“I want her to be perfect.  Every single thing.  If it takes a hundred years, I want you to make her perfect.  Just like the woman in the drawing.  Just for me.”
        “Of course, my lord.  I will do everything in my power to obey your command.”
        “See that you do, Gustav.  She will be perfect, and she will be my bride.”

------------

        Gustav Romanovich was a toymaker, creator of the most beautiful and enchanting toys on the face of the earth.  There were some who said his hands had been touched by the gods, and still held some of that divinity.  Gustav didn’t know about that – he never presumed to know the will of the gods, by any means – but he did know that what stood before him now was the greatest creation he would ever make, and he loved every part of her.
        She had taken him ten years to fabricate, from the finest materials known to man.  Her hair, raven-black, flowed in shining waves all down her back, like water captured in strands of perfect silk.  Her eyes were deep violet and crystal clear, and they sparkled like the most precious of diamonds whenever caught by the light.  But by far the longest time had been spent on the creation of her mind.  The complex web of gears and wheels that turned within her graceful head were enough to give the princess – that was what he called her, for she was to wed the king, and it was the king who would give her a name – what seemed almost like a human personality, and as long as she was wound up once a day, she would be the perfect bride the king had asked him for.
        “Come along, my dear,” he said to his creation.  “It’s time for you to meet your husband.”

-----------

        She was perfect – everything that he had asked for and more than he had even dreamed was possible.  No mortal woman could ever come close to the immortal one who stood before him, dressed in white and veiled for her marriage to him.  She had curtseyed when she entered the room with a grace the king had never seen before, and when she spoke it was with a voice that must have been stolen from an angel.  She had been modeled off a woman from a famous painting, one that had hung in the nursery of the palace when the king had been but a boy, and in life she was even more radiant than she had been in two dimensions.  He had been so disappointed, all those years ago, when his nurse had told him that the woman in the painting wasn’t real – but now she was, and she was perfect, and she was his.  He’d waited ten years for the toymaker to create her, but she’d been worth the wait, and more.  He paid the man and sent him away, eager to be alone with his bride.

-----------

        She was aware of herself, aware of the man beside her – her creator – and also aware of the man before her, the man who sent her creator away.  There was a feeling in that, and it wasn’t a pleasant one, though she wasn’t experienced enough of sensation, yet, to be able to give it a name.  Now she was alone with this new man – the king, her husband, she somehow knew – and her body was speaking words to him, moving to stand close to him, giggling as he tickled her and smiling when he spoke.  Why she was doing this she did not know, but something within her told her that she was supposed to love this man, and so she did, though she really wasn’t sure what it meant to love.  Her body seemed to go through the motions well enough, and he seemed satisfied.  She wondered, though, why it was not the same for her.

-----------

        “You have made her to be unhappy!” the king screamed in Gustav’s face, his own face bright red in his rage.  “She is depressed!  She mopes about the palace unless I order her to do otherwise.  I wanted her to be perfect!  You promised me the perfect bride!”
        “I only promised that I would try, my lord,” Gustav managed to stammer out, shrinking back a bit from the king, who was frightening in his passion.  “I do not know why she is depressed.  It should not be possible – perhaps one of her gears is worn, or slightly misaligned.  I could examine her for you, and try to put the problem right.”
        “See that you do,” the king said, still glowering at the old toymaker.  “If she’s not perfect, I might as well just get rid of her and have another toymaker create me a new bride.”
        “Of course, my lord,” Gustav agreed, and then bowed low so that the king would not see the tears forming in his eyes at the thought of his beautiful creation being destroyed.

-----------

        “You have been sad, my dear,” her creator said, and she nodded her assent.  “Why is that?” he asked, and she could not form an answer.
        “I do not know, creator.  I merely am.  Most days, I feel as if I am incomplete.  Do you think I am broken?  I do not feel that way now, but this morning I felt quite empty.  I do not wish to be a broken toy.”
        “It may be so,” Gustav said quietly.  “But I do not believe that that is it.”

-----------

        “My lord, there was nothing wrong inside of her that I could see,” Gustav said quietly to the king.
        “That’s impossible,” the king replied.  “There must be something wrong!  She isn’t perfect!”
        “I do not know what the problem is, my lord.  But I would beg you, do not have your bride destroyed.  The gods work in mysterious ways, and I do not pretend to understand them, but I do not think that it would be right for you to destroy her.”  The king sighed and shook his head.
        “I will not have the girl destroyed.  She is the best that could be made, and still close to the perfection that I desired.  I suppose no man is allowed to have everything, not even a king.  You may leave us, toymaker.  There is no more use for you here.”  Gustav bowed, and this time the tears in his eyes as he left the king’s presence were those of joy, though on his walk home that joy would disappear while he wondered just what his little creation had become.

-----------

        She felt the emptiness again once her creator had left the palace, but she tried her best to hide it.  Her creator had told her it would be for the better if she would do so.  But, somehow, she felt that the king still knew of her true feelings.  The king.  She was to call him James when they were in private, my lord when others could hear, but in her mind he would always simply be the king.  Just as her creator would always just be her creator, never Gustav, though he, too, had asked her to call him by name.  She obeyed, of course – had been built to obey, to obey and be perfect.  But with her conscious mind she envied those who had the power to choose, because had she been free, as they were, she would have chosen a life very different from that she had been built for.

-----------

        “When will I see my creator again?” she asked the King one night, when they were alone together.
        “I don’t know,” the king replied.  “If you were broken, I suppose he would be called.”
        The next morning, it was found that she had tripped and fallen down the stairs, jarring loose some of her smaller parts in the process.  Gustav was called that afternoon.

-----------

        “You need to stop doing this, my dear.  This is the third time this month you’ve been broken,” Gustav chided lightly, tightening a final screw before closing up his princess’ head again.  She sighed sadly.
        “But if I did not get broken, I would never see you, Gustav.  And that would make me sad, for I am only happy when I am with you.”
        “Does the king not make you happy, my dear?”
        “No.”

----------

        “I overheard your conversation with the toymaker today.”  She was silent, not sure what to say in response to this wholly unexpected news.  She wished the king would turn around and show his face to her – she had trouble reading emotions unless she could see one’s face, and she wondered what that funny tone in her husband’s voice signified.  As if in response to her unspoken wish, the king turned, and she was shocked to see tears in his eyes.
        “Have you been unhappy with me, all this time?  Did you never truly love me?”
        “I am but a toy, my lord.  How could I be anything but what you want of me?”
        “No, you are more than just a toy.  I wanted you to be more.  I wanted you to be real.  I suppose I just forgot that with intelligence, comes a few other things.  Like choice.  And you have made yours.  Go back to your toymaker, my love.  Tell him that you are his now, to do with as he pleases.”
        “My lord, I do not understand –”
        “It does not matter.  I am through playing with dolls.”