Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages, Page 2

  A disturbed spider scuttled down a trembling web and vanished into the darkness.

  The gleaming blade moved along the crack inch by inch, prying at the lid, and one by one the nails pulled loose. Then the lid was thrown back, and Rex emerged from the crate that for decades had been his coffin.

  Rex was a tall, slim marionette, but at the moment no strings were attached to him. He was dressed in black shoes, a black tuxedo, a black top hat, white vest, white shirt, white tie, and white gloves.

  His eyes had a cold, wild look as he slowly surveyed the shadows around him.

  The marionette’s white garments were slightly soiled with faint gray and yellow stains. His tuxedo was filmed with dust and faded in places. The right shoulder of the coat had been eaten away by moths, so the upper part of his jointed wooden arm showed through. The red silk carnation in his lapel was rumpled, tattered.

  Cobwebs wound around him as he had climbed from the crate. He brushed them off his coat sleeves and trousers.

  He smiled, but there was no humor or warmth in that smile. His lean, cruel face was painted like a stage actor’s: pale except for spots of rouge on both cheeks, penciled eyebrows, and bright red lips.

  “Alive,” he said, and his voice echoed eerily through the shadowy subcellar. “At last, alive again.”

  He carried a sleek black cane that had a straight rather than curved handle, the cane of a stage dancer rather than that of someone truly in need of support. From the tip, a gleaming steel blade protruded. When he touched a button on the handle, the knife snapped back into the shaft of the cane, entirely hidden.

  The dim bluish-white light from the stained-glass chandelier gradually began to brighten. Farther away in the vast room, another chandelier came on, and it too grew slowly brighter.

  The deep cellar seemed like a living creature that was finally awakening after a long sleep.

  Rex laughed. It was a cold, mean laugh.

  Unlike the Oddkins two floors overhead, Rex was not a good toy.

  3.

  STILL ADDRESSING HIS FELLOW Oddkins from the workbench stool, Amos the bear said, “This morning, Uncle Isaac decided who should be the next magic toymaker. He chose Colleen Shannon. She owns the toy shop in the city.”

  “She’s nice,” one of the velvet penguins said from the sofa on which he was sitting with a cat, a dog, and a squat green frog.

  “I like her,” Burl the elephant said. He was a stout fellow who wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a fawn-colored vest, and dark brown pants held up by suspenders. “I like Mrs. Shannon very much, as much as I’d like peanuts if I were a real elephant and could eat.” He lifted his floppy ears slightly and gave a short side-to-side wave with his trunk, as if underlining his statement.

  The other Oddkins murmured agreement.

  “Uncle Isaac was going to invite her here this afternoon or tomorrow,” Amos said, “introduce us to her, and explain about the honor and importance of being the next toymaker. But now …”

  “Yes, but now …” Skippy the rabbit said somberly, though he had never been somber before. He glanced toward the sofa where Uncle Isaac had passed away.

  Amos said, “So it’s our job to go to Colleen Shannon and tell her that she must take over as toymaker.”

  “Go to her?” asked Butterscotch the dog. She padded forward from the corner. Most of her coat was soft and golden, though her tail and ears were dark brown. The white fur of her belly and chest extended over part of her face, which had a sweet and gentle look. Her paws, too, were white, as if she were wearing little boots. She looked up at Amos and frowned. “You can’t be serious. How can we go to her? She’s miles and miles from here.”

  “We’ve got feet, don’t we?” Amos replied.

  All over the workshop, Oddkins gasped in surprise upon realizing what Amos was proposing.

  Thunder, like the growling of mighty machines, rolled through the sky. Lightning throbbed at the windows. A few fat drops of rain plopped against the glass, but only a few drops, then nothing more, as if the sky were hoarding the water for one great deluge.

  “Go out?” Burl said from the floor below Amos’s stool. He raised his plump, tightly stitched trunk as if to sniff the idea. From his expression it was clear that he did not like what he smelled. “Out of the workshop? Travel ten or twenty miles, all the way across the city to Mrs. Shannon’s shop?”

