Notes Wrought With Symbolic Hands

[catch]

Before the Calomel house, there comes to the door a singular, peculiar object, set there carefully by vagrant, murderous hands, hands that could be as gentle and kind, giant, rough, laced with the silver scars of once-tattoos. The only Magic about him, and it has long been swept away by Lamai, by Rhaena, and - to lesser, yet more devastating effect - by Renea. Those hands could write no notes, but they could form shapes to their will.

Waiting expectant at the door is the basket, the one taken from that tea-party that has so confused and endangered the addled Catch. Within it lays one of the many dolls that he finds, broken and discarded, or abandoned, or taken directly from the hands or windowsills of screaming girls. This particular specimen must come from a more expensive house, for what was left of it's hair was real, human hair, straying in wisps from the punctured holes of the skull, and the face was cracked porcelain, artful paint hidden under smudges of dirt and filth. The canvas belly had, lovingly, been cut open, the flaps skewered into the basket by main, brute force, so that the entrails of beautiful, spring flowers, and a few early summers, could cascade in simulated gore down the delicate, stained legs. One eye of the doll was missing, but it has been fixed with a bit of broken, prohibitably expensive mirror, glued in place with a slopping of horse-glue. There is another scrap of reflective glimmer glued to the forehead, to form a Zilliah-like Third Eye.

What did this mean? It is an apology. It is the best a madman can do.