Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Victoria had nowhere else to go. There was technically a warrant out for her arrest. She hadn't done anything serious, mind you- She had simply been… Behind on her taxes for a few years now. Results from her weather-controlling machines were just too inconsistent. Grant money had dried up, and she had been forced to supply her own funding for her experiments... With the money she owed to the city... Who should have been giving her a proper grant for her research anyways! It all would have evened out in the end, really.

Unfortunately, the attention the station collapse had brought onto her hadn't been conducive to the rat's nest of 'IOU's' she had stuffed into a mailbox the postal service had all but forgotten about at the foot of the mountain. And of course, the extra fines for her building not being 'up to code' and it being 'her fault' it had been in such poor maintenance hadn't been any help. Apparently, cliffside buildings weren't ever supposed to break at their foundation and roll down the mountain, even after sustaining minor structural damage from a magical shockwave.

At the time, Victoria had thought they were being a little black and white about things. But she had also gotten the distinct impression they didn't fully believe her story about weather spirits being captured in brilliant machines or flying in through the windows, enraged by the previous usage of said machines.

Anyways. Victoria could admit she had done some things wrong. A couple of things wrong. But… She wasn't sure she deserved all of this for it. Her life's work was destroyed, her pockets were emptying fast, and her reputation was at an all-time low. The only thing she could think to do was try to pick up the pieces of it all, but she was getting nowhere fast.

She tried to find herself a nice little flat in the city proper, but no landlord would take her after looking into her finances or recognizing her from the news. Motels worked for a little while but… Well, it seemed that despite their insistences, the staff's hospitality did have its limits. And that limit was somewhere around the moment an officer showed up at the front desk and informed them that one of their guests was a (somewhat) wanted woman. Hotels. Who needed them? Her money was going to run out soon at those room rates, anyways.

She didn't remember exactly what thought process had led her to the little wooded area on this side of town. Easier to get into than the Huldawood proper, she supposed. And with the first streak of luck she had found in months, she spotted the old abandoned windmill. After a few nights stay, it seemed to be safe- Pleasant, even. If she could get ahold of some supplies, maybe by salvaging things from her old lab and pawning off some of what she found… She could turn this place into a nice little temporary home. Come up with a new invention… Or another way to make money quietly, pay her debts off, and be on her merry way.

She was clearing the cobwebs when she found it. It must have been sitting in the rafters, knocked loose as she patted her broom into them. It hit the floor with a series of brittle thumps behind her, nearly scaring her out of her skin.

Victoria turned and examined what had made the clatter, "Oh, heavens! They're just some old bones." She smoothed her hair back down and laughed it off. Then, she knelt down and grabbed the skull and jawbone, holding them together

"My, my… What do we have here?" she mused. She tilted the skull this way and that, then clacked the jaw up and down a few times like it was some sort of macabre puppet. "Humanoid in shape, but small and much too robust in the mandible. Sharp incisors… Why, you wouldn't happen to be the skeleton of a nisse, would you?" she asked it.

No reply.

But what a find! Nisse weren't rare on their own, but their remains on the other hand… From what Victoria knew, when the little creatures were injured or ill, they preferred to retreat quietly into their magic nests. Nowhere Space, they called it. And it was completely inaccessible to anyone but one of their own kind.

"Poor chap. Must have died alone out here some time ago," Victoria muttered. She tucked the little skull gently under one arm and sifted through the other bones that had fallen. Many of them had already crumbled or broken in the fall.

"Well, let's try not to make it two of us, then."

***

It was a few weeks of grueling work sifting through the wreckage of her old lab and hauling what she could back to the Windmill. Tools. Canned food. Books. Blankets. Coffee maker (for tea… She was swearing off coffee). Space heater. Supplies to build a generator. Planting a garden. Trying to pawn 30-year-old lab equipment for money for food in the meantime without drawing too much attention to herself. Almost drawing too much attention to herself, pulling her hood up, and bolting out of the consignment shop with a clunky plastic monitor in her arms and the power cord whipping people and things behind her. And when she finally got home at the end of all of that, the door fell off its hinges.

Victoria slumped down against the side of the millstone and stared into space. "It's all just too much to do at once," she admitted. "If only I had another set of hands...."

She cast her gaze around the windmill. It fell upon something splotched yellow and brown- She had placed the nisse skull on a shelf for safekeeping and quickly forgotten about it. No time to prepare a bath and bleach it around all the more necessary tasks in her queue.

"Now a live nisse, that would have been useful," she laughed wryly. How perfect would having a house spirit be? The secretive little creature could guard the Windmill and do half of the work for her to boot. And all Victoria would have to do in return is keep a fire going and share some food with it.

"You just had to go at it alone out here, didn't you? Couldn't have waited for me to bring in some canned beans and get the stove burning?" she accused the skull.

Its eye sockets stared blankly back at her. No answer.

"Of course not. You're not even good company," she teased. "Blanker than the radio I used to talk into for my weather reports. At least the radio gave me static back. Plus a little bit of income on the ads."

But what if…The gears in her mind were already turning. A scientist observed and worked with the data that was there, yes, but a true inventor, a creative mind, worked with what could be. What should be. What was needed. Victoria hadn't gotten this far by giving up when the cards were against her. She would work smarter and harder to make ends meet. Like she always had.

