The Toymaker's Apprentice

by Sherri L. Smith

  “Does it never lose its leaves?” Stefan asked.

  “Ah, you’ve noticed. It does, but never without another one taking its place. The new shoots literally push the old ones off the branch. Eternal youth, and yet”—he tapped the strong brown trunk in the last tapestry—“the wisdom of the ages.”

  The final hanging, spring, showed the clearing around the tree awash in yellow and red tulips like great strokes of a paintbrush.

  Stefan’s heart twinged at the sight. “My mother would have loved this,” he said, brushing his fingers along the flowers. They were so vibrant, he half expected to smell their green, growing scent. “Clara, too,” he said without thinking.

  “Clara?” Samir asked.

  Stefan shook his head. “Just a girl I met back home.” What would she make of the industrious squirrels and the smooth yellow walls of living wood? He decided to draw a sketch of each wall hanging to share with her when he returned.

  Little torches lined the corridor, lighting the inside of the main hall with a buttery glow. On closer inspection, Stefan realized they were not candles, as they had first appeared, but fireflies, darting among the tender leafy shoots growing out of the walls.

  The Pagoda Tree was alive in every sense of the word. The hall was flooded with traffic, squirrels carrying nuts and rolls of dried-leaf parchment, barely giving the humans a second glance as they scurried by. Stefan imagined it was like a human government office, with couriers and clerks racing back and forth. Doorways of varying sizes branched off from the main hallway, which Stefan now realized was curving upward. At each new level appeared several passageways so low that Stefan had to stoop to look down them. These tunnels led out into the open air—the limbs of the tree held the treetop highways Stefan had seen from outside.

  “The human quarters are down here, in the larger trunk of the tree.” Samir pointed to man-sized doors as they passed.

  “Humans live here?” Stefan was amazed.

  “Certainly,” Samir replied. “They come to study, or to trade. The squirrels do a healthy business with nuts. The commerce gives them the tools they need to deal with the outside world.”

  Stefan’s head spun. “But, who would do business with squirrels?” He imagined a young squirrel coming to buy nutcrackers from his father’s shop.

  “The man who can get us in to see the Pater, among others,” Samir replied. “Almande. The King of Almonds.”

  “First a king of dates, and now an almond king?” Stefan said wryly.

  “Not an almond king, the Almond King,” Samir corrected him. “From the country of Morocco, on the northern coast of Africa. I’ve known him for many years. Our guide tells me Almande is here on his annual trade route. By the season, I’d say we’ve just missed Al’a Palmir, the King of Dates. I have a nephew who lives in his court,” Samir said proudly. “Lovely country, plenty of shade. Without Almande’s help, we would have to wait weeks or longer to see the Pater, who is very busy and does not interrupt his studies often.”

  “And the Pater can tell us how—”

  Samir waved him to silence. “Squirrels have very good ears,” the astrologer whispered.

  Their guide squirrel had led them to a great set of double doors and was watching them curiously. Stefan remembered his cousin’s request—mouth closed, eyes open—and complied.

  The squirrel turned to Samir and chattered hurriedly. “Ah,” Samir said, “we’re in luck. The king’s entertainment is about to begin in the audience chamber.”

  As if on cue, the doors swung open onto a hollow in the heart of the tree.

  Stefan caught his breath. The room before him was as large as a barn, and shaped like a giant round bowl of honey-colored wood. Glowworm lights hung in clusters from vines dangling from the ceiling, like natural chandeliers. A bole in the tree—a natural hole in the wood—had been shellacked over in amber tree sap to form a giant window. Starlight gently illuminated the rest of the room. Along the floor, the wood rose in ridges, forming benches. On each tier sat rows of squirrels, resting their fretful elbows on the wood.

  Their guide led them to empty seating toward the middle of the hall, where the wooden resting ledges had been coaxed to human height. Pressing his paws together, the red squirrel gave a little bow, and departed.

