The Toymaker's Apprentice

by Sherri L. Smith

  “Are they not . . . perfection?” the Queen asked.

  To their credit, not a single mouse squeaked, though some fainted—the pale mouse in the russet gown dropped like a leaf, narrowly missing Ernst’s other foot. No one else moved.

  Except for the little princes. They turned back toward their mother, her breath stirring their delicately folded ears. Two pink paws reached for her face, to grasp a whisker or stroke the warm gray fur. But those new eyes betrayed them. The hands spasmed (Only two hands! thought Ernst) and the blinking eyes slid out of sync. Another twitch, and the paws missed her cheek, tugging the crown from her head instead.

  As with all infants, born knowing how to grasp but not how to let go, the little paws gripped the crown tightly. It stayed clutched to the tiny mouse chest, rising and falling with the beating of a single heart. Some of the princely heads turned to see this new shiny thing; a few gazed in other directions. The one in the center, whose face was framed by the others like a jewel, only had eyes for his mother. Ernst had no doubt that one little boy would drop the crown in favor of her touch. If only his little hands knew how.

  Hmm. Ernst had thought of him as a boy. Not a collective, but an individual. They were all boys, he realized. Trapped on one perch perhaps, but each face seemed to have its own will.

  The Queen looked at her distorted brood and smiled.

  “They reach for the crown! Thou seest?” she addressed the congregation. “They will be conquerors!”

  As one, every mouse in the audience chamber, from piebald guard to noble guest, dropped to their knees and flattened themselves in obeisance.

  The Queen looked out over their bowed heads at Ernst Listz, who stood, unable to move for all the mice crowded at his feet. The Queen crooned a few soft notes and the boys’ ears twitched. A strange faintness swept over Ernst again, as it had outside the birthing room. Like the sound was drawing him away from his body. The feeling faded as the melody drifted away.

  “Like the Piper tune of olden days, the melody binds them,” the Queen said. “All the broods before these were weak. Born together, they died apart. Until one learns to bind them. Learns to keep them, link them, make them strong. Thus the Piper’s magic becomes my magic. Thus the Piper’s tune becomes our destiny!”

  The mice swayed, enthralled by the might of their ruler. Ernst quailed. Had this country mouse been meddling in human magic? In Piper music? Was that the meaning of the strange tune that compelled, yet threatened to take him apart? No wonder she looked so ill. Black arts! And at the cost of her own vitality.

  “Able, they will be,” she continued. “Strong and able conquerors!” She grazed her nails against the nearest cheek. Tender skin blushed white and red. Tiny feet wriggled beneath her touch. The Queen clutched her brood to her bosom.

  “King Above, beware!” she brayed. “My sons are born! And you shall see their greatness!”

  Trembling like the newborn princes, Ernst bent over in an awkward bow, chilled to the bone. The mouselings were not the monstrosities he imagined after all. The real monster was the one who had made them.

  GEORG THE BARMAN kept his promise and secured three bunks to Silistra on a shallow, unpainted barge called the Gray Goose. The captain was a blue-eyed, dark-haired man with the unwieldy name of Helmut Holige-Schwarzwasser. Helmut’s bright eyes peered out from a bristly, bearded face. His grin appeared like the sun between black clouds.

  “Welcome aboard,” he boomed as Stefan’s party clambered up the gangplank. The deck was long and wide, piled with stacked wooden crates tied down with thick rope. At the center of the barge, a long, low building served as quarters, mess, and wheelhouse in one.

  A squeal sounded on the far side of the deck.

  “Ah, our other guests,” Helmut Holige-Schwarzwasser said. “We are carrying wine, pigs, and timber.” He patted the barge’s railing. “Fine company, if you can ignore the smell.” His laugh was infectious. Stefan liked him instantly.

  But the captain eyed him with a considering frown. “Ever been on a barge, boy?” he asked.

  “No, sir.” Stefan had never been on a boat in his life. “I’m a clockmaker in training,” he added, as if that explained things.

