Ninja Timmy

by Henrik Tamm

  “Many years ago,” Alfred began, “when I was just a little boy, my father brought me down here. He taught me how to make magical toys with the help of these plants, just as his own father had once taught him. For years I studied the ways of mixing and blending, and extracting just the right amount of juice out of a leaf, or grinding seeds together and blending them with other extracts at the right temperature. It was knowledge that only my family had.”

  He grew quiet as they came to a serene lake. The water was very still and as black as night. There was a rowboat pulled up on the shore. Alfred pushed it into the water, and they climbed in.

  Alfred rowed silently, dipping the oars into the dark water as carefully as he could. Timmy climbed to the front and looked down. He could see movement deep under the surface—something pale slithering through the waters.

  He glanced back with a concerned look on his face.

  “Very old creatures. Don’t disturb them,” Alfred whispered.

  Timmy and Alfred finally reached the other shore, pulled the boat onto land, and continued on. The stone structures on this side were even more fantastic. There were deep ravines, falling into the blackest of black. At other parts of the cave, the ceiling soared higher than Timmy could see.

  At one point, Alfred stopped and threw his arms out with a high-pitched yell. Timmy’s cat instincts were on such high alert, he almost dove to the ground for a second time; then he realized that the toymaker’s outburst was one of joy. Alfred pointed excitedly. On the rock wall high above them grew some beautiful blue flowers.

  “Eufsporia galitinos marillimus,” Alfred explained. “Very rare…very rare indeed!” He shook little Timmy happily. “You bring good luck, don’t you? This is a real treat.” He craned his neck to look up. “It’s just a shame they’re so high up there.”

  He peered at Timmy.

  “Cats are supposed to be good at climbing, aren’t they?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you think you could climb up there and pick a couple of those? Only the biggest ones; we need to let the smaller ones grow.”

  Timmy looked up. He thought they were awfully high, but feeling gratitude toward the old man, and having his pride to uphold, he knew he had to give it a go.

  “Okay. Sure thing. No problemo.”

  He looked up again. He could do this, he decided. Feeling intrepid, he started to climb. It was dark and slippery, but he soon found his footing in the little cracks and crannies. It was only when he looked down that he realized how far up he was. Fear gripped his gut momentarily, but he took a deep breath and brushed it away.

  Up and up he went, and finally he was within a paw’s grasp of the flowers. He reached out.

  Just as he was about to take the biggest one, he could feel the fur on his nape stand straight up. In the shadows above, it was as if the air fluttered and moved.

  Hundreds, if not thousands, of bats descended from the darkness and enveloped him. He could feel their leathery wings flapping against his fur and face. Their shrieks howled into his sensitive ears. He closed his eyes, but that just made it worse. Panicked, he could feel his grasp begin to slip. He opened his eyes again and looked around frantically, but all he could see was flapping gray-black bat wings and bat eyes and bat mouths. It was as if the air around him were boiling. His paws slipped away from the wall, and he fell.

  As it was, being a cat did have its advantages. Timmy knew (he had time to reflect on this while he fell) that he had probably used up about three of his nine lives so far, but that still left six. With a little luck, perhaps those six would be enough to get him out of this mess. As Alfred would tell him later, it ended up being more like two. Yes, he hit his head against the rock, and his back, and his sensitive belly, but he also showed some amazing agility. He managed to slow his fall a little by grabbing on to tiny sections of rock when he could, and by flailing and waving his arms as he slid, so that at the end, when he hit the bottom, only two more of his lives had been used up.

  Alfred rushed over to him, fearing the worst, but he cried out with happiness as little Timmy opened his eyes.

  Then, to Alfred’s even greater amazement, Timmy opened his left paw. And there, between his kitten claws, was one of the bright blue flowers.

  “Oh joy! Oh dear! Oh my goodness! Alfred was beside himself with all kinds of emotion.

