Several moments, perhaps half an hour, passed before Serendipity was satisfied with the smiling face, and she eventually sat the doll head down carefully on the roughly hewn wooden table that held her paints and turned her attention back toward the fireplace, certain that whatever wayward piece of postage had haphazardly found its way into her chimney would be long gone. But it wasn’t. It still sat there un-charred and unblemished atop the dancing flames, staring at her almost as intensely as the blank canvas she had just personified.
Serendipity stood and stretched her back, noting that it no longer seemed quite as erect as it once was from so many hours of carefully examining her work, and crossed the few feet to the fireplace. Before she made a move to retrieve the stalwart article, she contemplated its existence a moment longer. Finally, taking the poker in her long, spindly, paint-stained fingers, she drew the envelope out of the flames, and it came to rest on the brick surround, no worse for the wear.
Again, Serendipity hesitated. The envelope sat seal side up, red wax with a mistletoe imprint anxiously awaiting the tear of a quick finger. She was certain that, once she flipped it over, she would see some print--something she would likely find indecipherable, as most writing was--and she did not like being faced with such a predicament within the solace of her own solitary abode.
At last, she bent down and took the letter in her hand, surprised that it didn’t even appear to be warm. With an audible sigh, she flipped it over and was surprised to see that she could, in fact, read the inscription. It simply said, “Serendipity Fizzlestitch,” written in neat, gold ink in legible, if not slightly fancy, script.
A soft squeaking near her feet caught her attention, and she sighed again, this time in relief. Glancing down, she saw one of the few living creatures she considered a friend. “Well, Pozzletot,” she said, bending to scoop the little mouse into her free hand, “it seems we’ve received a message.”
Pozzletot wiggled his little black, whiskery nose to and fro, rubbing his hands together several times before resting back on his haunches against Serendipity’s palm. His eyes were large and curious, and his tail wiggled back and forth as if he were trying to form a question mark.
“I haven’t any idea who it is from,” Serendipity admitted, flipping the foreign object over in her hand. “I would suppose it is some sort of a magic letter, if I still believed in magic,” she continued.
Once again, Pozzletot made an inquisitive sounding squeak, gesturing as if to ask a follow up question. He rubbed his nose with his hand and shook his tail. Then, looking off across the room, he squeaked again, louder this time, and within a few seconds several of his colleagues skittered across the room, congregating near Serendipity’s feet.
“Well, hello my little loves!” she exclaimed, dropping carefully to her knees and bending closer to the floor. “It seems like it’s been days since I’ve seen any of you, I’ve been so preoccupied with my work.” She lowered her hand so that Pozzletot could join the others and sat in silent observation as they seemed to chat in a language she could only assume to understand.
After a moment, she realized they were all gesturing toward the letter now, and she returned her attention to it as well. Once again, she examined the front and the back, turning it over in her hands several times, before shrugging her shoulders and addressing the small audience. “I suppose I could open it. It’s only… you know how I feel about… reading.”
Pozzletot stepped forward, an encouraging expression on his whiskery face. As she kneeled staring down at his innocent wide eyes, they momentarily seemed to morph into the shocked expression of pain and disbelief she had created the last time she was in a similar situation, and her stomach began to tighten, her breathing labored. “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, my friends. I… can’t. Not now.”
Before she could catch a glimpse of their disappointment, she stood, tossed the letter aside, not even watching as it landed near her rocking chair on the wooden floor, and returned hastily to her work. There was hair to string, gowns to stitch, shoes to assemble. Whatever the envelope contained could wait. Eventually, most of her tiny roommates scampered off, back into the solace of the cottage walls, leaving only Pozzletot to accompany her as she worked. He made his way up the gnarled table leg and found a seat next to Serendipity’s spool of thread. Though a dusty Singer occupied one corner of her living space, she preferred to stitch by hand, as her grandmother had shown her when she was a wee lass, and she was quick and accurate with her weapon of choice. Pozzletot frequently watched her work, often in silence, though the occasional squeak of marvel served as quality assurance even if her mind wandered from her work to distant times, as it so often did.
Occasionally, she would share her remembrances aloud in whispered stories to her tiny friends. Pozzletot was often joined by other members of the household; Bitsy, Muffincrumb, Mr. Joggington, or Gypsim, perhaps. Today, however, it was only he, and after a few moments, Serendipity began to justify herself.