Victoria got up and strode across the room. She grabbed the skull and brought it with her to her pile of salvaged books. She had known these were important! Well worth the priority she had given their recovery.

"Now… Let's see here. I'm not sure Meteorology will get us anywhere on this one, but I do know that I found that book on reanimation rituals just the other morning. You wouldn't happen to have seen where I put it, would you?"

Chapter Text

A body, a body, a body. She could reanimate the skull alone, but if she wanted her creation to be useful, to be that extra pair of hands around the Windmill, well… It was going to need hands. Victoria was a little fuzzy on what a complete nisse should look like, so she took a quick trip to the Trolberg Library. She slipped the book Identifying Lesser Spirits into her cloak and out of the building while that little purple-haired woman at the front desk was absent, and that was enough to fix that. Sure, the book was free to borrow, but giving up her personal information for a library card wasn't really a good option when she was trying to stay off the grid.

"Hmm, so many shapes to choose from," Victoria mused to the skull as they flipped through the myriad of small, furry forms house spirits could come in. She had thrown out most of the creature's fragmented bones when she had first found them, and was left with really only a skull, most of a leg, and an arm that hadn't fallen off the rafter with the rest.

"Perhaps we build a few prototypes to start with, eh?" she suggested to the now-clean skull in her lap. "I'm not exactly an artist myself- Function over form and all that- But I got quite good at mending clothes and tarps back at the old station. Some things just weren't worth the trip down the mountain."

"Oh, stop judging me. Yes, it never hurt that it was cheaper to mend my own clothes either."

Victoria set the skull on the workbench beside her and began working on a few sketches. There was something about the rasp of the pencil on paper, or the act of planning a build… Or maybe it was simply that the darkness of the basement workspace was making her sleepy… But she really wanted some coffee right now. She had recovered a can of pre-ground coffee from her old lab (in fact, she was surprised she had only found one good can). But… No. Perhaps it was best she stick to tea instead. She had always thought long, caffeine-fueled sessions were good for her work, but lately she had been reconsidering that hypothesis.

Instead, Victoria made herself some herbal tea and took her time drinking it while gazing peacefully out a dusty window at the sunset. Then she gathered up some extra supplies and resumed her planning.

The reanimation ritual only needed a few pieces of a specific, living creature to work, and supplementing with other living or once-living matter was recommended. Conveniently, plant material fulfilled that requirement. She already had some vegetables from the farmer's market, and she would have more once her own garden got off the ground.

She tried a variety of forms (using gourds for heads and sticks for the bones, of course- The real ones were too valuable to use until she was absolutely ready for them).

"No, no, no. Vegetables in a glass jar for a torso is a bad idea. I can't attach anything but the head to it," Victoria muttered, standing back to look at a pumpkin she had placed on top of a jar of garlic.

The next idea consisted of dowels pushed into a pincushion, on which the skull could rest. "Oh… I know you'd so like to be tall, but it looks unstable… And I know a few things about 'unstable' if you catch my meaning," Victoria laughed. "Why don't we stay low to the ground this time?"

Finally, she tried sewing up a sack of potatoes and dressing it up as a portly little nisse. She stood back and held the skull with her as if it were looking too. No response.

"You're right. If the sack rips, you're going to be spilling potatoes everywhere. And I'd rather not be doing repair jobs every few days- You're meant to save me work, not create more of it!"

The answer to her material problem was clearly wood, but Victoria didn't know much of woodworking. She had a hatchet for splitting firewood, but she wasn't sure it had the finesse she'd need to craft the perfect wooden body for her creature. Maybe it was best she put this project on pause for now and focus on some of the chores that had been piling up around the Windmill. She… Was starting to get carried away with this whole reanimation ritual thing.

It was a few days before inspiration struck again. Victoria was watering her garden when she cast her gaze a little farther back into the tree line than she usually did. There she saw a solidly-shaped stump with one branch protruding from the side. Her imagination immediately likened it to a torso and an upright, waving hand.

"Good heavens, that's it!" Victoria exclaimed. She dropped the watering can and nearly drowned one of her turnip patches. She kicked the can away and ran inside to grab the skull.

"Now… I know it won't look perfect from the start," Victoria cautioned as she made her way back out to the spot. She held one hand over the skull's eye sockets to avoid ruining the surprise, "But keep an… Open mind!" She tapped on the hollow cranium and barked a small laugh.

"Really, though, I do think we could make something of this. Let me know what you think." She lifted her hand from the eyes and held the skull by its temples to let the nisse take in its new torso.

No answer.

The mandible fell off.

"Yes, yes! I like it too! I think we're ready to start working on the real thing!"

The skeletal leg wired up just perfectly and attached into the base of the stump. Victoria covered the exposed limb with a long, black sock and a shoe she had found on the side of the road, fearing the small bones in the foot (though she had taken hours to string them all together) might break apart without protection. For the other leg, Victoria made do with the side of a banister that had broken off the Windmill's staircase a while ago.

The left arm gave her more trouble. The head of the humerus crumbled as soon as she tried to make a hole for the wire to run through. She ended up sewing the bones into a little linen sleeve and nailing it all to the stump. By her calculations, the ritual should take to the organic fiber, at the very least.

Finally, the face. Victoria held the little skull in her hands and looked between it, the body, and the pictures of nisse in the book.

