Toyland- the Legacy of Wallace Noel

by Tony Bertauski

  So she put her arms around him.

  Unlike all the other visions, she felt him move in her grasp. His fur soft, his padding firm. She squeezed him and felt the gush of love. The floodgates cracked open. He stiffened then relaxed. She could feel him quiver as the warmth flooded into her and filled her.

  Completely.

  The room dimmed to a dark place that didn’t feel lonely anymore. It was just the two of them, holding each other, in a space that was warm.

  He wasn’t alone.

  The little bell rang.

  Snowflakes piled on top of her. The night was filled with lofty white puffs that continued to climb higher, eventually drifting off to find trees and earth.

  Toys were strewn across the field.

  Most of them, however, were still standing. Next to her was a pile of black and white fabric. Soldier was next to it.

  He was missing an arm. Fresh dents were carved across his chest. He stood there not like a victor, but a protector who would never, ever let down his guard. He laid his broken spear against the mysterious metal ball.

  Noel toys each come with a surprise inside them—a marble that makes them special. Only Pando doesn’t have a marble.

  The metal ball was etched with symbols, just like the drawing she’d seen in Wallace’s sketchbook, the one he was so obsessed to record. This was his most special creation, the toy that would be the pinnacle of all his creations.

  A lifelike toy that did more than just love.

  Piggy climbed into her arms. A heavy footstep crunched behind her. Tin scrambled away from the stranger who appeared from nowhere.

  He seemed to come out of the dark, poking the ground with a long stick. With a grunt, he took a knee in the settling fluff and uncovered the etched metal ball. Soldier didn’t stop him. That was when she noticed two moles above his eyebrow.

  And the green eyes.

  23

  A long coat dragged behind him, the hem frayed and tattered.

  His beard was as white as snow and reached past his waist. Perhaps if he stood upright, the beard would merely be to his chest. He stabbed the hard ground with a gnarled cane and shuffled through the fluff and shreds of fabric.

  The etched metal ball lay in the goose down like a medieval egg, the top half dull gray. Standing guard, the soldier was buried up to his waist. He watched the old man shuffle near without moving, as if this was the treasure he’d been charged to guard.

  Somewhere in the beard, a smile moved.

  The old man’s eyes crinkled, and laughter rumbled from the whiskers. He lifted a feeble hand to his forehead.

  The soldier returned his salute.

  The old man continued kicking around the stuffing. He was looking for something, muttering as he went, stopping at the toys who had fallen and did not get up. Occasionally, he grunted. Often, he shook his head. He continued searching and then bent over with a tired groan. With a knobby, knuckled hand crimped over the cane, he tossed the stuffing aside.

  The toymaker’s hat.

  He brushed it off and looked inside it. A gentle smile and a kind look possessed the bright eyes hidden in deep folds.

  Bells chimed in the distance.

  A herd of deer was near the trees, noses in the snow in search of lichen. The biggest of them all was watching the old man. Tin was starting to doubt he’d even seen her. The toys had gathered in such a tight knot around her that she was buried.

  “Come now.” His voice was strong and joyous. “Gather round, just like we used to, remember? Come along.”

  The toys, however, did not budge.

  They remained suspicious, as if Pando had assumed the form of a feeble old man. He held out his arms like an elder magician who’d forgotten his tricks. No rabbits in his wooly sleeves, stuffed or otherwise. Slowly, he lowered them.

  For the first time, his gaze fixed on her.

  “My dear, what you’ve done is nothing short of remarkable. And I cannot apologize enough for my tardiness, to leave this monumental task all alone with you. It never should’ve happened like this.” He gestured to the remnants of fabric and stuffing. “Be that as it may, there is a remedy.”

  He held up a crooked finger.

  “My promises are not the best, but I do keep them.”

  If he was Santa Claus, then all of the stories were way off. There was no red coat or floppy hat, no belly full of jelly. Just the white beard, scraggly at that. And perhaps a twinkle in his eye.

