Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages, Page 3

  Rex said, “And you, Gear, will also join us. We might have need of your strength.”

  Gear was a robot, the last Charon toy created before Mr. Bodkins took over the factory, a futuristic design. He was made entirely of metal and was lightly filmed with rust that steadily disappeared as the power of evil revitalized him after years of inactivity. Two small but fierce yellow lights glowed in his deep eye sockets. His lipless mouth was toothed like the jaws of a steam shovel, and his hands looked frighteningly powerful. He stepped forward, pushing through the crowd of vicious toys, all of whom crowded forward in their eagerness to be chosen. Gear’s feet clanked softly and occasionally struck a spark on the cold, stone floor.

  The robot stopped in front of the crate on which Rex stood. He looked up. In a voice of ice and iron, he said, “I will tear their soft limbs apart. I will rip the stuffing out of them. I will tear them to pieces.”

  Something about Gear made even Rex uneasy, so he looked quickly away and pointed to Jack Weasel. “You will join us as well.”

  Jack Weasel was a jack-in-the-box. His red box was on wheels that boasted shiny, razor-sharp rims. His body was an accordionlike structure that rose out of the box and supported a wickedly painted clown’s head. His mouth was large and red, and his teeth were yellow. The pupil of his right eye was small and green, but the pupil of his left eye was large and blood-red. He wore a ruffled clown’s collar and a black derby much too small for him, although there was nothing comical about his attire. He could propel himself with two highly flexible arms that ended in four-fingered, white-gloved hands.

  His wheels clicking on the stone floor, Jack rolled forward and gazed admiringly at Rex. He giggled. In a whispery voice he said, “I’ll snatch one of those cuddly little Oddkins, and I’ll drag him inside my box, and I’ll close the lid tight, and that will be the end of him.”

  Jack Weasel looked perfectly mad.

  He giggled again.

  Rex’s final choice was Stinger the bee.

  This creature was made of wood with hinged metal wings and four hinged legs of wood. His yellow body was marked by black stripes. His head was yellow with large crimson eyes, and his facial features were less like those of a bee than like those of a man. When Stinger was held in a child’s hand and swooped through the air, his wings would flap. He also made a buzzing sound as wind passed through a hole in his body and, in passing, turned two sets of noise-making propellers. He had red wheels, too, so he could be rolled along the floor.

  Rex chose Stinger because, powered by the forces of evil, the bee could actually fly. He would be able to soar ahead of the others in search of the Oddkins and report back to Rex when he located the enemy. Besides, Stinger was a good warrior as well. His body ended in the weapon that gave him his name: a curved stinger that did not look impressive until, when needed, it telescoped out of the bee’s body, becoming three times longer and much sharper than it first appeared to be.

  When he heard Rex call his name, Stinger flew out of a dark corner of the subcellar. He buzzed over the heads of the other toys. He was grinning. His red eyes flashed.

  “They have no chance against us,” Rex said, and a low growl of agreement passed through the crowd in the subcellar.

  7.

  HAVING CLIMBED ONTO THE workbench again, Amos fumbled with the latch on the casement window and pulled the two halves inward. A cold gust of wind swept into the toy factory.

  Nightfall was fast approaching. The fiery red western sky was turning purple. The leafless trees swayed, and the dead grass rippled like the brown surface of a muddy pool.

  The other members of Amos’s mission were on the bench behind him: Burl the elephant, Butterscotch the dog, Patch the cavalier cat, old Gibbons, and Skippy the rabbit. They had all said good-bye to the other Oddkins—the penguins, the gravel-throated frog, the cats and dogs and monkeys—who would remain behind to defend the factory if nasty toys did indeed climb out of the darker regions beneath the old building.

  The winter-seared lawn was only a few feet below the window, and Amos urged Burl to leave quickly.

  The elephant stood on the sill for a moment, hesitant. His large ears rose and fell and rose and fell as the wind got under them. “My kind were meant to rule the veldt,” he told Amos. “We weren’t made for jumping.”