  Timmy licked his scratches, smiled broadly at Alfred as he handed him the flower, and said, “Sorry I could only get you one.”

  “Timmy, you were brilliant.” Alfred beamed.

  Back up in the safety of the toy shop, Timmy sat in front of their loot. Alfred shook his head in bewilderment.

  “Timmy, do you realize we now have ingredients for hundreds of new magical toys?” He was most pleased—no, not pleased, ecstatic—over the blue flower that Timmy had collected, the rare Eufsporia galitinos marillimus.

  Timmy looked at it; to him it looked like just a normal flower. But Alfred sat in front of it in wonder, slowly shaking his head and tearing up with happiness.

  “Only once before in my long life have I been able to find this rare flower, and that was almost forty years ago.”

  “What did you use it for?”

  Alfred grew quiet. “It doesn’t matter. Now I am wiser and will prepare it with a thousand times more care.”

  He looked at Timmy. His heart was heavy with regret when he thought of what had happened when he had last prepared the Eufsporia galitinos marillimus, so many years ago. If only he had known back then what he knew now, he could have controlled the powerful magic within the blue petals. Instead…he had created something monstrous. Would he ever get the chance to correct his mistake?

  He wondered if it was fate that had brought Timmy to him. Perhaps there was a reason why they had met.

  Outside, a heavy rain hammered the glass windows, and thunder rolled in the distance. Timmy wondered how his life had changed so dramatically in just a day, how he could have made such an amazing new friend. He also wondered how Simon, Jasper, and Casper were doing. He hadn’t seen them since the afternoon of the previous day. They must have been quite worried about him by now. Perhaps they too had gotten lost. He would have to go find them the next day.

  Chapter 5

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Timmy, Alfred, Simon, Jasper, and Casper found themselves talking and drinking tea together in the back of the toymaker’s shop. Timmy wondered if Alfred ever drank anything besides tea, but he was a little afraid to ask.

  Earlier that morning, Timmy and Alfred had paced the streets to find Timmy’s three friends. Sure enough, they had found them up in the loft where our story began.

  They had been very happy indeed to see Timmy again, and had been ever so grateful to Alfred for saving him from the guards and giving him food and shelter.

  “We were so worried about you, Timmy,” said Jasper.

  “But we also knew you could take care of yourself,” added Casper.

  Simon had been particularly worried and had waited in the loft for more hours than he could count. So long, in fact, that he had missed his date that evening with a particularly cute squirrel girl.

  Now they sipped some of the spicy, hot tea, and Timmy told his friends of his previous day’s adventure in the cave. They were all very curious about the magical toys—how they worked, and how the ingredients were mixed to make them, and who Alfred made them for, and what happened when the toys broke.

  Spellbound and round-eyed, they listened when Alfred patiently answered even the most ridiculous questions. He let them play with a few of the toys, and they laughed and chased each other around and were just like inventors were supposed to be.

  As they quieted down, Simon cleared his throat a bit nervously.

  When all eyes were on him attentively, he asked: “Remember how two days ago this weird thing happened where it seemed like Mathilda couldn’t laugh? Well, it turns out she still can’t laugh. So I asked her father down at the bakery, and he said that Mathilda had been missing for a few
days, and he and his wife had been terribly worried. Then he had found her sitting in front of the bakery one morning, looking rather confused. Mathilda herself had no memory of the missing days. For her, it was just a vague blur, but she soon realized that she couldn’t laugh anymore.”

  They had met several other kids, both animals and humans, who were just like Mathilda. Simon loved to tell jokes (in fact, he took pride in inventing new jokes and considered himself quite a funny mink) and would tell them to any kid he encountered. It had happened five or six times, just in their neighborhood, that the children had stood there with their mouths open as if they were laughing at Simon’s jokes, but not a sound would come out. It was the strangest thing. And they too had been missing for a few days, then simply turned up again.

