A Valiant Quest for the Misfit Menagerie

by Jacqueline Resnick

  In the center of the wall was a huge stone door with an iron handle. Two interconnected green T’s rose above it. Bertie tugged on the handle, but the door refused to budge. He tried again and again, but it was futile. The door was locked and bolted, sealed up tight. Bertie shook his head. “We’re finally here, and now we can’t get in.”

  Tears welled in Wombat’s big brown eyes. “That,” he whispered, “is what’s called irony.”

  Bertie pressed his forehead against the stone. It was rough but cool to the touch, and his tired eyes began to drift shut. Between the Lifers and the sheriff and the hedgehog’s wild antics in the alley, it had been a long, long day. Bertie smiled briefly at the memory of the hedgehog’s happy twitters as a second hedgehog appeared from beneath the dumpsters. When the two prickly animals had disappeared together, Bertie had gotten the strangest sense that the hedgehog had found what he’d come for. He would have to remember to tell the story to Susan.

  The thought of Susan made Bertie’s face crumple. His only chance of finding her, Rigby, and Tilda was behind this fence. They had to get into Toddle’s.

  At his feet, Wombat let out several snorts, each one more frantic than the last. Bertie opened one eye, looking down at the small animal. “You okay, Wombat?” he asked softly. This time, Wombat didn’t snort. Instead, he lifted his strong burrower’s paws and began to dig.

  Bertie had never seen Wombat dig with a purpose before, and he watched in amazement as a wall of dirt flew up behind him, his legs moving so fast they were almost a blur. Soon, a hole had begun to form under the stone door, just wide enough for a sun bear to squeeze through. Bertie straightened up as he realized what Wombat was doing: He was trying to dig them into Toddle’s!

  Wombat continued to burrow, inching deeper and deeper into his hole, until even his stubby tail was out of sight. Bertie could hear him panting as he sent mounds of dirt flying into the air. Behind them, the city was dark and still, like a sleeping beast. Bertie could almost feel it heaving with each breath, just waiting to be woken. “Come on, Wombat,” he begged. He felt restless, something unnamable bubbling up inside him. Nearby, Smalls was shifting nervously from paw to paw and soon Bertie found himself joining in, moving in sync with the bear.

  Finally, Wombat reemerged, his snout dusty and his paws black. Bertie kneeled down, peering into the hole he’d dug. It was long and twisty, but he could see light filtering in from the other side. He broke into a smile. Wombat had done it! He’d dug them a tunnel. Carefully, Bertie wriggled his way inside. He wanted to go first to make sure it was safe for Smalls. Wombat could easily go unnoticed or ignored on the other side, mistaken for a rodent of some sort. But there was no way Bertie was letting Smalls enter until he was sure there were no bear traps awaiting him.

  As he crawled, dirt clung to his clothes and flicked into his face, but he kept pushing forward, his eyes glued to the light. Soon he could make out whole spirals of it, flickering across blades of grass. Lanterns, he determined as he emerged on the other side. They lined either side of a long, narrow road, blowing softly in the night breeze. Bertie brushed the dirt off his hands as he followed the road with his eyes. It led to the green brick building he’d seen from the other side of the wall. Toddle’s Toy Emporium, the sign in front read. His stomach went fluttery, as if he’d just swallowed a hundred moths. They were finally here.

  The building was beautiful, a deep green the color of a jungle, with a white lace trim and a white shingled roof. It was huge too. It twisted and turned and fanned out, the kind of building with never-ending hallways and tucked-away rooms, the kind of building you could get lost in. In the distance behind it, toward the back of the fence, Bertie could make out a stone house with a tall turret and, off to the side, a small yellow cottage.

  “Come on, Smalls,” Bertie called into the tunnel. He gave a soft whistle. A minute later, Smalls squeezed his way out of the hole, grunting as his eyes landed on the building ahead. Wombat shot out behind him. With an impatient snort, he took off for the Emporium at his fastest waddle. Bertie looked over at Smalls. “I guess that’s our cue.” They hurried after Wombat, Smalls sticking close to Bertie’s side.