"Not that you aren't delightful as you are but… I think I know what you're missing," Victoria mused with a wink. She put the skull down and went to the ladder that led to the upper floors of the mill. "I'll be right back!"

She returned with a straw broom head and a turnip, working to fasten them around the skull in a way that resembled the big nose and shaggy fur many of the nisse in the book displayed.

Victoria stood back and examined her work one last time. "We're almost there," she whispered joyfully. "Now, neither of us are going to have to go at it alone."

***

The stone circle was arranged precisely to the one in the book. Victoria had taken her time copying it and memorizing its intricacies. Science and dark magic shared a pleasing number of similarities; they both rewarded precision and preparedness. But magic was less forgiving of mistakes, and far less predictable with its punishments.

"Now we need to wait for this storm to break. Which…" Victoria paused. She scanned the murky sky and noted the direction her cloak was blowing in the wind. "Should happen in just a few minutes. Lots of lightning, too. Exactly what we need."

She turned to where she had set her creation up against a tree like it had simply sat down to rest. "And you thought Meteorology wasn't going to come in handy for this!"

No response.

"Now, now. No time for that- It's our big moment," Victoria chided. She picked the amalgamation up and stepped gingerly into the circle with it. She knelt down and arranged it carefully in the very center of the stones, then stepped back and triple checked its positioning on the diagram. Perfect.

She moved back to her own position (check) and laid the book of incantations down beneath her. Then she paused to pull her hood up against the first fat drops of rain that were beginning to fall. Took a breath. Raised her hands. And began to chant.

She thought she saw her creation twitch, but now wasn't the time to get distracted. If she didn't get her words exactly right, there might not be another chance at this. Another chance to fix the problem that had been plaguing her long before her lab collapsed: Her inability to keep up with routine chores.

Oh, and the whole thing where she was talking to herself and inanimate objects all the time too, she supposed.

The stones began to glow and the wind picked up. Parts of the circle began to float, though they bobbed independently of the leaves whipping around them. Victoria could not break her concentration to take many more notes than that. Finally, the incantation ended, and the last remnants of her voice echoed oddly around the clearing.

Victoria lowered her hands, staring at the body in the center of the circle. The rocks lost their glow and dropped one by one, and it didn't stir. A pang of disappointment churned in her stomach. All this, for nothing. She must have-

The body sat bolt upright.

"The spell worked! It worked!" Victoria cackled. She rushed forward, knocking a few of the stones aside. They had served their purpose, and the magic was quickly fading.

The body startled and scrambled backward, a low and unnatural growl rising from somewhere in the core of its stump chest. Victoria didn't take any notice. She swept it up like it was an old friend.

"You're finally here!" she told it, rubbing her cheek against its straw head. The construct kicked a few times in her grip, then fell limp with bewilderment.

"Oh, we're going to have so much… Well, it won't be fun but, many hands and light work and all that." She held the amalgamation out so that they could look at each other. It tilted its head as it regarded her through empty sockets and layers of straw.

"My new assistant. What do you say to that?"

No response.

And then the conjured nisse tilted its head haltingly back the other way like it was thinking about it. A leaf had gotten stuck to it sometime during the ritual. It nodded slowly. The leaf flapped in the light wind.

"Excellent. Now… Let's get you inside before the rain picks up." Victoria patted her assistant on the head, then put it… Him… Down. She lifted one side of her cloak to shelter him from the rain.

"Go on, get under here. We don't want mildew growing in your straw."

Chapter Text

Victoria and her creation spent a few months working around the Windmill and its garden, trying to stay on top of chores. Victoria repaired and sold off a few more pieces of lab equipment she no longer needed, then used the funds to get ahold of some baking supplies- She'd always wanted to learn how to bake. Though... The conjured nisse didn't appear to eat or even have a sense of taste, which was a bit of a shame.

In the rest of her free time, Victoria looked through some of the other the books she had recovered. Nothing like losing your entire library to make you appreciate the titles you had left. Often, now that there was someone to listen, she read them aloud.

It was… Well, it wasn't always fun, but it wasn't so lonely anymore, either. Victoria's assistant could be a little rough around the edges, but he was a fast learner. And he seemed to like being read to after a long day of work, the way he'd sit at her feet, or peek over her arm to look at the diagrams. Victoria couldn't help but feel fondness for him. Her helper, her creation, and her only friend. He didn't talk, but Victoria could easily talk enough for the both of them.

There was just one thing that was nagging at her. And sometimes, Victoria wondered if it might be bothering him, as well. Whether he knew it or not.

"Are you ever going to make a nest?" Victoria asked one afternoon as her assistant brought a sack of potatoes up from the cellar.

He stared blankly back and started trying to hand her potatoes.

"No, no, bring them in here. They're for the stew," Victoria chided. "But you know… A nest. In Nowhere Space- That place nisse are meant to get into."

No response. Her assistant climbed up the counter and sat next to the pot, reaching for the bristle brush they used to scrub vegetables.

"Hmm…" Victoria hummed. She handed him the brush, then grabbed a carrot to peel. "I had hoped using nisse bones might give you an affinity for it. The spellbook seemed to indicate you should have the ability- Perhaps it's a learned behavior," she mused as they worked. "We'll have to do a bit more research."

It wasn't that she disliked having the conjured nisse milling about during the day (and all night, though he was good at being quiet), but there was something about him that just seemed… Restless. Like despite their peaceful lifestyle, he never truly had a place he felt he could relax. Victoria had tried a few little things here and there to make him to feel more at home, but none of them had really seemed to fix the issue in its entirety.