  “And my kind,” Amos said, “were made to eat honey and to catch fish with our paws and to hibernate in caves, but if I had to rollerskate on an airplane wing in order to accomplish what Uncle Isaac asked of me, I wouldn’t hesitate.”

  “I’d never hibernate in a cave,” Burl said, teetering on the windowsill as the wind flapped both his vest and his ears. “Mice might live in a cave. And there’d be bats, too, which are nothing but flying mice. I don’t like mice. No, sir. Like all elephants, I have a healthy fear of mice. Horrid little creatures.” He shivered.

  Amos said, “I’m sorry to hear that … because there’s a mouse on the workbench right behind you.”

  Burl squeaked in fear and jumped out of the window. He landed solidly on both stumpy feet. As lightning flickered in the darkening sky, he turned and looked up at the window, obviously surprised by his surefootedness. If he realized that he had been tricked, he was not angry; he grinned and waved his trunk at Amos. Outside, the trees surrounding the toy factory appeared to be melting into one enormous black blot. On the lawn, shadows were lengthening. Butterscotch leaped down to the grass without hesitation, and Patch followed with the wondrous agility of his kind.

  As the oldest of the six, Gibbons was the least spry. Over the decades Uncle Isaac had repaired Gibbons’s stitching when necessary, but the elder creature’s joints and fabric were not as flexible as they had once been. Besides, he was a scholar, bookish by nature, not created for such adventures as these.

  “Can you do it?” Amos asked worriedly.

  “Oh, of course,” said Gibbons. He pitched his cane down onto the dead, brown grass. His long snout twitched, and he raised one eyebrow as he looked sideways at Amos. “Fortunately, my spectacles are glued to my nose.” He jumped.

  Skippy stepped to the window and said, “I would prefer a ladder.”

  “We don’t have a ladder,” Amos said.

  “A rope will do.”

  “No rope.”

  “A parachute?” the rabbit asked.

  “It’s only a few feet down.”

  “A helium-filled balloon would be nice.”

  Amos planted one foot against Skippy’s tail and shoved him out of the window.

  The rabbit made a frantic effort to twirl his long ears as if they were the blades of a helicopter, but instead of keeping him aloft they became tangled. He hit the ground, rolled, and knocked over all of the other Oddkins who were waiting for him.

  Standing on the windowsill, Amos looked down at his friends as they picked themselves up from the winter-dry grass, and he thought that they looked pathetically small and helpless. The world beyond the toy factory suddenly seemed huge, frighteningly vast. The sky was even bigger than the land beneath it: barely touched by light in the west, the blackest of blacks in the east, and full of churning storm clouds. The chilly and powerful wind chased crisp leaves across the lawn, rattled the bare branches of trees, and caused the evergreen shrubs to shiver and rustle as if they were alive. The city—and Mrs. Colleen Shannon’s toy shop—seemed as far away as the moon.

  Dear God, Amos thought, the world is so big, we are so small, and I’m afraid.

  But then he said to himself, “Alpha and Omega. I will be the first to face up to every challenge and the last to retreat. I will be the first to forge ahead and the last to surrender to fear.” He nodded and said aloud, “Okeydoke,” and then he jumped.

  He landed on his feet, stumbled, but did not fall. By the time he turned and looked up, a corduroy monkey named Scamp was closing the halves of the casement window. “Good luck,” Scamp called to them.

  “We’ll need all the luck we can get,” Skippy said as he peered anxiously around at the blust
ery night and the lowering sky.

  “We’ll make our own luck,” said Patch, speaking with all the confidence of a heroic cavalier. His bushy tail fluttered in the wind, and the wide sleeves of his shirt billowed.

  Skippy said, “Is your hat sewed to your head?”

  “Sewed tight,” Patch confirmed.

  “Well,” Skippy said, “that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about.”

  Amos said, “Enough talk. Let’s go.”

  8.

  SECRET STONE STAIRS LED up from the subcellar to a hidden door in the wall of the first cellar. Rex, Lizzie, and Gear could climb the steps with no difficulty. Of course, Stinger flew to the top. The bee made a high-pitched buzz that reverberated between the damp walls of the stairwell, irritating Rex.