  His big feet thumping on the oak floor, Skippy swiftly moved in front of Burl, cocked his head in the direction of his bent ear, and said, “Well, why not, big fella? I must’ve heard you wish a thousand times that you were a real elephant and could go on treks with a herd. You keep telling us that your heart yearns for the vast plains of Africa. This would only be a little trip to the city. Nothin’ to it. Why, if something gets in your way, you just tromp on it with your huge elephant feet—”

  Burl looked down at his stubby little velour-skinned feet and frowned.

  “—or knock ’em aside with your powerful trunk!” Skippy said with great drama, staggering backwards as if he had been hit.

  Burl wrinkled his brow and crossed his eyes in order to examine his own soft gray trunk.

  Amos was pleased to have Skippy on his side. He just hoped that some other Oddkins, more responsible and less silly than the rabbit, would also side with him. Butterscotch, for one. And maybe Patch and Gibbons.

  “Or,” Skippy told Burl, “if you run into some troublemaker, you could gore him with those enormous and wickedly sharp tusks.”

  Burl’s tusks were the size of the first joint of a man’s thumb, covered with soft cotton, stuffed with fireproof fiber, and about as sharp as butter. But the elephant, who did indeed dream of being a real pachyderm on the African veldt, was willing to be talked into believing that he was in fact an impressive creature. He did not seem to realize that Skippy was teasing him.

  “Well, I guess a little trip across the city isn’t out of the question,” Burl said. “I can take care of myself. Nothing out there is half as dangerous as the predators who stalk the veldt!”

  “That’s the spirit,” Skippy said, clapping him on the back. Thunder rumbled again. The rain was still holding back.

  Butterscotch padded over to the rabbit and said, “Whether we could make the trip or not is beside the point. I mean, we can’t risk being seen by adults. We must never be seen by anyone except the toymaker and the special children to whom we’ll one day be given.”

  Looking down on them from the workbench stool, Amos said, “Oh, yes, it’s a frightening and dangerous idea. But Uncle Isaac is in Heaven now, watching us, and this is what he’d want us to do.”

  “How do you know what he’d want us to do?” asked the frog on the sofa, his deep voice echoing around the big room.

  Amos frowned. “Well … gosh, I’m not sure how I know, but I know. This is what Uncle Isaac would want. Because every hour that passes without a new magic toymaker in charge of the workshop … well, the danger increases that a bad toymaker will come along.”

  “A bad toymaker?” said Burl.

  From a shadowy corner of the workshop, old Gibbons stepped forward. “Amos is right,” he said.

  Gibbons was a stout, squat, long-snouted creature, the only Oddkins that was not patterned after a recognizable animal. At least none that Amos recognized. White hair streamed back from Gibbons’s high forehead. He wore half-lens reading glasses on his long nose, but even without those spectacles he would have looked wise and scholarly.

  His appearance fascinated all the Oddkins. More than a few of them regarded him with reverence, as children might look up to a greatly respected and beloved teacher.

  Gibbons said, “Before Uncle Isaac, this workshop was run by an evil man who made magic toys that harmed children.”

  Every Oddkins in the room, except Amos, gasped in shock.

  “Harm children?” said Butterscotch, a most gentle dog. “But that’s … that’s unthinkable!”

  4.

  IN THE SUBCELLAR, SOMETHING st
range was happening.

  While Rex the marionette brushed the last of the dust from his tuxedo, the light from the stained-glass chandeliers grew slowly brighter. Throughout the vast chamber all signs of age and neglect began to fade. The thickly layered dust on the crates vanished as if it were water evaporating in summer heat. The cobwebs grew thin, thinner, and then disappeared.

  Some power had awakened in the basement, and though this power was invisible itself, its effects could be seen.

  The brittle, dry, stained wooden boxes somehow became new again. The words CHARON TOYS blazed brighter. Wherever it appeared, the company’s symbol—a silhouetted gondolier poling a boat along a dark river—looked freshly painted. Within the crates, noises arose: low grumbling, soft thumping, scraping, raspy voices.

  “Arise!” Rex cried. “Your time has come again!”

  The eerie voices grew louder, stronger.

  Some of the imprisoned toys began to pry at the lids of the crates from within, working their way out as Rex had done. Nails screeched. Wood splintered and cracked.