  But the moles. The green eyes, she thought. It has to be.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Go ahead.”

  One by one, the toys crawled off her. They moved around the old man as he nodded his approval, as if they were surrounding him. All except Piggy went. She remained seated firmly on Tin’s chest. The old man nodded with a twinkle.

  “Gather them,” he said. “We can do this.”

  Reluctantly, they did as he asked. They scooped up the empty fabric and piles of stuffing, brought them back to Tin, stacking them on all sides of her until she was surrounded by the remains of what had happened, buried in a tribute. They gathered it all.

  Except for Pando’s remains.

  The old man nudged the metal ball farther away then held out his hands. The toys formed a circle around Tin as if she was the tribute and they were about to sing. The old man was part of it. He joined hands with a stuffed giraffe and a plastic baby doll with one lazy eye. It was a strange sight.

  She heard voices.

  The old man closed his eyes. His mouth gaped open, but he didn’t make a sound. The song was in her head. They were singing.

  If you want to play…

  The fabric fluttered. The stuffing swirled. A flood of energy, like the hands of the wind, swept around her. Tin felt the bonds of love move inside her. She was weak and alone, nearly emptied of her own vitality, all of it given to the toys, to wake them up. To save them.

  And now they were giving it back.

  The inanimate toys that had fallen felt it too. They began to move. They lifted their heads as if waking from a pleasant dream, filling their sides with stuffing, leaping up to join their family. The circle grew wider and the love grew stronger. The song grew louder.

  And stay out all day…

  She closed her eyes and felt like she was floating high above the ground, a titan who could walk over the forest and through the oceans, a container who had endless capacity to love. Not a creature was stirring, all through the night.

  I know the place where we can do it.

  For a moment, she thought she was alone, that all of this was a dream. But the toys were still there. The old man, too. He was more wilted than before, stooping like an ancient spruce holding the burden of winter on his branches. He faltered a step. Tin started to get up.

  “No, no,” he said. “Stay where you are.”

  The toys, once reluctant and suspicious, now gathered at his sides, helping him shuffle toward her. He looked back at the metal ball and the pile of black and white fabric and weakly pointed.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Several toys—including a boar, a brown bear and an elephant—hoisted the ball on their backs. They followed the old man to the tower. Tin helped him sit on the ground. He leaned back with a groan.

  He took deep breaths, as if smelling the country air for the first time. Or a place long forgotten. Something familiar that felt so comfortable.

  Zebra sniffed his coat.

  She pawed at the beard. The old man opened his eyes. He stroked her with both hands, the black and white mane bristling. She laid her head on his chest then flopped on her side, nuzzling into the long whiskers. He held her with both hands.

  “You’re…” Tin said. “You’re Pando.”

  His laughter was frail and trailed off. He nodded with a tired sigh.

  “Is Wallace—”

  “Gone?” He rested his hand on the metal ball. “No, he’s in here. He’s here.”

  “I didn’t… is he…” Tin swallowed. “Is
he hurt?”

  “No, dear.”

  Even after everything Wallace had done, to her and her family, the toys, she couldn’t live with the guilt of harming him.

  “The hat chose him,” he said, “but you probably already know that. He was a decent man then, a good man perhaps. And he didn’t want to die, not with so much life to live. Perhaps the hat knew that when he was lost on the North Pole, so it saved him. But, after that, he just…”

  An amused chuckle escaped his throat. He turned his head with a feeble smile and brightened up, as if recognizing her for the first time.

  “He loved her, you know,” he said.

  He dug a handkerchief from his coat and blew his nose like a tuba. He smiled down at Zebra, rubbing her nose.

  “Why did she leave?” Tin asked.

  “I think you know why.”

  “They need to hear it.”

  The toys were watching. They were listening. The emotion that wrung Pando’s voice was thick with the memory of Awnty Awnie, and he was holding it in.

