“But I want the lizard,” her brother complained. “Remember? I told you that on the drive over!”
“Really?” The girl gave him an overly innocent smile. “I must have been sleeping when you said that.” She stopped only inches away from Smalls, reaching for one of the lizards in the pile to his left.
“Your eyes were open,” her brother argued. He hurried over, bumping into Smalls as he glared at his sister. Smalls held completely still, not daring to breathe.
“So?” The girl hugged the stuffed lizard to her. “Sometimes people sleep with their eyes open.”
Her little brother’s face went red with fury. “Fine, I don’t care! I’m getting a lizard too!” He bent down next to Smalls, rooting through the pile of lizards until he found the biggest one there. Smalls allowed himself a quick gulp of air as the boy shouted, “And mine’s bigger than yours!”
The siblings continued to bicker as they headed toward the register. Only when they were out of sight did Smalls and Wombat start inching forward again. “That is why it’s a miracle that only one hairy-nosed wombat is born per litter,” Wombat whispered with a shudder. “Can you imagine having a sibling? I so prefer being independent.”
“Yes,” Smalls said dryly, twisting around to watch as Wombat followed closely on his heels, attempting to hide in Smalls’s shadow. “Independent is exactly what I’d call you.”
“Well it’s hard not to be when you have an IQ of thirteen thousand.” Wombat edged even closer to Smalls, accidentally bumping into his stumpy tail. “You really need to watch where you’re going, Smalls,” he lectured.
Smalls stifled a groan. He knew Wombat was just being grumpy because he missed Tilda, but he wasn’t sure how much more of his lecturing he could take. He took a big step forward. The sooner they got on with their plan to save Tilda, the better.
But Wombat had stopped moving. “Look!” he said. He pointed his snout at a low window a few feet away. It was tucked behind a tall shelf of craft supplies, and it was wide open. Behind it sat a line of bushes, just thick enough to conceal a bear. “Grab the hot air balloon,” Wombat whispered. “My IQ of fourteen thousand has just given me a brilliant idea!”
“Sneak out the window into the bushes?” Smalls offered.
“Humph.” Wombat snorted, looking miffed. “I was going to say exit secretly into the shrubbery, but I suppose you got the gist.”
Smalls waited until the coast was clear to snatch one of the hot air balloon boxes with his teeth. He felt a stab of guilt, but he promised himself they’d return it as soon as they were done. Besides, saving Tilda—and reverting Wombat back to his old self—was worth more than any toy.
“Time to commence Plan Rescue Princess,” Wombat declared.
Smalls shot him an exasperated look. “What happened to Tilda?”
“You always use code names on a rescue mission, Smalls,” Wombat preached. “We can’t just go around using Tilda’s real name willy-nilly! What if someone were to hear? Our whole plan could be thwarted!”
Smalls could think of about a hundred different reasons why that was completely ridiculous—one being that humans only heard a series of snorts and grunts when they talked. But he kept his muzzle clamped shut. Squeezing behind the shelf, he gave Wombat a boost, helping him out the window. This better work, he thought as he climbed out after him.
Clay Master Pro
Chryssy led Bertie down a long, narrow corridor. Framed newspaper articles and advertisements lined the wall, each one featuring another toy Bertie had never heard of.
Introducing the Spangaphone! Why talk when you can spangle?
Toddle’s Build-a-Monster takes holiday sales by storm!
Jump to new heights with Turbo-Jump 5000, the latest in bouncy technology!
Bertie couldn’t take them in fast enough. How had he missed so many toys? It made him feel like he’d been floating in a black hole these past five years. The black hole of Claude.
Toddle’s reaches record sales with the groundbreaking Crybaby Carrie!
Keep your kids laughing with Fart-Along Princess!
“Come onnn,” Chryssy whined, pulling impatiently on his arm. “These are all boring old toys. The good stuff is behind these doors . . .” Her eyes lit up as she stopped in front of a room labeled 33E. The door was plastered with signs. BEWARE! WARNING! DANGER! DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER! Strange, muffled noises floated out of the room, thuds and clangs and what sounded like water churning.
