Jingle Jangle: The Invention of Jeronicus Jangle

by Lyn Sisson-Talbert

  But, as she watched over his shoulder and saw him finish the formula, she couldn’t prevent herself from teaching him. “You have to raise the variable exponentially to the second power.”

  Jeronicus didn’t look up, but he made the slight adjustment to the formula.

  Journey chuckled. What was he thinking? Wasn’t it obvious? “The other one,” she shared.

  “No, that’s not possible.” He scrutinized the formula. She was right. He made the change then turned to her with a mystified expression. “You understand this?” he asked incredulously.

  She gave a sanguine nod.

  “What about . . .” He reached across his note-cluttered desk and pulled out a piece of paper with another formula written on it in peculiar concentric circles. “This one?” he asked, testing her ability.

  “That’s the circumference of spectacular,” she said with aplomb.

  “And this?” He reached for another page marked with a sort of bell curve.

  “The second derivative of sensational,” she said proudly.

  Jeronicus stared long and hard at her, baffled. “You’ve been looking through my notes,” he accused. Only he and Jessica had ever been able to understand such things. And yet . . . He snatched up a blank sheet of paper and jotted down one more zany formula. She tried sneaking a peek over his shoulder, but he kept the note hidden. “Hey, hey! Watch it!” he warned as she wiggled this way and that. “Wait until I’m finished.”

  Finally, he stopped writing and turned to her. “You’re not gonna trick me with this one. What about this?” He offered her the note. There was no way she’d deduce that theorem. He doubted anyone with a sound mind could understand it. If she could, then maybe, just maybe, she could help him with creating his something revolutionary in order to save his shop.

  She contemplated it then looked up at him vacantly.

  Jeronicus sighed, pursing his lips. “That’s what I thought,” he said sadly, turning back to tweaking away with a pair of rusty needle-nose pliers. “It’s okay,” he added gently.

  “Well,” she said, “it would be the square root of possible . . .”

  Jeronicus froze. She could understand it! Because she wasn’t just anyone with a sound mind; she was a Jangle, whose minds were unbelievable and full of soundness—and sounds!

  “But there’s a miscalculation,” she stated. She stared off into space, and then, before Journey’s eyes, neon-blue lines and symbols appeared in the air directly in front of her. She had unlocked this special, magical side of her long ago, after which Jessica had shared that Journey had inherited the ability from her grandfather. This was why it had been so important for Journey to meet Jeronicus. But while she’d operated her magic before, she had never seen it glimmer and dazzle so brilliantly, so vibrantly, so clear!

  Refusing to let her excitement distract her, Journey focused in as she heard her imagination ignite. Noises echoed and clanged over one another, until they coalesced into one clear inner voice that showed her the way. Intuitively lifting her hand, she sifted through the glowing numbers and letters, and used her finger to write an even longer calculation in the air. The intervals and functions and decimals sparkled before her.

  Jeronicus couldn’t see the magic like he’d once been able to. Still, he watched. Still, he knew.

  Journey finished writing the formula, and stopped to study it amid her utter exhilaration. There it was, shimmering before her like a starry galaxy full of answers. An accomplished smile cometed across her face. “Now it should work,” she said with a certain, elated bob of her head.

  Jeronicus stared at her in fascination. “You can see that?” he breathed. Not even Jessica had inherited his magical ability. It must have skipped a generation.

  She turned to him with an inquisitive smile. “Can’t you?”

  “No. Not anymore.” At that, he stood and began to retreat down the hall.

  Journey could see that she had accidentally touched a nerve. “I was just—”

  “No more talking. Chores,” he reminded her in a sing-song, vanishing through the doorway and into the lonely darkness that lay beyond it.

  Journey set her rag down on the desk and slumped her shoulders. Something must have happened to her grandfather to cause his magical ability to submerge in the murk of his mind, or, perhaps, of his heart.

  Just then, something on the desk caught her eye . . .