  Following Samir’s lead, Stefan lowered himself, cross-legged, to the floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly a drum sounded, like a great thunderclap. In the center of the room stood a large, broad-chested man. His skin was darker than Samir’s, from sun or from birth, Stefan couldn’t tell. This must be a true Moor.

  The man smiled broadly at his audience, white teeth like pearls in the coffee expanse of his face. On his head he wore a shimmering turban, like Samir’s, but made of a gorgeous striped cloth of many colors: gold, pale red, pine green, purple, and peacock blue. He wore pantaloons to match, curled-toed slippers, and a gold-trimmed vest.

  “Is this the king?” Stefan asked.

  Samir chuckled. “No. Only a performer. The king is over there. And that is the Pater beside him.” The astrologer pointed to the left of the stage, where an ancient squirrel rested on a cushion beside another human, not as darkly handsome as the man on the floor, yet more regal-looking in a pure white turban and kaftan. His legs were all but invisible beneath the drape of his cloak. His dark hands were bedecked with golden rings, and his beard was carefully trimmed to a point that curled slightly, like the performer’s slippers.

  King Almande scanned the audience. Catching sight of Samir and Stefan’s wide-eyed stare, he smiled and tilted his head, his hand making a series of waterfall movements from the forehead downward. Samir repeated the gesture.

  “What does that mean, Samir?” Stefan whispered.

  “It is a blessing, asking God to grant you peace.”

  Stefan rested back against the bench. He was torn between wanting to lie down and sleep for a year, and getting quickly on their way to Boldavia. Here he was in a court of wonders and all he could think of was being home again with his father and a cup of Miss Prue’s elderflower tonic.

  His eyes prickled. He rubbed the sensation away. The Pagoda Tree was fascinating, but he hadn’t come here for a show. How long would they be expected to wait before he could speak to the Pater and get some answers?

  A cluster of human musicians were seated near the floor. They began to play thin, reedy music on an instrument that Samir called a sitar. A pipe joined in, the thin cry of a lonely crane at the end of summer. Then chimes, a hundred silver bells. The Moor in the rainbow turban clapped his hands once, twice, three times, and began to dance.

  Stefan had never seen anything like it. It was like watching a djinn, an Arabian genie, come to life. The music grew wild, a storm of bells and thunder and screaming winds, and the Moor whirled and whirled like a top, spinning in joyful circles around the room. The squirrels watched serenely, as if they had trapped a storm under glass for observation.

  Stefan’s heart beat faster. Suddenly, the man leapt into the air, turning an impossible arabesque. A second leap, and he pulled his knees into a wide crouch, then sprang sideways and continued along in a circle of crouching spins. The whirling reminded Stefan of the City Clock, a complex spiral of motion.

  In spite of himself, Stefan began to clap in time to the music, oblivious to the incredible calm of the squirrel audience, to anything but the stunning display of acrobatics. The man spun round and round, a circular metronome. Stefan could hear his own breath in counterpoint to the music, the beat of his heart thumping the rhythm. Was there a City Clock under the Pagoda Tree? he wondered. Whatever the case, Stefan knew that he had been pulled into synchronicity with something.

  With a crash of bells, the music ended, and the dancer landed on his knees, forehead pressed to the ground before his king and host. The ancient squirrel, the Pater, clapped his tiny forepaws politely, and bowed to King Almande.

 
Stefan was breathless. “How do they do it?”

  “King Almande’s dancers train for many years,” Samir told him.

  “Not the dancer. The squirrels. They’re so . . . calm. I feel like I’ve run a race, and they look like they’re having tea.”

  “These squirrels are an enlightened group. They study, they observe, but they do not participate. Squirrels have one of two goals in life—to find a krakatook to bring them longevity and insight, or to be invited to study at the Pagoda Tree. A longer path to wisdom, but a more likely one.”

  Stefan frowned. “Enlightenment looks boring.”

  Samir shrugged. “After all those years frantically looking for nuts—they deserve a little peace and quiet, don’t you think?”

  A soft breeze rose in the hall as doors around the room opened. Samir rose to his feet. “Perhaps now we can gain an audience with King Almande.”

