Madou Ai Li | ((top))

So he made a new puppet—a smaller one, a boy this time. He carved it from the same willow. He did not paint its eyes. He left them hollow. And he whispered to Madou Ai Li, "Trade with this one. Give him your threads. Become wood again."

That girl was Kuro's daughter.

Kuro wept. But he was a puppeteer before he was a father. He knew that a marionette cut from her strings becomes a heap of wood. And Madou Ai Li's strings were not silk or hair. They were the hopes of everyone she had touched. madou ai li