The Toymakers

by Robert Dinsdale

  ‘They’re listening,’ said Kaspar.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It isn’t a parley unless you agree terms. So what are the terms … of your surrender?’

  ‘If we must share the Emporium, then we share it.’ Emil hardened himself. ‘I’m willing to give them the attics. The burrows in the cellars and the deep layer storerooms too. They can live there and do whatever it is soldiers do in peacetime, build their towns and cities and make toy children of their own. I won’t interfere with them, and they won’t interfere with us. It will be like night and day. Two states, inside the Emporium, and never the twain shall meet.’

  There was uproar on the Wendy House floor. The soldiers swarmed around Kaspar, seeming to squabble for his attention. Others pirouetted and danced.

  ‘The Emporium is their mother country. You ought to know how fiercely a man can fight for his home. What guarantee do they have that you’ll stay true to your word? What guarantee that, the moment they’re safely tucked away, you don’t start making soldiers again – dumb, obedient ones who have to do your every command?’

  The chaos stopped. Ranks re-formed. On either flank, the soldiers advanced, as if in a pincer with Emil at its head.

  ‘It is my Emporium, Kaspar. I must be allowed to make what toys I can.’

  ‘We have spoken of this, Emil.’

  ‘I don’t remember any conversation. All I remember is orders. Orders, ever since I was a little boy. Well, it’s my life too, Kaspar. And next winter, when the frost comes, these shelves are going to be full. The Emporium’s going to be alive. It’s what Papa would have wanted. It’s what I want.’

  ‘They came here tonight to reach an accommodation. What are you giving them, if you mean to just make more—’

  Emil hung his head. ‘Don’t make me do this, Kaspar.’

  ‘You’re still a little boy with a puffed-up sense of his own importance. Haven’t you—’

  As Kaspar had been speaking, the soldiers fanned out. At the foot of the bed where Cathy once slept sat the first toybox Kaspar had made, his earliest, most unrefined design. Now the soldiers had scaled the summit and, working in unison, heaved open its lid. With arms windmilling wildly they drew Kaspar’s eye.

  Inside were cans of bully beef and seasoned ham, jars of new potatoes in brine, sardines and blackberry preserve. Two of the soldiers descended into the chest and returned smeared in dirt from the terracotta pots underneath. They bore up packets of garden seeds as if they were unearthed treasures.

  ‘Please, Kaspar.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Your provisions,’ spat Emil. ‘In the event they don’t accept my terms.’

  Kaspar was still – but somehow the soldiers seemed to understand.

  ‘Because these soldiers can’t be trusted,’ Emil said, ‘because I need a way to be certain this is the end. I’m sorry, Kaspar. I told you I’d do anything, anything at all.’ Emil lifted his hand. There dangled the key to the Wendy House door. ‘You should have listened to me, Kaspar. You should have listened all along.’

  In the same moment that Kaspar understood, the soldiers sprang to life. Emil stepped backwards, making for the exit, but already the soldiers were around him. A dozen infantrymen scythed into his shins and Emil lashed out, sending them sprawling. Too late, he realised another unit was besieging his other foot – and, caught off-balance, he crashed into the Wendy House wall. That was when the first artillery fired. From somewhere on the other side of the Wendy House floor, howitzers rolled into place. Emil took the first volley on the breast, turned against the second, only for the third – coming from some unseen corner of the Wendy House – to catch him full in the face. Stars exploded behind his eyes. Blood exploded from his nose. He reared back, fighting to keep balance as the next wave of infantrymen attacked. It was only five more strides to the exit. He would get there however he could.

  They thought him a coward? Well, was this what a coward did? He felt mahogany bullets peppering his back and, propelled by them, staggered through the door. Some of the soldiers were trying to stream out alongside him. He took aim and kicked back, stemming the tide one splintered soldier at a time.

  There was blood in his eyes, the taste of fresh meat on his lips. Before he closed the door, he dabbed it away and looked within. In the sea of stampeding soldiers, Kaspar was like an island, a god propped up with walking canes either side.

  ‘I didn’t want this,’ Emil said, and then he closed the door.