“It’s not as if I have invited the outside world in, mind you,” she began mid-thought, insisting Pozzletot infer the context. “It’s probably nothing anyway, you know. Perhaps a Christmas card…. I believe the holiday season has just past. Perhaps it’s nothing but a piece of recently discovered postage the postman mishandled. I should think it would have been better directed to… the main house, where Maevis or Ms. Crotlybloom could have given it some attention.”
Pozzletot squeaked, and Serendipity shifted her eyes away from her work momentarily before returning them to the hem she was working on so adamantly. “I have no explanation as to why it didn’t catch fire and turn to ash,” she admitted. “Perhaps the world has invented some flame-retardant paper in these past few years.” Once again, her eyes flickered in his direction, and he seemed to scratch his head in disagreement. Huffing, Serendipity’s pale blue eyes crinkled a bit as she peered closely at the small stitches she rapidly, yet precisely, placed along the folded edge of satin. “Don’t look at me like that,” she replied sharply. “You can’t begin to understand what it’s like for me….”
This time, Pozzletot seemed to disagree quite harshly, stamping his narrow foot and knocking Serendipity’s favorite paintbrush off of the paint jar where she had rested it a few minutes ago. “Now, now,” she scolded, righting the instrument, “I won’t have you questioning my motives. It simply won’t do. You’re a guest here, after all, my tiny friend,” she reminded him.
Pozzletot slowly shook his head from side to side, a disparaging expression on his pointy face.
Serendipity tossed the dress onto her lap, paying little care for the sharp needle, which came loose from the thread and tinkled across the floor. The knot in her stomach was making itself known again, and flashes of grim faces, the wretched smell of vomit mixed with blood, and the harsh voice of her mother all came back to her. “Serendipity! What have you done? Foolish child! You’ve killed us all…”
“No!” she exclaimed, snapping back to the present. “I won’t do it.” Rising from the chair, she flung the dress on to the table, only slightly leery of the open paint jars, and turned her back to the astonished mouse sitting nearby. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Pozzletot, my head is aching. I think I shall retire to my quarters for some rest.”
Pozzletot squeaked at her retreating back as she made her way across the room to the rickety ladder that led to her loft. His protests fell on deaf ears, and Serendipity ascended to her private chambers with nothing more to be said from any of her permanent house guests.
“A merchant, who had three daughters, was once setting out upon a journey; but before he went he asked each daughter what gift he should bring back for her. The eldest wished for pearls; the second for jewels; but the third, who was called Lily, said, 'Dear Father, bring me a rose.' Now it was no easy task to find a rose, for it was the middle of winter; yet as she was his prettiest daughter, and was very fond of flowers, her father said he would try what he could do. So he kissed all three, and bid them goodbye.”“Papa! That merchant had three daughters, just as you have three daughters,” Serendipity laughed as sat upon her father’s knee, listening to his deep voice portray the tales of the Brothers Grimm in full spectrum. “So he does,” Rudolph Fizzlestitch confirmed, absently rubbing his nose. “But I’m sure that his three daughters are not near
At first, Serendipity went about her business as she would any other time. After a short nap, she was always ready to dive right back into her work, picking up precisely wherever she had left off. Today should be no different: she picked up the dress, realized her needle was missing, and chose another one from a wide selection stuffed inconspicuously into a well-used pin cushion. She threaded the needle without looking on the first try, and settled down into her chair, training her mind on other things, anything, other than that letter that sat across the room from her. She decided to concentrate on the doll she was working on, number 1,452, or as she had nicknamed her, Lizzette Sassafras, thinking how smart she would look attending a cotillion in the pink lacy dress she was currently creating for her.Lizzette sat on the table near the head of number 1,468, the one she had been working on earlier, which she had chosen to name Hester Pineyfrock (her dress would be green, of cou
The snow was coming down hard, the flakes small and sharp, more like ice droplets than the fluffy white puffs one usually thought of when considering this particular type of precipitation. But after a century or so of living in the Village, Cornelius Cane had grown immune to the cold and the various forms of solid water the clouds heaved down upon them.As he crunched along the well-decorated cobblestone street that led to his home, his mind only vaguely noticed the impeccably hung twinkling white lights that decorated each of the cottages, shop fronts, and various other buildings, their iridescence broken up only by the velvet bows and greenery interspersed every few feet. Here, Christmas decorations were not seasonal; they were part of everyday life, and while he did occasionally stop to marvel at their splendor, particularly when they had recently been changed out, after a while, like the snow, the decor became part of the background, an inconsequential part of his e