  A book open to a page of eccentric color-penciled doodles and designs. Picking it up, she regarded robot designs, then flipped the book and read the gilded name on the cover: JESSICA J.

  Journey scrunched up her nose. “Mom?”

  Meanwhile, Gustafson was baffled

  by his broken, busted Werly Twerly . . .

  Chapter Twelve

  A mystified Gustafson scrutinized his own design for the Werly Twerly from his polished desk.

  His entire office was opulent, with ornate wallpaper and rich pinewood paneling, a domed lamp with intricately cut pieces of colored glass, and oil portraits of Gustafson and Don Juan, all lit by candles, bulbous wall sconces, and sunlight through long stained glass windows. Gustafson feared that if he didn’t get his act together, he’d end up having to relinquish it all.

  “Well, maybe next time someone will lose an eye so they’ll never have to see what a mockery you’ve become.” Don Juan mounted a miniature staircase that led to the top of Gustafson’s desk where Don Juan’s own scaled-down office also lay, dwarfed by a large decorative gold egg.

  Gustafson slammed down the page. “If you hadn’t forced me to burn your designs, I could’ve mass-produced you,” he said bitterly. He stood and wrestled off his jacket, flinging it to the floor in frustration. What was he to do about his quaking, crumbling, decaying dominion?

  Don Juan chuckled nastily. “And the burden of building an empire would have fallen upon whom? I am, and forever will remain, one, and only one, of a kind.” Don Juan strode gallantly across the desk toward his own minuscule one with its minute furniture and all.

  Gustafson took the stopper out of a crystal decanter and poured himself a drink—cranberry juice, his favorite. “I will fix it. You’ll see. Or I will come up with something even better!” he declared. “And you wanna know why? Because I’m the toy maker of the year! Toy maker of the year! Toy maker of the year! Toy maker of the year!” With each repetition, he pointed to the round TOY MAKER OF THE YEAR plaques hanging bountifully on either side of the door’s archway.

  “Lift me!” Don Juan commanded him.

  Gustafson’s face hardened in confusion.

  “Do not be afraid,” Don Juan urged. “I want to offer you sweet words of encouragement.”

  Gustafson picked up the pedestal on which Don Juan stood, like a pint-sized crow’s nest one might find on a toy ship, so that they were eye to eye. And then Don Juan slapped him.

  “I encourage you to not be an imbecile!” the matador yelled. “Your only successes have come from that book of inventions! So why not borrow another one of Jeronicus’s inventions?”

  Gustafson plunked him back down and stormed to the window. “Because I’ve already stolen—”

  “Borrowed,” Don Juan interceded.

  “—everything in that book!” Gustafson continued. “There is nothing left of him! There is nothing left in that pawnshop of his!” He set down his cup and gazed into the darkening sky.

  “Do you want me to slap you again? Because I’m happy to do it,” Don Juan said. “Truly, once a great inventor, always a great inventor. There is always something left.”

  Slumped at the sill, Gustafson considered it. Could Jeronicus still have one last invention in him after all those years? Or perhaps a whole other book full of fresh ideas not yet explored?

  “It’s easy . . .” Don Juan reminded him, as he had once before, long ago.

  Gustafson considered. With Christmas looming
on the horizon, all that remained was supplying his factory workers with the blueprints for a new toy—one that actually functioned.

  One that would again award him Toy Maker of the Year.

  And he knew just where to get it . . .

  Journey couldn’t get over the notion that her mother may have been a great inventor, too . . .

  Chapter Thirteen

  Journey had taken her mother’s book and sprawled out on a brocade sofa in a nook of windows.

  Her own thoughts, like the light snow falling outside, began to drift. Poring over the pages, she grasped at the idea that her mother had also been an inventor, and she wondered why she’d never mentioned it. Her mother only ever told her of her grandfather’s great mind, and how Journey had inherited his magical ability, but having seen him, she wondered what had happened to his shop, and to his spirit. She felt there was hope for her to do great things there. Miraculous things. Impossible things.

