Toyland- the Legacy of Wallace Noel

by Tony Bertauski

  It wasn’t even winter.

  But he smelled good. Like spices, coriander and cinnamon and the like. A different smell than the other times.

  The plan on top was of the house. She couldn’t slide it off to see what was beneath. Wallace didn’t notice her. Dream or not, he was oblivious to the outside world.

  Pencil in hand, he scribbled in a leather journal. There were stacks of them, each filled with musings. He wasn’t recording his thoughts. He was doodling. Both pages were filled with sketches.

  Tin leaned closer, the pleasant smells of pumpkin filling her nostrils, to see the intricate details. It looked like circuits and formulas, nothing she could understand, but all of it orbiting a well-rendered spherical object.

  An ornament with hieroglyphics.

  He was working too fast for her to follow, not pausing to think or admire his work. He couldn’t go fast enough, as if he was transcribing what he was hearing.

  “Wallace?”

  A woman marched into the loft with a bulky box. Tin hadn’t turned around until then. The loft was completely different. It wasn’t filled with artifacts of world travel or the botanical wonders of a tropical conservatory.

  It was empty.

  The woman was, of course, Awnty Awnie. She was young again, as young as the first time Tin had seen her in the forest when Toyland was under construction.

  She looked around the place and put the box down next to a sapling—a tree that would eventually fill the entire room, its branches scratching the glass as if one day it too would realize it was trapped.

  Her knees were dirty and she wore the kind of gloves made for gardening. She wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  She was so rugged, so beautiful.

  She shed her gloves and put them into a pocket, careful not to step on any of the plans. She stood next to the desk and touched his shoulder.

  And startled him.

  He came out of a trance. Tears melted into his whiskers. He blinked without recognition for a moment. Then smiled back.

  “I’m sorry, love. Do you need help?” He said it like he had broken a promise.

  “No, dear. No, no. I’m hungry. You?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m, uh, let me finish this last bit and I’ll join you for lunch.”

  “Lunch?” She chuckled brightly. “Dear, it’s almost dinner. You’ve been here since morning.”

  He looked around the loft. Quite a bit had been accomplished without him, it appeared. He seemed oblivious to the amount of work that would be required to make it become what it was meant to be. Awnty Awnie didn’t appear bitter.

  Quite content actually.

  “Yes, well, I am a bit hungry. I’ll make quick work here.”

  “What are you making now?” She peered a bit closer.

  He covered the journal. “It’s a surprise.”

  “Surprise? Not much left to surprise me with.”

  He grinned and laughed. It was so contagious that Awnty Awnie laughed with him. Even Tin found herself smiling.

  Awnty Awnie pushed his chair back and fell on his lap. She slung her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his lips, looking down on him with pure joy. Plans slid onto the floor as he threw her onto the desk and kissed her back.

  “An hour,” he said. “Come for me in an hour no matter what.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  He put her on her feet and kissed her again. She brushed the hair from his eyes and tipped the toymaker’s hat. He reacted abruptly to keep it from sliding off. With one hand, he turned her around and began to dance. Awnty Awnie was laughing, paper scuffling under their heels. He dipped her backwards with his hand at the small of her back, and they both laughed.

  “One hour,” she said.

  He watched her return to the box she had brought up, watched her unload seeds and soil and tools. When she left, he returned to the desk, his smile slowly fading as he lifted the pencil. His eyes, once again, turned blank.

  And the scribbling began.

  This time, instead of muttering, he was humming. Tin moved closer to see what he was drawing and noticed the plans that had slid off the desk. She squatted near them.

  It was a schematic of scaffolding and an observation hut on top. Mechanical details were inset around it, control panels and circuits that were even more complicated than what he was drawing. She got on her hands and knees to read the fine print. It would take her hours to sort through it. But this was it.

  The tower.

  That was when she recognized what he was humming. She knew the tune from her dream. She remembered the words.

  If you want to play, and stay out all day—

  Two black eyes.

  They were shiny beads. Tin’s reflection was looking back. Piggy was pressed against her nose. The toymaker’s hat was still on Tin’s head.

  It had told her what she wanted to know.

  The front door opened suddenly and morning light spilled into the lobby. Oscar plodded inside, his scarf loose around his neck, snow tracking off his boots. Mom’s footsteps came from the other direction, the towel still around her head.

  “Did you hear that?” he said.

  “It was distant,” Mom said. “Almost like thunder.”

  “The sky is clear.”

  “The power’s still up, though,” she said. “Let me check the boiler room. Stay here. I’ll let you know if I need you. Tin, hon, Pip is in the shower. Can you just let her know I’ll be right back?”

  Mom hurried away. Oscar went back outside, holding the door for Corey, who came in with an armload of firewood. When his dad closed the door, Pando’s expression softened. His snout wrinkled.

  “I know how to turn off the tower,” Tin said.

  Pando nodded once. Corey reached into the sleeping bag. Clyde climbed into his arms. “Cool, cool,” Corey said. “Any word on my laptop?”

  “He got it all from the hat, didn’t he?” she said. “All the plans to build this house, the ideas to modify the tower.”