  The key was in the lock before the soldiers hit it. Wooden shells sprayed into the other side, but the door only tremored; they would never be enough to break through.

  The boards were piled where he had left them, on the ground at his feet. Emil took the first and held it in place against the door. A single nail trembled in his hand.

  ‘They held me to ransom for too long, Kaspar.’ His words were punctuated by the pounding of his hammer. Every nail felt like triumph. Every nail felt like guilt. ‘Well, now I’ll hold them. I’ll hold … you.’

  The door bucked. Emil fell back, but the board held in place – and, when he heard his brother’s voice, it was dull and far away. He got back to his feet, continued his task.

  ‘Don’t try and fight it, Kaspar. Nobody will hear you, not through Papa’s walls. You can’t tear it down. It’s stronger than that. Did you ever know a toy Papa made that could possibly break?’

  ‘Emil?’

  Emil hammered harder. The second board went up, then a third, and with each one his brother grew more distant. Those Wendy House walls, Emil remembered, designed so children could play inside and never be heard …

  ‘Emil, you can’t mean to …’

  He stopped before lifting the final board. ‘I didn’t want to,’ he said, uncertain if his brother could hear. ‘But what else is there when you won’t see?’

  Emil paused when the last nail was in his hand. Something was pressing on his foot and, unthinking, he kicked it away; it was only when he had driven the last nail into the wood that he looked down and saw it was the Imperial Kapitan. Somehow, the soldier had forced its way out of its birdcage prison, its back still burnt and scarred from his workshop fire. Now it lay by the picket fence, kicking feebly as it tried to stand. Emil left the boarded door behind and loomed above the Kapitan, lifting his boot as if ready to grind it into splinters and tangled wire.

  ‘I ought to,’ he said. ‘I should, but … you used to be mine.’

  Then, driven by some feeling he did not know, Emil slid his foot away. Lying prostrate on the ground, the Imperial Kapitan stared up. The key in its back was winding down. It turned in circles, desperate to wind itself but unfit for the task.

  Slide down, into that sandalwood mind …

  The Imperial Kapitan knows what he has seen. The journey from the birdcage was fraught, but he got here just in time: to know the fate of his creator, the fate of his people. Now there is only him left to face the wrath of the evil one. He thinks: I will kill you now, you daemon, smite you down here in the heart of the paper forest. But new connections have been being made in his mind, chasms of confusion and misunderstanding are being bridged daily, and with this comes deeper, richer ideas. And this time, the Kapitan thinks: I will surely perish if I fight him now. My people might be gone – but there is another way.

  So he runs.

  Under floorboard and through skirting, up the crevasses in the wall cavities, down the undersides of shelving. These are the homelands of the toy soldier and the Imperial Kapitan knows them better than any. But there is a sword hanging over him now and, the more he exerts himself, the more he feels the touch of its blade: the key in his back is winding down, down, down, and the Kapitan must lift himself up, up, up …

  The world and all memory of it is separating, turning into fragments and whirling through the grain of his mind, but finally he reaches his destination. He must conserve energy now so he slows, creeping to that place in the skirting where the monsters who once lived here, creatures of fur
and whisker and sharp yellow teeth, once mined their tunnels. Through a tiny portal in the wood he sees the room where she is sleeping: the one who lies with the Kaspar god at night. She is the only one who can save him now, the only one who might lead his people back into the light.

  The Imperial Kapitan emerges into the midnight room. It is an ordeal to scale the Bedside (his mind is fraying now, his senses are fading), but somehow he hauls himself up, using the dangling tassels of a blanket as ropes. Then he is there, standing on the sleeping lady’s breast. He marches up (his motors almost dead!) and reaches out to open her eyes.

  Behind him: the gale of the bedroom door being opened. The Imperial Kapitan turns and sees the great figure stomp into the room.

  It is him. The daemon lord. He has come again, by staircase and Secret Door. His feet strike the ground with echoes like earthquakes.

  The Imperial Kapitan knows what the daemon is here to do: to capture and imprison the lady, just as he has done the Kaspar god. He will fight him with every iota of tension left in his motors, fight him even though he knows it will do no good. That is his duty, now that he is the only one left. So the Kapitan charges.