  THE TOYMAKER WAS NOT at all what Arthur had expected. As promised, he and his brothers had returned several times, and each time there was progress on the toy soldier, as the Drosselmeyer called it.

  But these visits had disturbed something deep inside Arthur. After all, the princes had never known their father. There were rumors, of course—one of the palace guards, a piebald, or other such scandals. And worse. There was talk of dark magic. Whatever the truth, Arthur found himself longing for what he’d never had.

  It was a weakness. One he was trying to amend. Each visit should have strengthened his resolve, but it had the opposite effect. He liked Zacharias Drosselmeyer. And that was the highest treason.

  This morning, after their mother’s daily inspection and Ernst’s lessons, Arthur took a book and candle down to the river that ran beneath the city. It was a good, quiet place to read where his mother’s piebalds rarely sent for him, and his brothers would often grow bored and fall asleep, leaving him in peace.

  Already the others snored softly, crowding around him, lulled by the rush of the river. Arthur wanted to talk. But to whom? His mother would call him weak. The court advisers would read it as a sign, and his brothers refused to speak about it: Arthur was having bad dreams.

  He was the only one of the brothers to suffer from them, as far as he could tell. Ever since the toymaker had come to Boldavia, he’d been wracked with restless nights. Only now, having spoken with the captive Drosselmeyer, did he start to understand his nightmares. He would like to share the insight with his tutor. The old rat had seen much of the world. Maybe he could make sense of it, or at least disperse Arthur’s fears. But, after today’s fencing lesson, the rat had requested time away to heal his wounds. Arthur knew that he and his brothers would not be welcome, at least for now.

  Arthur shuddered, thinking about the darkness of his dreams, and immediately felt sheepish. He held his small candle up to play along the walls of the cavern. Here he was, sitting in a gloomy old cave by choice, and now he was afraid of the dark? But the dark in his dreams was different. It wasn’t empty. Something, or someone, was there. If only he had a candle to hold in his dreams to see for himself.

  A snort pulled Arthur out of his reverie.

  Hannibal had woken up. “Daydreaming again?” he sneered.

  “Thinking,” Arthur said defensively. “One of us has to.”

  Hannibal made a face and yawned. “Some of us think too much. Action. That’s all we need.”

  “Action,” Arthur repeated, bemused. That was his mother talking. Hannibal knew her speeches by heart. Act. Lead. Triumph. The world of Men was theirs for the taking. And Arthur, young Prince Arthur and his brothers, were the ones to do the job.

  The thought terrified him. Arthur had only glimpsed the humans from hiding places in the castle above. As the crown princes, they’d been told time and again that their life was not to be risked by gallivanting aboveground. The few men he had seen were enormous, like walking trees, while Arthur and his brothers were so very small. For all of Hannibal’s bluster and Roland’s demands, Arthur was still just one insignificant mouse.

  How different life could have been if he were separate from his brothers! He might have chosen to be a scholar, not forced to read quickly so his brothers didn’t get bored. Or to travel! To see the sun shine rather than stay hidden in the walls until some future date known only to his mother and her plans. Had he been born separate, one of the others could have been King and Arthur could have just been . . . Arthur. But he was not.

  Hannibal had fallen asleep again, his head nodding off to the side. Now Arthur was getting tired, too. He could feel himself being pulled in by his brothers’ slumber. The candle flickered in a light breeze, sputtered for a moment, then shone brighter than ever. The glow gleamed off the rocks and the white rush of the river down below.

  It really was quite beautiful, Arthur realized. Nothing to fear.

  He repeated the thought to himself, humming the refrain to his mother’s old lullaby as he lowered the candle and let sleep take him. With sleep, again came the dreams.

  THE KING OF ALMONDS swept out of the audience chamber with his entourage and stopped in front of Samir and Stefan. The two men greeted one another, standing like rocks in a river, as the squirrels streamed around them in a flood of red, white, black, and brown.

