Professor Greenbolt's Aetheric Marvels

Professor Greenbolt’s Aetheric Marvels

  By Melinda Bardon

  Cover illustration by Danielle Moreau

  https://www.melindabardon.com

  He came to town in the middle of the night like a bad dream, a quiet phantom in coattails, setting up shop in the abandoned grain mill when no one was watching. The busted-in door was repaired; the shattered, crag-toothed windows were replaced with glistening new panes, clear as the sky. Burr Ridge awoke to find a wonder had come to nest in its midst while every honest soul was asleep in their beds.

  Danny was the first to discover the change. He’d snuck out at dawn to go bullfrog hunting before the school bell rang. When he saw the ramshackle mill transformed into a two-story spectacle of thick viridian stripes on fresh whitewash from ground to gable, Dan dropped his frog net in a hurry and raced back down the streets to round up the rest of us. Pretty soon, a whole pack of children were standing at the doors, peering in the darkened windows in the hopes of glimpsing what manner of sorcery might be inside the transformed mill.

  It wasn’t long before our parents began figuring out we were neither in our beds nor at school and came looking for us. Their admonitions died on their lips, however, when they rounded the corner and saw the building for themselves. Half the town must have been out there that morning in their slippers and housecoats, staring up at the sparkling—yes, truly glitter-coated!—sign someone had fixed up above the door in a flowing, fat script:

  PROFESSOR GREENBOLT’S AETHERIC MARVELS

  Stars had been added for emphasis in the same green paint as the stripes, and that fancy glitter over the lettering positively gleamed when the morning sunlight hit it. We shielded our eyes from the brightness, but couldn’t bear to look away entirely. It even smelled unusual. A whiff of licorice and something darker, like engine oil, hovered in the dewy morning air. You’d think we were all spellbound, standing around staring at the place like we were. Finally, Ms. Knole, the librarian, marched up in her night bonnet and rapped firmly on the door.

  There was no response. Practically three dozen of us waited, holding our breaths, not daring to make a noise lest we miss a muffled “just a moment!” or “who is it?” No such answer came, however, from the other side of the door. A young girl named Trina kicked a rock sullenly.

  “My, my, I didn’t expect to have quite so many customers lined up so early on the first day!” said a cultured, somewhat grandfatherly voice behind us. The lot of us nearly jumped out of our skins and turned in unison to behold a peculiar little man, grinning as wide as any cat ever did. “I always knew those new-fangled advertising men in the city were full of nonsense!” he continued. “Customers can sense a good deal without it being plastered all over billboards, that’s what I always say!”

  “So this is a store, then?” said someone’s father from deep within the crowd. I never found out whose.

  “That’s right, that’s right,” the old man replied as he made his way to the door. “A shop, but ah! So much more! Now, would you all care to be the first to see?”

  None of us had ever seen the likes of a man such as the one before us. Not even Jimmy’s older brother, Dover, who had earned himself a scholarship and gone off to a city in the West for college. At least, if he had ever seen such a man, he never thought to write of it to his family back home. For there before us stood a short, wiry man with a luxurious, bushy mustache that had gone to gray a little bit, in a bright blue silk three-piece suit, vest and pocket-watch and all, with a matching blue silk top hat adorned with a bright yellow flower which nested upon a mop of well-oiled curly brown-gray hair between two floppy ears. An unimaginative and mean-spirited person might say he looked like a clown, but I don’t think clowns could afford to look so expensive. Besides that, he had that sort of mad sparkle to his eyes, the kind a man got when he was chasing something impossible. Clowns generally tend to just look drunk.

  We nodded our heads and pressed forward. Yes, we would very much like to be the first to see whatever it was this strange, colorful man from the city had to show us. He swung the doors to the mill open wide and we poured in to find ourselves dazzled yet further by the transformation. How had he accomplished such a thing with seemingly no workers? we wondered aloud to each other. For now the floors had been swept clean of debris and rat droppings, shelves had been put up, brightly colored lanterns hung from the ceiling, and the old mill had been completely taken over by toys.

  Everywhere we looked, there were toys, toys, and more toys! Dolls and tin soldiers, teddy bears and rocking horses, and beyond all the mundane playthings were items we had never before dreamed could be real. Shining white unicorns, the size of small dogs, winged cats that meowed if you poked their tiny pink noses, armored rhinoceroses, dragons decorated with an infinite number of small, gleaming scales in every color of the rainbow, and more, were all laid out for us like a king’s treasure.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am Professor Greenbolt,” the man declared grandly, “and welcome to my workshop! You may be surprised, astounded, and even a little bit afraid of what you find within these walls. I assure you, each of my creations has been crafted to bring only the purest joy to every individual soul that passes through this threshold. Once you find your favorite toy, you’ll never want to let it go. Come in, look around, and find yourself the perfect plaything.”

  He stepped behind a counter set up with a cash register and all manner of candies. There might have been even more types of sweets than there were toys, but who cared about ribbon candies and licorice when wind-up birds were fluttering around the ceiling and the tin soldiers were dashing about our feet on tiny tin horses?

  “How do they work, you ask?” Professor Greenbolt said, though in fact no one had asked the question aloud. “Aetheric gas! A rare commodity in this part of the world, to be sure, but I have connections in all corners of the globe, from the jungles of Brazil to the snowy peaks of the Himalayas! One day, everything will be run on aether-power and I will be but a footnote in the history of this technology. For now, however, this gas is a precious secret that I share only with you, my friends, and I beg of you not to tell a soul outside this fair town.”

  School was effectively cancelled for the day. Not even the sternest of adults could resist the allure of a magical toy shop, not one with so many astounding inventions. Lunch was a handful of butterscotches and a cherry phosphate that poured from a peculiar little dispenser the professor had set up near the cash register. Miraculously, not a single mother or aunt complained about that arrangement. Most were too busy whispering amongst each other, speculating on whether Professor Greenbolt were married to a magnificent seamstress, or if he simply had all his suits made in the city. It seemed the whole of Burr Ridge had come out for a magical secret carnival that had been built just for us.

  It was late in the evening when Greenbolt hit the sale button for the last time and wrapped up the last purchase. The shelves were nearly cleaned out, but he assured us all that more of his creations would be ready the next day. The dolls that could talk and walk were the most popular with us girls, though unicorns came in a close second. For myself, I went with a dragon: a green one the length of my forearm with leathery wings and baleful yellow eyes that blinked. When it snorted, it emitted sulphurous-smelling smoke from its nostrils.

  Weeks passed, and in spite of the professor’s request for silence, word of Greenbolt’s toy shop spread throughout the county, then throughout the next county over from us, until pretty soon the whole countryside knew about it. By Christmas-time, every kid’s wish list in the whole state could have doubled for an inventory of the professor’s stock. It wasn’t just enough to have one
doll, when the twins up the street had three each. It wasn’t good enough to have one unicorn when the mayor’s nephews had a small herd of them for their soldiers to ride on.

  By then, though, the adults had grown weary of the toys. They were cute, certainly. Astoundingly complex, to be sure. But weren’t the toymakers in the big city all using gears and cranks to make wind-ups that could put on a whole circus show in your living room? Weren’t music boxes cleverly placed into delicate porcelain dolls to make them sing any song you could dream up? Professor Greenbolt’s shop did steady business, but to the adults he had become just another city-dweller looking to line