What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Gepetta takes over the narration as Radha brings her to her first meeting with Gustav in Berkeley Square. They meet Gustav’s puppets—Hamlet, Chagatai, Brunhild, Petrushka, and Loco Dempsey—who each have a unique point of view. Radha and Gustav both seem able to understand their puppets, and Radha takes to learning from him. A fortune teller tells Radha that she’s “falling for an invisible man” and Gepetta assumes that it must be Gustav (121).

Radha and Gepetta meet Rowan Wayland in Radha’s history of puppetry class. Rowan always sits alone, and other students seem to avoid him, so Gepetta and Radha decide to meet him. Rowan is an attractive living puppet who is a man, a woman, or both depending on what those seeing Rowan find attractive: “Rowan’s physical effect—godlike jawline, long-lashed eyes, umber skin, rakish quaff of hair—is like that of a lightning strike” (127). Rowan has blue hair and tiny horns and is built to human scale. Rowan and Gepetta become friends, bonding over the fact that they are both alive but not quite human. As Radha and her classmates learn more about their own puppetry philosophies, Gepetta learns more about the students.

Rowan tells Gepetta about a young woman—Myrna—who can feel no human touch and who can take the pain away from others by touching them. She sometimes uses her ability to help those who need relief, though sometimes people use her for her abilities. The woman’s mother experienced chronic pain, and the daughter’s ability became a burden on the relationship. To avoid using the daughter, the mother became addicted to substances. Myrna went to Prague with her puppeteer father and watched him rehearse, impressed with the power she could have from the stage. She befriended two brothers, Jindrich and Kirill Topol, who lived in the apartment above her and her father’s. The boys would wrestle and teach her how to speak Czech.

Myrna and the boys found Rowan—a devil puppet made of rowan wood—at the Olšany cemetery. The little devil’s official duty was to guard the grave of the alchemist Rowan Wayland, though the grave was empty. Wayland liked to imply that he had figured out a way to cheat death, and so he had seven empty graves across six continents. The puppet was pegged to the ground near the grave, often confused for a human person. The puppet followed Myrna home after Myrna accidentally left her door keys at the grave; Myrna discovered Rowan under her bed. Myrna and Rowan decided that Rowan would stay with Myrna until Myrna’s death, at which point Rowan could return to graveyard duty.

Rowan brings Gepetta to Radha’s place, and Gustav answers the door while Radha practices with Gustav’s puppets. Rowan says “I’m sorry” to Gustav but leaves when Gustav asks why Rowan is sorry. The puppetry students prepare to perform at the end-of-year show. Radha and Gustav’s segment is first, even though Tyche and Myrna’s is the most anticipated. The latter’s segment is called “The shock of your life or a piece of cheese” (148): Everyone receives a card that either says “Shock” and asks them to write a name other than their own, or that says “Piece of Cheese” and includes a space for a name.

Gustav begins to perform to TLC’s hit song “No Scrubs”; as he does, his puppets reveal that their throats are cut and their strings spilling out. Gustav loses consciousness. Everyone thinks it’s a joke, but when Gustav doesn’t move, Radha checks on him and finds him lying with his eyes open, apparently dead. Myrna’s father tells someone to call an ambulance, and he calls Myrna to the stage to help. She holds Gustav against her chest, and he regains consciousness. There is an awkward exchange of glances between Radha and Gustav and between Tyche and Myrna. Gepetta refuses to high-five Rowan, who cryptically says, “As expected.”