Bertie eyed the signs doubtfully. “This is the woodshop?”
Chryssy waved a hand dismissively through the air. “We’ll get to that. This is even better.” Her eyes flitted through the hallway. “Keep watch,” she demanded.
“The signs say . . .” Bertie began. But Chryssy had already pulled a bobby pin out of her hair and was using it to jimmy open the lock. It made a satisfying click as the door eased open.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Bertie asked, impressed in spite of himself.
“Lots of practice.” She slipped inside the room, gesturing for him to follow. Bertie glanced over his shoulder. The corridor was empty. “Hurry,” Chryssy urged. The sounds in the room were clearer now, soft booms mixed with the thuds and clangs, and definitely some kind of churning. Bertie couldn’t resist. With a final glance over his shoulder, he ducked inside, pulling the door shut behind him.
The room wasn’t very large, but it had a ceiling that seemed to stretch up and up. In the center of the room stood the strangest machine Bertie had ever seen. It was a hulking beast made of shiny silver, tubes sticking out of it in every direction. Some of the tubes were thin and some were as thick as trees. Some were short and some were so long they wound around the entire room. And each one was doing something different.
Thick bursts of steam rose out of one. Strange clanging sounds rang out from another. Pinwheels of ashy flakes spun down from a third. And all along, echoing in the very center of the machine, was a soft, steady boom, like the beating of a heart.
“This,” Chryssy announced smugly, “is the Clay Master Pro.” She ran a hand over a wide silver tube that was eliciting the churning sound Bertie had heard. It reminded Bertie of pressing a shell to his ear and hearing the ocean trapped inside. “It’s a brand-new invention, still in testing phases. I was the first kid in the world to know about it. And one day I plan on being the first kid in the whole world to own it.” She stuck her nose in the air. “Doesn’t that make you wish you were me?”
“Then I’d be a girl,” Bertie said flatly. What was wrong with her? At the circus, Bertie would have come up with a nasty nickname for her in two seconds flat. I-Still-Drink-from-a-Bottle Chryssy, maybe, or better yet: My-Head’s-Too-Big-for-My-Crown Chryssy. But right now, the silver machine was beckoning to him, drumming out a heartbeat: Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom. A spiral of something that looked like foam catapulted into the air. Bertie pushed the nasty nicknames to the back of his head. “So what does it do?”
For the first time since he met her, Chryssy broke into a real smile. “Watch.” At the foot of the machine was a big silver lever. Crouching down, she used all her weight to pull it back. A loud gurgling noise erupted inside the machine. One by one, every one of its tubes began to spit out bubbles.
These weren’t ordinary bubbles. They were bubbles like none Bertie had ever seen before: thick and creamy, opaque yet iridescent. The bubbles were colorful too: green and red and purple and blue, no two the exact same shade. Bertie had never seen colors that vivid before. They looked like they belonged in a painting—like they shouldn’t be real.
“What are they?” he asked. His voice was filled with awe.
“Clay bubbles,” Chryssy said proudly. “Invented right here at Toddle’s Toy Emporium. Watch. In less than sixty seconds, they will mix together to form a sculpture that’s so lifelike you won’t believe it.”
The bubbles began to gather in the center of the room. As they bumped and collided, they melted together, until a mass of colors was swirling through t
he air: a glistening, dripping tornado. “What kind of sculpture?” Bertie asked.
Chryssy shrugged. Above her, the tornado was thickening, smoothing out. “Could be anything. The machine is programmed to make two thousand three hundred and twenty-one different sculptures.”
Slowly, a shape began to emerge from the swirling mass of color: a single, high arch stretching across the room. As the clay settled, the colors intensified and separated, molding themselves into seven single bands, one clinging to the next: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The colors were shimmering, gossamer, the reddest of reds and the bluest of blues. “A rainbow!” Bertie said.
A cloud of fog burst out from one of the tubes. For a second, the room was icy cold, as if a frost had settled over them. But as the fog evaporated, the room warmed. Bertie looked up to see that the clay had dried. The rainbow was hard and solid, rising all the way to the ceiling.