  Equipped with wheels but with no legs, Jack Weasel found the climb more troublesome. However, his arms were quite powerful, so he was able to drag and pull himself from one step to the next, driven by his desire to get his hands on the Oddkins.

  Neither Rex nor any of Jack’s other comrades offered to help him reach the upper landing. They had been created without a single drop of mercy, without a trace of compassion, with no capacity for kindness. Although they had the same goals, and though they thought as if with a single mind, and though the same vicious desires drove them, they never considered assisting one another.

  The head of the stairs was illuminated by a bare bulb in a wire cage. In that dim glow, Rex saw that perhaps a hundred spiders had ascended with them and were perched on webs overhead. They were fat, glossy black spiders with long legs, a good-bye party no doubt sent by the Master of Darkness himself.

  “Little girls are afraid of spiders,” Lizzie said. “One day, when I am at last sent to a toy shop and sold, I will collect the ugliest spiders I can find and hide them under my child’s pillow and in her shoes.”

  Jack Weasel giggled with approval.

  “You will have your chance with a child,” Rex promised Lizzie. “Our time has come again. You’ll have your chance.”

  Gear hooked his blunt fingers into a slot in the secret door. Straining his iron muscles, he forced the portal open wide enough to allow them to pass into the higher cellar.

  Rex pointed his black cane at a ceiling light. It winked on.

  He could feel the lingering aura of Bodkins’s goodness; it seeped down from the factory above, where it was undoubtedly far stronger. Even though Bodkins was dead, the magic toymaker’s benign influence would not fade for several hours and would be strong enough in the rooms overhead to prevent the Charon toys from seizing control. For now, they dared go no higher in the building than this cellar.

  “The Oddkins have already left for Mrs. Shannon’s shop,” Rex said, merely telling the others what an inner voice had told him. “We’ve got to get out of here quickly, find those soft-bellied goody-goodies, and destroy them.”

  They discovered a coal bin in one corner of the cellar, climbed the pile of coal, and crawled out of the factory by way of a heavy hinged door at the top of the bin.

  The lawn was windswept, and the air was cold.

  Lightning stabbed through the sky. Jagged shadows leaped in the brief, bright spasm.

  Thunder cracked, then rumbled overhead.

  Encircling the lawn, skeletal black trees, stripped of leaves, seemed to jump forward with each flash of lightning, then retreated into darkness.

  Rex laughed with delight. He loved nights like this.

  9.

  HIS NAME WAS NICK Jagg, and this was his first day of freedom in a long time. He had spent the past fifteen years in prison, for he had once committed terrible crimes. This afternoon, having served his full sentence, he had been released.

  Since stopping for an early supper in a roadside diner, Jagg had been heading steadily north. He was not sure where he was going or what he would do when he got there. But he felt in his bones that he must go north. Something seemed to be calling him in that direction. He walked in the cold rain along the shoulder of the highway.

  He wore a cheap pair of black shoes, a cheap blue suit, a white shirt, no tie, and a baggy raincoat—all of which he had received on his discharge from prison. He had a hundred dollars in his pocket. His clothes and the hundred bucks were all he owned in the world.

  Tall, lean, hawk-faced, Nick Jagg looked dangerous. He could make people uncomfortable just by walking into a room. His gray eyes were almost transparent, cold as ice—and now, at night, they seemed to shine like the eyes of a wild animal.

  As he walked along the highway, sometimes the rain drizzled down, and sometimes it fell with such force that it seemed that a dam had burst in the sky. Jagg’s hair was plastered to his head. His shoes were soggy, and the skin of his feet had shriveled inside his wet socks. His pants were soaked by the spray from passing cars.

  He was thoroughly wet, cold, and miserable, but he used his misery to fuel his hatred. Jagg hated everyone and everything. He hated the prison and every man in it. He hated the world outside the prison and everyone who lived in freedom. He hated the drivers who roared past him without offering a ride, and frequently he hurled curses at them even though they could not hear him.

