The Puppets of Spelhorst

Martha returns to the mantel where the puppets are, this time reaching for the boy. He thinks, “[P]erhaps the purpose the master puppet maker had spoken of had at last arrived and […] he was now going to do something that truly mattered” (56). He is excited as the little girl carries him away from the room.

Outside, Martha tries to shoot the boy’s arrows from his bow. When she is unsuccessful, she grows frustrated and leaves the boy puppet propped against a tree. The boy is not discouraged, knowing that he will find a way to fulfill his destiny one way or another. Just then, a large bird swoops down and picks up the boy puppet. The boy is not afraid, however, but excited for the adventure ahead of him.

Back on the mantel, the other three puppets are growing anxious about their missing friends. The king tries to demand that someone bring back the boy and the wolf, while the owl, who is still lying on his beak from being knocked over earlier, tries to assure them that all will be well.

The girl puppet remembers that in the toy shop window, she “had been in the middle of the other puppets, so whichever way the wind blew her, she could see either the king and the wolf or the boy and the owl” (60). She feels a deep sense of loneliness as she sits on the mantel, forced to look straight ahead.

Jane Twiddum, the family’s maid, enters the room and is startled by the sight of the puppets on the mantel. She looks at the king and curtsies and then studies the girl. Jane “under[stands] that the king [is] a king and the girl [is] a girl, but since the owl [is] facedown on the mantel, she [mistakes] him for a feather duster” (62). She takes him off the mantel and throws him in her cleaning bucket.

Jane looks deep into the girl puppet’s violet eyes and feels as if the puppet is clearly looking right back at her. She tells the girl puppet that her mother nearly named her Violet but then decided on a “sturdy name for a hard world” (64). She then dismisses “[a]ll of that” (64)—the story of her naming, her own words, and life itself—as “nonsense.” After a moment, Jane picks up the cleaning bucket and leaves the room.

The owl, now lying at the bottom of the cleaning bucket, contemplates Jane’s words. He agrees that everything is nonsense: “For instance, what kind of nonsense was it that he had been mistaken for a feather duster?” (65). He thinks about the friends he left behind and wishes he could have said goodbye to them. The longer he is alone with his thoughts, the more he feels that they don’t matter. What he would really like to do now, more than anything, is to fly away.

Meanwhile, the boy is flying as the hawk carries him further up into the sky. He wonders whether “this [is] his destiny, his purpose? To fly up high over all the world?” (67). The exhilaration doesn’t last long, however. As soon as the hawk realizes that the boy puppet isn’t an animal to eat, it drops him. The boy tumbles down, his arrows spilling out of his quiver and his bow falling off him, and finally lands in a tree.

On the mantel, the king is growing more anxious about being separated from the other puppets. He asks the girl, “How can they be taken away one by one? It does not seem right to me. I command someone to make it different!” (69). The girl asks what he would prefer, and the king says they would all be together and sing songs every day. She assures the king that she has hope they will reunite with their friends.

The girl puppet offers to sing for the king since they can’t all sing together right now. He agrees, and she starts to sing the rag-and-bone man’s song. The king, who is calmed by her singing, says to her, “When I have my kingdom, songs will be sung all the time” (72). The girl agrees, and the two friends sit silently together, allowing a peace to fall over them for the first time in a while.

The wolf is still on the carpet where Martha left her earlier. As much as she tries to be tough and independent, she can’t help but miss her friends. Just then, Jane enters the room and mistakes the wolf for a squirrel skin, assuming that Martha made a mess and left it behind as usual. She picks up the wolf, disgusted, and tosses her out into the snow.

Now the wolf really misses her friends and wishes the owl were there to help her understand this situation. As she lies there, a fox comes up to investigate. The fox sniffs the wolf and then picks her up in its mouth and starts to run. The wolf is excited: “[T]hat mean[s] the wolf [is] running, too—running through the woods in the snow! It was all just as it had been in her dream” (76).

When the governess comes to the blue room to teach Emma and Martha their lessons, Jane takes the girl puppet from the mantel and puts her in her apron pocket. She is annoyed by the governess and tells the girl puppet, “I say you’re better off spending your day with me. That’s what I say” (78). Jane leaves the blue room, taking the girl puppet with her.

From within the pocket, the girl puppet can hear some of Jane’s interactions throughout the day as she greets different people in the house. Suddenly, Jane is singing a beautiful song about violets and a love who left her flowers but then went away. The girl puppet listens in awe, thrilled to hear a song besides the rag-and-bone man’s tune. It makes her excited to sing songs for her friends when they are all reunited.

Emma is astonished to find that all of the puppets, except for the king, are missing from the mantel. The governess tries to get the girls to focus, but Emma starts quizzing Martha about what she did with the puppets. Martha rushes into the room where she left the wolf and says that it’s gone now. Although she is not sure what happened to the owl or the girl, she does remember where she left the boy puppet.

The girls go outside to look, but the boy is gone from the tree where Martha placed him earlier. Emma finds the boy’s arrows on the ground and tells the governess, “We’re going to have to go into the woods” (85). They eventually find the boy in the tree, where the hawk dropped him. Martha climbs up to get him as Emma plans to look for the owl, the girl, and the wolf.

The wolf is in a fox den, being played with by a family of kits. While she does not like being their toy, she does find “something very comforting about being surrounded by so much life” (88). When the mother fox returns to the den and sees the wolf, she picks her up and tosses her out into the snow.

Outside, “The wolf [lies] facedown in the snow. She [has] never felt so alone. So toothless” (91). She has almost given up hope when she hears a young girl’s voice calling out: Martha is shouting to Emma that she found the wolf. The wolf is relieved, even if Martha did pull out her teeth.

While Emma and Martha are finding the boy and the wolf, the girl is sitting on a hill with Jane, looking over a river. Jane tells the girl, “It was my dream to sail down the river, wasn’t it? I always wanted to get on that river and leave” (92). She goes on to explain that she would sail until she reached a place where they had camels and that she would ride one and see the world. Jane sighs, saying she will probably never get to do any of this but that she wanted to show the girl puppet the river anyway.

Jane picks up the cleaning bucket, and “a great gust of wind ruffle[s] the owl’s feathers and lift[s] one of his wings” (93). Curious, Jane picks up the owl and realizes he’s not a feather duster at all. She tenderly places the girl puppet back in her apron and holds up the owl with both hands so that he can feel the wind beneath his wings. After a moment, Jane decides it’s time to go back. She puts the owl in her pocket next to the girl and sings a song on the way back to the house.

Back in the blue room, the king sits alone on the shelf, wishing more than anything that he could “have everyone returned to him—the wolf and the boy and the owl and the girl” (96). He wishes that someone could sing to him and then wonders if perhaps he could sing to himself. He begins to remember the rag-and-bone man’s song, and although he starts off small, he eventually sings louder, filling the empty room with music.