  “Then you won’t mind a bit of work to keep you out of trouble. Come along, boy. Take your bags to your room and I’ll show you a thing or two about sailing Die Donau. She’s a shifty lady, but with respect, she’ll treat you right.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Stefan said, casting a glance at Christian. They had things to discuss—plans to make—if they were going to succeed in Boldavia. Besides, if he was going to learn about anything on this trip, it should be clocks, not barges.

  But Christian had other ideas.

  “He’s all yours, Captain.”

  Stefan balked. “Shouldn’t we . . . That is, I . . .” What he meant to say was, he should be learning his new trade. But the thought of poring over books right now was also maddening. What he really wanted to do was punch something. He was wound tight enough to snap.

  “Mornings with the crew, afternoons with me,” Christian said.

  “Yes, sir.” Stefan nodded and hurried after the sailor showing them to their room inside the deckhouse. Sailing wasn’t the same as punching things, but maybe it would help.

  Their cabin was small, with two bunks bolted to one wall, and a third cot lying alongside them. Stefan stowed their bags beneath the beds.

  Samir sat down gratefully on the bottom bunk. “There will be no stars until evening, and even then, the trees on the banks will make for difficult viewing. I shall take my rest now and see what I may, come nightfall.” With little ceremony, the astrologer lay back on the bunk and instantly fell into a deep, snoring sleep.

  Christian sat back on the solitary cot and folded his hands behind his head. “Ah, Samir has the right of it.” He rubbed his long fingers beneath the strap of his eye patch, closing his remaining eye with a sigh.

  Stefan stood in the doorway and shifted from his right foot to his left.

  Christian opened his eye. “Still here?” he asked. “Pacing the floor glaring at me won’t make the time pass any faster.”

  Stefan pulled his sketchbook from his pocket and wrote Is it safe to speak? He handed the open book to his cousin, who shook his head slightly and waved for Stefan to follow him back out on deck.

  The barge had shoved off from shore and was creeping slowly out into the current. Christian reached inside his coat.

  “A beautiful day, isn’t it?” Christian remarked. “I wonder what we’ll have for supper.” From his pocket, he produced a small penny whistle that looked like a piccolo, and pretended to play a few notes on it.

  Stefan watched, baffled, as Christian’s cheeks puffed and deflated. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a ripple on the water, heading for shore. Several mice and rats had leapt into the river, fleeing the boat.

  “Handy device,” Christian commented, patting his pocket. “And now it’s safe to speak. At least until the next port.”

  “What was that? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It’s not meant for human ears, but mice seem to hate it. We’ll have to make you one at some point. I have the materials in Boldavia—or at least I did seven years ago . . . Now, what did you want to tell me?”

  “Why didn’t you use that in Nuremberg? You could have chased that mouse right out of the kitchen before it heard anything!”

  Christian looked embarrassed. “I had it made the next day while you were out on your krakatook quest. We really weren’t expecting any trouble, Stefan, or I’d never have come. Now, you were saying?”

  Stefan marveled at how quickly his cousin could switch subjects. His mind was like a busy port, ships full of ideas, coming and going. Stefan would have to train himself to be that way, if he wanted to learn all that Christian had to offer.

  Now it was his turn to look embar
rassed. “I should have told you before we left, but there wasn’t time. It’s about the krakatook. It can’t be cracked.”

  “Of course it can. It’s a nut. That’s what they do—crack. It’s how you eat them. Granted, I only know of one other fellow lucky enough to have done so, but he never mentioned it being a problem.”

  “May I see it?” Stefan held out his hand.

  Christian shook his head. “It’s far too valuable.”

  “Yes, it’s worth my father’s life,” he agreed. “But only if we can open it.”

  Christian bit his lip in thought. “In the cabin, then.”

  Samir woke up when they entered.

  “Our journeyman has presented us with a stumbling block,” Christian explained. “He says the nut can’t be cracked.”

  Stefan took a hammer from his tool bundle and placed the nut on a small wooden table. He held it as Professor Blume had done. “Step back, in case I lose my grip,” he said.

