The Dollmakers

by Lynn Buchanan

think he’s alive? You believe he’ll return to unite your country?” “Oh, no. I don’t believe anyone will ever unite the mountains again.”

But, a soft voice whispered, a voice that sounded terribly similar to Nock’s, you ruined someone else’s life to get here.

That way of thinking wasn’t logical. Or normal. That way of thinking made Shean uncomfortable.

“If they wouldn’t listen to your words, if you couldn’t talk to them, why didn’t you fight back?”

Really clear what Shean's problem solving approach is lol

That was her, wasn’t it? That hunched figure sitting across from her in a rumpled dress with hair in tangles, her leg in bandages, tears dripping between the gaps in her fingers? Wasn’t that another Ikiisa softly weeping right there? A reflection. A mirror.

You could even call her a foil

But Roque, fool as he was in many ways, was not quite foolish enough to attempt raising the dead. He was, after all, living proof of why such should never be done.