  Rex climbed onto the top of the crate that had been his own coffin. Clenching his white-gloved wooden fists, he raised his arms above his head and shouted, “Arise! Our time has come again! Time to torment children. Time to spread darkness instead of light. A wonderful new dawn of unhappiness and fear.”

  From scores of wooden boxes came the bad toys of the earlier age. They had all been hiding in the subcellar, dreaming nasty dreams, ever since Mr. Bodkins had taken over the factory from the evil toymaker who had owned it during the first four and a half decades of the century. Now they were finished with dreaming and ready to bring their nasty schemes into the real world.

  The boot heels of toy soldiers clicked on the cobblestone floor. Their enameled eyes were black, shiny, cold. The bayonets on their rifles had sharp, gleaming edges. The toy trucks had grilles that looked like toothy mouths; their headlights were watchful insect-like eyes. The stuffed-toy lion was not cuddly like the toys two floors above in Mr. Bodkins’s workshop; this cat had a mangy, hungry look. “The cycle begins anew!” Rex cried as the toys began to gather around on the floor, looking up at him. “Good gives way to evil. Our time has come again, and we’re going to seize it!”

  5.

  “HARM CHILDREN? UNTHINKABLE!” BUTTERSCOTCH repeated, shaking her head, dark ears flapping.

  “The forces of good and evil are always present in the world,” Gibbons said, putting one finger alongside his big snout, a gesture that he frequently used and by which he meant to indicate the truth and importance of what he was saying. “Sometimes evil wins,” he told them somberly.

  Gibbons was good at being somber.

  Too good at it, Amos the bear thought. There was a danger that Gibbons would demoralize the others.

  Amos quickly descended from the workbench stool to join his friends on the floor.

  Gibbons was the oldest toy in the shop—and in fact he was the first creature that Mr. Bodkins had stitched together decades ago. Gibbons was not meant to be sold, and he was the only Oddkin who would never serve a special child. He was a great scholar who knew everything about the lore and history of the Oddkins. If something unexpected happened to the toymaker, it was Gibbons’s sacred trust to carry his knowledge and the details of magic toymaking to the next toymaker. He took his responsibilities seriously, and his brow was permanently furrowed as a result.

  “Some of those bad toys may still be hiding here,” Gibbons said, scowling at them over the tops of his reading glasses.

  He was dressed like a character out of a story by Dickens (Amos had read a little of Charles Dickens, so he knew about such things), like a Victorian scholar or attorney, wearing garters on his shirt sleeves, a dark suit, wide tie, and peculiar fingerless gloves. His authoritative appearance and voice held the Oddkins’ attention.

  “Uncle Isaac believed that below the cellar was a subcellar where the creations of the previous toymaker were stored. But he couldn’t find the entrance—maybe because the way is guarded by dark magic.”

  Skippy the rabbit looked down at the floor. “Bad toys right under us?” His nose twitched. His tail twitched. His bent ear twitched. “Nasty toys?”

  “Very nasty,” Gibbons said.

  “We can deal with them,” Amos said firmly.

  “Sure. If they come around here,” Burl said, “I’ll tromp them.” He stamped one of his little elephant feet on the wooden floor for emphasis. “Squish ’em, is what I’ll do. Yes, sir. Squish, squish, squish.”

  “And I,” said Patch the cat, “will skewer them.”

  Patch was dressed like a cavalier in a silk shirt with wide sleeves, a green wraparound vest, a broad leather belt, and maroon trousers tucked into high boots. He wore a broad-brimmed hat with one side of the brim pinned to the crown, giving him a roguish look. The sword in his scabbard, on which he now rested one paw, was made of highly flexible rubber and could skewer no one. However, Patch believed himself to be a swordsman of great skill. And if you believe in yourself, almost anything is possible. If you believe in yourself, even a rubber sword can be a good weapon.

  “I suppose I could bite them,” Butterscotch said, “although I’d regret having to do such a thing even to a bad toy.”

  Her teeth were no sharper than Burl’s tusks, but she was clearly distressed by the thought of applying even soft fangs to the enemy.

  Swept up by these courageous statements, Skippy said, “And I will fight those nasties, too, if they show their faces around here.”

