I came too in a heap on my shelf. Feeling wrung out and exhausted. I started to recall what I had been thinking about before my cranial overload but then forced my mind away, focusing on the tasks ahead. My existential crisis would have to wait. For now I needed to get down off this bookcase and have a look around.

I stood and walked to the edge of the high shelf and peered down. I was about 9 feet above the shiny wood planked floor. 3 or four feet in front and below was the edge of the closest desk, no clear way to climb down.

I considered just jumping. I was a small wooden puppet and if you dropped a puppet from 9 feet it likely wouldn't be damaged too badly. I flicked a finger against my wooden arm, then harder. I could feel the sensation distantly but there was no pain. I knelt and banged my wrist against the edge of the shelf I stood on, harder and harder until I feared I'd chip the wood. Still nothing. I raised my hand and stroked my chin, considering. Maybe not the smartest plan to just leap off. Even though I can't feel pain, I could still crack my legs and arms off. Or smash my head or my chest, who knows what that would mean.

My new puppet body hadn't exactly come with a manual. I had no way of knowing which parts of my body were vital, if any. It was possible I could totally shred myself and I'd stay conscious of every separate piece, living as a sentient pile of wood shavings. Forever. Let's not test that theory though, eh.

I started to look around my shelf for things I could use. The center of the bookcases shelf was taken up by the wood and metal sling contraption with its leather supports that I had woken up in. It looked a little like an old timey, upright hospital bed, or maybe a miniature recreation of the harness Frankenstein's monster had been on before the whole 'he's alive!' part.

Against the wooden divider to my left lent an upright stack of leather bound books, a grey metal sculpture of a knight on a rearing horse for a bookend. Arranged around the shelf where knick-knacks and curiosities. A small iron wrought box, a metal pot full of screws and bolts, a miniature chest of draws like an apothecary would have.

I moved over to the wooden box, the edge coming up to just above my hip, and lifted the metal latch. I tried lifting the lid with one hand but it was much too heavy. I set my feet and slid my wooden fingers in the gap and wrenched. For me the small trinket box was the size of a large wooden chest and the lid was damn heavy. I heaved and then shoved the heavy wooden lid up and over, dropping it open with a slam.

Inside the trinket box was velvet lined, a stylized black and silver fountain pen nestled into the dark cloth. Useless. Next I moved over to the apothecary box and began searching through the draws. There were six draws set in two rows of three, top to bottom, with a mini cupboard between. I started on the top left, inside was a folded piece of paper and a couple of paper clips. I pulled the paper out and unfolded it but there were just numbers on it, like an equation, and it made no sense to me. The next draw held a small ball of brown twine wrapped around a stick. The third had square patches of cloth in different colours and patterns.

I skipped the cupboard and moved to the other side. The top draw on the right held needles and little rolls of different coloured thread. The middle just had 5 small glass vials with corks but they were empty. The bottom draw on the right had a tiny pouch inside, stiff black cloth with a drawstring top. I lifted it out and dropped it to the shelf, the contents clinking together. I uncinched the drawstring and pulled the bag open, revealing a small pile of glittering stones, most clear with a scattering of blue and red. I reached in and drew out a red gem, about the size of my hand, and held it up. Turning it back and forth in the light. Cool, I'm rich. The gems were tiny and could be fakes, I'd have to try smashing one.

I left the pouch of possible treasure on the floor and moved to the double doors of the cupboard, standing in front of it like my very own puppet wardrobe. I grabbed the little carved metal latches with both hands and threw the doors open grandly. Inside was stuffed a small leather bag, or maybe a wallet. I grabbed a handful of the bag's leather and dragged it, dumping it on the floor.

It was a brown leather pencil case like bag, rectangular, about 6 inches long and 3 wide. There were two little buttoned pockets on the front and a flap top with a string tie. The bag was heavy, the contents making a metal thud as I dropped it. Pencils?

I opened the flap top and pulled the edge up, tugging it down so I could see what was inside. A pair of scissors, long sturdy needles and a small, wood handled knife with a brown leather grip and sheath. Inside the pockets were an assortment of buttons and a bronze thimble. A sewing bag.

I began to formulate a plan.

I stood tall at the edge of my shelf. I was wearing a simple toga I'd made from a blue patch I found in the draw, red thread belted around my waist. I had the leather sewing bag slung across my back, the leather ties on the back, meant to tie the pouch to a belt or backpack, tied in a loop and slung crosswise from my right shoulder to my left hip. I'd filled the bag with everything I thought might be useful from the draws and it bulged. I kicked the bundle of twine off the edge of the shelf, one end tied to the metal knight bookend behind me, I'd wanted to tie it in a way that I could release from the bottom and reel it up but if I had known a knot like that I couldn't remember it now. The stick wrapped inside the ball dragged the bundle down, unwinding my climbing rope until the stick fell loose and dropped a foot or so to the floor with a clatter. I leant forward and looked down, leaning back quickly and fighting the vertigo from the towering drop.