Lizzette Sassafras was dressed in her finest holiday gown, complete with white bloomers and black boots, a stylish matching hat atop her blonde curly hair, ready to be wrapped up and shipped out to whichever sweet little girl had petitioned for her creation when Serendipity heard a slight knock at the door, followed by a rattling of the knob and the stomping of heavy boots against the mat that somewhat protected the rough wooden floor. She did not turn, not yet, as she was still admiring her work. Instead, she called over her shoulder, “Good morning, Maevis.”Maevis was satisfied with the dryness of her boots and she crossed the few steps to the table, dropping the heavy basket she carried in the only cleared off place as she replied, “Morning? Serendipity, it’s practically evening. It’s past five in the afternoon. Why don’t you open the curtains and let some light in here?”At the suggestion, Serendipity turned her head sharpl
Maevis’s eyebrows grew together. “What of it?” she inquired, not sure what her charge was getting at.“Why can we not sell it? Keep this cottage and one of the others for you, let Ms. Crotlybloom go. Why must we keep that dreadful place? I shall never step foot in there again.”“Serendipity,” Maevis began, leaning forward, her hands on the table, “we can’t. That’s where all of the doll parts are kept. There’d be no way we could store them all here.”Nodding, Serendipity suddenly remembered it had not been that long ago that Maevis had asked to sell the last remaining warehouse. It had required making space in the hall for all of the fabric, hair, eyes, bisque heads, what remained of her father’s initial supply of paint--everything Serendipity used to assembly her art. “All of the money from the warehouses is gone then?” she confirmed.Maevis’s curls bounded up
Maevis watched for a few moments as Serendipity worked at her craft table, laying out the hair for her next project and readying her tools. Clearly, she was not in the mood to talk today. Occasionally, when Maevis came to the cottage to visit, Serendipity would want to converse, but Maevis could never predict what circumstances would cause her to be chatty and what would prevent her from voicing whatever was on her mind. Maevis glanced around the room one last time, looking to see if there was anything else she could do to straighten the space. The lanterns were still full, since Serendipity rarely turned them on. Everything seemed to be in its place, and she was just about to turn to leave when something white caught her attention. Out of the corner of her eye, Maevis noticed an object that shouldn’t be in the cottage and turned to look at the suspect item. “What’s that?” she asked, staring in the direction of Serendipity’s rocking chair.Serend
It hadn’t taken long for Serendipity to get over her shock at Maevis’s departing words. She was certain that, even if Maevis had read the letter correctly, the information had to be incorrect, or else someone was playing a prank on her. She was quite certain that St. Nicholas was not trying to recruit her services. If there was such a person as Santa Claus in the first place, and she had stopped believing in him the year her father had passed away, there was little doubt in her mind that murderers could be on the Nice List, and why would St. Nicholas look to recruit a doll maker who wasn’t even on his list of those who deserved a gift?Serendipity had been extremely busy since the day the letter had arrived, not because of its existence, but because of the conversation she had carried out with Maevis that afternoon. The money was almost gone, which meant there would soon be no place for the dolls. She needed to finish them. At the rate she was going, it woul
Corey could hear in her voice that she was no one to be trifled with--not that day anyway. He had been in similar situations before, though never with someone in their youth such as Ms. Fizzlestitch. Generally speaking, the younger the crafter, the more capable he or she was of believing in magic. This was particularly true when it came to young ladies. Nevertheless, Serendipity was beginning to challenge him, and while he was up for the challenge, he was not up for the rain; snow was one thing--rain was something else entirely. “Very well, then,” he replied. “Might I trouble you for a drink of water then?” he called, hoping that he would make more progress with her if he could meet her face to face. Then, she could look into his dazzling green eyes and fall captive to his mesmerizing gaze as so many young ladies had before her.Serendipity was puzzled. She had not expected him to give up so quickly, nor had she expected him to make any requests of her