Chryssy planted a foot on one end of the rainbow. The clay held strong, neither bending nor crumbling. Her smile broadened as she began to climb. Bertie sucked in a breath. The rainbow looked frighteningly real, as if someone had snatched it right out of the sky. But here Chryssy was, walking on it. “What are you waiting for?” she called down. She was already high above him, her voice tinny and distant. “Are you scared?”
“Of course not,” Bertie retorted. “I’m not a baby.” He put one foot on the rainbow, then the other. It felt firm and solid beneath his feet. He began to climb, following after Chryssy. In the back of his mind, warning flags were waving, fighting for his attention: There were things to do, people and animals to look for. But standing on the rainbow, it all felt so far away, as if it belonged to another boy, another life. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt like a regular kid, just playing with a new toy.
Wanting to hold on to that feeling, he began to climb. Faster and faster, higher and higher, until he stood at the apex of the rainbow, looking down over the room. Just once, he promised himself. Afterward, he’d go back to being the Bertie he really was. Dropping down on his butt, he pulled his knees to his chest. “Timberrrr!” he shouted. Then he slid down the rainbow, all the way to the other side.
A Glass Box
Bertie kept his promise. After one slide down the rainbow, he stood up, dusting tiny bits of colored clay off his pants. “We have to go,” he told Chryssy when she slid down after him.
“Already?” She was smiling again, and it made her look like a different person entirely. “We just got here!” She carefully dusted clay off her own dress. “That’s the kink they’re still working out,” she told him. “The clay gets you dirty.”
“You promised to show me the woodshop,” Bertie said, ignoring her comment. The rainbow gleamed temptingly above him, but he wrapped his hand around the wooden boy in his pocket, refusing to look up. “Come on,” he pressed. “I want to go before someone figures out we’re here.”
“Okay, okay,” Chryssy whined. The pinched expression was back on her face, any trace of a smile long gone. “You don’t have to be pushy about it.”
Bertie gritted his teeth as he followed her back into the corridor. “How far?” he asked.
Chryssy signaled for him to be quiet. Without bothering to see if he was following, she took off jogging. The corridor twisted and turned and twisted again, and still they kept going. Finally, they came to a stop in front of the very last doorway in the hallway. 33Z. This one was simpler than the others they’d passed, no STAY OUT! or DANGER: EXPLOSIVES! signs in sight. Just a single plaque, swinging from the handle. Stanley’s Workshop, it said.
“Stan is Toddle’s resident woodworker,” Chryssy informed him. “Practically every piece of wood in this building was carved by him. Even the wooden tree in the main room.” Once again she pulled a bobby pin out of her hair and used it to jimmy open the lock. “Luckily, Saturdays are his day off.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” Bertie asked. For a second, Chryssy looked almost sad. She turned away, slipping into the room without answering.
Compared to the rest of Toddle’s Toy Emporium, the woodshop was plain and bare. The only furniture was a long table lined with whittling knives. A blank chalkboard hung on the wall next to a single cabinet, which was bolted up tight. Along the back wall a huge collection of wood was lined up, sorted by size and color.
Bertie walked over to the table. Along with the whittling knives, it had the usual desk supplies on it: a spool of tape, a pair of scissors, several pens. There was also a small square of wood, half of which had been whittled away so that the form of a boy had begun to emerge. Bertie picked it up, running his hand absently over its rough edges. He’d been hoping to find something that would trigger more memories, but there was practically nothing here. Just an old room and a half-formed boy that reminded him of nothing more than the figurines he’d already found.
Frustrated, Bertie brought the chunk of wood closer, studying the tiny, precise knife marks. He waited for something to hit him, some memory or sense of meaning, but nothing came.
A noise from the hallway shook him out of his thoughts. “Hide!” Chryssy hissed. They both dove under the table at the same time, their knees clanging together. Seconds later, a slight, gray-haired man ambled into the room. He was humming under his breath, a light, cheerful tune, as he carried something over to the cabinet. Reaching up, he removed a key from the top of the cabinet to unlock it.
