Slowly she turned the doorknob, pushed open the door. The hinges didn’t squeak. Of course they didn’t, this was Karl Drost’s house, the hinges never squeaked.
He sat in the circle of light from an adjustable work lamp. His head, covered with close-trimmed white hair, remained bent over his workbench. He peered through a magnifying lens attached to a headband, positioned in front of his face. With needle-nosed pliers and a wire-like probe, he made adjustments to a mechanism set on the table in front of him. Brass gears the size of quarters nested together. The workbench dominated the center of the room. Piled on it were pliers, jeweler’s picks, tiny screwdrivers, gears and wires, pulleys and motors. In addition to building sets for the ballet and opera, Drost made clockworks, toys and dolls that wound up and moved, clapped their hands or turned somersaults. Their parts–faces, fur, glass eyes–lay scattered among the tools.
Covering three walls were shelves filled with cuckoo clocks, wooden dolls, animals, and nutcrackers. Nutcrackers filled entire spaces. He’d made a new one every year for as long as he’d worked for the local Ballet. Some were white-haired, some black-haired, some blond. Some wore British redcoat uniforms, some wore German lederhosen, some Napoleonic velvet and braid. He must have kept every one that had ever been loved by the girls who danced as Clara for the Ballet. They were all dusted and well-preserved, glowing when the rest of the house did not.
She counted back a scant eight years from the last and there it was, her own first nutcracker. A black-haired doll with a tricorn hat and a cavalier coat with tails and lace, a cutlass held tight to its side. Its glass eyes stared, and it bared painted white teeth. She longed to test the handle sticking out the back, to see if it still worked. The muscles of her legs twitched, the memory of a plié. Her right leg felt a throb, a longing pain. She stumbled against the wall.
“Who’s there?” Drost spoke with the hint of a German accent.
Marie gasped and raised the gun, hardly noticing how much her hand trembled, how shocked and wide her eyes were. She was more startled than Drost, who had the gun pointed at him. His expression didn’t change as he set down his tools and raised his hands in surrender. He looked like an insect, the magnifier pointing antenna-like from his forehead.
“What is this?” he said.
“I—I—” It had seemed like such a good idea when she planned this. She’d seen what he could do, she had to make him help her
He could work magic.
She said, “You have to help me.”
He shrugged a little, the resigned gesture of an old man who faces what he must. “What can I do, when you point a gun at me?”
She wasn’t going to shoot him. She could hardly feel her hand. Her arm was shaking. The gun was heavy. “You have to fix me. I want to dance again.”
He opened his mouth, a silent ‘ah’ of understanding. “Again I ask, what can I do?”
She almost laughed, and the tears started. “You can do anything! The doctors can’t fix my knee–can’t you make me a new one?”
“You know that sounds quite mad.” He gestured at the leg brace. “What was it? Torn ACL? Destroyed cartilage?”
“Yes.” Too complicated to describe last month’s injury. Time and surgery might ease the pain, but she would never dance again.
“You know that is what it is to be a dancer. You accept the possibility that such an injury will end your story.”
“But it happened before my story even started!” A month with the New York City Ballet. That was all she’d had before her knee shattered and the door closed.
“Put the gun down, Marie.”
“You remember me?”
“You carried those three nutcrackers, the middle of the bottom shelf there. The Cavalier. The Cossack. The Prussian. I remember all the Claras.”
Her hand dropped with the weight of the gun. She slumped against the wall, listing awkwardly on her braced leg.
“There, my dear. Don’t cry.” He removed his magnifier, stood and came to her, taking the gun as he drew her arm over his shoulder to help her stand. His body was surprisingly solid; he’d looked so frail, hunched over his work.
He would call the police. She ought to be locked up.
“Come to the sofa and lie down. You’ve had a busy day. Sleep tonight. We’ll talk in the morning, yes?”
Limping, pitiful, she let the old man guide her to the parlor.
