The Legacy of the Master

No one remembers his name. The villagers simply called him " the eccentric from the outskirts", and the children he entertained in the evenings called him Master. He lived in a rickety hut by the swamp, where even the firewood pickers rarely went. They never greeted him first, and if he went out to the well, the women fell silent and turned away. Not because he was angry, on the contrary, he was always smiling. It was because there was something frightening in his gaze: he looked at people as if he saw emptiness in them.
 
In the evenings, he rolled the cart out to the village square and staged performances. His dolls danced, bowed, fought with wooden swords and even cried. His performances were so lively that the residents did not even let ordinary actors into their village. Why, if there is a Master and his dolls?
 
But the strangest thing was that no one had ever seen the threads. The dolls moved by themselves, without any support, and the only tools that the Master held in his hands were old rusty scissors and a long needle. He did not control the dolls, but simply sat on the sidelines and sometimes cut the air with scissors or made an elusive movement with a needle.
 
Children screamed with delight, and adults looked at these objects with apprehension. Superstitious people thought that scissors and a needle could reshape the universe itself. And after the death of the Master, no one dared to touch these objects.