Toyland- the Legacy of Wallace Noel

by Tony Bertauski

Something moved inside it. A pointed hat came out of the shadows followed by a square mouth.

  Tin’s heart walloped.

  She focused on her breath, keeping thoughts from forming a warning flare. Pando wasn’t the only special toy in Toyland. There was one of them different than all the rest, who wasn’t made of cotton stuffing and soft fabric. He didn’t feel like Piggy or Clyde or Baby Doll. He wasn’t made for hugging.

  It was to protect.

  The wooden toy fell out of the ceiling. Pando was about to teach Tin a lesson if she didn’t agree to turn the tower on, but in the moments before he finished counting to three, he saw what was coming.

  It was too late.

  Soldier dropped like an arrow, his square mouth open in a silent scream, his spear pointed down. There was a long rip. The panda bear arched violently.

  A storm engulfed the lobby.

  Pictures were slung in hurricane winds, the couches slid, and the sad little tree tossed across the room. Debris showered the walls. Pando swung around. White stuffing poured from a long tear. He reached back to hold it together.

  Soldier was flung onto the ceiling.

  The wooden toy rebounded to the other side of the room. He skittered like a rodent, the tapping of wooden limbs falling quiet.

  Pando sent blankets flying. The tree landed on the steps. Firewood punched holes in walls as Pando stalked the room. There was another rip and Pando hobbled to one side.

  Stuffing leaked from his leg.

  Pando sent everything into the corner to bury Soldier. Her family was still on the couches with no blankets or pillows. Oscar snored. Pip sucked her thumb.

  Hey.

  Tin heard a whisper. She looked down at the pile of crumbs. The icing on the head was moving. It blew away crumbs like strands of long hair.

  Sweep me up, Gingerman said. This is our only chance to go.

  “Go… I… I can’t—”

  Soldier’s doing his job so you can escape.

  Tin looked back. Pando was digging through the pile now. “But Pando—”

  That’s not Pando!

  “What… what you—”

  It doesn’t matter, he can’t suck the love out of Soldier because he’s made of courage. And I’m made of brains. So come on, sweep up my brains.

  “My family.”

  They’re okay, but not if you’re still here when he gets a hold of Soldier, which he will.

  “And then what?”

  Exhibit A. The part that was his hand pointed at the crumbs. Look, let him have the hat. He can’t use it without you.

  Something broke. Pando went after it.

  “Where am I going—”

  Get in the car. Bring back help.

  Something went flying. It hit the ceiling and then the wall. A piece landed near her feet. It was a wooden hat. Pando pounced in a storm of fluff. It was flowing from his chest now. He pushed something heavy back inside his body.

  What is that? she thought.

  The next thought that ran through her mind was not her own. It blew open the valve of adrenaline and ignited the fight or flight response.

  Run, run, Gingerman’s voice rang loudly. As fast as you can!

  Tin crashed into a snowdrift and popped up like a windup toy.

  High-octane hormones fueled her around the driveway’s turns like a snowball rolling down Mount Everest. She hopped over the fallen tree like an Olympian and picked up speed.

  It was the rumbling that broke her stride.

  It thundered through adrenaline-soaked panic, a tremor that sounded like heavy machinery and cracking lumber in the distance.

  The car was hiding in the forest’s moonlit shadows. Mom had driven around the tree so they wouldn’t be snowed in again. It was ready to go, the keys in the ignition where she always left them. Tin’s chest was burning. Her legs cold and weary.

  The adrenaline tapped out.

  There wasn’t much left to burn, not after the tower.

  The starry night was obscured by intertwining branches. There was no wall to stop her, nothing that would turn off the squirming cookie crumbs in her pocket. The world was wide open. And her family was back there.

  And Toyland was breaking.

  Whoa, whoa, Gingerman said. Where are you going?

  “He can’t see me.”

  She started back up the drive, her legs reluctantly hiking up the slope, her thighs quickly on fire. She locked into a furious stride, head down.

  Who? Who can’t see you?