The living room smelled like a forest. A Christmas tree stood in front of the window. The seven foot spruce dripped with gold tinsel. Garlands of red and green beads roped it, and antique wood and glass ornaments weighed down the branches. It even had real candles set in holders on the outermost branches. How the tree must sparkle and glitter when they were all lit.
A grandfather clock, silent, stood against the opposite wall. The stage was set, she thought.
She focused on the pieces, set in their places–the tree, the clock, the nutcracker–so that she hardly noticed Drost directing her to lie on the sofa, unfolding a blanket, murmuring vacantly as he urged her to sleep.
As soon as she slept, he’d probably call the police. But she didn’t care, because it was like it used to be–the tree, the clock, the nutcracker–and she was Clara, and when she woke the house would be filled with magic.
*~*~*~*
The overture began, light strains of violins. Backstage she practiced: point the toes, plié, arabesque. Then the dream: lights, music, laughter, once-a-year gowns of velvet and satin. Everyone smiled because the audience was watching. Marie didn’t care so much about the audience; applause was nice, but it was background noise. She preferred to lose herself in the role. The Christmas tree grew, the toys came to life, and she was at the center of it all.
She dreamed of the dance, a stage awash in soft yellow light, like candlelight. She moved easily, floating. A few more steps would bring her to her Prince, who waited for her, ready to catch and hold her.
Her legs collapsed. She crashed to the floor and heard laughter. High pitched voices squeaking in harmony interrupted the music. Red eyes, whiskers, chisel-like rodent teeth appeared. The creatures scratched and chittered—
She woke lying on a sofa, tangled in a blanket, trapped. Something scratched the wall behind her; movement caught her gaze. She blinked, squinted, thinking it was only that she was tired and the sunlight through the window, shining through the Christmas tree, made weird shadows.
A quivering, furry body the size of an apricot zipped across the floor like it was on wheels, racing from under the sofa to the little space under the grandfather clock, so small, hardly anything could fit there.
Marie screamed reflexively. Only a mouse, she knew it was only a mouse. But that didn’t stop her heart from racing.
“Ah, just like a woman to scream at a mouse.” Drost came in, carrying a toolbox and the set of gears he’d been working on the previous night. “I should put out more traps. It is a constant battle, to keep the mice at bay in this old house.” He gave her an appraising look.
Marie rubbed her forehead to keep her hands from shaking. A battle against the mice. Clara fought the mice, after the Christmas tree grew and the nutcracker came to life.
Drost shifted a footstool in front of the clock and opened the clock face to expose the innards. He started working, poking with tools and fitting the extracted gears back in place.
Marie pulled the blanket to her chest. “Are you going to call the police about me?”
“No. You’re hurt, and I understand a little about desperation.” He spoke in a half-distracted manner. “I don’t know if I can help you. I am very busy, clearing out the mice for one, fixing this clock for another–I think I may finally finish soon. Then, maybe I can help you. If I have time.” He gestured wryly at the clock.
Something rustled under the sofa, a snapping sound under a floorboard, like teeth biting through wood. Tapping noises traveled down the parlor wall. Marie held the blanket tightly, hugging herself, and drew away from the edge of the sofa. Scratching, biting�
��the sound of tiny claws scraping throughout the house. There must have been dozens of them. Hundreds. Nauseated, Marie put her hand on her stomach.
Drost hissed angrily and slapped at his leg. The gesture sent a mouse flying; it leapt from the stool and scampered away, a fluff of panicked gray disappearing into a corner.
The old man scowled after it. “You see, they try to keep me from fixing the clock. Vermin.”
She sympathized, she did–she couldn’t see a mouse without screaming. “Mr. Drost–I don’t want to interrupt, but can you help me? If you can’t, I’ll go…”
He frowned at her, as if she were a clockwork broken into pieces on his workbench. He tapped his chin a moment, nodded. Hope rose up in her.
“Perhaps I can help you,” he said. “But will you do something for me, first?”
“Anything.”
“Can you trap the mice? If you are setting traps, I can fix the clock, then I can fix your leg, and all will be well. What do you think? Can you do that, with your leg hurt?”