After leaving the stew to simmer, Victoria sat down with the stolen guidebook and flipped back to the pages on house spirits. Her assistant clambered up the back of the chair and leaned over her shoulder. He reached down with his linen-covered hand and snatched at the book.

"Ah-ah! What did we say about asking nicely?" Victoria scolded. The conjured nisse backed off and held out his hands, flexing his fingers in a motion that said 'Gimme… please.'

"Now hold on, I'm reading it to you," Victoria insisted, "You can see the photographs in a moment. Ah- It says it here, under 'Sighting Tips': 'Indoors, you will not see nisse, as they prefer to inhabit nests they keep in Nowhere Space- A dimension only accessible to these spirits when they are within a home. Out of doors, the perceptive spirit watcher may catch a glimpse of a nisse just before it jumps back into Nowhere Space. Look for forgotten places- under porches and behind garden sheds, for example. These are the favorite passageways of nisse. Steer clear of nisse that behave irregularly or spend too much time out in the open. These nisse have been banished from their nests for wrongdoing and are easily aggravated….'

Her assistant made the 'gimme' hands again.

Victoria rolled her eyes but smiled, "Oh, alright. Here, most of the photographs are on these-"

The conjured nisse jerked the book away from her, jumped down, and scuttled into a corner. Victoria rose from her chair to see him hunched over the book, flipping the pages back and forth and pressing his turnip nose unsettlingly close to the pictures.

Victoria watched for a few moments, unsure of how she should respond to this. She looked around. Her supportive smile wavered into something more like concern.

Finally, she cleared her throat and took a few steps closer. She clasped her hands together, "Why don't we try looking for Nowhere Space ourselves?" she prompted. "I've been thinking, perhaps, that you'll feel better with your own nest inside the Windmill."

The turnip swung from the book, to Victoria, then to the book again. A long pause. And then, suddenly, there was a tearing nose.

"Wait what are you-" Victoria closed the rest of the distance and grabbed the book from her assistant.

He had ripped a page of photos out and was holding it in his linen hand. He crumpled it quickly and stuffed it into the straw under his nose, holding it in the space under his jaw. The message was clear: 'Mine. For later'.

Victoria could only stare. "Fine… We couldn't return the book anyways," she relented, "But I'd ask that you don't rip any more pages. In the future, if we want to look at books, we ask for the whole book and we leave the pages in, alright?"

The conjured nisse nodded, and Victoria heard paper crumpling under the usual wisp of straw.

***

They looked under furniture. They looked behind things. They looked outside, around the base of the windmill. They tried pushing, and pulling, and jumping, and rolling. They had no idea what they were doing. Victoria had to replace her assistant's turnip nose twice.

By the end of the afternoon, the conjured nisse seemed more agitated than before, not less. Victoria's attempt to help him find a space to call his own had… Clearly failed. He was currently lying face-down in a dusty corner of the kitchen he had been trying to press his head into for the last several minutes.

Victoria walked over and lifted him up gently. She brushed him off and set him down on her knee. "Hey. It was just an idea- An experiment- to see if you could. It's no issue if you can't get into Nowhere Space on your own," she comforted him.

The conjured nisse stared up at her.

It was clear on her face- She would be lying if she said she wasn't disappointed too. But that disappointment wasn't in her assistant, and the last thing she wanted to do was make him feel worse about this. It wasn't his fault. She would have really liked to see a house spirit's powers in action. To study them a little- She couldn't help but be scientifically curious! But she could help her reaction to it, and she could make sure her creation knew he was appreciated, with or without special dimension-hopping abilities.

"Listen. You're perfect just as I made you," she told him, "I wouldn't have you any other way."

Victoria tousled the straw on top and gave him a small kiss on the forehead. "As for a nisse nest of your own... My home is your home, and you're free to share any space in it you like. But how about you make your nest in the cellar?" she tried. "You can jump up and down through the trapdoor like it's a portal, and it's all yours any time I don't need the extra workspace."

No response. Her assistant looked slowly to the floor in the main room. The paper under his jaw crinkled softly as he tilted his head.

"You could put your pictures down there as your first borrowing," she suggested. "Then, perhaps we can find more about proper Nowhere Space later. We'll see to another way of getting in. A better way, even."

The conjured nisse hopped down from her knee and walked over to the trapdoor. He lifted it high enough to crawl into, then paused and looked at Victoria. She nodded. He looked back to the wooden hatch, then scuttled straight over the edge and onto the cellar ceiling. The sound of upside-down scrabbling came up through the floorboards. Adorable.

Victoria thought she had seen an extra spring in his step, but it… Might have also been one of the wires on his legs coming loose. She'd have to take a look at that later.

Chapter Text

It started with a low rumble in the distance, accompanied by beeping and shouting.

Construction.

Victoria had considered sending her assistant to check on things, but he couldn't exactly describe the scene once he got back to her, and she worried for what might happen to him if he was caught. She would have to go too.

"Come with me, and don't let anyone see you," Victoria commanded. She put her cloak on and was off into the woods with her assistant on her tail. It was only a brief walk to where all the commotion was, and that worried her.