  She didn’t want to say it out loud. But she thought it and Gingerman heard it.

  Santa Claus? Gingerman said. Santa… he’s not back in the house! He’s not anywhere. You believe in Santa?

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  I’m alive doesn’t mean there’s a Santa Claus. You realize that, right? There’s all sorts of miracles that don’t mean Santa Claus is real. Come on! He wriggled like a pocketful of bugs. Look, I don’t know why I’m alive. No one does. But I know how you can stay alive. It’s not up there!

  She rounded the last bend. The porch swing was swaying. Snow was falling off the eaves. Black holes were smashed out of the walls where firewood shot through like cannonballs.

  No! No, you can’t go in there. You can’t. There’s nothing you can do.

  She stopped with tears blurring the details of the crooked shutters. Maybe, she thought, she could carry her family out, one at a time, if Soldier kept Pando busy long enough. But carry them where?

  She didn’t have the strength to pick up Pip.

  Okay, I admit it, Gingerman said. I’m scared. There, you happy? I’m not like the other toys, you know. Wallace just made them to love, made Soldier brave. Made Pando psycho. He made me different. So I think, you know, it’d be cool if we went away from Toyland. Like far, far away.

  “You’re wrong.” She ran past the porch. “The toys are scared.”

  Not for themselves they’re not. It was you, silly. They knew he would do something. They knew Soldier couldn’t stop him, he could only buy you some time to escape. Get it? The car, the road.

  Tin made it around Toyland and into the forest, the sounds of breaking boards and shattering glass fading. She was scraping the remains of adrenaline.

  “Run, run,” she panted, “as fast as you can… you can’t catch me…”

  Gingerman’s remains went still. She fell in front of the dilapidated stage, pushed herself up and continued. For a moment, she thought the crumbs had fallen from her pocket.

  That’s what I say. How, uh, how did you know that?

  She reached the end of the path and stood at the edge of the circle. The metal monster stood on four legs. The tower was cold and still. The night sky bright and clear. Gingerman wanted to run. That was all he knew how to do.

  Tin didn’t know what to do.

  So she was doing something different. The only thing that made sense. And it didn’t really make any sense at all.

  The brittle ground crunched beneath her boots. Her face to a full moon, stars dusting the black night like diamonds, she searched for a streaking comet. Or a sleigh.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  She remembered the exact day it happened; at a sleepover, her best friend, Tina, told her Santa wasn’t real. Tina’s mom told Tin it was true, that it was her mom and dad who were pretending to be Santa. They were the ones who were leaving the presents under the tree.

  Tin had argued about the milk that was gone on Christmas morning, the cookies half-eaten. The carrots on the sidewalk for the reindeer were missing. The sooty footprints at the fireplace. It was proof. Right?

  Tin’s mom was so angry with Tina’s mom. But she relented, told her it was fun to pretend. Told Tin not to tell her friends like Tina did, because they wanted to believe.

  Tin did too.

  She wanted to lie in bed and swear she heard the reindeer’s hooves on the roof, heard the bells ringing on their harnesses, hear Santa’s belly laugh as he slipped presents under the tree
and stuffed the stockings. And not the Led Zeppelin Santa. The real one. And she would be snuggled up in her covers as sugarplums danced and the world felt safe.

  “I grew up,” she said. “I had to.”

  She reached the tower’s moon shadow and continued searching the sky, her voice effortlessly reaching the trees. She didn’t need to speak loudly. He would hear her.

  If he was up there.

  She leaned against one of the tower’s legs and slid to the ground. It was hard and cold. She wrapped her arms around her knees and continued searching.

  She was alone. Just her and the tower. The trees and the stars. A still Christmas night. Not a creature was stirring.

  “I thought I was helping. I didn’t mean to… make it worse.”

  She dropped her head and felt warm tears spread against the backs of her cold hands. She was crying for a lot of reasons. Her family was in danger; she was helpless and didn’t know what to do. And Pando had uncorked her secret thoughts, the way she pretended to have a better dad, the way she hated her real one.