  “You?” said Patch with obvious doubt. “Just what could you do to scare them off?”

  Skippy blinked. He wiggled his nose in thought. “I could thump them with one of my big flat feet,” he finally declared.

  Patch drew his rubber sword from its scabbard. Stroking the blade he said, “Skippy, if these black-hearted scoundrels are truly nasty, they may just cut off the foot you try to thump them with, then use it as a good-luck charm.”

  Skippy’s ears stood straight up—even the bent one—and his eyes went wide.

  Lightning flickered at the windows, and tree shadows leaped in the blood-red twilight.

  Thunder clattered through the sky.

  The velvet penguins began to twitter nervously. The cats stood with their backs arched, and the dogs looked around worriedly, and two of the teddy bears hugged each other for comfort. On the sofa the frog croaked unhappily and spoke of doom in a deep, rumbling voice.

  Before the Oddkins could talk themselves into a state of panic, Amos took control of the situation. “We must set out for Colleen Shannon’s toy shop now, without delaying another minute.”

  “Yes,” Patch said, “before those evil toys climb up from the subcellar and try to stop us.”

  “Most of you will stay here,” Amos said. “If worse comes to worst, you’ll defend the toy factory from whatever might crawl out of the subcellar.”

  A small teddy bear named Ralph climbed onto the low table in front of the sofa and plucked a spoon from an empty china cup. The cup had held Uncle Isaac’s morning coffee. Ralph took half a dozen quick practice swings with the spoon, scowling with utmost seriousness while slashing at the air in front of him, as if he were wielding a deadly mace instead of a piece of silverware.

  Amos was not confident that the factory could be defended by spoon-armed soldiers, but he knew that his friends were gentle by nature and could not be expected to be fierce fighters. They would just have to do the best they could.

  In his most solemn, deep, and bearish voice, Amos continued: “If the Leben Toy Factory falls into their hands before we can reach Mrs. Shannon and convince her to take Isaac Bodkins’s place, then an evil toymaker might take over. The name will be changed back to what it once was—”

  “Charon Toys,” Gibbons said.

  “—and if that happens … well, it’ll be too late. The factory will be lost for many years. Bad toys will be made and sold for decades, and countless children’s lives will be darkened �
�� ruined. …”

  Ralph the bear swung his spoon again.

  The cats hissed.

  One of the dogs growled deep in his throat.

  A pair of monkeys—one corduroy, one velveteen—began to gather up paperweights, pens, pencils, figurines, and small vases that could be thrown at attackers. They piled these missiles in one corner of the room.

  As the monkeys worked, Amos said, “Now, I will lead a party of Oddkins to Mrs. Shannon’s toy shop. I’ll need true, selfless, and courageous companions—stout of heart, swift of foot, strong of limb, quick-minded, and dependable.”

  “Gosh, Amos, that sounds like me,” said Skippy the rabbit. The S-sounds whistled slightly between his big buck teeth.

  6.

  THE LINGERING AURA OF Isaac Bodkins’s goodness still protected the toy shop from evil. The creatures in the subcellar would not be able to ascend into the upper floors of the building and seize control until that aura had faded.

  Because the Master of Darkness—the Evil One himself—spoke to Rex in a clear voice that his fellow toys could hear only as a vague whisper, the tuxedoed marionette knew that several Oddkins were about to embark upon a difficult journey to Colleen Shannon’s toy shop. They would probably not survive the dangers of the night, the storm, and the city. Their chances of reaching Mrs. Shannon in time were very small, but Rex could not permit them to make the trip unchallenged.

  “We must stop them,” he told the malevolent crowd that gathered around him in the subcellar. “We must go after them and wipe them out. I will need assistance. Lizzie, you will come with me.”

  Lizzie was another marionette. She was made up like a flapper from the Roaring Twenties. She wore a sleeveless red dress with a short hemline and a long waistline, a matching hat that was tightly fitted and decorated with a small blue feather, and three strands of blue beads. Her cheeks were brightly rouged. Her hair lay across her forehead in a series of tight curls. There was a hard, cold look about her that Rex liked, a meanness in her blue eyes. She carried a black cigarette holder that contained a plastic cigarette. Like Rex, she had no strings attached to her.