  On top of that, Simon had heard that the Gribble cousins were continuing their troublemaking throughout the streets and alleyways of Elyzandrium. They had even been seen with a biker gang that rode around on steam-powered motorcycles, and all the bikers were iguanas. Iguanas! This sounded pretty ridiculous to all of them.

  Timmy was shocked. Their city had always been so peaceful. Now both people and animals had to be fearful of these criminal gangs, even in the middle of the day.

  His head sank, and he propped it up again with his paws. He looked at his friends. He looked at Alfred. He looked at all the wonderful magical toys around him.

  “This is our city,” he said. “We were all born here. It used to be quite nice, and now it’s being run by gangs. Something has to be done,” he declared. “It’s one thing to steal our orange-peeling machine and chase us all across the city, but it’s another thing to be intimidating people all over town. And small children, at that! And for all we know, the Gribbles are behind all the children losing their ability to laugh too. No, this won’t do at all, guys.”

  For a moment, the room was silent. Alfred regarded the group of friends solemnly. Simon looked at Timmy. Timmy let his gaze travel over Jasper and Casper. In turn, the brothers looked back at Alfred. Finally Timmy spoke up again.

  “I, for one, will not sit idly by while this is going on. I refuse to be a victim. We will fight back. Our orange-peeling machine is probably long gone, sold for lots of money, but that won’t stop me from standing up for others who may have the same thing befall them.”

  The friends nodded. Timmy liked how he had used the word “befall.” It had sounded important. He continued.

  “We could fight back. We have everything we need right here, in this toy shop. I’ve seen what these toys can do. If Alfred can help us create some magical tools, we can do anything. We can form our own gang—like…a ninja gang! We’d stand up to the Gribbles or anyone else who wreaks havoc on our town. Enough is enough. Who’s with me?”

  Timmy wasn’t sure where he’d gotten “ninjas” from, but he thought it sounded good. And he actually believed in what he was saying. He repeated the last sentence louder.

  “Who’s with me?”

  The friends all looked at each other.

  “I am!” Simon was the first. Then Jasper and Casper joined in.

  “And we are!” they exclaimed simultaneously.

  Timmy looked to Alfred. “Will the toymaker help us with this quest? Will he make magical gear for us, so that we can put an end to this suffering?”

  Alfred studied the group. One kitten, one mink, and two rather plump piglets who were good at math. His eyes were serious. At last he spoke.

  “I will. Indeed I will. We’ll work together. And you can all stay here in the shop while we figure out our plan.”

  Chapter 6

  THERE WAS MUCH planning to be done. The four friends were about to set out on their first mission. Alfred had shown them some basics about how his magic worked and had constructed a special device for each of them.

  For Jasper and Casper, he had made shoes that enabled them to jump really far, and even float in the air for a while. They looked a little like metal clogs but had intricate machinery inside. Both of the brothers immediately tried to calculate the aerodynamics that made the shoes work, but neither of them could quite figure it out.

  Simon got a pair of goggles. They were clunky and heavy, and at first he didn’t like them one bit.

  “They don’t really go with my look,” he said. But when Alfred hit a switch on the side, Simon jumped with excitement. “I can see through the wall!” he cried. “Jeez, Alfred. You sure have a lot of clutter behind that closet door.” Alfred blushed, but they all laughed. Simon was so excited that he forgot about the goggles’ unfashionable appearance.

  And finally, for Timmy, Alfred had constructed a very special walking stick. It looked just like a normal walking stick, but it could open and transform into all kinds of useful things. When thrown, it would always come back to the hands of the one who had thrown it. It could grow to about ten times its original length. These were only a few of the things it could do; not even Alfred knew all its capabilities.

  Alfred, with design input from Simon, had also made outfits for each of them, all in black, complete with belts. Simon had then added a final touch: black headbands. After they put their new outfits on, they looked at each other and thought they all looked quite cool. And quite appropriately, Timmy thought, like a band of little ninjas. Alfred came into the room.

