While strolling through a neighborhood-wide garage sale looking for sellable items, antique doll broker Wanda spied an extremely rare item. It was a Madame Alexis baby doll from the mid-20th Century, marketed only in a few Eastern European nations just before the outbreak of World War II. Never exported to the U.S., it was highly prized by collectors, especially because of the myth about the seven female thieves who entered the factory were the dolls were hand-made, seeking to seize its entire inventory during the chaos of the war, who disappeared, never to seen again.

But the doll wasn't on a table with a price tag. A cute little girl held it. "I'm Wanda. What's your name?" Wanda asked the girl. "I'm Marta," the girl grinned back. "Is the doll for sale?" Wanda asked. "No! Gretchen is my baby!" Marta replied. "Look, Marta, I'd like to give Gretchen a good home. And I can pay you enough to buy ten new dolls," Wanda offered. "No!" Marta replied. "Surely there is something I can get you that will make you sell Gretchen," Wanda pleaded. "Okay, $1 million," Marta smiled back.

"Rotten brat," a disgruntled Wanda thought as she walked away. But the doll was a rare Madame Alexis. She had to have it, not to sell to another collector, but for her own personal collection. Wanda turned around, dashed up to Marta, snatched the doll from her hands, and began to run away. But Wanda's balance left her. She stumbled, her white high-heel pumps flying off her feet. She momentarily nursed her skinned knees before noticing that she was no longer wearing her sheer pantyhose.

Looking upward, Wanda saw Marta finishing putting on her white pumps. Only Marta was no longer a girl, but an adult woman in her early 30s, in the same color dress, but one that was now proportioned for a grownup frame. Wanda rose, to see she barely came up to Marta's stomach. She was now a little girl like Marta was.

"You freed me from the spell those gypsies put on the dolls my friends and I stole," Marta grinned. "Under the spell, I stayed a little girl who couldn't let go of her doll. So for 60 years, I was stuck as a little girl, never aging, going from foster home to foster home, ever since those relief workers sent me to the U.S. as an orphan in 1946. Since the spell wouldn't allow me to just give you the doll, I had to appeal to your greed so you'd snatch it. And in all these years, you are the only person I've run into who was greedy enough, and nasty enough, to steal from a little girl. So the doll and its spell are now yours, and I shed no tears for you," Marta added, as she walked away from Wanda.

But Wanda ignored this tirade. She was too busy hugging her doll. She was one lucky little girl to at last own a rare and genuine Madame Alexis baby doll. And she was going to love it, and never let it go, forever and ever and ever.



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