  There were several unusual contraptions dotting the Emporium’s lawn, and Bertie studied them curiously as they neared the building. There was a tall silver coil that sprinkled bits of candy into the air. There was a boy built entirely of copper, waving a rainbow of balloons in his copper hands. And nestled in a tall oak tree, there was a life-sized version of the wooden dollhouse Bertie had found at the circus—the one that had been home to his wooden boy.

  Bertie stopped so suddenly that Smalls bumped into him. A memory was rushing at him, so strong it knocked the breath right out of him.

  He was lying beneath a tree, its leafy branches sweeping over him. His mom was lying next to him, and in between them was a small wooden house, the roof opened to reveal two floors filled with perfect, miniature rooms. The top corner room was a boy’s bedroom, complete with a collection of tiny wooden baseball caps hanging from hooks on the wall and a miniature leather baseball glove discarded on the bed. There was a redheaded wooden boy in the room, a tiny baseball bat clutched in his hands. “BAM!” Bertie said, making the boy swing the bat.

  “And it’s outta here!” his mom cheered. “The crowd goes wild as the ball reaches the trees . . .” Bertie and his mom both looked up, following the trajectory of the imaginary ball. The leaves rustled above them, as if they too could feel it. “If only we could have a house like this up in the tree,” Bertie said. “Like a real tree house!”

  His mom looked over at him. Her red hair spilled into her face, and her freckles caught specks of sunlight. “Yes,” she said, breaking into a smile. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  The memory was gone as quickly as it had begun, and Bertie was left staring up at the tree house, feeling like he’d been hollowed out. He leaned against Smalls, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. Up ahead, Wombat snorted anxiously as he paced in front of the Emporium, pausing every few seconds to nose at the door. Bertie took a shaky breath. These new memories and dreams meant something—were telling him something. They had to be. And there was only one way to find out what it was. “Come on,” he said to Smalls. “Let’s help Wombat find a way in.”

  • • •

  Bertie pulled on the front door of Toddle’s Toy Emporium for what felt like the hundredth time, but still it wouldn’t open. With a sigh, he sagged against the door. That memory from the tree house had left him feeling more spent than ever. All he wanted to do was climb into a soft bed and sleep for days.

  In the back of the building, Wombat was snorting up a storm. A grunt followed from Smalls, soft but urgent. Peeling himself off the door, Bertie headed around back. “We have to keep quiet,” he whispered to the animals, as he stifled a yawn. “We don’t want anyone to hear . . .” He trailed off when he saw what Smalls and Wombat were standing in front of. It was a small, child-sized door in the back of the Emporium. It stood slightly ajar, as if someone had forgotten to pull it shut behind them. Wombat had his snout in the crack, nudging at it. With a soft creak, it popped open the rest of the way.

  Behind the door was a big room, filled to the brim with colorful plastic balls. Wombat pushed his way in, snorting sharply. Bertie followed hesitantly. His feet sunk into the pool of balls, the plastic cool against his bare ankles. He took another step, and another, until he was wading out chest deep. Next to him, Wombat was swimming through the sea of plastic balls, his head bobbing above the curves of color. Smalls walked behind Wombat, nudging him up with his muzzle every time he started to sink.

  A wild impulse stole through Bertie, chasing away his exhaustion. Without stopping to think, he sunk beneath the balls, letting the colors swallow him up. Underneath, the whole world changed: sounds became muffled and colors became brighter, and rainbows seemed to fracture and split around him. When he finally sprang back to the surface, he was smiling. Just then, something hit him squarely in the
forehead.

  He looked down. A blue plastic ball dropped softly in front of him. Seconds later another ball came at him, this time bouncing off his shoulder. Bertie’s eyes landed on Smalls. He had a yellow ball in his mouth and a mischievous glint in his eyes. Slowly, Smalls stretched out his long tongue and, while Bertie watched, flung the ball right at him. Bertie burst out laughing.

  “Finally,” Smalls said as Bertie’s laughter rang through the air. It had been too long since he’d heard that laugh. He grunted happily, winging another ball at Bertie. This time Bertie fired back, laughing louder with each ball he pelted.

  “Some of us have a job to do,” Wombat chided, climbing out of the pool of balls. He stuck his snout in the air, sniffing several times. “Tilda?” he called out. “Are you here, mon amour?”

