One time, a porcelain doll lived within a music box. Beautiful, everyone who saw it said, pale skin and dark hair, raised en pointe with hands brushing the sky, forever dancing in an endless twirl.
The doll was fragile; everyone knew that, but no one paid much mind. It was safe inside its music box, feet floating above its stage, spinning in time with a shower of tinkling bells. It liked being like this, or so the crowd said, liked the safety and structure. The doll never had to question what it was to do; it simply had to dance.
One chilly morning, the doll’s foot slipped. It was nothing spectacular, just a simple accident. It fell as the crowd watched, between one heartbeat and the next, crashing down to hard ground, one of those eternally raised arms shattering as it took the force of the blow. The music box tinkled mockingly as the doll lay there, gasping, immobile, and staring down at where its arm had been until the bells fell silent.
–What do we do?
—I didn’t know it could fall.
–Get the creator.
And so the doll’s creator came, gathering up the frozen doll and all the shattered pieces of what had been. The creator took the doll to the kiln where it had been built and fired it anew, the pieces of the arm held together by molten metal. It hurt, but the doll did not scream. Not until it was back inside its music box and lifted its new white-gold arm above its head, preparing for another dance, and froze, stutter-stop still as the gold pulled and tugged, refusing to cede to anything but gravity.
—What are you waiting for? Dance, the creator demanded.
—I can’t. It hurts.
Mouth pressed into a sneer colder than the doll’s porcelain body, the creator turned away and started the music box again. The platform underneath the doll began to spin, and it was all it could do not to fall again, to lift its screaming golden arm and begin to twirl. But the doll obeyed. It knew nothing else. It wobbled, it shuddered, but it danced.
The next fall came two weeks later. Exhausted from fighting its arm, the doll lowered it and fell victim to its uncertain gravity, snapping both perfectly extended legs below the tutu. Again, the crowd called, and again the creator came, muttering expletives and snarling malice as the doll’s pieces were gathered up and returned to the kiln. This time, the doll screamed as gold was poured into its legs, as the gold in its arm burned in time with the crackles of the fire.
—Be quiet. I didn’t make you scream.
When the music box was again in sight, the doll tried to stand, but the lightning that tore up through its legs into the very core of it was too much, arms and legs throbbing in unison. The doll wanted to fold back down, to curl up like a wounded animal and breathe until the pain was gone. It knew that would be what those witnesses to its dance would do if they hurt like this, but the doll was not made to be one of them. It was made to entertain them. And so, painted face contorted into a grimace, it stepped back up onto the platform. It danced.
It danced, and the crowd watched, but they grumbled now. The doll didn’t look pretty with its face like that, with the tears beading in its eyes. The gold shining in its cracks glowed under the sunlight, but that served only as a reminder. It was slower now, cautious. No longer did its head lift towards the sky, ethereal, closer to flight than dance; it watched its feet carefully, determined not to slip. What is the point of this, they muttered among themselves. They were here for a performance, not a prayer.
The rock came from no one and everyone, flung from the crowd, anonymous and half-understood and inexorably, brutally real all the same. It hadn’t stopped, exactly, just slowed for a heartbeat to breathe. The missile caught the doll dead in the face in an explosion of ceramics and one haunting music note. Yet again, the crowd stood, grumbling, waiting for the show they had come to expect as the doll’s pieces were hauled away and it was brought back, thrashing, a mask of gold sealed over its once-beautiful face, moaning uselessly as it was deposited upon its stage.
The platform began to turn.