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Elly stitched the face out of an old school satchel, with bright boot buttons for eyes and jagged whalebone teeth from a broken corset stay. She filed the teeth as straight as she could and they looked very fine in the end.
The clothes came from father’s own closet. He never missed them because he was too busy missing Bran.
The disguise’s hands were doe-colored leather gloves, fingers stuffed plump with crumpled up pages of unfinished poems.
The trunk of his body was hollow. Instead of ribs, a large birdcage protected where his heart and lungs should have been. The sisters had consulted among themselves and concluded that hearts were troublesome and lungs were even worse. Besides, if he’d had organs, there would have been no room for the operator.
All the sisters were small of stature, but Elly was the smallest. If she hunched over, she fit into the birdcage chest with room to spare and could still reach the levers to operate the puppet brother. Actia gave her a cushion to sit on.
The levers were important. They were how the new brother walked and bobbed his jaw up and down when he spoke with a surprisingly brittle voice that seemed to come from the very depths of him.
It was all part of Lottie’s plan. The plan to get to London.
This new Bran ambulated around the house, listing and tilting until Elly got the hang of controlling him. He took some maneuvering, but she was quick and bright. Father, lost in
despair and deep in his cups, welcomed this semblance of his