  Jagg even hated the drivers who stopped and picked him up. He did not curse them, but he sat in sullen silence in their cars. He would speak only a few grudging words, and he scowled at them when they tried to engage him in conversation. He made them so uneasy that none would carry him more than a few miles; therefore he spent most of the afternoon and evening walking in the rain when he could have been riding in comfort.

  His only reason for living was to enjoy his hatred, to spread his evil wherever he could. He took no pleasure in books or movies or good food or music, found no joy in the beauty of the world, and never laughed. Without his hatred he would have turned to dust and blown away.

  In prison, after he had served long enough to be given certain privileges, he had passed much of his time in the woodworking shop. The prisoners built simple toys that were given to various charities for distribution to needy children each Christmas.

  Jagg hated all children as much as he hated all adults. He built toys with hidden flaws, wooden cars and wooden dolls that would break after only an hour or two of play. His greatest—and only—pleasure was the knowledge that the children playing with his toys would be reduced to tears when their bright new dolls and trucks and wooden-wheeled cars cracked and splintered into useless junk.

  Last night, his final night in prison, Jagg had experienced a strange, vivid dream about a toy factory. The sign had said CHARON TOYS, and he had seen himself busy at a workbench, constructing a clown doll with a wicked gleam in its painted eyes.

  He had recalled the dream several times today, while trudging through the rain. He was puzzled by it. No other dream had ever seemed so real.

  Jagg was also puzzled by his own determination to keep moving northward in spite of the storm. Even with just one hundred dollars in his pocket, he could have afforded lodgings in a rooming house or a cheap motel. He could have waited until the rain passed, which would have made his journey less miserable. But he was unable to stop. He was compelled to slog on through the storm. He felt as if he were a sliver of iron being drawn northward by some enormous magnet.

  My future is in the north, he thought.

  But he did not know what his future might be.

  The rainy highway glistened blackly.

  Now and then, cars approached. Their occupants were invisible behind the glare of headlights and rain-streaked windshields. Each time he heard an engine behind him, Jagg turned and raised his thumb in the classic gesture of hitchhikers. Most of the cars sped by him. A few drivers slowed down, but when they got a closer look at Jagg, they accelerated again and disappeared into the stormy night.

  A thin fog appeared like a gauzy cloak on the fields that flanked the highway. Later, there were trees bearded with fog.

  Jagg trudged on.

  The air grew colder.

  Jagg wondered
if the rain would turn to sleet or snow.

  He shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat and hunched his shoulders and continued north.

  2

  A DARK AND SORMY NIGHT

  1.

  VICTOR BODKINS—NEPHEW OF Isaac, the recently deceased toymaker—drove along the night-shrouded suburban lane, muttering to himself. He often muttered to himself because he did not have a wife and lived alone, and he was without close friends, so the only person to whom he could talk at any length was himself.

  He was a sour man. Though he was still young, only thirty-five, he seemed seventy because his vinegary personality had made him old before his time. His face was pale, lean, pinched, and unpleasant. He always looked as if he had just bitten into a lemon. He was tall and too thin. He hunched over the wheel as he drove. When on foot, he walked with a stoop, as though a mountain was balanced on his narrow shoulders.

  At the moment he was both sad and angry.

  He was sad because his uncle was dead. They had never been very close, which was Victor’s fault. Sweet-tempered Isaac would have delighted in a warm relationship. But Victor had neither the time nor the desire to be close to anyone. Now that Isaac was gone, however, Victor missed him. In fact, Victor was surprised at how very much he missed his Uncle Isaac.

  At the same time he was angry because Isaac’s life as a toymaker seemed like such a total waste. Toys were for children, not for grown men. That was Victor’s view. Actually he had never much cared for toys even when he was a child. By contrast Isaac had never really grown up, which was why he was so happy to spend his life surrounded by toys. Such a waste. Such a pity.

  Victor braked at a stop sign, then turned right, heading for Leben Toys, which was only about a mile away.