"Good heavens- A housing development?" she asked as they watched from a safe distance within the trees. "They're bound to run out of space within the walls soon if they keep going at it like this!"

Trolberg had always looked small from up in her mountaintop weather station. Up there, the space within its walls was so clearly and pitifully finite. Really, Victoria sometimes marveled that there was any green left down here at all. Some people just didn't have a proper respect for nature, it seemed! They always had to pave it over and wall it in and control it... And then, after all that, turn it into shopping malls and parking lots and neighborhoods.

Victoria shook her head, but all she said to express this frustration was, "Don't they have enough homes in this city?" 

Her assistant looked between her and the scene before them, unsure if that was a question he was supposed to answer.

Victoria grew quiet. Yet another thought had occurred to her. "Aah- I wonder how far they plan to take it. If they get too close to the Windmill, we'll have to leave. Oh, and after all the work we've put in, too..." she sighed. "But with the two of us, perhaps we-"

She reached down to pat her assistant reassuringly and found her hand swinging through thin air. "Where on Earth did you go?" she asked, casting her gaze around the underbrush at her feet. Oh, she knew she should have given him a name to call out. This wasn't the place for him to be skulking about on his own!

She looked back down at the field the bulldozers were razing. Something near the perimeter caught her eye. It was the fluid-but-not-quite-natural way the conjured nisse moved.

"I didn't tell you to-" she hissed, but it was more to herself than anyone else. There was no way she'd be able to call down there over the din of construction, and she only risked drawing attention to herself if she tried. She could only watch helplessly as her creation stalked closer and closer to a knot of workers near the site's entrance. Luckily, they seemed distracted as they talked with each other. At their head was a man in a differently colored vest- Probably the foreman. It wouldn't do to be seen by someone like that!

The conjured nisse bolted for the big sign that had been set up at the front of the site, advertising the new development to the road. He jumped and landed vertically, crawling like a spider onto the opposite side as a way to keep cover from his apparent quarry.

"Oh, get off the sign! People from the street will see you!" Victoria urged quietly, as if there might be a way for him to hear if she willed the words to him. Someone more faint of heart might have looked away, but Victoria had to see every moment of what was happening. If he got caught or hurt… She didn't know what she would do. Victoria had cared for other people before, and worried for their safety in the odd circumstance, of course. She wasn't a monster! But this was something much more intense than the distant worry you felt for a near-stranger. Her assistant was something special to her. He was like family. He was all she had.

The conjured nisse dropped from the other side of the sign and stalked around the group of workers. Then he rushed in and snatched something off a crate next to them. And after that he was headed back, whatever he had been so keen to steal clutched to his chest.

No one had noticed.

Victoria relaxed as he moved closer to her and farther away from the danger. Apparently, she had been holding her breath. She tried to turn her relief into a scowl, preparing to scold him for being so reckless. What could possibly be so important that he had run all the way down there to grab it? How could he risk getting himself hurt or taken or seen, with her too far away to help until it was far too late?

And then she saw what he was holding.

"Oh, good find! You've done it," Victoria cheered instead- She couldn't stop herself. After all... How could she stay mad when he was just trying to do a good thing? Besides, it had all evened out in the end, really.

She petted his straw for a long moment then took the clipboard and leafed through the attached papers. Inside, a rough schedule and a map of the area with the stakes numbered out. It was even better than she had thought it might be! She compared the area around them to what she saw.

"Hmm… Look here. Seems they're not moving far past that next hill back there," she whispered, holding the picture down for her assistant to see. "Well, it's hardly enough space for a neighborhood at any rate, but the old Windmill is more than safe for now."

Her assistant swiped for the clipboard, but she lifted it out of his reach. He pressed against her, and Victoria had to put a hand down on his head to hold him back. He waved his mismatched arms and pointed frantically back towards the workers, who were now disbanding. One of them looked down at the crate and lifted his hardhat to scratch his head.

"No- No grabbing. We'll be keeping this," Victoria decided. She didn't really want him going down there again. Besides, who was going to question a few papers being misplaced during a chaotic day of breaking ground?

"Let's go back home. From now on, keep an eye on this perimeter when you're out," she traced the map with her finger to illustrate her point. "Stay away from it," she clarified with a pointed look down at him, "but do let me know if anything from this site gets too close."

***

In her assistant's defense, perhaps Victoria's instructions had still been a little vague.

Victoria was making some improvements to the generator. She was going to rig up a system that could capture lightning and store the energy for later use. Sure, it was a little counterintuitive when they lived in a windmill, but the blades had long since rotted away and many of the inner mechanisms were damaged.

Plus... She already had blueprints for a lightning harvester from her old work! She had always wanted to bring them to life, but had never gotten the chance. 'Too inconsistent' reviewers had marked her proposal, 'Why rely on lightning for power when you could use something safer and more reliable?'. Well, it was their loss, then. She was rather proud of her idea, and if no one else wanted it, she was going to build it for her own enjoyment. This was the first major scientific build she had attempted since losing her old lab and honestly, it felt nice to work without external deadlines or expectations. She had a warm cup of tea next to her, and a whole afternoon devoted to nothing but this. It was going to be wonderful.

Victoria was jolted out of her work by a chittering, screaming noise and a horrendous, unnatural growling.

She jumped up as the conjured nisse burst in, wrestling with something small and furry. The door slammed shut behind them, and the wall around the hinges cracked. Victoria snatched her teacup from the floor just before it was stepped on.