  A few brushed up against Stefan as they passed and hesitated, delicate noses twitching, then shook their heads and moved on. Before he could worry about it, Samir was introducing him to his first king.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, and bowed deeply.

  “Another Drosselmeyer?” the king said with amusement. The king had a deep, rich voice that reminded Stefan of an organ at a fair.

  “Yes, I am Stefan,” he said, rising.

  The king came forward and offered his own courtly bow. “Samir tells me Christian is no longer with us. You have my condolences. He was an interesting man to know.”

  Stefan fumbled for a response, but a sudden surge of grief made him mute. He could only nod.

  “But now is not the time for mourning,” King Almande continued, not unkindly. “I hear you’ve made a discovery!”

  It took all of Stefan’s willpower not to pat his inner pocket, where the krakatook lay hidden inside its case.

  “You think you can keep such things secret here for long?” The king laughed. “My nose may not be so keen, but the Pater will smell it on you.”

  “He needn’t guess,” Stefan said. “I will tell him myself.”

  “You have the confidence of a lion.” King Almande laughed. “If it’s real, what makes you think he’ll let you keep it?”

  “I’ll do my best to convince him.” Stefan shrugged. “Then again, if he can open the blasted thing, maybe he deserves it.”

  The king smiled. “Come join me, young Drosselmeyer, and we shall see.”

  Almande led his entourage up a long winding pathway that climbed the inner trunk of the tree. His robes flapped behind him in a silken ripple that reminded Stefan of a flying carpet.

  Stefan and Samir fell back, allowing the king’s people to lead them. From their place at the end of the line, Stefan drank in the sight—women draped in pale, sheer veils of silk, guards bearing scimitars at their sides. It was like a page from his book Arabian Nights. He half expected a genie to rise out of one of the glowworm lamps and offer to grant him a wish. As eager as he was to get to Boldavia, he hoped he would have time to sketch later. Certainly his father would be amazed, and Clara would admire the fine embroidery that edged the women’s veils.

  As they continued to climb, the number of side tunnels grew smaller. The tree branch highways became narrower until they were almost at the top of the tree.

  “Where did the other squirrels go?” Stefan asked Samir.

  “They are outside. They climb the trunk of the tree far more swiftly than they could travel these human walkways.”

  Rounding the last spiral, they came to a dark wooden door, planed smoot
h and polished to a deep shine. The king’s entourage lined either side of the hallway. Stefan and Samir moved forward to stand directly behind the king as he bowed to a little black squirrel that stood outside the door. The squirrel returned the bow and pulled a thin rope beside the door.

  A gong sounded overhead. The squirrel bowed again and scampered back down the walkway.

  Stefan was sweating, uncomfortably aware of his wet coat and matted hair.

  Samir adjusted his turban as if having the same self-conscious thoughts. He gave Stefan a reassuring nod just as the great door before them swung open.

  A delicious, spicy scent wafted toward them, warm and inviting. Involuntarily, Stefan took a step forward. He could have kicked himself for stepping in front of the king, until he realized that both Almande and Samir had been drawn forward by the smell, too.

  “Sandalwood,” Samir murmured, taking a deep breath. “Wonderful.”

  This was the pinnacle of the Pagoda Tree. The ceiling soared high above them; windows sat high in the crown of the room, revealing small tatters of rain clouds and stars. The windows here were also of hardened tree sap, applied in many layers, yet clear enough to see through.

  Despite the lofty ceiling, the room itself was inviting and cozy. The walls and floor were covered in gorgeous crimson and cream oriental rugs. In the center of the room, curled up on a pile of sumptuous pillows, sat the wizened squirrel from the audience hall. His fur was gray as much from age as from natural coloring.

  “Pater is Latin for ‘father,’” Samir whispered to Stefan. “It is the highest office a squirrel can hold.”

  The Pater began to chitter, his small body quivering beneath the yellow cloth wrapped around his shoulders. Stefan watched as King Almande and Samir bowed deeply to the aged squirrel and quickly followed suit. The Pater nodded and gestured for them to sit.