  She studied the intricate robot design written in meticulous pencil lines, with its wide binocular-like eyes and hint of a mouth. She noticed a happy sketch of a cube, and recalled the mysterious glass one she had picked up, and how strangely protective her grandfather had been of it. Then a new thought came . . . If her grandfather couldn’t get his inventions to work, perhaps she could help! Journey was unstoppable.

  With hope swelling in her chest, she shut the book, climbed on top of the front desk, and began to muster the magic inside her. The magic swirled around her and grew more concentrated in her open palms. All her life, she’d never felt like she fit in, but there, standing in the once-famous shop, Journey felt right at home. She released the splendid orbs of energy from her hands, and the magic projected around her, ensconcing her in a web of equations and numbers that lived in her head. Quotients and fractions. Decimals and coefficients. Calculations of additions and subtractions, brackets and parentheses. Her vision swam as she explored it all.

  After she was done testing her ideas, the magic extinguished, and she glanced around the room, taking new details of it in. In the corner, a curious red, rounded fence adorned with metal florets caught her eye. Following a sudden sense of intuition—or maybe it was her magic—she made her way to it and stepped through its groaning little gate then pressed her boot down on a pedal. The platform began to rise up a pillar. It was an elevator. Before she knew it, she was headed straight toward the ceiling! But then, a hatch parted, and the elevator took her even farther up into a dark, wood-smelling abandoned room.

  “Wow.” She breathed, gazing around at her unexpected discovery.

  She stepped off the elevator and it descended, vanishing behind her as she took in the large and drafty room. Despite the cobwebs coating flasks and beakers on the center table, the scuffed-up wooden floorboards, inventions covered in white gossamer sheets, and the stale air of neglect, Journey knew a creative space from any other kind of space, and this room buzzed with inspiring energy, even more than she’d first detected in the shop below. It vibrated through every molecule.

  Passing an antique cabinet, she crossed to a covered invention and parted the sheet to get a gander. “Jangleator 2000?” she mused, disappearing under the sheet to marvel at the strange old machine.

  “I knew it!” came a boy’s awestruck voice. His tune quickly changed. “Ahh! A ghost!”

  Journey emerged from behind the sheet as the boy cowered under a desk. Apparently, he had stumbled upon the elevator and had taken it up there—only to assume that the figure examining the Jangleator 2000 was a ghost. Striding toward him, Journey took in his green-and-orange tartan suit, green polka-dot bow tie, and owlish glasses with a makeshift magnifying lens clipped on.

  “Who are you?” they asked each other in unison.

  “I’m Journey,” she said. “Jeronicus’s granddaughter.”

  Edison stood to greet her. “I’m Edison. Edison Latimer. Professor Jangle’s most trusted assistant,” he said with all the pride in the world.

  Journey blinked at him, staving off an ounce of envy.

  “You want to be my apprentice?” he asked optimistically.

  “Do you want to be mine?” Journey asked him right back.

  “I asked first,” he said pointedly.

  She sighed, shook her head, and walked away, eager to keep exploring.

  “As the Head Inventor, I insist we leave at once,” Edison called after her.

  She combed over mysterious gadgets on the desk. “Not until I find what I’m looking for.” She contemplated a cobweb-covered machine that resembled a typewriter, and kept searching.

  “What are you looking for?” he inquired.

  She opened the creaky little door of a dusty hutch. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “You really shouldn’t be touching anything in here because you never know when it could do something like—” He accidentally knocked over a kettle-like contraption that clattered loudly to the floor and rolled to a stop. Before it, there was an object covered by a ratty white sheet.

  Journey crossed to it, with Edison chattering by her side. She tentatively pulled off the sheet to reveal a mechanical robot—the same one she’d seen in her mother’s book of inventions! It was three feet of sturdy brass plates, with stocky arms and legs, and a head that practically resembled a pair of gigantic binoculars. The Buddy 3000.

