But the shop the toymaker opened overnight, packed to its corners with living dreams, was too beautiful to be the work of wicked hands. Though it was odd, the townspeople admitted, that no one could claim to have met the man himself. Behind his counter stood an aproned girl in a tidy braid, who smiled at the children and took their parents’ coins. More than a few found themselves slowing as they walked by the shop, hoping for a glimpse of her face. Such a beauty wouldn’t work for a monster.
It was decided, then. They were lucky the toymaker had come. And over time the dark cloud of rumors that nipped at his heels was forgotten.
Only Eleanor did not forget. Thirteen years old, she should’ve been past the point of longing for toys. Yet often she wondered what manner of toy was bewitching enough to coax a princess from her bed. A wee prancing stallion, perhaps, with a foaming mane, and flat metal teeth to pull the girl into the water.
Eleanor would risk anything to receive such a gift. She would follow it anywhere.
In a threadbare cloak and a dress she’d long ago outgrown, she walked between her mother and her brother, Thomas, through the kind of winter day that dulled its teeth on your bones. Everything she laid her eye on was damp or dim or scorched with cold—all but the toymaker’s shop. Her mother’s gaunt hand tightened on hers as they passed it, a silent warning not to stop. But a crowd of children stood out front, and that could mean only one thing.
“New toys today!” a boy called out, running past them. Eleanor tugged free of her mother and ran over the icy cobblestones, pushing her way toward the shop’s bright window.
Inside she saw cut-paper ballerinas that spun on strings. Whole towns carved from wood and populated by tiny porcelain people. There were feathered masks and tin swords and dolls with clever eyes that blinked. But best by far were the clockworks. Animals and fairies and carriages and ships, butterflies that lifted the delicate glasswork of their doubled wings. Today the toymaker had added to his menagerie a poppy-red dragon, a pair of tussling fox kits, and a marvelous hare, which hopped and twitched its mottled ears just as if it were alive.
Eleanor could almost feel the greasy give of its brindle fur beneath her fingers, and smell its oiled-metal musk. As Thomas shoved in beside her, the scent of his hair—sweat and smoke and liniment—pulled her roughly from her daydreams.
“Why bother looking if you cannot buy?” one of the children said nastily.
Thomas dropped his head, but Eleanor favored the speaker with a knife-point smile. “Say one thing more,” she said. “I beg you.”
“I only mean to warn you,” the girl replied, her voice a smooth blue river with rocks beneath it. “The toymaker punishes thieves. He’ll drown you. He’ll come for you in the night with his silver calipers.”
I wish he would, Eleanor thought fiercely, her neck burning with shame and her fingertips pressed to the glass, their warmth turning its frost to wet jewels. I wish, I wish, I wish.
* * *
“Did you see the tin soldiers?” Thomas whispered from the pillow beside hers.
Eleanor shook her head.
“Or the forest made of glass? The kites? You only looked at the dolls, didn’t you?”
She shook her head again. She didn’t want to speak about the clockworks. Their clever brass pieces and neat metal chests, the places you could see their machinery and the places you couldn’t, so they seemed like magic. The way their ticking perfection made her mouth dry up and her stomach twist around the part of her that always felt hungry.
Thomas squeezed her wrist. “Do you hear that?”
Eleanor shook her head a third time. She was tired of listening to her mother weeping behind the curtain that shielded her bed.
“Not that,” he said. “That.”
She listened, and the sound repeated itself. A sound too small to be heard, surely, but she heard it all the same. It was a clump and a thump, like a boot breaking through the crust that hardens over snow. She crawled from their bed to peer out the window, and wondered if she was already dreaming.
On the street below crouched the wonderful hare, the one she’d seen through the toy shop window. It had grown as big as a draft horse, and on its back sat a life-size tin soldier. Through the glass Eleanor saw his beckoning hand, the moonlight catching on the blond metal of his mustache.
She sprang back, already reaching for her cloak.
“What are you doing?” Thomas said.
She paused in the act of pulling on a boot. “What are you doing? Get your coat!”
“It’s a trick,” he said. “It must be.”
All the sudden, delicate joy in her turned like old milk. “Stay behind then,” she hissed, “and just see if I’ll share with you.”
Her brother lingered a moment, looking wounded, then gave in as he always did, pulling on his shoes and following her down the stairs.
Outside all was quiet, but for the mechanical breathing of the hare. Up close it was enormous, its sides giving off a steady machine heat. The soldier on its back, trim in a white uniform with blue piping, held tight to the velvet sails of the creature’s ears.
“Come quickly,” he said, in a high, sweet voice. “You’ve been invited by the toymaker to play!”
He lifted them onto the hare’s back, his flexing fingers hard over Eleanor’s waist. No sooner were they seated than they were off, bounding over the snow in great leaps. Eleanor felt the hard ticking of the hare’s heart as her body in nightclothes slid over its fur. Beside her Thomas was taut as greenwood, his breath a cold white scuffle. When they reached the toymaker’s shop the hare ducked its head, sending the children tumbling onto the frostbitten cobblestones.
The shop nestled among darkened buildings like a lit birthday cake. From its open door poured tinkling music-box notes and thick golden light. Gripping her brother’s hand, Eleanor walked over its threshold.
There before them were all the toymaker’s treasures. The paper ballerinas had grown to the size of children, with the small heads and slim limbs of women. They pirouetted in skirts of taffeta netting, their laughter scattering like light. The hare shrank down to size and rejoined the menagerie, which danced on hind legs and bumped friendly noses against the children’s knees. The apple-cheeked woman who worked for the toymaker held out plump arms, moving from behind the counter to greet them. Eleanor laughed at the sight, triumphant at uncovering one of the shop’s secrets: the woman was a clockwork, her lower half a solid wedge of unworked metal.
Shyly Thomas approached the soldiers, and soon he was leading a company of them in battle against the red dragon, whose muzzle licked with real flames. Pixies made of lantern light scurried over the walls, and the little ballerinas pulled Eleanor to her knees, touching her eyelids with glitter and her lips with paint, and nestling a paste-and-tin crown into her hair. When she rose again the tin soldier waited for her. His arms held and spun her so lightly she might have been a soap bubble. The laugh that broke from her lips seemed stolen from a different girl.
The hours wore on and Eleanor thought nothing of the hard, poor world beyond the toy shop’s doors. The night was almost through when she remembered to ask after the toymaker, sensing dimly that she must thank him. She hoped he might send her home with an armful of gifts.
“The maker does not show his face,” the animals sang, surging around her in a giddy whirl.