  “If we’re going to extremes, let’s be prepared,” Samir said. He rummaged in his bag and produced a vial of amber glass. “We can keep the pieces in here if it works,” he explained. “Nut oils can be potent. We must take care to retain their healing properties long enough to get to Boldavia.”

  “All right, then,” Christian said. “Proceed.”

  Stefan brought the hammer down with a crash.

  It bounced off the nut, digging it into the tabletop. One of the table’s legs creaked. But the nut did not crack.

  “Remarkable,” Christian said. “May I?”

  Stefan handed over the nut and the hammer. Christian studied them both. “You see, here along the seam where the two halves join? That’s where we want to strike.”

  Stefan nodded innocently and took another step back.

  Wham! The hammer rebounded and the nut flew across the room. Samir snatched it out of the sky before it could hit him in the face.

  “Astonishing,” Christian said, grinning. ”What else have you tried?”

  They used the table, a chair, Samir jumping up and down in his boots. But the nut remained unharmed.

  “Huh,” Christian said at last. “Well, the captain is waiting for you, Stefan. We’ll deal with this.”

  “Fine,” Stefan said. That nut was life or death for the princess and his father. It was certainly more important than busywork on deck. The little cabin was suddenly uncomfortable. He loosened his collar. His cousin wasn’t treating him like a journeyman with something to offer. He was treating him like a child. Well, he refused to behave like one.

  “I’ll see you at lunch,” he said, and went back up the narrow hallway of cabins to the deck for his first lesson in sailoring.

  • • •

  SAILORING, IT TURNED OUT, was a very tedious affair.

  Stefan’s first afternoon was spent learning Captain Helmut’s very precise method for coiling rope. “Hold one end, then gather it in loops like so,” he instructed. The captain reached for another length of rope and pulled it to the loop hanging from his other hand. “And again.” He created another loop, the coiled rope forming a perfect circle.

  Eager to earn the captain’s trust, Stefan spent the next several hours coiling and recoiling rope that seemed to be lying about, for no other reason than busywork. By lunchtime, all thoughts of princesses and magic nuts, pretty girls and missing fathers, had leached from him like poison from a snakebite. Stefan was bored as stiff as his aching fingers. He collapsed onto the deck near the makeshift pigpen and stared up at the sun filtering through the thick leaves.

  They had reached a calm patch of the river. Stefan pulled his notebook out and began to write. It wasn’t until he had finished that he realized it was a letter meant for Clara. His stomach did a little flip. It wasn’t like he would ever send it to her. He put the book away.

  The barge rolled downriver through sunshine and shade. Stefan sighed. The pigs made satisfied snorking noises over the slosh of the water against the hull. Lying on the deck, blocked from the cool wind by the pigs, Stefan fell asleep.

  “Ha!”

  He started awake. Helmut Holige-Schwarzwasser stood over him, seven coils of rope running up the length of each arm. “Ha!” the barge captain shouted again. “Asleep with the pigs, are we?”

  Stefan sat up, embarrassed. He quickly jumped to his feet, fighting the urge to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Sorry, sir!” A glance at the sun told him he’d slept through lunch! Christian would be waiting, and there was still rope strewn on deck.

  Holige-Schwarzwasser gave him a stern frown. “Good sailors don’t sleep on duty.”

  “It was my mistake,” Stefan said hastily. “It won’t happen again.”

  Holige-Schwarzwasser scowled. “It best not.”

  Stefan watched forlornly as the captain unraveled his rope down to the ground. “Now,” he said gruffly, “there’s rope to be coiled. We’ll get the Goose in shape yet.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stefan bent to pick up the first length of cord. By the time the captain had disappeared across the barge, Stefan had already finished two coils of rope.

  ZACHARIAS WAS VERY COLD. Rough hands hauled him from his cabin, and lifted him from the heaving deck of his captors’ boat and onto solid land. The men were clumsy and his coat got soaked in the process. Hands set to work peeling it off him.

  “Don’t want you to freeze to death,” a voice smirked. Zacharias knew it now as that of the scarlet man.