  A wonderful man, Pando said.

  “The journals he was sketching in, they’re up there. But the pages are missing.”

  Quite a few things changed, in the end. He was… different.

  “He was sketching a-a-a ball or ornament. It had all these symbols. What was it?”

  Pando leaned forward and turned his head. If his eyes weren’t simple buttons, she thought he might be winking. So much was lost.

  Tin was so weak again. Her legs were drained. She was famished. The smell of Oscar’s cooking was suddenly filling her senses. She was going to eat first and wait for Mom. And then disappear for a while. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.

  So little time.

  15

  The workshop was even worse than the last time.

  Before, a few of the shelves had fallen to expose the entrance to the loft. Now almost everything was in a pile. Gloomy light beamed from the loft.

  Tin carefully worked her way through the mess. She passed the workbench where, in one of her visions, Wallace had brought a toy to life. The little drawers had rattled out of their slots and dumped their contents. All the jars were on their sides or broken. She squeezed Piggy hiding under her sweatshirt and flashed her light under the bench. The little door was exposed.

  “He built this for you,” she said. “The toys.”

  He had a vision. Pando hopped on all fours.

  “You’re special, though.” She pointed at the drawing still tacked to the board.

  Not special. Different.

  “His favorite?”

  In a way. The dim light shaded the half-grin beneath his snout.

  “Why are you so different? You’re bigger than the others.”

  I think.

  “You think?” She laughed. “How do you think without a brain?”

  How do I do this? He spun like a ballerina. Without a brain?

  He curtsied. It was fluid the way he moved. Not like when she first saw
him in the lobby when he moved stiffly and made noises like he was filled with stuffing.

  “Is that why you weren’t in the toy room?”

  That’s not the toy room. His expression matched the room’s gloom. It’s just where he put them.

  Piggy buried her snout beneath Tin’s arm. She wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was safe with her.

  The path circled around the workshop. Pando hopped on all fours through the debris, gracefully leaping his way to the ladder. His steps sounded like beanbags.

  “Why did he build things like this?” She pointed at the door. “It’s so strange.”

  He was original.

  “Crazy?”

  Not crazy! Pando turned away to compose himself. He was doing things no other human had ever done. No one understood him.

  So don’t insult Wallace, she thought. But he was right about him. The house was like no other. And, as far as she knew, no one had brought toys to life. Perhaps his visions made him see things in different angles. There was nothing boring about the house.

  There was still so much to discover.

  “What’s so special about me?”

  You’re different, I think. It wasn’t always like that for him. The hat became part of him. The hat wants to show you something.

  “Then why did he leave it?”

  He was jealous.

  “Jealous?”

  The hat changed him.

  She tugged the hat from her pocket. The little bell rang. “Is it changing me?”

  Not if you peek.

  His grin was sympathetic, hopeful. Wallace abandoned them and hid the hat. Perhaps they’d been waiting for someone to come find it all this time.

  “Why are his eyes blue?”

  Pando stopped abruptly. He nodded his head then balanced on his back legs. Blue?

  “In the visions, his eyes are blue. But all the stories my aunt collected mentioned green eyes.” She explained the newspaper clippings her aunt had in a leather journal that looked like the ones on the desk.

  She… collected them?

  “I think she was following him, yeah.”

  He wandered off on all fours, nosing through the debris as if he was sad. Instead, he circled around and looked up. No tears on the button eyes, no sniffing imaginary sadness. He was a toy.

  We should go up before your mother wonders where you are.

  She climbed the ladder quickly, the ropes thick, dusty and rough. Through the short tunnel, she stopped in the yellowish light. Musty, earthy odor fell over her. Where once ferns covered the ground and flowers bloomed, now little things scampered through debris. The vision of past beauty lurked somewhere in the shadows. Now it was filled with a collection of things, an attempt to hold onto the memories.

  And now no one was there to remember.

  “What happened to this place?” she muttered.

  It wasn’t always this. Pando briefly stood on his back legs.

  “No, it wasn’t. This place was alive. I saw it. My Awnty Awnie built it.”

  He built it for her.

  She turned. Pando was scanning the area, straining to see what she was remembering. He sounded hurt.

  “I saw her carry the seedlings up here. The soil and tools, the boxes. This was her garden. There were palm trees and hummingbirds, butterflies on flowers. And these paths, they weren’t slippery.”

  Her aunt was like that, she remembered. The garden in her backyard where she spent endless afternoons pulling weeds and sowing seeds, watering and mulching and sometimes just sitting there to nap, like she had all the time in the world. Somehow, she imagined, that was what she did here, in this place, whittling the afternoons away, discovering the small pleasures hidden beneath stones or still pools of water. This was her paradise.

  Or her escape, she thought.

  She forgot about the slippery paths. She fell into Pando. Piggy scampered beneath her sweatshirt.

  Careful. He picked her up. There’s no hurry.

  He slid on all fours, left then right, leaning into the curve and expertly gliding to a spinning stop.

  “You’ve been up here all this time?”

  He took her hand. I don’t remember.