  Wallace wasn’t the only one to fall in love with her.

  “My dear, she left,” he said, “because he loved something more.”

  All at once, the toys migrated closer. They crawled onto his legs, onto his shoulders, into his arms. He looked around with a pained smile. He didn’t love them any less now than he did all those years ago.

  “He had tapped the hat’s magic,” he said. “It’s not magic, really, but it feels that way. He gave it to them. Giving life felt so… so remarkable. ‘You are all my children,’ he would say often. But then he became something else.”

  She heard the sadness. It was the same sadness she’d heard in the workshop, witnessing Wallace empty the elephant, taking the toy’s lifeforce, as if drinking it, becoming drunk with it. That was just before Pando had done the impossible, so impossible that it couldn’t be anything other than magic. He had the power to move the wind, to send thoughts. Wallace didn’t realize everything Pando could do.

  He switched bodies.

  The toys took turns in Pando’s embrace, waiting patiently to climb into the crook of his arm. He squeezed each one with the same amount of affection, reluctantly releasing them before the next one.

  “They’re perfect,” he said. “Wallace was making the world a better place, one at a time. He was helping Santa deliver the most important thing in the world.”

  Love.

  Something snorted in the distance. The deer were still grazing at the edge of the forest. The biggest of them was staring in their direction. Even from that distance, his rack of antlers was enormous.

  “Children need love more than something to play with,” he said. “The toys had more than enough.”

  He glanced at Tin.

  “There’s a reason the hat wasn’t for him,” he said. “Your aunt saw it. She tried to stop him, but it was… it was too late. He was lost again.” He cast his gaze at the metal ball. “All this love, and still he was empty.”

  With help from a stuffed gorilla, he put the ball on his lap. It was heavier than it appeared. He followed the intricate carvings, his finger retracing their design. He pulled the black and white fabric to his face and drew a deep breath.

  “How did you do it? How did you switch—”

  He held up his hand. “I understand it seems impossible. It should be impossible. But there are so many things in this world that humans just can’t know. Even Wallace didn’t know what I could do when he created me. You have to understand I am special. I am different than all the rest of the toys. And I understood what would happen if I didn’t do something.”

  “So you left?” she said.

  He dropped his heavy hands, recalling a decades-old memory. “There was someone who could fix this.” He took the hat in both hands. “I went to find him.”

  “The toymaker?” A long pause. “Did you? Did you find him?”

  He turned his head. The folds of skin, the countless wrinkles and faded green eyes told of the years he’d accumulated and the things he’d seen.

  “It’s not up to me to find him,” he said. “It took all these years to discover that. But journeys are like that, my dear. They take as long as they take. The hat will find him.” He held it up. “It just found you first.”

  “My family.” She began to fidget. “What about my—”

  “I’m sorry, how selfish of me. Your family is just fine, I promise. They’re sleeping, nothing more. The song was one of my gifts to bestow peaceful sleep and glorious dreams. Wallace was using it for other reasons. I assure you they are dreaming on their own now, and they’ll wake without a scratch or a memory of what happened. He’s making sure everyone will have a wonderful Christmas.”

  “He?”

  A twinkle lit his eyes at just the right moment.

  She didn’t want to say whom she thought Pando was talking about because maybe it was someone else. But there were reindeer by the trees and bells ringing on harnesses.

  He threw his weight forward with a grunt and a groan. The elephant and gorilla pushed him upright and then helped him stand. He was bent over, taking a moment to straighten up like his back had rusted over time. But like a tree that had grown crooked with time, he wasn’t meant to straighten.

  He scooped up the metal ball and curled it like a pumpkin. It made her nervous to see him clutch something so heavy.

  “He, uh, he meant well,” he mused. “And I loved who he was. Just not what he’d become.”

  He seemed to drift into a well of memories that the ball released. A lot of history was packed in there. She thought, for a second, he had forgotten she was there.

