her conversation with Ganglia in the bedroom, it seemed that bribing them individually might be more effective. After all, it wouldn’t much matter what it was she promised them; to the dolls, whatever she offered would be enticing only if it were something the others couldn’t have.
She discarded the aunt at once. She was so distant and cold that Vicky was afraid to say anything to her. She would never have the nerve to ask her for help. The father, who had entered the dining room, was of no use. He was so utterly meek and helpless that he probably wouldn’t dare to help her, even if
she offered him everything she could think of. And Dandaroo, who was still up in his room, would be the same.
Although … .
Her eyes slid back to the father’s face. The cotton in his head seemed to be settling down, so that the top of his head was narrow and empty and his chin was wide, sagging down onto his chest. He was staring vacantly at the wall, while on either side of him Ganglia and the mother, both giggling, were stabbing savagely at the turkey with their knives and forks, crumbling off bits of plaster. The father … what if she promised him that when she got out she would make him the ruler of the family; that everyone else would follow his orders, that they would treat him like a king and bow and scrape at his every whim? He might not be able to resist that. And he didn’t seem as cruel as the others; he might even want to help her, if he knew that he would be safe afterward. He was definitely a possibility.
It was different with the mother. She was already in control. And Ganglia she couldn’t trust. She had almost seemed to respond in the bedroom, but Vicky was sure that she would take great joy in exposing her little scheme to all the others. No; it was the father or no one.
But as Vicky watched him, her hopes sank. His
sagging cheeks twitched nervously. Perhaps he might like to have control over them all, but he would be too timid to take any risk. Before asking him, she must try to get out on her own.
Tonight, she decided, when they were all in bed, she would go through the secret door by herself.