"Stop!" she bellowed. "What the devil are you doing?"

The conjured nisse pulled the animal away from his chest and presented her with a struggling squirrel. He used his nose to point out the door, then back down at the squirrel. Then he drew a certain perimeter on the floor with his wooden foot. Victoria immediately understood.

"When I said don't let anything get close, I didn't mean-" Victoria cried.

She turned and placed the teacup on a pile of books, then paced for a few moments, pinching the bridge of her nose as she tried to figure out the best way to handle the situation.

Finally, she took a deep breath and turned back around. "Forget about the build site. And look," she placed her hands on her assistant's arms and made him lower the squirrel to the ground.

"Let go," she said firmly but gently. The construct released his iron grip, and the squirrel went bolting for the pillar in the center of the room. It climbed into the rafters and cowered there, chittering at the two of them.

"He's just a little shaken from being grabbed, is all. Oh- I'd bet I have some peanuts left over…"

Eager to please after his apparent blunder, her assistant ran to grab them from the makeshift pantry without her needing to ask.

Victoria thanked him and took half of them and climbed the stairs quietly to the top platform of the Windmill. She shelled a few nuts and placed them at the edge, then backed off. The conjured nisse followed stiffly behind her.

"Quiet now… He won't come down if he's afraid," she whispered. They had to wait for several minutes before the squirrel felt confident enough to investigate.

Victoria moved to put a few more nuts out, and the squirrel bounded back onto the central pillar. Her assistant started behind her, but she put out a calming arm. "We're not going to grab it again. We're just giving it some food to make up for the scare. Why don't you put some up there too?"

The conjured nisse obeyed, then retreated to his former position. He put his stick arm on her shoulder as they watched the squirrel approach again.

"See? Animals won't hurt us. They're our friends," Victoria explained quietly. "Poor chaps must be getting scared back this way with all that construction at the edge of the forest."

She looked up at the squirrel, who was creeping closer. She knew what it was like to lose a home, and she knew what it was like to find yourself happier than you thought you could ever be in a new one. She smiled softly. "If you want to stay here with us, you can. Our home is your home," She offered the animal.

Her assistant pulled away and stared at her.

"Oh, don't be like that," Victoria insisted, "There's plenty of unused space up in the rafters. Besides, the basement is still just for you." She tousled his straw again and gave him a small kiss. "This will be good for everyone. I promise."

The conjured nisse looked between Victoria and the squirrel, tilting his head. Then he pulled another peanut from Victoria's pocket, shelled it, and rolled it gently towards the animal.

"That's the way," Victoria praised. "You'll have plenty of friends in no time like that!"

Her assistant looked back up too quickly and sent the squirrel fleeing again.

Victoria hummed her slight disappointment, but was quick to smile again and give him a pet to let him know it was an admirable effort.

She looked away and thought for a moment, her hand resting on top of her assistant's head. "Come to think of it, though, I wonder just how many animals are in the same boat as this little chap? It would be nice if there was just a little more space for everyone within these walls…."

Chapter Text

Victoria paced through the Windmill. The Scarlet-capped warbler landed on her shoulder and whistled a small tune, but she waved it away.

Her creation had a habit of disappearing, but not when he was called, and never for this long. She had already checked the cellar, combed every inch of the Windmill, and shouted into the surrounding woods. He knew not to get to close to the roads or skulk around the building site, didn't he? She had told him time and time again, and usually he listened. But what if…?

Suddenly, the door flew open along its newly oiled hinges. A patchwork figure shuffled in.

"Where on Earth have you been? I thought I taught you better than to disappear like that!" Victoria scolded. Actually, admittedly, she hadn't. And so, she resisted the urge to embrace him. He couldn't keep learning that this was okay.

The conjured nisse drooped under his creator's rebuke. But he quickly perked back up and pointed towards the door. He mimed something Victoria didn't quite understand beyond the idea that it was an excuse.

"It wasn't anything to do with that David chap, was it?" she asked, furrowing her brow. Frida was a delight, and Hilda had come around, but David… He had clearly only stayed today to antagonize her assistant behind her back. She did not care much for that David.

Her assistant tilted his head for a long moment, like he was considering blaming David in some way. But he seemed to decide against it and shook his head 'no'. He clambered onto to the table, which was still piled high with tools from all the repairs the children had helped them with. There, he snatched something from the midst of the clutter.

It was Hilda's drawing of Nowhere Space. He pointed to the figure in the corner: Hilda's nisse, Tontu. Then he pointed to one of the Windmill's windows and mimed peering in.

Victoria began to piece his story together. "You followed Hilda home to see her nisse?" she asked.

He nodded enthusiastically.

Victoria glanced over her shoulder as if someone might be watching. "And… Did you ask her if that was alright for you to do?"

The conjured nisse lowered the drawing and shook his head from side to side more slowly. It was a clear admission of guilt.

On one hand, it seemed wrong. Not only was sneaking around the city dangerous, but Hilda was a friend- She had been so generous with her time today!

On the other… Her assistant wanted this badly, and Hilda's explanations of house spirits had only left more questions. And surely, access to something like Nowhere Space could be useful! With all the animals fleeing the building site nowadays, empty nooks and crannies within the Windmill were becoming few and far between. Hilda had mentioned her stubborn nisse only allowing her family to use Nowhere Space as extra-dimensional storage. That was one use for it, though an admittedly unambitious one. Surely, Victoria and her assistant could come up with something much more creative. Besides, what wasn't there to want to explore about a nearly-infinite dimension just under reality, twisted in and over on itself and accessible only the most secretive spirits?

