The Toymakers(61)

In the half-moon hall, the first customers froze. Before they could fan out, their eyes were drawn upward. Cathy looked the same way. Above them, the cloud castle drawbridge was lowering, and out of the vault inside a red carpet rolled. Instead of dropping from the precipice, it slowly unfurled, charting a crimson pathway over the tops of the aisles – until it landed here, at the feet of the first family. From up above, the sound of sleigh bells could be heard. The swirling lights of the castle interior revolved, and through curtains of rippling white the heads of two cloth creatures emerged. Black button eyes and embroidered noses were followed by antlers of crocheted bone. Soon, two patchwork reindeer stood regally at the top of the crimson road; then, each with a nod to the other, they began to canter down.

Behind them they trailed a simple wooden sled, its rear piled high with presents wrapped with silver paper and bows. No passengers descended with the sled, no driver flicked the reins to drive the reindeer on. They cantered, without hoof beats, to the half-moon hall, and there they came to a stop in front of the first family to have breached the doors. The first reindeer nuzzled the hands of the mother, the second reindeer nuzzled the hands of the children, and in that way they directed the family aboard. Then the sled drew around, parted the gathered shop hands, and took off along the cobbled aisle.

Somewhere, gramophones began to play. The carousel burst back into life. The shop hands came together in one last burst of applause – and then it was done. Opening night had begun.

‘Danger! Adventure! Glory! Have you got what it takes? Step up, be courageous! Fight the brave fight, beat the unbeatable foe, win the unwinnable war!’

Emil stood atop one of the monstrous bears, which had been armoured and saddled like some monster plucked out of Nordic myth. The glade between the aisles was one of several waiting to be discovered on the shopfloor. In front of him, two dozen expectant faces looked up. More were being drawn from the neighbouring aisles, boys straining on their mothers’ hands.

Beneath him – Emil, the god of the battlefield – lay a medieval village in miniature, a rustic landscape where a hand-crafted windmill turned the waters of a stream, where paper trees the size of a boot made forests against the banks, and the hilltops rose in gradients of felt, cloth and papier maché. The houses were tumbledown creations crouched around a market square, where wind-up pigs and cows troughed in the fountain.

Soldiers were descending from all sides, the village the scene of the battle.

‘Take cover!’ Emil cried, and one of the boys shuffled his soldiers into a barn. ‘Enter the fray!’ he exclaimed, waving at another boy about to deposit his soldiers to the battle. ‘Keep tabs on your sergeants, on your captains and mercenaries! You there—’ he waved at a nervous boy, who was opening a package his mother had purchased and finding a rag-tag set of soldiery within ‘—those soldiers were peasant farmers just two days gone, but they’ll need to see battle. Then—’ Emil whipped out another package, which he gave to the boy. Inside were tiny pantaloons, leather jerkins, private’s tunics and redcoats. ‘—dress them as you see fit, as they rise up through your ranks! This is the Long War, boys, and it is only just beginning!’

Emil threw his arms out. Battle was being joined all around him. Boys had dragged their mothers to the counters, rushed back with their new toys and set them loose at once. Above him, the great banners of THE LONG WAR! were held aloft by patchwork robins. The walls of the glade were built from boxes that boys might buy. They said Kaspar had enough imagination for an entire Emporium, but they had never seen this. In one box a troop of medieval knights were waiting to be wound up, ready to joust. In another were horse dragoons and musketeers; in another, Roman legionnaires. The boxes of the new Long War game came with a set of soldiers ready for battle, but boys could get together with their friends and make armies as big as the imagination allowed. This was how, Emil knew as he let himself be borne up by the excitement around him. There might not have been true magic in the glades, the children here might not have been witnessing the impossible – but this was magic, all the same. Not the showmanship of Kaspar and his ostentatious toys, but the simple showmanship of business. The ordinary magic. This was how he might be remembered.

Emil was so engrossed that he did not notice, at first, the women who had entered the glade and looked disapprovingly down on the battle. There were five of them, four matrons and one woman much younger, dressed in grey finery with huge white collars. The younger woman had a most severe look, elegant and cold, with hair that was turning from blond to a brilliant white and eyes almost as pale. It was she who set foot in the battlefield, to the consternation of the boys whose soldiers were about to meet. The cries of foul play went up around them, boys scrambled to right their soldiers – and Emil, who was already referring to the Rules of Engagement inside each Long War box, did not notice that it was to him that the woman was purposefully striding.

‘Sir?’ she began.

‘One moment, madam, this is an emergency …’

‘There is one more emergency at hand, good sir.’

Emil looked up from his notes and was perplexed to see the woman standing imperiously above, like she was the goddess and he the lowly soldier sent out to do battle. Pinched between her fingers stood a single white feather. It trembled in the warm Emporium air.

All of his world zoned in on that single feather. The rest of the Emporium faded. When it returned, Emil saw that some of the boys had stopped making battle to stare at him. He came to his senses with a resounding crash.