  When he reaches the end of the bed, ready to launch himself into the black, his motor stops turning. There is life left in his mind, but only the residual echo of energy in his body. He can go no further. He tumbles, tumbles from the bedside, tumbles into the jaws of the lady’s bag lying open below. The tumbling seems to last a lifetime. Perhaps it lasts many, for Wind Down has come and his whole existence is flashing before his eyes.

  Through the roof of the bag he sees the world turning above him. The darkness is gathering, but in his last moment, before thirty years of sleep come to destroy him, he sees that the daemon lord is not here to steal the lady away at all. Instead, the daemon lord is holding a letter in his hands. He places it gently at the sleeping lady’s side and then he himself steals away, out into the Emporium halls.

  Never has a blackness been as bitter as this. The Imperial Kapitan has failed his god, failed his people. For thirty years, what parts of his mind survive as knots in the wood, will not let him forget.

  Cathy stepped back, in horror, from the Wendy House wall. ‘How could you, Emil? It wasn’t a parley. It was an … execution. What am I to find in there? Tell me that, Emil! A husk? Whatever’s left of my husband?’

  The Wendy House sat in the storeroom where the patchwork beasts had dragged it almost thirty years before. Cathy looked at the boarded windows and crêpe paper ivy, the steepled roof and stoppered-up chimneypot on top. This place that had once been her home, had it also been a … prison?

  ‘You’re the one who wrote that letter,’ she breathed.

  In reply, there was only stony silence.

  ‘And you’re the one who left Sirius out in the snow. Left him to wind down and die. All to make me think Kaspar had walked out, when really …’

  Sirius looked up at the boards and set up a howl.

  The toy soldiers were already obeying the Imperial Kapitan, driving wooden bayonets at the boards that sealed the door. But it would take a thousand lifetimes for a toy soldier to break through. Martha crouched down and gathered them near.

  ‘I tried to warn him. I told him I’d do anything, anything to keep our Emporium alive, anything so that it was there for my sons. Well, he didn’t listen. It wasn’t meant to be like this. It was only meant to be – what did he call it? A meeting of minds. But he wouldn’t, Cathy, he wouldn’t even meet halfway, and I had to make sure …’

  There were other boxes in the storeroom, crates deemed of no value, left behind when the prospectors came. Between them stood an axe, once used to fell the paper trees. Cathy strained to lift it, dragged it to the Wendy House door.

  ‘Mama, you mustn’t. You’ll break your back.’

  ‘Let me,’ said Emil. ‘I owe him that. I owe you …’

  But Cathy had already hoisted it high. She brought it up above her shoulders and let its weight carry her forward. ‘You owe me thirty years, Emil. You owe me a life. You owe me …’ She stopped herself wheeling around, the axe in her hands. ‘You owe me a world. Whatever’s through these doors, you …’

  Martha came between them. ‘Perhaps you should go, Uncle Emil.’

  ‘Go? But this is mine. My Emporium …’

  The axe bit into the boards, but the door did not buckle. It bit again, and splinters showered down. Three times, four times, five times and more, Cathy threw her body at the axe and the axe into the wood – until, at last, the boards scythed apart. Then, taking to them with fingers and fists, she revealed the little red door.

  Its paintwork was tarnished. The brass knocker, its head the shape of a wolf, was thick with grime. Cathy reached out and touched it. She gave Martha a questing look and, when she nodded, she knocked on the door. But the sound was hollow, no answer came, and when she tried again it was in desperation, not belief.

  So she returned to the axe.

  The door was stronger than the boards, and Cathy remembered, suddenly, the old truth: that Papa Jack had never made a toy that would break and spoil a child’s day. Against Papa Jack’s invention, an axe was useless. She dropped it at her side, was about to turn and cast invective at Emil – but he was already standing there, drawing a little silver key from a chain that hung around his neck.

  The door had grown warped with age, but it gave in to Cathy’s touch – and, as it rolled inwards, she saw the Wendy House interior for the first time in half a life.

  Inside was only darkness.

  By torchlight they crossed the threshold. The sweeping light picked up the corners of the Wendy House, much further away than they had any right to be. Cathy stood in the heart of the room, taking in the bed that had once been hers, the hotplate and cabinets, the old threadbare rug – but, cavernous as it was, the Wendy House was empty. Nothing remained but the dust.