I steadied myself, trying to take a deep breath before I remembered I didn't have lungs anymore. Shaking off the momentary biological dysphoria, I knelt down, grabbed the rope and lay on my stomach, shimmying my legs over and clenching my feet around the cord, I dropped off the lip and dangled. Then I started edging my way down, hand over hand. I kept slow, I'd carved my hands again to give them a textured grip on the pads to better hold the rope, working on the joints of the fingers some more so I could grip firmly.

The descent was easy. My body was light and I was plenty strong enough to make the climb down. Still I kept it slow and steady, releasing the twine with one hand, lower myself down and regrip, sliding my feet down to the new position, then repeat with the other hand. Eyes watching the shelfs slip past me, pushing out at the lips with my feet as I passed each level. Eventually my clenched feet reached the end of the line of twine. I gripped the rope and looked down, about a foot off the floor, one shelf up.

I'd considered my options if my improvised climbing rope didn't reach the floor. I thought of trying to swing on the rope and make a jump for the desktop in front but the rope hinged against the lip of the shelf above me, only giving me about 8 inches to swing back on and the desk was 3 or 4 feet away. Too far to jump to.

Still I started to swing, releasing the twine with my feet and swinging my legs. Back and forth, back and forth. Back and then as I swung forward I released my grip. I dropped towards the floor at an angle, rushing towards the shiny wood, my feet stretched out in front of me, my blue patch toga rippling out behind me in the rush of the fall. My feet hit and I dropped into a roll, tumbling, my bag slapping about on my back, and came to a stop in a heap.

I rolled onto my back, laying on my bag, and dropped my head back to the wood with a clunk. I chuckled, the thrill washing through me. I sat up and checked myself over for cracks or injuries. No pain of course. My arms and legs seemed to be intact. I stood and checked my footing, crouching into a couple of little hops. Everything's in working order.

I looked up from the floor and scanned the room. From my perspective I was in a vast circular room filled with towering wooden columns, the legs of the tables and desk chairs. Some with chests next to them or desk draws. Double wooden doors led out of the room, down a couple stairs way off to my right. The doors were much too large for me to shift in my small puppet body. Ahead lay the gaping hole to the outside with the view of the mountains. To my left was a huge cabinet made of a dark, chocolatey wood with iron studs and latches.

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From my shelf I had scanned the room and made a plan. My destination was up high on the left hand wall, just above the fancy cabinet. A small metal grate, the type that would lead to a ventilation system.

I needed out of this room. The door was much too large for someone of my size to open, the struggle with the pen box had taught me that. There was the smashed hole in the room's wall which I planned to check out, but an exterior descent would likely be a perilous option, if I was even one story up it would be the equivalent of climbing down a high cliff for my diminutive puppet body.

The cabinet on the other hand, there was something I could climb.

The wooden cabinet doors were covered in intricate carvings of a forest scene, trees and foliage with small animals dotted about. These carvings would make good handholds and after my easy climb down the rope I was even more confident of my ability to scale the large ornate cabinet. First I needed some supplies. I rubbed my wooden hands together in childlike glee at the thought of loot. Sweet sweet loot. Even if what I likely found would be relatively simple.

I walked across the room to a specific desk I'd spied from my perch. It had two sets of draws with a gap between to put your legs when you sat. I walked up to the left set of draws, I gave the lowest draw a tug but it didn't even budge, much to heavy for me to slide out. I wedged my wooden foot in the crack beneath the bottom draw, reached up and gripped the latch, then up and wedged my fingers into the top crack. Step on the latch, reach to the latch above. Like this I climbed up to the desktop and then scrambled over.

I surveyed the dusty junk scattered there. Old clockwork mechanisms partially taken apart or being assembled. Small pieces of wood carved into shapes, body parts maybe, for more puppets. Screws in little piles. And scattered among these projects were small tools.

I picked my way through the littered junk and selected a screwdriver, levering it up. It was a metal flat head, about 9 inches long, thin, with a wooden handle. In my hands it was like a long spear or javelin. After a little searching I found a matching Philips head. I took my bag off and slid my new tools inside with the scissors and needles and the small knife, cinched it back up and shouldered it. Then I turned back to the edge of the desk and made my way back down to the floor.

Next I walked over to the crack in the wall. Walking beneath towering desks and then clambering over cracked stone and shards of wood as I approached the jagged edge of the broken wood planks of the floor. Far below me spread a large red tiled roof. Various round towers and spires rose from the structure, tan stone with red tiled cone roofs, like little party hats.

I was standing in one of these towers, looking down over a castle. Or perhaps you called it a manor house, or a palace even. Old fashioned like the palace in the Disney icon. Weird that I could picture that image so clearly, a white palace on a blue background, the animation of the white arc forming above, but I couldn't remember what my own mother looked like.

Focus. I pulled my thoughts back on task. Looking down over the broken edge I saw that I was three or four stories above the red tiles of the main building's rooftop. The large stone wall probably would've made climbing easy for a full sized person but in my puppet body it wouldn't work, the mortar filled cracks would be much too far apart. I turned away from the incredible view of the fairytale palace and back to the dusty workshop. I walked back inside and over to the bottom of the forest cabinet, the stroll of 20 feet or so for me like 20 meters, craning my neck to look up, up, up all the way to the top of the huge wooden structure I needed to scale.