It sounded easy. Just set traps. Clean them when they were dead. She wouldn’t even scream.
“Yes. I’m just a little slow,” she said.
He paused so long, and his face was such a mass of uncertain lines, Marie felt sure that now he was going to call the police. But finally he said, “Fine. Good. On the floor of the pantry is a bag of traps. I use peanut butter for bait. Also, there is a bottle of poison under the sink. For the ones that are too smart for the traps.”
She set about climbing off the sofa, shifting her bad leg and propping herself on the good one. Eager, now that she had a quest. This was a role she could play.
Limping to the kitchen, she found the pantry and pulled the string of the overhead light. Movement streaked in all directions, now-familiar lumps of fur racing from the light into shadow.
She screamed, a sharp yelp, and pressed her hand to her chest and her suddenly pounding heart. Stupid, stupid. Horrible little things.
She started in the pantry, setting traps on shelves alongside packages of spaghetti with jagged chew marks in the corners, boxes of pudding mix leaking their contents through bitten-out holes. She found evidence of the mice everywhere, in chewed packages and in trails of little black droppings. The place ought to be fumigated.
The same evidence lay all over the house. Along cupboards, in corners, on the shelves in the library. Drost spent so much time on his clock and at his workbench that he’d let them overrun the place. The air smelled of mouse, filled with their exhalations.
She learned more about Drost along the way. Along with the wood carvings and clockworks, he had hundreds of books on topics ranging from mechanics and alchemy to Victorian pseudo-science and outright fairy stories. Leyden jars and perpetual motion, complicated locks to unreal doorways, the animation of clockworks and the granting of souls to dolls. Half the titles were in German; she didn’t have a clue what those said.
Back in the kitchen a couple of the traps in the pantry had already killed mice. A tiny sense of victory–and dread, because now she had to clean up the bodies. She scooped them into a paper grocery bag and dumped them in a trash bin in the alley, then washed her hands for a full five minutes.
She made her ponderous way up the stairs, setting traps and bait in every corner. Most of the rooms upstairs were used for storage. Boxes and trunks stacked on each other, gathering dust. Pieces of sets and sections of painted flats showed Italian palazzos, island seascapes, and distant mountains. Drapes and chandeliers, faded and disused, lay piled on old armchairs. Framed snapshots faded to brown and gray hung on the walls–cast and crew photos from forgotten productions staged in other countries. Groups of laughing dancers crowded on stage, flanked by men in suits who were choreographers or patrons, or men and women in overalls and aprons who were carpenters and costumers. Marie recognized costumes and sets from Coppélia, Sleeping Beauty, all the classics.
She never would have looked under the drop cloth, but a mouse darted under it, and she had to set a trap there. Under the cloth, sitting on an old steamer trunk, was a scrapbook. The photos were all black and white. One was a formal squadron photo of a hundred uniformed young men; they couldn’t have been more than eighteen or so. Snapshots of the same boys with their arms draped over each other’s shoulders, the rifles in their hands incongruous with their youthful smiles. Khaki uniforms. Dark armbands. Swastikas. One person appeared in all the photos: a lanky, square-faced young man with close-cropped blond hair. He looked far too young to be a soldier. In the theater photos, he looked older, gruffer, and he wore coveralls and a tool belt. Marie recognized the older version. Karl Drost.
She closed the scrapbook, put it back exactly the way she’d found it, and tried not to think any more about it.
Back in the parlor, Drost was sitting on the floor, tools and gears scattered around him. He was eating a sandwich and gestured for her to join him.
“Here, eat. You’ve been working hard.”
She settled to the floor, sticking her hurt leg out, and took a sandwich. The bread smelled of mouse, and she suddenly wasn’t hungry.
She studied the grandfather clock. An immense antique, it stood at seven feet of polished mahogany, had a brass pendulum and fixtures, an etched crystal cabinet front, and a picture above the clock face. The picture, circular and meant to rotate, was stuck halfway between a scene of a gold leaf sun on a turquoise background and one of an opal moon on a lapis night. The key was slotted into its place under the clock face. Looking at the parts without homes, she doubted it would ever work again.
