The Story of Kriz

The Master’s shows featured a star of their own: a horse named Kriz. During performances, she would burst out from behind the screen, rear up, and neigh so fiercely that the little ones felt goosebumps rise on their skin. Kriz would gallop across the stage, leaping over miniature hurdles, while the children shouted, "Again! Again!" Rumor had it that the Master himself would talk to Kriz at night, brushing her fabric coat and calling her his one true friend.

When the Master’s body was found, Kriz was standing in the corner with her head bowed, as if mourning her owner. Yet the very next day, when the old women came to sort through his belongings, the horse was gone: the door stood open, and strange tracks—resembling hoofprints—marked the ground.

Nothing was heard of the toy horse for a long time, until, six months later, a warrior in a tavern in the capital mentioned over a mug of ale that a strange horse had once saved his life. He described her thus: gray as an old bedsheet, with buttons for eyes, and remarkably obedient. "I wanted to keep her," he said, "but when I dismounted, she simply turned and walked away into the mist." Naturally, no one believed the knight. After all, dolls cannot come to life. Can they?