  ‘It can’t be,’ Martha whispered.

  Emil was about to step through when Cathy said, ‘No, Emil. This Wendy House isn’t for you. It’s mine. Mine and Kaspar’s, remember? Ours. That summer …’

  ‘Cathy, please.’

  ‘Just go, Emil. Just go.’

  For some time, Emil stood on the threshold and stared. He too remembered that summer. He remembered reading books about childbirth and bringing her his designs. He remembered their picnic out in the glade and the way her face had dimpled when she said, treat yourself more kindly, Emil. That’s an order. He remembered how whole that had made him, how he’d felt capable of doing it all, all because of the girl – and, whether she wanted him or not, how it hardly mattered, because she was here and she mattered and she was Cathy Wray. All of those memories, they had lasted a lifetime – and, in an instant, they unravelled.

  ‘Cathy?’ he ventured, but the silence was answer enough.

  After he was gone, Cathy sat on the edge of the bed and teased her fingers so that Sirius might join her. There he lay, black button eyes as disconsolate as black button eyes could be. Across the floorboards, the toy soldiers came to a halt. The Imperial Kapitan was gesticulating for them to line up in some new formation, but they did not have the words for what they were feeling, and not one of them knew where to stand; sometimes language was such an inconsequential thing.

  Martha peered under the bed, and found nothing. She looked behind the broken door, and found nothing still. Dancing in the light of her own torch, she scurried to the little tin sink and squinted down the plughole – but nothing, nothing, nothing, everywhere she looked.

  Then she reared up, with an empty can of bully beef in her hands. ‘Mama,’ she said. ‘He was here.’

  The torch arced over the room, illuminating first her mama, nursing what little hope she had left, then Sirius, still snuggled on her lap. Finally, light spilled upon the toybox at the foot of the bed – that plain, unremarkable thing that Kaspar had brought to her almost fifty years before.

  Martha rushed to open it up.

  ‘Mama,’ she breath
ed.

  From the lip of the box, into its unseen depths, a stair spiralled down. Where once there had been cans of bully beef and sardines, jars of new potatoes in brine, now there were polished oak steps, a banister rail of glistening bone. Unlit candles were fixed in brackets to a wall that disappeared in the darkness. Balanced in the first was a book of matches.

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘That old fool …’ Cathy said. ‘Oh Kaspar, what have you done?’

  ‘What has he done?’

  In the half-light it seemed that Cathy was smiling. She had to try twice before she could speak, for something was clogging her throat – and to Martha it sounded like joy. ‘He … got better,’ she laughed.

  It was dull in the Wendy House. The toy soldiers provided some modicum of company, and across the weeks and months Kaspar had grown used to the silence, but no amount of tutoring them, or watching them discover new things, could keep boredom at bay. Sometimes, he let it smother him and lay in bed for days and nights (though he could not tell where one ended and another began, and never would again), and were it not for the memory of the summer Cathy, his Cathy, had spent here, perhaps he would never have got out of bed again. Cathy had thought this place a prison too … at first. But she was carrying Martha inside her, a whole new world, and when Kaspar remembered that, that was when he knew what he had to do. If the world outside was to be denied him, he would have to make the world within.

  The toy soldiers stopped their drilling as they watched their demi-god shed his bedclothes and get to his feet. With his canes he shuffled to the toybox and began to empty it of the tins of seasoned ham, the bags of flour and jars of honey that Emil had crammed inside. Beneath were bags of earth and seedling potatoes, onions with shoots and packets of seed. Emil had provisioned him well, and that was both proof of the love his brother still bore him and evidence of how eagerly he had prepared Kaspar’s cell.

  With the toybox emptied, Kaspar lowered himself inside. The place was more cavernous than he remembered, though scarcely the size of a four-poster bed. He basked in the darkness and remembered: that summer, that first summer with Cathy, I barely made six of these. We painted them in bright colours and put the price tag high, but I never went back to them. It was too slow an endeavour – and back then there were other distractions, the ordinary magic more important than the rest.