  The mess she made.

  She thought if she turned the wall off, help would come. Now it was up to her. And she didn’t know what to do.

  At some point between blowing her nose and quietly sobbing, something was ringing. It was tiny and bouncy. She held her breath and listened. At first, there was only the sound of her pulse. Even the distant quaking of Toyland had gone quiet. But then she heard it again.

  It was a bell.

  There was no one walking out of the trees, but it was getting closer. And then, in the moonlight, she saw something trotting near the ground. The toymaker’s hat was galloping right at her, ringing with each stride. She sat in disbelief.

  The hat had never moved on its own, but it was making its way across the barren ground. It slowed as it neared then stopped in front of her, the bell lying between crispy tufts of weeds. She reached down to pick it up.

  Zebra.

  The toy zebra shook snowflakes from her black and white mane. The toy zebra that had been on Wallace’s desk. The toy zebra her Awnty Awnie had left. Zebra looked up with black glassy eyes and nudged the hat. Tin reached for the stuffed animal.

  The warmth gushed inside her.

  It filled her with love and something else. It wasn’t words or thoughts she heard, not a vision. But Tin understood what Zebra was feeling. She was holding something more than love.

  Sadness.

  Awnty Awnie had left her. Zebra knew she couldn’t stay at Toyland any longer. She had to leave. And she had to leave Zebra behind. It broke her heart to do so.

  Zebra’s too.

  Tin reached into her sweatshirt and found the hard outline of the necklace’s medallion. Zebra crawled onto her legs and watched her hold up the oval pendent. It was the one her Awnty Awnie always wore, the pendant Mom let Tin have. It took a few attempts to find the latch. She pried it open like a tiny book.

  Zebra climbed onto her knees, eyeing the black and white photo her aunt had put inside all those years ago. No one knew why.

  It was a zebra.

  All four legs reached around Tin. And what little snow was on Zebra’s mane, the ice crystals that were sticking to the toymaker’s hat, began to melt. There was no room for fear.

  Love.

  Zebra nuzzled against her then pulled away, nudging the hat with her muzzle. Somehow she’d gotten away from the lobby. But how did she get here? Zebra was inanimate like the toys in the toy room. It was just her and Pando in the loft when Tin had first seen her. What was different? Tin looked at the hat.

  I put it on.

  When she found the balloon in the loft, she had put on the hat. Zebra woke up and Pando hadn’t found her. She’d made her way to the lobby, had risked everything to get it.

  This was when the toys first woke; it was after she had put on the hat. And every time afterwards she was weak. Like it drew something out of her. How many toys were in Toyland?

  “I know why I’m here.

  “I know why I’m here.”

  Zebra leaped in circles. With the hat in one hand, she ran her fingers through Zebra’s mane—

  Wallace.

  He was in the toy room. The toys were with him. They were gathered around as he took a knee, arms out, hugging each one. They stood in line and hopped away when he let go with a troubled laugh in his belly.

  They didn’t notice the key.

  He was holding it in his right hand as he clenched them one by one. The toymaker’s hat was a green crown, crooked on his head. When he hugged the last one, they stood around waiting for what he wanted to do next. Wallace picked up the wooden soldier. He didn’t hug him, simply looked into the big painted eyes very seriously.

  “I’ll be back,” he announced. “Close your eyes and it’ll be like I never left.”

  He backed out of the toy room with a pained look in his bright green eyes. Confusion filled the room. The toys shuffled toward him as the door began closing, light knifing down to a narrow line. Soldier at his post.

  And then it was dark.

  Tin was in there with them. She heard the scratching at the door. Wallace’s footsteps. And then it was quiet. Soon, they closed their eyes to sleep. She knew what would happen, though. How the lock would turn and the door would open. How they would excitedly run to it. But they wouldn’t find Wallace.

  The sadness in the room was palpable.

  Tin closed her eyes. Never had she been able to touch anything in the vision or influence it. But she wasn’t there to move them. They were toys. They were made to give.

  It was time for them to receive.

