Chapter 1 – The Doll in the Dust
Part III: The Weight of Dust and Bone
The fireless hearth radiated cold. Not simply the absence of warmth, but an inverse kind of heat—hollow, invasive, like standing in the memory of a funeral. Morrigan sat with the letter in her lap, its brittle edges brushing her skin like paper cuts from the past.
The ink blurred in places. Where her mother had pressed harder, the quill had torn tiny valleys through the page. She imagined her mother at this very hearth, hunched over in haste, glancing toward the stairs, sealing it all in silence.
You were never meant to carry the curse.
That line kept catching in her mind like a splinter. It wasn't a metaphor. It wasn't poetry. Her mother had meant it.
The curse.
Morrigan stared at the doll again. It hadn't moved. But the air around it felt weighted now, the way a room feels just after someone leaves it—or just before they enter.
Its hands were folded in its lap. Porcelain fingers painted delicately, but slightly worn. The lace on its cuffs had unraveled, threads waving like the trailing roots of some underwater plant. The gown itself was no longer just antique—it was ceremonial. That's what the embroidery was: sigils. Runes. Mourning spells, if her memory of her mother's grim bedtime stories served.
"She's a gate," her mother had written.
Gate to what?
To whom?
Morrigan shifted, winced. Her spine sent a bolt of pain through her shoulder blades and down into her hips. Her cane clattered against the floor as she braced herself. It took effort not to cry out, but she'd grown practiced in that kind of silence.
The cloth the letter had been wrapped in lay beside her now, wax seal broken. A small piece of blue ribbon still clung to it, fluttering with every breath she took. It reminded her sharply of childhood—of when her mother used to braid her hair with scraps of lace and ribbon from the sewing chest. She could almost smell the spiced oil her mother rubbed into her scalp, hear the low humming that kept rhythm with each braid looped and tied.
A memory struck her then, fast and bright.
Her mother—taller than she remembered now, face half-shadowed—kneeling beside her as Morrigan cried from a twisted back and a long, sick ache in her bones. She had screamed that day. Screamed because her body wouldn't listen, because she wanted to run, because other children had laughed when she'd fallen.
"You are not broken," her mother had said, cupping Morrigan's face with cold fingers. "You are just… structured differently. You will move the way no one else does. That is not a flaw, Morrigan. That is a signal."
A signal. Of what?
She pressed a palm to the center of her chest, where the weight of the discovery now sat heavy.
The doll, still perfectly posed, seemed almost to nod—though of course it didn't. That was her imagination again. The same imagination that once drew charcoal sketches of monsters that danced behind the curtains at night. The same one her tutors said was a distraction. A "hindrance to classical learning."
But now the monsters had names. And symbols. And porcelain faces.
She stood—slowly, carefully—and limped toward the desk in the corner, letter still clutched in one hand, cane clutched in the other. The drawer stuck at first, swollen with damp, then gave way with a brittle pop. Inside: her old sketchbook.
It was leather-bound, stained, its corners softened by years of restless fingers. She opened to the last page she'd drawn on. A crooked house. Not this one. A different one—taller, narrower, with windows that looked like open mouths. She remembered dreaming about it three nights in a row last year. That house had whispered her name, too.
Beneath the drawing: a girl with no eyes, her arms wrapped around a doll.
She'd forgotten she'd drawn that.
She turned the page, picked up a piece of charcoal from the desk drawer, and began to sketch the doll as it sat now—its veil draped, its spine too straight, its mouth too quiet. As her hand moved, something in her steadied. Drawing was the only act that ever seemed to organize her thoughts. The shapes fell into place like a puzzle she hadn't known she was solving.
Halfway through the sketch, her hand paused.
There, in the crook of the doll's elbow, a mark she hadn't noticed before. A seam—not part of the construction. A stitched line, like a healed wound. Tiny runes had been etched into the porcelain, so fine she had mistaken them for cracks at first.
She looked at the doll. The mark was real.
She leaned closer. The runes shimmered faintly in the low light—etched not with ink, but with something metallic. Silver? No—something older.
She reached toward it, half-wondering if the sigils would respond to touch.
The moment her fingers brushed the surface of the porcelain, her vision shifted.
The room dimmed. The shadows pooled outward, gathering at the corners of the parlor like ink drawn to water. The doll's eyes became fathomless, not just black, but deep. She couldn't move. Couldn't look away.
A voice—hers, but not hers—spoke in her head: "She remembers. She remembers what you forgot to forget."
Morrigan gasped and fell back onto the stone hearth, the letter slipping from her fingers.
The shadows snapped back to normal.
The doll sat as it had before. But now, it leaned slightly forward, as though interested.
Morrigan's hands trembled as she reached for her cane. The pain in her back had numbed, replaced by a cold sweat that dampened her spine.
This wasn't coincidence. It wasn't childhood fantasy.
It was real. And it was old. And it wanted her to see it.
She took the letter again, folding it with care, and slipped it into her journal. She glanced once more at the doll before slowly rising.
It didn't move.
But as she turned to go, her foot brushed something on the floor—a curled corner of the rug she'd pulled earlier.
Beneath it, just peeking from the floorboard's edge, another piece of black lace. A second wrapping.
Another doll?
Her breath hitched.
No. Not yet. She wasn't ready.
One gate was open. One name had been spoken. That was enough for one day.
She stepped back, placed the rug carefully over the new seam, and turned toward the stairs.
As she climbed, the doll's glass eyes seemed to follow her—not with malice.
But with memory.