The Toymakers(14)
Kaspar held up his hands. The boys were rampaging toward him, looking desperately for a place to hide. Some of the shoppers had noticed the commotion now; all eyes along the aisle revolved until they stared into the copse of paper trees.
Clawing at each other to get ahead, the boys scrambled into the alcove. As they breached the first line of trees, Cathy felt Kaspar’s hand close over her own. Then he was wrenching her out of their path. Not a moment later, the boys came cartwheeling past, no longer in control of their own arms and legs. Tangled together, they plunged headlong into the pyramid of boxes.
Kaspar’s hand was like a claw over Cathy’s own. She had been trying to tease hers away (this is what boys always did) but now he was straining in the other direction, and when she caught his eyes they too were open in horror. Only, unlike the boys spread-eagled in the boxes, this horror was tinged with glee. ‘Run!’ he mouthed. It took Cathy too long to understand what he meant. By then, the first paper tree was already sprouting.
Beneath the prostrate boys, one of the boxes had started to unravel. Paper burst upwards like a geyser, forceful enough to send one boy flying and carry the other up high on a tide of unfolding boughs. Other boxes, their seals already broken, were pulsing as the paper tried to force its way into the light. More had been snagged in the branches of the first tree as it rocketed upwards, but when that tree’s growth suddenly stopped, they continued their flight, arcing up past the galleries and into the Emporium dome, where one of the serpents of fabric and lace looped the loop to avoid being hit. Through the branches still budding newsprint leaves, Kaspar saw the flying boxes open. One tree was exploding mid-flight; uncertain which way was down, it became an orb of latticed branches before crashing to earth, somewhere among the doll’s houses of the neighbouring aisle. Other boxes remained intact as they flew. They seemed to hang in the air, if only to tease, but in a second they would come down like hailstones.
‘This way!’ cried Kaspar. ‘New girl, now!’
He took her by the hand and darted along the aisle. Behind them, one of the boxes crashed down and, seconds later, a Douglas fir erupted. Up ahead, a row of hawthorns ascended, battling against each other as they curled into the vault above the aisles. Kaspar steered her left, heard the panicked cries as other shoppers ditched their baskets and fled for the entrance. Somewhere, the patchwork dog was setting up the kind of bark only it could, with a sound like wet laundry.
Cathy risked a glance upwards. Boxes were raining down. One had lodged in the rails of the gallery above, and the rowan tree that had sprouted out was teetering, ready to tumble. Instinctively, she cowered. That was when she felt Kaspar’s arm about her shoulder. ‘Here!’ he cried, and steered her into a dead end of an aisle. At its apex sat a Wendy House, ringed with a perfect picket fence.
Kaspar was harrying her towards it when one of the boxes landed at her feet. She reeled back, just in time to feel the rush of paper leaves roaring across her face. Kaspar put his arms around her, pirouetting through the branches of yet more trees springing up around them. To Cathy, the Emporium was a whirlwind of whites and yellows, crêpe paper and card. Half blind, she let Kaspar usher her over the picket fence, and in through the Wendy House door.
For the first time, the world felt still. Kaspar still had his arms around her, but now she tore herself out of the embrace. She was ready to barrack him, but the pained expression on his face made her pause. That was when she saw where she was standing.
Inside the Wendy House, what had promised to be a cramped corner revealed itself to be a living room of preposterous size. Three armchairs gathered around an open hearth, and in between them was a table with board games piled high. There was a shelf full of books and a deep-pile rug, and in the corner a basket in which a toy tiger lounged. As they had approached, the Wendy House had barely reached the line of her shoulder. She closed her eyes, but they had not been deceiving her. Inside, the room was big enough to perform a cartwheel – and she would have done exactly that, if only her insides had not been cartwheeling of their own accord all morning. She stretched a hand upwards but her fingers could not even grace the rafters overhead.
She was about to step outside and check the veracity of her own vision, but Kaspar reached out for her again. ‘Not yet …’
Outside, the Emporium floor was groaning as the new trees settled. Cathy and Kaspar gazed out across a paper forest. Some enterprising customer had opened a box of Emil’s pipe-cleaner birds and they were now fluttering up high, their wings spinning vainly as they searched for a roost.
‘It will be safe soon,’ said Kaspar. ‘Just wait to make sure they haven’t—’
The words had barely left his lips when there was a rustling in the boughs of the nearest tree, and from its uppermost branches another varnished box crashed down, fracturing in front of the Wendy House door. Kaspar staggered back, taking Cathy with him, just as the tree exploded upwards, bulbous trunk and overhanging branches blocking their view. Moments later, when the tree was fully grown, Kaspar picked himself up and ran his hands across the bark. There was no way through.
Half of him was already counting the cost of putting this right, imagining the grave look on his father’s face, but the other half was grinning inanely, overjoyed to behold this wonderland his toys had made. The customers who had seen this (those without concussions, at any rate) would make sure this story was told for Christmases to come. There would be a rush on EMPORIUM INSTANT TREES tomorrow; this he could say with every inch of merchant’s instinct that lay within him. Papa, he would say when the old man began his rebuke, don’t you see what I’ve done? I’ve done better than make us a fortune – I’ve made us a spectacle. My toys, they’ll outsell Emil’s soldiers for certain …