  His green eyes peered through wrinkled slits. His laughter echoed off the trees and startled the herd of reindeer. It trailed off into a coughing fit. He wiped his eyes and dug his free hand into his pocket to retrieve the toymaker’s hat. He studied it like he did the metal ball.

  “Do you know why it chose you?” he said. “The hat.”

  “Because I look like my aunt.”

  He squinted again. “No. Well, maybe. But it’s more than that. What makes a person isn’t the way you look or the way you feel any more than Wallace was a panda bear.”

  The black and white fabric was just a suit. Wallace was in the metal ball.

  “You’re more like your aunt than you realize, and the hat knew it. The toys too.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “You’re real, Tinsley Ann. Genuine. You’re vulnerable and courageous. And, most importantly, you love.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t—”

  “The hat doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “Oh.” She looked around at the rutted field and damaged toys. “I think it made a big one.”

  He took her hands. His hands were dry and thin like fallen leaves. But they gave warmth that went all the way through her.

  “Mistakes,” he said, putting the hat in her hands, “look different in the past.”

  “I can’t keep this.”

  “I’m not leaving it. In fact, I’m taking it back.”

  “Taking it back…?”

  “Where it belongs. This too.”

  He lugged the metal ball up a few inches. If Wallace was still in there, he wasn’t going to stay at Toyland. Not after the mess he’d made. Perhaps, if there were so many things possible, like Pando had said, then someone on the North Pole could fix Wallace.

  A sullen mood seemed to age him. He looked like a feeble old man under the weight of responsibility. He sighed deeply. The largest of the reindeer stretched its neck toward the moon and let out a hoarse call.

  “A gift. It is Christmas, after all.” He gestured to the hat. “One more story.”

  He smiled with a twinkle. There was something jolly about him. She hesitated. It was the last time she would see the hat. It didn’t belong to her. It didn’t belong at Toyland.

  “What about them?”

  She picked up Piggy and Zebra. Dozens gathered aroun
d her. She wanted to pick them all up or roll around in a puppy pile of toys. She didn’t want to lose them.

  “They’ll always be there for you.” He opened the hat. “That’s their job.”

  The reindeer were trotting near the trees, their harness bells chiming. Something was in the shadows behind them. It was large and boxy. It looked like a sleigh. And someone was sitting in the front of it.

  “May I?”

  He placed the toymaker’s hat on her head. Lights started to sparkle around him like fireflies of different colors, blinking on and off—red and green and blue. She wanted to reach out and grab one. Before he pulled it snug, she heard his crackly voice one last time.

  If you want to play, and stay out all day…

  24

  They weren’t fireflies.

  Colors flashed on the bristly branches of a Christmas tree. Strings of popcorn and cranberries were draped from the limbs; silvery strands of tinsel hung from them, too. The ornaments were homemade—pine cones with glitter, foam balls with hot-glued beads.

  Tin reached for one.

  It was a hard plastic snowman. She’d made it with her mom during a snow day. School had been cancelled and Mom stayed home from work. They had cut out plastic figures and colored them with markers then put them in the oven till they shrank. They made them every year after that.

  The snowman was her very first one.

  Mom was wearing a sweatshirt with a candy cane print and carrying a small plate of cookies and a glass of milk. Candles threw warm light across the room. Her hair was past her shoulders. Tin couldn’t remember it ever being that long. She looked younger.

  Sadder.

  She left the plate in front of the fireplace. There were only three stockings hung from the mantel. A big cushiony chair was facing the window. It had been pushed across the room. Awnty Awnie’s loopy brown hair was above it. She wasn’t watching the traffic go by. In the dark glass, Tin saw a little girl on her lap.

  They were looking at the sky.

  Awnty Awnie looked just like Tin remembered her, heavyset and soft. Doughy enough that a little girl sank into her. Tin knew that she was looking at herself on Awnty Awnie’s lap. She also knew that Little Tin was five years old.