  “Well, look at you!” he exclaimed. “Not bad at all. Quite the fearsome troop. Heroes all!”

  “Yes, I think our outfits are pretty awesome. And our magical gear is great. All thanks to you, Alfred,” Timmy said.

  “No, my young friend. Thanks to you. This was all your idea. I just sat there and listened, remember?”

  Timmy knew that was true, but he didn’t feel entirely comfortable with being the one who’d started a ninja crime-fighting gang. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever done before. It was just that he didn’t like being bullied or stolen from. And the four friends were a good gang. Alfred stepped away.

  Simon came up to Timmy.

  “Okay, you old street cat. Let’s see what trouble we can get into. I hope we didn’t get dressed up for nothing.”

  Simon put on his own headband and paraded in front of a mirror, striking fearsome ninja poses and practicing a mean glare to use on the Gribbles.

  Timmy smiled at his friends.

  “Okay, lads. Let’s go fight some crime!”

  An hour later, they moved single file across a high rooftop. They looked out over their city as they walked toward the same dark alleys where they had first been attacked. The tall bamboo skyscrapers glittered like rocket ships in the distance, white smoke rose from steam engines and chimneys below, and lonely flying balloons drifted slowly across the blue night. At first, they felt self-conscious, but they felt better when they started complimenting themselves on their ultra-cool ninja outfits. Simon looked particularly sharp, as usual. Jasper’s and Casper’s clogs clinked a little as they moved. Timmy held his magical cane tightly.

  They reached the right neighborhood and stalked across the rooftops, spying on the alleys below. They peered down, seeing if they could spot the Gribbles or any other troublemakers. Everything seemed calm—no sign of the wild boar cousins—but then…

  It was Simon who saw it first, using his fancy goggles. A flying machine, maybe two hundred yards away, was in trouble. It was way too low. The engine sputtered, and the wings dipped sharply left, then right. He pointed:

  “Look! It’s gonna crash!”

  They watched it slowly spiral downward; the pilot seemed to struggle to gain altitude. Timmy quickly calculated where it might land and started running. The others followed, and the group sprang from building to building. With their magical clogs, Jasper and Casper could bounce far ahead.

  The winged machine dropped down between two tall buildings and out of sight. There was a hollow bang, then a metallic scraping sound, then silence.

  When Timmy reached the narrow street, he heard yelling through the blinding dust and smoke. It sounded shrill and angry.

  In t
he pilot’s seat was a cat. She was yelling loudly and furiously, flailing her arms, pushing poor Casper away.

  “Can’t a girl land her plane without being attacked? Get away from me!”

  Casper backed away from the cat, turning to the others with a defeated look. Timmy stepped up and straightened his back. He tried to use his most heroic voice.

  “We are here to rescue you. Stay calm.”

  “Rescue me! I’m in no need of rescuing, especially from a bunch of…of…bandits like yourselves!”

  Timmy was stunned at this outburst but could understand how she might mistake their ninja clothing for that of, well, bandits.

  The girl hopped out of the cockpit and took off her goggles. As she did so, Timmy was overwhelmed. This scowling cat was the toughest and coolest and most beautiful cat girl he had ever seen. Simon noticed it too, and struck a pose, about to pour on his usual charm. But Timmy wanted to be the one she talked to, and he quickly continued.

  “We’re not bandits; we’re ninjas.” He realized how silly it sounded as the words left his mouth.

  Simon took a step back as Timmy spoke.

  “Ehm…I mean, we’re good ninjas, like the ones that save people and stuff.”

  “Good ninjas?” She started laughing.

  “Yes, that’s right. And we’re here to save you after your crash.”

  “First of all, I was landing, not crashing. Okay, it was a hard and sudden landing, but a landing nonetheless. Second, let me get this straight. Those are supposed to be ninja outfits? Are those headbands? And you just happened to be here, at this very spot, in case someone was about to crash—or, I mean, land—their flying machine?”