  But they did not lift the blindfold. Instead someone took his hands, which were bound in front of him, and led him to a roughhewn rock wall. The stone was cold and wet beneath his numb fingers.

  “Climb,” the scarlet man directed.

  Zacharias felt forward with a foot, stubbing his toe against the first step. He waved his arms in front of him. There was a staircase carved into the side of the wall—with no railing, it seemed—and the rock was slick.

  “I will fall,” he whispered, hands clutched together as if in prayer. The scarlet man seemed to agree, for he pulled the blindfold from his eyes.

  He found himself on a cliffside in the dark of a moonless night. Above him rose a mountain of black stone. Below and behind him, the lapping expanse of the sea. The waves reflected nothing, not even the stars.

  “Where are we?” he asked in a panic. For all he knew, this could be hell and the man behind him the devil himself.

  The scarlet man merely shoved him forward. Zacharias fell silent and climbed.

  They were still far from the top of the cliff when the man stopped. Here, the rock face gave way to a broad ledge and the yawning black mouth of a cave.

  “In here,” said the man in scarlet.

  Zacharias nearly fell to his knees with fright. He was shoved roughly into the cave. The stairs continued up the side of the cliff without them.

  Under the mountain they went. The cold grew deeper. Wind sighed around them like a moist and clammy breath. Zacharias felt his way in the dark and found a rope tied to iron rings at intervals in the wall. His captor stalked at his heels, leather boots ringing out against the stone.

  “Is this a dungeon? Am I to be imprisoned?” Zacharias asked through chattering teeth. He was only in his shirtsleeves and the work vest he’d worn the day he was kidnapped. Fortunately he had good shoes—Elise had made sure of that, and knitted him sturdy woolen socks as well.

  “Congratulations,” the scarlet man said. “You’ve passed the test. I had money on leaving you in a field like the rest of them.”

  There had been talk of missing apprentices in Germany, strange tales of kidnappings and mysterious tasks—like something out of a fairy tale. But this was no charmed fantasy. This was a nightmare.

  If only he knew what was behind it. “Who do you work for?”

  The scarlet man laughed. “Enough questions. We’re to leave you here. The rest is up to them.”

&nbs
p; Them. Every task set to him was at the behest of a nameless them who clearly commanded fear in the hearts of their underlings. Or perhaps it was the sort of obedience bought with gold, and lots of it.

  “At least tell me where we are,” he pleaded, only to be cuffed in the back of the head. After that, he remained silent. But there were so many questions. Why didn’t they use a lantern to light the corridor? Would they give him back his coat? Was there a warm room and a fire at the end of this march? Would there be more blueprints and plans, or some other cockeyed task for him to toil over?

  The drawings had been absurd, of course. Standard toys fit for a young boy—but the size of them! Whomever his captors worked for, surely they were mad. A chilling thought, since he was at the mercy of those madmen.

  At last the scarlet man called a halt. Zacharias had passed some unseen landmark. He leaned against the wall exhausted, and quickly recoiled from the damp. There was a fumbling of cloth, the jangle of keys, the tumble of a lock, and he was thrust forward into a room. The door boomed shut behind him.

  He threw himself against it. Solid wood. Running his fingers along the length of it, he found a small barred window near the top. “Please . . .” he said through the iron bars.

  “Better luck to you, then,” the scarlet man muttered. His bootheels faded away into silence.

  “Well,” Zacharias said to no one but himself. “Here I am, and that’s something. At least I am still alive.”

  He did not allow himself to wonder for how much longer.

  ERNST LISTZ SAT DOZING in a chair by the fire, soothed by the sounds of thread through velvet. The royal seamstresses plied their trade close to the light of the flames. If he lowered his lids enough, the scene was almost idyllically domestic. At his feet, the young princes were wrestling with their tail. It kept getting in the way when they tried to grasp their mother’s skirts. To be fair, the Queen was not exactly compliant. She swept up and down the threadbare carpets of her antechamber, tapping her long claws against her sharp, yellowed teeth.