“Why do you have to fix the clock?” she asked.
“You will see, when it’s fixed.”
“Does it do something special?”
His gaze narrowed and he turned a sly smile. “You will be happy to know, I have time to work on your leg.”
*~*~*~*
Clara’s Uncle Drosselmeyer gave her the Nutcracker as a Christmas gift. That night when the clock chimed midnight, the toys came to life and the mice invaded the parlor. The tin soldiers did battle with the vicious mice and their seven-headed king. The Nutcracker, with its stiff gait and grotesquely painted head, commanded the soldiers, who were sorely outnumbered. Clara rescued the Nutcracker by killing the Mouse King with her shoe. Then the Nutcracker became a handsome prince who whisked her away to a fairy tale kingdom where sugared dreams danced in her honor.
The scratching of claws and clacking of teeth changed, becoming a clear, deep voice.
“Why do you wage war on us?”
A pair of red eyes flashed, then another, and another. Four sets of whiskers appeared, then six sets of ears, seven sharp-toothed mouths, but the creature that stalked toward her had only two legs and two front paws. It walked upright on steel-tipped claws.
“I can make you dance again,” it said. It crept toward her; she flinched back. “Dance with me, Marie.”
She could feel the movement in her muscles, but her limbs could not obey.
The hand that took hold of hers was thin and bony. Claws tipped the fingers.
“Dance with me,” he said, and raised her hand in preparation for a waltz.
Gasping, she pulled away from the Mouse King and brushed off the shivers running across her skin.
*~*~*~*
Marie sat in the workshop, her leg stretched out on a second chair while Drost fitted pieces around her knee. The orthopedic brace was gone, and he worked over her sweatpants, securing metal bands above and below the knee, tightening them with little screws. Jointed metal struts connected them.
To distract herself, she played with one of the clockworks lying on the table, a Columbine dancer. The key in her back turned and her white chiffon dress fluttered while she kicked, turned, bowed, kicked, turned, bowed, over and over until the key slowed and she stopped, bent over.
Drost watched her staring at the clockwork dancer. He said, “It’s all simple pulleys and springs, cords attached to clever joints. But cut one of those cords, those tendons, and it
will never move again. Not so very different than you or I, yes? All you need are a couple of cords to replace the ones that broke, some extra support to give you strength.”
He fit cords to the bands, crisscrossed over her knee. He attached gears for the cords to loop through, which would take up the slack when she bent and straightened her leg. They made clicking sounds when he turned them.
“How does that feel?” he asked.
“It feels the same as the brace.”
“It should. We’ll stop for now, so you can get used to this before we go on. I must get back to my clock.” He gathered his tools as he stood. “Today is Christmas you know. I want to finish by midnight, so we can hear the chimes, yes?”
Christmas. She hadn’t known.
Something snapped and squeaked at the same time. One of the mousetraps in the next room.
“I should check the traps,” she said, standing gingerly.
Drost was already in the hallway, on his way to the parlor. “Yes. Vigilance. Never give them a moment’s rest. The only way to win against mice is to wage war on them.”
Why do you wage war on us? She hesitated, remembering dancing among tin soldiers while the seven-headed King advanced, slashing with his sword. Drost had designed the headpiece that the dancer portraying the King wore, the clockworks and effects that made the heads gnash their teeth and made their eyes glow red. She’d been so frightened of it, but in a giddy way, because it was only make-believe after all.
“You must be tired of it,” she said. “The war, I mean.”
“Yes. War is tiring.”
She balanced on her left leg because she was so uncertain of the right. “You were a soldier. I saw some of the pictures.”
He raised a brow, his frown deepening. “Not really. I was young. It was late in the war, and the army was taking children by that time. They told us we were making a better world. We believed them.” He shrugged and rearranged the tools in the toolbox. “I am still hoping for a better world.”
Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology Page 27