  Smalls wanted to shout high and low for Tilda too. But first he needed to hear Bertie laugh one more time. Gathering up three balls, he tossed them into the air and juggled them with his long, graceful tongue.

  “Looks like the circus was good for one thing,” Bertie said, watching him admiringly.

  “Circus?” Smalls repeated disdainfully between juggles. “I’ve been doing this since I was a cub! You should have seen the kernels of popcorn I used to juggle.” As if to prove his point, he added two more balls to the mix, his tongue working overtime.

  Bertie didn’t know what Smalls’s grunts meant, but he loved the look in his eyes as he juggled: determined, proud. He tossed Smalls another ball and the bear flicked out his tongue, incorporating it effortlessly.

  “Go, Smalls!” Bertie cheered, and Smalls let out such a proud grunt in response that Bertie couldn’t help but burst into laughter once more.

  By the time they left the ball room, Bertie had all but forgotten his exhaustion. And as they crossed through a hallway, following the sound of Wombat’s snorts, any final traces of it melted away. Because Bertie suddenly found himself standing inside the main room of Toddle’s Toy Emporium. And everywhere, everywhere he looked—up and down and left and right and forward and backward—he saw one thing and one thing only. Toys.

  Sweet Nothings

  Standing in the entrance to Toddle’s Toy Emporium, Bertie was reminded of a film he’d once seen. It had been soon after he’d gone to live with his uncle. The circus performers had set up a secret screening in the Big Top, and the smell of popcorn and cinnamon buns pouring out from the tent had been impossible to resist. Risking his uncle’s wrath, Bertie had snuck over. He’d gone for the food, but it was the screen that drew him in.

  On it, an actress was walking through a wooded area when she came across a horse, rearing and wild. As her hands flew to her mouth in surprise, the scene went fuzzy around the edges, blackness rolling in until eventually the only thing you could see was the horse—all sleek fur and flashing hooves, a slice of life in the center of the darkness. That was how Bertie felt as he stood inside the Emporium, like the rest of the world was blackening around him, the edges rolling in until all that was left was toys. He could feel his own hand flying to his mouth as he switched on a lamp and looked around.

  The toys were everywhere: in every nook and cranny and shelf and cubby, hanging from every wall and crammed into every corner. Board games, stiff and unopened and stacked to the ceiling. Kites, bright and patterned and hanging from the walls. Dolls of every shape and size, in boxes and cradles and strollers and cribs. Pogo sticks, Frisbees, trucks, tea sets, tricycles, Barbies, jack-in-the-boxes, puzzles, stickers, Legos, even tiny winged planes, zooming and looping through the air. There were games to play, balls to throw, things to build, art to make, and, of course, winding through it all: stuffed animals. There were shelves and shelves of them, fur glossy and eyes shiny and stuffing plump, lizards and tigers and bears and monkeys and kittens and mice, spilling off the shelves and onto the squishy rubber floor, standing on tables and piled in bins, palm-sized all the way to life-sized, more stuffed animals than Bertie had thought existed in the entire world, and they were all right here, in a single building.

  Bertie’s head felt heavy with it all, colors spinning and swirling around him. He wished so badly that Susan was there with him. He had a huge toy store all to himself; it was like a genie had plucked one of his dreams and made it come true. But without Susan, it just wasn’t the same. Soon, he told himself. If Susan and Rigby had managed to stay on the train, they had to be arriving soon.

  Immediately, Smalls and Wombat ran off, going in opposite directions. Bertie hoped that if Tilda was somewhere nearby, they would be able to smell her. He planned to go search for her too—he knew there was no better time than when the store was closed—but for a minute he allowed himself to just stand there, taking it all in. He was in the middle of a slow sweep of the store when his eyes landed on the life-sized toy tree in the back.

  It was carved entirely of wood and reached all the way up to the ceiling, its wooden branches curling and arching, laden with delicate wooden leaves. It reminded Bertie instantly of the wooden dollhouse. Every detail was captured perfectly: the roughness of the bark, the dewy green of the leaves, the wooden birds perched on its branches. At the foot of the trunk was a tiny door, just large enough to fit a child. It had four words inscribed across it: Here, you may escape.