Bertie held his breath as he peeked out from behind the table’s leg. Chryssy tried to pull him back, but he ignored her. His eyes were glued to the cabinet. There was an array of woodwork inside: figures and furniture and a few tiny motorcars and trains. Some, like the wooden boy the man slid inside now, looked freshly carved. But others were worn down with age, like they’d been sitting in that cabinet for a long, long time.
In the center of the cabinet, a small glass box held a single figurine. The man tapped the top of the box three times, fast, like it was some kind of ritual. Bertie shifted, trying to get a better view, but the sun was burning brightly through the window, casting a glare on the glass. No matter which way Bertie turned, he couldn’t make out what was inside.
Chryssy grabbed one of his suspenders, shooting him a furious look. Sorry, he mouthed, freezing in place. On the other side of the table, the man locked the cabinet back up and placed the key on top of it. Still humming under his breath, he headed out of the room, leaving the door hanging wide open.
“We have to get out of here,” Chryssy whispered the second he was out of sight. “Stan must have come in on his day off!”
Bertie eyed the key jutting off the top of the cabinet. It would only take him a minute to get it down . . .
“Now!” Chryssy said urgently. “The only reason he would leave the door open is if he’s coming back!”
Still Bertie lingered. He kept thinking about that figure in the glass box. What was so special it needed its own box?
Chryssy grabbed one of his suspenders, snapping it against his chest. “Let’s go!” she ordered.
“Ow,” Bertie grumbled, glowering at her.
“It will hurt a lot more the second time,” she said. She glanced anxiously at the doorway. “I’ll help you get back in tomorrow, okay? At noon, during Stan’s lunch break. But we have to get out of here now, before we get in serious trouble with my—uh, the Toddles.”
Bertie met Chryssy’s eyes. “Promise me,” he said evenly. The last thing he wanted was to spend another minute with this suspender-snapping, hoity-toity, know-it-all royal highness, but if it meant finding out what was in that glass box, it would be worth it.
“I promise.” She grabbed his suspender again, yanking him toward the door. “Tomorrow at noon,” she repeated. “I’ll meet you in Fine Woods.”
Brussels Sprouts
The Toddles were having chili for dinner. Chili and a big, steaming plate of brussels sprouts. Everyone in the Toddle household knew just how much Chrysanthemum hated brussels sprouts. She’d thrown many a
fit over being forced to consume even half a brussels sprout, and her parents had famously built her an entire backyard swing set as a prize for eating a plateful. So it was with pure trepidation that Mr. and Mrs. Toddle watched Chrysanthemum sit down at the table.
“Chef Mary made chili today,” Mrs. Toddle announced in an overly cheerful voice.
“What’s that, dear?” Mr. Toddle called out, cupping his hand around his ear at the other end of the table. He was frowning, like usual. “There’s dairy in the lily bouquet?”
“No, no, dear, chili! I’m telling Chrysanthemum about the chili!”
“You’re chilly, dear? Then turn the heat up, why don’t you?”
In chair seventeen, Chrysanthemum ignored her parents as she dug into her chili. Every few bites, she would repeat a single sentence to herself, as if it were some sort of chant. “I, Chrysanthemum-Chryssy Toddle, have plans tomorrow.”
It had been a long time since Chrysanthemum had plans that didn’t involve chores or school. If her parents had looked closely—had looked at all, really—they might have noticed that there was an unusual flush to their daughter’s usually pale, pinched cheeks. But they didn’t, of course. Instead they yelled across the table at each other, mistaking “miss” for “fish” and “mortgage” for “garbage,” until Mrs. Toddle was shouting, “Why in the world would you fish in the garbage, dear?” It was only when Chrysanthemum asked to be excused that they both stopped yelling and looked over at her.
“Well now, Chrysanthemum,” Mrs. Toddle said nervously. “You still need to eat your brussels sprouts.”
“Did you tell her to eat her brussels sprouts?” Mr. Toddle shouted.
“Yes, dear, shush,” Mrs. Toddle called back.
“Mush?” A wrinkle formed between Mr. Toddle’s thick eyebrows. “They’re brussels sprouts, not mush!”
A Valiant Quest for the Misfit Menagerie Page 13