  She imagined all the toys in Toyland, their stiff arms and empty stares, the cold marbles in their bellies. She wished to give them the love they gave. And then she felt it pour from her. A dam broke open and flooded the world. It shook her.

  Emptied her.

  Staring at the starry night, the toymaker’s hat was crooked on her head. Zebra had climbed onto her lap. Tin was lucky to be leaning against the tower or she would have hit the ground. She was too weak to lift her arm.

  “Did it work?” she croaked.

  The fur on Zebra’s mane had stiffened. She was rigid, pawing Tin’s dead legs like an angry bull. Tin was too cold to feel fear when she saw the figure coming toward her.

  He was limping on four legs.

  21

  Tin had slumped to the ground.

  The toymaker’s hat was beneath her head like a thin pillow. Her steamy breath leaked into the starry night. Zebra climbed onto her chest.

  Pando stood over her.

  He looked like a ragged overcoat. He was badly torn. Patches of fabric were missing. A long tear had opened his stomach. He looked down without a hint of malice or anger. Just weariness.

  He bent over—bits of stuffing floating toward her—and reached for the toymaker’s hat. Zebra spun around and kicked his arm away.

  He stood tall. You know why I have to do this. You know! She left you, remember? She left all of us.

  Zebra braced herself again, bowing like a bull about to charge.

  Who kept you company? Pando said. Who stayed in the loft and made sure you weren’t lonely? Who told you stories when it was dark and promised she would come back? Who was the one who took care of you?

  He thumped his chest.

  I did.

  This time he swatted Zebra away. She tumbled across the ground and leaped back, but not before Pando took the toymaker’s hat. Tin’s head thumped on the frozen earth.

  They watched the tired and torn panda bear stare into the toymaker’s hat as if searching for answers, yearning for it to talk to him like it did to her, to share with him the memories it held. He looked into her eyes with those dull button eyes that were somehow filled with expression, perhaps a bit of guilt.

  But not regret.

  She didn’t know how she was going to turn the tower back on. Even if she wanted to, she didn’t have the strength to climb it. Bits of dust and debris swept
against her cheeks. She closed her eyes and felt a deep magnetic hum. It wasn’t coming from the tower this time.

  It was Pando.

  He was pulsing. Shock waves emanated from his chest and swelled in her head. Something creaked in the trees. Tin turned to see the skeletal remains of the staircase rise from the ground. The trees whipped around and branches snapped as it began dragging toward the tower.

  Pando hadn’t flinched.

  He didn’t lift a hand. Magic words didn’t resonate in her head. He simply watched the stairs creep closer. The metal twisted and bent. Twice it tumbled over. Eventually it slid beneath the tower, the sticks of an attempted fire scattered beneath its weight. It tipped upward and leaned awkwardly in place.

  A final groan and the silent night returned.

  I know what you think, that I’m a bad toy. It’s not that simple. Some things cannot be undone.

  He started reaching for her, prepared to carry her to the top, put her in the tower and keep her there until she threw the switch. Her family would sleep until she did. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Zebra took her final stand, bucking with renewed efforts.

  You can’t stop me. He hesitated. Not now.

  This was all a mistake. He had wanted her to wear the hat ever since he woke up. Maybe she was giving life to the toys, but she was giving it to him, too. Or was he just taking it from them after she gave it? If she’d just never found the hat in the first place, none of this would’ve happened.

  But the rest of them deserve to wake up, she thought. Just not Pando.

  He frowned and glowered. That thought stung a little. It was so easy to love the other toys. Pando wasn’t like them. And that was the real mistake, she thought.

  My mistake, Pando said, was trusting him.

  Stuffing spilled from his belly as he slid both stumpy arms under her. Wind swirled around them. She felt magnetic waves beam from his chest. He didn’t have the strength to lift her, but the vortex did.

  The ground began to quake.

  Tin thought he was preparing to unleash the magnetic waves again, but his button eyes buried beneath the creases of fabric brows. He looked back toward Toyland.

  The trees were shaking.