  Bertie walked over to the tree, unable to stop himself from climbing through its door. It was dark inside—the walls painted midnight black—but up at the top, where the trunk branched out into limbs, there were dozens of tiny, round globes floating through the air, light spilling out of every one of them. Catching that light on their gossamer wings were butterflies: hundreds of tiny, vibrant butterflies. Instantly, they began fluttering down to him, whirring loudly as they alighted on his shoulders and his hair, their wings velvet-soft.

  Bertie watched as a purple-spotted butterfly landed on his hand. He knew it wasn’t real, knew the whirring must be coming from a mechanical engine somewhere deep inside it. But it felt real, all of it, as if he’d stumbled into a field filled with butterflies, where the stars were so bright he could reach out and touch them. He leaned his head back against the tree trunk as a teal butterfly landed on his knee. His exhaustion was flooding back, turning his limbs to jelly and making his eyelids grow heavier by the second.

  Groggily, he climbed up the stairs to the landing at the top. “I’ll just lie here for a moment,” he murmured, curling up on the soft, thick rug. “Then I’ll go check on Smalls and Wombat and look for Tilda . . .” A moment later, he was fast asleep.

  At the same time, Smalls was in the Emporium’s vast main room, sniffing wildly at the air. He’d been smelling for Tilda, but instead a sweet, sugary scent wafted toward him, making his nose tingle with excitement. He followed it through a winding row of shelves, all the way to a set of stairs. More smells rushed up at him, syrupy and mouthwatering. Sniffing wildly, he bounded down the stairs.

  “Holy horseshoe,” he said. He was in a room full of candy. The floor was built of Twizzlers, the walls made of peppermint tiles. Oversized lollipops created a winding path through the room, guiding the way through buckets filled with candy and chocolate. On the back wall, brightly colored M&M’s spelled out the words Sweet Nothings. Smalls’s mouth watered. His big, empty stomach grumbled. He’d start his search for Tilda in a minute. First, it was time to eat.

  He rose onto his hind legs. With his big paws, he scooped up gummy candies and toffee candies and caramel candies, gooey candies and hard candies and milky candies. He sucked them down one after another, letting them gather in his stomach, filling up every inch of emptiness. He was in the middle of a mouthful of candied peanut butter and maple syrup chunks when he suddenly caught a whiff of something familiar.

  Sweet and tangy . . . fresh and oaky . . . balmy and fragrant. He knew that smell better than any other in the world. His eyes flew to a tower in the corner. It was built entirely of jars—jars featuring a bee on the label. Smalls couldn’t read the words, but he didn’t need them to tell him what his nose already knew. Every one o
f those jars was filled with honey.

  He reached the tower within seconds. The jar on the top twisted open easily in his strong paws. Smalls’s tongue darted out, sinking into the thick, sticky goodness. Holy honey, he thought.

  While Smalls was busy devouring honey, Wombat was in a different wing of the Emporium, remaining all business. He didn’t stop to admire the shelf of Angora rabbit stuffed animals; he didn’t hop onto one of the red train cars rolling along an elaborate wooden track; he didn’t utter a single fact about the collection of dinosaur fossils on display. He did one thing and one thing only, and that was call for Tilda.

  “Tilda? Tilda, my love?” he repeated over and over as he went from room to room. He wove his way through bins of glistening marbles; he walked across a life-sized chess board; he jumped over boxes of jacks and rows of dominos. He turned left through a row of globes and right past a display of brightly colored crayons. Soon he found himself in yet another wing, passing several locked-up rooms. Warning: Inventions–in-Progress!, a brightly lit sign read. Wombat walked right past it, banging his snout against the locked doors, calling out for Tilda. But no matter how many corners he turned or how many stairs he took, no Angora rabbit answered his calls.

  Soon his voice was raw and his paws were dragging. Still, he pushed on. “Mon amour?” he called out hoarsely, turning into yet another room. “Are you here?”

  “Keep it down,” a voice answered. It was a female voice, clear and high. “Some of us are trying to catch some beauty Z’s!”

  Wombat blinked, looking around for the first time. He was in the Emporium’s Reading Room, a carpeted space piled high with pillows and lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There was a window seat in the corner, and dangling on the other side of the window was a three-story birdhouse. Standing on its deck, her head cocked in irritation, was a beautiful blue-winged bird.