Set in the bottom of the cabinet were two large drawers, the full width of the cupboard, one atop the other, much too large for me to work open with my meager puppet strength. I repeated my trick of climbing, foot in the crack, first hand latch, second hand crack, latch, crack. Pulling myself up was harder as the draws were taller but I made it, fingers wedged in the top crack of the top draw, I reached up and gripped some wooden carved vines round an inset tree and began climbing.

The going was easy, my wooden body light, the only real weight coming from the improvised tool bag on my back, my fingers gripping the trees and clambering over the squirrels and foxes and birds carved amongst them.

Like this I made it all the way to the top edge in a minute or so and pulled my body up and over, springing to my feet, not breathing heavily, or at all actually, and turned to look out over the workshop.

The lack of a fleshy body might be disconcerting and dysphoric but it certainly made physical labor much easier. I took a last look around the old cluttered, dusty and moldy room with a strange fondness. This was my birthplace in a way, my first view of a brand new world. Outside the glow of dawn was just seeping up over the mountain tops, covering the sky in red and gold.

Then I shook off the foolish melodrama and moved over to the grate, set in the stone just above the flat top of the cabinet. I pulled my bag off and dropped it by the wall, kneeling next to it and examining the screwhead fastened in the corner of the grate. Philips head. I opened my bag and slid the tool out. Holding it like a spear I slid the cross end into the screwhead and lodged it in place, then began to twist with my hands. Getting it started was difficult and I had to strain and squeeze, but then it gave and started to turn easily. The second screw came out much the same but half way through undoing it something occurred to me. How was I going to get the top ones?

I finished up and removed the second screw, then lent the screwdriver on my shoulder and looked up at the top corner above me, the screwhead glinting just out of reach. I raised the screwdriver above my head with both arms and tried to slot it in. I could just point the tip in but at an angle so I couldn't get the prong to lodge properly and allow me to unscrew it. I pulled the screwdriver out and dropped my arms with an audible huff. How do I huff without lungs?

I eyed that top screw angrily, flummoxed. I laid the screwdriver down and moved to the bottom lip of the grate, gripping the edge with both hands and pulling, to see what I was working with. The grate twisted out a couple of inches before stopping. Not quite enough to fit in round the side. I pulled and jiggled it, trying to widen the gap so I could squeeze through. After a little more of this treatment I managed to stuff my bag through, then one shoulder, then the rest of me followed and I tumbled in, wooden body clattering on the thin metal of the ventilation shaft.

The shaft was about two foot high, and four wide. It ran off to my left and right at a curve about the perimeter of the room. My new highway.

I set off to the left, circling the room and passing another grate looking out after a minute or so. Just past there was an opening in to a second shaft, this one sloping down, still curving around the stone tower. I took this exit and started down, eventually making it to what I judged to be one story down and the tunnel connected with another flat shaft. The tunnel continued down but I decided to check out the room on this floor.

I walked round the circumference of the room in my metal tunnel until I came to a grate and could get a look. Inside was a bedroom. A single bed on one side with a chest at the foot, a wardrobe against the wall beside it, off centre in the room was a square dining table with a couple of wooden chairs around it. A fireplace against the wall had pots and hooks over it for cooking, the fire bed cold and black. Someone's living space, possibly whoever used to work in the workshop above. My creator maybe?

I wanted to search through the room, see if I could find any clues as to where I was or why I was here. But I'd seen the palace from above. The place was massive and I was tiny. It could take me a lifetime to search every room thoroughly and there was no guarantee I'd find anything. For all I knew the full details of my new life were in a draw in one of the worktables upstairs but I'd never get them open as I was now. Besides I had no way to get in. These vents where screwed in from the outside, no way to get to the fastenings from this side.

I moved on, circling back to the ramp and heading down, I skipped the next floor, and then the one after that. I past four more floors, circling round the tower in my metal vent walkway and then the ramp came to an end at a new tunnel. This one no longer curving. The floor here was dusty and and littered with random scraps of debris, unlike the clean metal of the tunnels above. I turned side to side in the gloomy tunnel and then decided to head left. I walked for 20 minutes or so, passing other tunnels in the ventilation system branching off but not taking any, walking straight.

I passed a dark tunnel to my left, lost in thought, trying to think what to do now. Suddenly a huge weight landed on my shoulders and smashed me to the ground. Something grabbed my bag and shook me, lifting me off the metal and flinging my wooden body about until the grip released and I went flying, colliding with the metal and thumping to the floor.

I rolled over, unfazed by the tumble and crash thanks to my unfeeling body, no breath to be blasted from my lungs, no flesh to bruise or bones to snap. I climbed to my knees and finally I saw what had thrown me. A terrifying beast with grey shaggy fur, beady black eyes and huge fangs, dripping spittle in a grinning, pointed snout.