Victoria's curiosity had officially gotten the better of her. And it wasn't like she could very well undo her assistant's breach of etiquette at this point! She looked back at him and couldn't help but give him a small smile. "Well then, since it's already over with… What did you learn?"

Straw crinkled as her assistant nodded his head again. He scuttled down and over to a shelf, paper still in hand, and slid towards the crack between the wood and the wall. Purple sparks flew from the bones underneath his straw and within his limbs. Victoria gasped.

And then… Nothing. The sparks fizzled, and the conjured nisse was standing with his nose jammed anticlimactically into a corner.

He swung his nose towards her, then back towards the corner and tried once more. Fizzle, then nothing. He jammed his nose in again and again, scrabbled at the wall, and tried to force his wooden body where it would not fit. The construct stopped and looked down to study Hilda's drawing again. Particularly, the nisse lounging in the corner.

There was a soft clatter, and Victoria realized he was shaking. Straw, wood, and bone rattled against each other with steadily increasing force. The wires in his joints began to creak.

Victoria's expression turned into a worried frown. She tried to force it back into a smile. "Listen… Why don't we-" she started gently, extending a hand and moving towards him.

He swung his nose towards her so violently that she stopped in her tracks. He held the drawing up and shredded it, letting the pieces flutter to the floor. Then he bolted for the cellar door.

Victoria could only stare after him. She didn't have anything to comfort him with. He didn't have material things with which he soothed himself, and he couldn't be distracted with food like the animals. He really only had her. And around the children visiting and the time Victoria had been spending tending to the other creatures that had taken up residence in the Windmill lately… Oh dear.

Victoria headed up to the second landing. Her assistant had always liked being read to, and there were a few specific books they had yet to finish. It would only take a moment to pick one out and bring it down to him.

Unfortunately, she found her library in a state of disarray. And not her disarray. Frida had pulled every book off the shelves and piled them up, but it seemed she hadn't gotten around to actually reorganizing them. Victoria let out an exasperated sigh. Well, control was what you sacrificed in exchange for help, she supposed.

What else was there? She had intended to do more research into house spirits for her assistant, to build him something to remedy his inability to create a nest like any other nisse. But chores around the Windmill took up the bulk of her time, and other projects had been more pressing (or easier) to start. But now, with everything the children had helped cross off her to-do list, and everything Hilda had told them about Nowhere Space… Maybe it was time Victoria make good on her promise.

***

"Given what we've seen… I believe the issue to be this: Your body simply doesn't produce the energy needed to create a fully-realized portal into Nowhere Space," Victoria explained to her assistant as she sat down at the workbench and smoothed a piece of paper out before her.

She began to sketch a diagram of Nowhere Space, similar to the one Hilda had drawn for her. And under it, she put a drawing of her assistant. "You see, Nowhere Space, when observed, likely exists in a higher-energy state than the normal space it's connected to."

The conjured nisse clambered onto a crate and peeked over the worktable next to her. His mismatched hands clutched the table's edge in anticipation.

"Now, due to its proximity to our own dimension, small, momentary tears into Nowhere Space should be quite easy for house spirits to produce, regardless of energy state. Especially in frequently unobserved places where the borders would be thinnest," Victoria tapped the holes in the walls of her diagram. "But to be of any use, such a tear would have to be made large enough and maintained for long enough for a nisse slip through. And that is what costs most of the additional energy. And as soon as the energy input stops," she gestured with her free hand, "say, when a house spirit loses contact with the wall of the space, the portal immediately closes."

She looked to her assistant to see if he was keeping up. He prodded her with his linen hand. 'Continue.'

"And so, your situation is something like a spark without proper kindling- The magic you have can initiate a portal into Nowhere Space, but you lack a true metabolism, and therefore, don't produce enough energy to sustain a portal you could actually put anything through," she continued as she began jotting down a few calculations. She mumbled through a few more. "To reach out of or exit Nowhere Space should have no such energy requirement, of course, because it is a return to a lower-energy dimension," she mused. She drew a single-sided arrow connecting the drawing of her assistant to the drawing of Nowhere Space. She finished her explanation with a wink, "And so, the good news is, our problem should only exist on the way in."

Her assistant kicked his feet as he looked between her and the notes.

With the background of the experiment thoroughly outlined, it was time to start on the methods. Victoria began the roughest sketch of a machine. "Perhaps, if we created something that supplied the energy we need and sent it in the right direction, by channeling it through you and into Nowhere Space…" she mused, biting the end of her pencil.

Victoria continued to draw and annotate. She pulled a notebook up and slid a few more notes out. Pages she had created while putting her assistant together. Pages about the generator and lightning-harvester. She wished she still had the blueprints from her Weather-Spirit capture machine. Though the ultimate consequences of that experiment had been… Undesirable, some of the magic-channeling concepts could be put to work here, too. She'd have to work them in from memory. It was rather like the pieces of her assistant that she had assembled, really. A little break, and all the inspiration she needed had come to her. And there would be no drowned turnips or angry weather spirits this time!