  Journey knelt to get a better look.

  Edison followed suit. “There is something here. Why didn’t the professor tell me?” He moved past his shock and dismay, and his face lit up. “It’s— It’s amazing!” he hollered.

  Journey scoured the robot for an on switch, but couldn’t find one. “It’ll be even more amazing when I get it to work,” she mumbled, deep in thought.

  “If the professor couldn’t get it to work, what makes you think you can?”

  She looked at Edison, straightening her posture. “Because there’s nothing that says I can’t.”

  “What does that even mean?” Edison asked her.

  She noted the robot had a square hole in the center of its chest, like it was missing a heart.

  A cube-like heart . . .

  “Wait.” Her eyes widened. She had an idea.

  After a quick stop downstairs, Journey returned to the workshop with the mysterious glass cube she’d noticed earlier. Carefully, she slid the cube into the cavity of the robot’s chest with a gratifying click. She waited for it to turn on and activate. Nothing happened.

  Edison knelt back down. “There’s something wrong with it,” he remarked.

  “There’d be something wrong with you, too, if you were stuck in a dark room all your life,” Journey retorted, her tone perhaps a bit more defensive than she’d intended. She found a page for the cube’s design on the worktable while Edison peered over her shoulder. “It looks like the power source is in a superposition of states. We just need something to collapse the wave function.”

  They referenced the designs together. “So will it work or not?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Journey answered.

  “What are you saying yes to?” Edison asked indignantly. “Will it work, or not? It’s a simple question. All I request is a simple answer!”

  “It will work,” Journey said warmly. “At least I have to believe it will.”

  Just then, beeping and whirring sounded behind them. Journey and Edison whirled around, facing the robot, whose radial aperture-eyes were now open, whose glass cube now glowed and spun, and who had taken a few steps toward them. Journey and Edison turned back to each other.

  And screamed.

  Journey had found magic, and then some!

  Good thing she had a new friend by her side.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I don’t want to die! I haven’t even hit puberty!” Edison buried his face in Journey’s back.

  They’d hidden under the worktable together. “Edison! L
et go!” Shaking him off, she inched out from under it. The robot, she saw, was just as scared as they were, peeping at her from around the table and mimicking her motions. “It’s okay. Come on,” she encouraged him.

  The robot waddled toward her, wobbling as he grew accustomed to his newfound mobility.

  “Easy,” Journey told him.

  The gears inside the robot’s glass heart purred, and he steadied himself.

  Journey motioned to herself. “My name is Journey.”

  Buddy regarded her, eyes dilating. “Jeronicus’s granddaughter.” He imitated what he’d heard her saying earlier!

  “And this is Edison,” Journey added, gesturing to the boy, who looked up.

  He bonked his head on the bottom of the table. “Ow! I’m okay!” He crawled out from under it and tentatively clung to Journey’s back. Finally, he gave a timid wave at Buddy. “Hi!”

  “Why didn’t you work for my grandfather?” Journey asked.

  Buddy’s eyes enlarged. “It will work. At least I have to believe it will,” he parroted back.

  Journey gasped. “That’s it.” She rose. “Belief! It collapsed the wave function. It must’ve been part of the formula. He works because we believe,” she told Edison, reviewing the page of the robot’s designs.

  “Well, of course we believe. He’s hovering above your head,” he said matter-of-factly. Sheer horror crossed his face as he realized what he’d said, and he reversed. “He’s hovering above your head!” He ran and hid under the ladder of a stripped loft bed. “Mommy!”

  Journey looked. Her jaw dropped, along with the page in her hands.

  Buddy was levitating, somersaulting clumsily through the air. He knocked into wheels hanging from a wall, and then into ropes on a pulley system, as he tried to get his bearings.

  Journey winced. “Be careful!”