  She hung onto his hindquarters like a child learning to ice skate. “What’s the last thing you remember, then? I mean, before the toys woke up.”

  He swung around the first turn and spun around. She grabbed onto his fuzzy ears. He slid backwards and picked up speed, swaying his hips. She was beginning to feel the balance, taking longer strides to keep up.

  I remember him. Out there.

  She didn’t need to ask what that meant. Wallace had looked back after releasing the balloon with the key attached. Someone was in the loft. She thought it was Awnty Awnie, but her aunt was long gone by then.

  “It was you.”

  They reached the platform. Her legs were still weak since that morning. The floor felt wobbly. The chair was empty where Pando had been. He was still nothing more than a stuffed animal sitting at Wallace’s desk.

  Her last vision was still so clear. She could almost see him still sitting there, hunched over, scribbling madly, the visions coming faster than he could write them down.

  She picked up the zebra.

  Her legs were splayed, the black and white striped fur coarse, damp and moldy. But she was warm, but not like the others. Piggy peeked out of her collar and reached with a stubby leg. Tin held Zebra closer.

  Piggy hugged her.

  Awnty Awnie had left and Wallace couldn’t take it. The pain. Loneliness. He let the plants die and tried to fill it with stuff. It just never filled up.

  “Why did she leave?”

  Pando shook his head. He was hurt, too.

  “He must have said something about her.”

  She was young. Selfish. And she hurt him.

  That didn’t sound like Awnty Awnie. She had always been at peace, a present woman who gave her entire self to hear another person’s troubles, to sit in silence and enjoy the moment just as it was.

  But Tin didn’t know her when she was younger. That could have been a different person. Maybe she was selfish. Because she didn’t just leave Wallace.

  She left the toys, too.

  “You’ve been up here all by yourself. It must have been lonely.” She squeezed Pando’s padded shoulder. “I’ll fix this.”

  I know you will. He smiled weakly.

  Tin began her search for the tower plans. It had been clearly marked in the vision. She started with the one rolled and wrapped in ribbons, laying them flat on the desk. They were brittle and cracked. Her carelessness ripped some of them. These were antiques and she was tossing them about like crib notes.

  There were surveys and sketches, flowcharts and outlines, the outpouring of precious thoughts put down in pencil and ink. Some of the pages were filled with calculations and symbols, things that looked like another language.

  One oversized plan held variations of the ornament she’d seen him sketching in the journal. These were done in more detail. They were of different diameters with specifications listed in the margins.

  “What are these?”

  Visions, Pando said. Sometimes he couldn’t make sense of them, so he just wrote them down.

  Tin continued her search through the empty journals. Wallace must have ripped the pages out before leaving. Why would he leave the plans?

  She opened all the drawers. The tower plan wasn’t there. She stood on the top step and overlooked the endless collections. If it was out there, she would never find it.

  Why isn’t it with the other plans? she wondered.

  The windows were too grimy to see much more than vague forms. Even if she cleaned a panel, there were only trees now. No field where toys chased Wallace. No view of the tower in the distance.

  Plan or not, she thought, there’s only one way to turn it off.

  She had to get up there. If it was as simple as it looked in the vision, there was only one lever. Is it really that simple?
she thought.

  The hard part wasn’t turning it off. It was getting up there.

  “I’ve got to get back. I told Mom I’d help with the car.”

  Pando led her down the steps. She decided to take the other loop back to the exit, just in case the tower plan was sitting on a shelf. Pando continued sliding without her.

  There was a jewelry box.

  It was just past the bottom step. It wasn’t big enough to hold a full-sized plan or even the pages ripped from a journal. Something curious caught her attention. The small drawer was cracked open. She reached for it.

  It snapped shut.

  Dust and fallen leaves whipped off the floor into a vortex. A magnetic wave passed through her. It reminded her of the tower, the way it felt when she stood under it.

  “What was that?”

  Pando was down the aisle and around a corner. She couldn’t see him. She went as fast as she could all the way to the exit. She couldn’t explain what had happened, but she didn’t tell Pando what she saw and why it seemed so familiar.

  It was red.

  16

  The lobby was empty.

  Black logs smoldered in the fireplace; the sleeping bags were folded. The gingerbread house was still incomplete. Pip had lost interest. There was a squeal from outside.

  Pip was on the front porch.

  She had cleared a patch of snow off the boards and built a castle with a wall and miniature snow people. Monkeybrain was propped against the wall, his long and lanky arms folded over his lap. He was listening to her spin a story about a snow queen who lost her snow doggy, and the villagers were on the hunt.

  “Know where Mom is?” Tin asked.

  There was another squeal. It was followed by laughter.

  “Never mind.”

  The car was completely dug out. Corey was at the third turn in the middle of the entry drive. The snow was up to his knees. He stood there with arms crossed. Around the bend, the fallen tree blocked the road. It wasn’t a big one, but big enough they couldn’t drive over it.

  “Look away,” he said.

  His dad and her mom were rolling in the snow. They were covered, head to toe. Mom threw her leg over him and stuffed a handful of snow down his coat. She had wrestled in high school. Oscar would have let her beat him even if he could have won.