"Heavens, in fact… If we used electricity rather than metabolic energy, we could even create a portal larger and more sustained than those nisse typically utilize," she thought aloud. "Anyone would be able to enter Nowhere Space at any time they wanted." A better way in, indeed!

Victoria stroked her chin and sat back to see more of her diagrams at once. To observe the bigger picture. "Just think if the city had access to something like this! They wouldn't need to raze the forest to expand, and we'd not be having to board so many animals in the first place."

The thought hung in the air between them, becoming more and more real as Victoria considered it. She began rapping her pencil on the edge of the workbench.

Her assistant was still once more. He looked haltingly at her, then back at the notes.

"Well… Sure, this is an invention for you but… Think of it," she said, glancing away. Her grin remained, but it didn't reach her eyes anymore. "You could share Nowhere Space like we share the cellar, couldn't you? Like we share the Windmill with all our new friends?" she reasoned. "Why waste this idea on just observing when we could easily make Nowhere Space work for us? When we could make it work for everyone?"

No response.

Something about this felt… Wrong, but Victoria pushed the thought away. If they sat around speculating what the portal should and shouldn't be used for, they'd never finish! Best to focus on how to make it work and ask the ethical questions later. This would be a good thing! People in Trolberg wanted more space? Well, she would give it to them! And of course, the accolades for the invention would be hers, saving her reputation and bringing in the money she'd need to pay her debts. She'd no longer need to worry about being separated from her assistant or their animal friends if she was caught. If this worked, everyone could have what they really wanted. Mostly.

Victoria wondered how soon she might be able to whip up a prototype and test her idea. In fact, there was a thunderstorm moving in tomorrow, which would ensure their generator had more than enough energy for an experiment. But she would lose time where she had to entertain Hilda and friends in the afternoon, and it was already getting rather late. The machine would only be ready in time if she pulled an all-nighter. Victoria knew they were bad for her, knew they didn't lead to as much good as they seemed to promise and yet… She couldn't bear not to start working while the inspiration was fresh. This was an exceptional circumstance!

Her assistant was silent, as always, but he seemed less engaged than he had been previously. There wasn't quite as much for her to talk through while she finalized these blueprints, she supposed. He just needed to be put to work. That was what she had built him for, wasn't it? To be her extra pair of hands. Not to… Stare up at her and make her feel strangely and inexplicably guilty for the first spark of ambition she had found in months.

The words tumbled out of her mouth before she was fully sure of them, "Go up to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee- The tin is in the back of the cupboard. Get to it!"

***

Victoria and her assistant worked all night on her new invention. Then, they carefully hid every trace of it by morning. Victoria had a sneaking suspicion the children would try to stop her if they caught on to this new plan while they were here. And she was sure it was more than the paranoia she sometimes felt on too much coffee and too little sleep.

It was to their benefit to let her finish her work but… Her work with the juvenile weather spirit would have benefitted them too, along with every other citizen of Trolberg. And of course, again, she wasn't really hurting anyone this time! In fact, she would actually be making up for what she had done before. It all evened out in the end, really. But somehow, she wondered if they'd be able to see it that way. No one else ever seemed to.

They decided to rebuild the Windmill's central pillar around the machine to save having to disconnect it from the lightning-powered system Victoria had previously built into the shaft. Plus, she was sure David would poke his nose into anywhere else they might try to hide it. Well, let him stumble onto this one!

It was genius! Why had she ever gotten the idea that these caffeine-fueled work sessions were something to be avoided?

The animals that had found their homes and hollows displaced by this new development cowered in the rafters as Victoria and her assistant bustled around the platforms below. 'No need to worry,' she wanted to tell them. They'd have their favorite places back soon enough- and then some.

Victoria found herself pacing around the Windmill again as her assistant nailed the last few boards back over her invention. It was just before the time the kids had promised to arrive. Was all this coffee making her kooky again? This… Didn't feel like the mornings where birdsong bounced around the Windmill as Victoria sipped tea and baked and read to her assistant. Was she falling back on old, unhealthy ways? Taking for granted everything she had gained in her time away from the pursuit of her next, big discovery to impress a city that had never cared?

She gritted her teeth. No. She was on the edge of something brilliant this time. She just needed to stay calm and keep herself from getting carried away.

"Eyes on the goal, Victoria. Send the kids away without looking suspicious. Then the evening is all ours… An informative test run, a brief look inside, and a start on a write-up for the grant applications," she muttered to herself, counting the steps on her sore and grease-stained fingers. "If we stick to the plan, it will all work out. I haven't missed anything- My calculations are perfect." She snatched up her coffee mug (the last of the current pot) and downed the cold, caffeinated sludge from the bottom.

As she put the cup back down, she noticed the sprawl of notes still left on her desk. She must have missed them earlier. "Be a dear and hide these, would you?" She asked, sweeping the plans into a folder and handing it down to her assistant as he headed up the stairs towards her. He didn't tire, and yet his head hung lower than normal and his feet were dragging. He traded her the hammer, and she shoved it in a desk drawer. Then he slunk back down the stairs with her notes.

Victoria sighed. There wasn't exactly time to check if the wires in his joints had come loose. She'd have to do it later. "And I still need to determine the best place to aim the first portal…."

She glanced back out the window. Three familiar faces had appeared on the edge of the clearing. She had almost forgotten the thrill of working right up to a deadline.