Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages Read online

  “Look in the mirror, Jagg.” He whirled toward the sink. Where he should have seen his own reflection in the age-spotted mirror, he saw instead a shadowy face that was not entirely human.

  The awful eyes were sunken and glowed a smoky, sullen red. The mouth was too large for a human mouth … and seemed to be full of exceedingly sharp teeth.

  “The toy factory in your dream last night,” said the beast in the mirror. “Your destiny is to own it.”

  “Why?”

  “You will be the new toymaker.”

  Jagg did not have to ask the name of the creature to whom he spoke. In his heart he knew the beast’s identity. It was the Dark One, the Master of Evil. Though Jagg had never actually seen the Devil before, he had always been close to him.

  “Toymaker?” Jagg said. “But I hate toys. I hate children.”

  “Of course, you do,” said the hideous thing in the mirror. It grinned at him. “That’s why it’s your destiny. Times are changing. Evil is on the rise. The toy factory and many other things will be falling into my hands in the days to come. You will build toys that will do great harm to the children who own them, toys that will bring pain and misery and enormous sadness to everyone they touch. You must get to the city tonight, without delay. You will find a man named Victor Bodkins, and you will offer him cash for the factory. He can’t resist cash. He loves cash.”

  The face faded from the mirror, and in a while Jagg could see his own face staring back at him, pale and wide-eyed.

  He would be a toymaker with his own factory. Though he did not yet understand how his toys would harm children, he knew that this was indeed his destiny.

  Heart hammering, excited, as close to happiness as he had ever been, Nick Jagg closed the suitcase, carried it into the waiting room, went to the counter, and bought a ticket to the city on the next bus out.

  3

  BIG CITY, SMALL VI­SI­TORS

  1.

  THE ODDKINS WILL BE heading down to the highway. We’ve got to stop them. Those had been the words of the tuxedo-clad marionette when he had urged the robot, the bee, and the other toys to leave Victor Bodkins and pursue the stuffed toys instead. Hoping to catch sight of one of the impossible creatures again, Victor drove back to the main highway and turned north.

  Hunching over the steering wheel, he eased the car slowly along the gravel shoulder, peering intently into the rain-lashed gloom at the edge of the dark woods. He was seeking a tiny flicker of the robot’s glowing yellow eyes or the darting flight of the soda-can-size bee or the hurried movement of the stuffed toys that he had first seen crossing the lane in his headlights.

  He realized that these creatures were quite small and that the forest was large. He knew there was little chance that he would get another look at the toys. But he could not give up easily. He had been given a glimpse of something wondrous, something magical. Suddenly his entire orderly, disciplined way of life was trembling under him as if it were a rickety bamboo platform. He had to know what they were, where they came from—and what connection they had with his uncle.

  In time he came to a roadside restaurant and service station. The enormous orange and purple neon sign on the roof—HARLEY’S PLACE, EATS AND GAS, TRUCKERS WELCOME—seemed bigger than the building under it. The falling rain was tinted by the neon and looked like millions of strands of gaudy tinsel.

  Victor pulled into the parking lot, intending to pause there for a few minutes to think. As he entered, he passed two trucks that were heading out to the highway. The first was an olive-green United States Army transport, the cargo bed of which was enclosed with wood and canvas. One canvas flap at the rear was loose and billowing in the wind. The second truck had a long, open bed that was piled high with eight-foot lengths of large, steel pipes held in place by chains and wooden wedges.

  As the second truck slowly rumbled past only two feet to the left of Victor’scar, he was startled to see the male marionette perched on the cargo. It was standing on a wooden wedge, gripping a chain with one small hand and the rim of a steel pipe with the other. It was leaning out to peer forward past the cab of its own truck toward the back of the army transport. Rain drizzled off the brim of the wicked-looking creature’s top hat.

  The truck continued to roll by, and the marionette slid out of sight. Then Victor saw the toy robot. It was half in and half out of one of the stacked pipes. It turned its evil, glowing yellow eyes on Victor as they passed each other. They were separated only by the car window, a couple of feet of open air, and thin curtains of neon-colored rain. The robot’s arm drew back and snapped forward in a throwing motion. A small object—maybe a pebble, perhaps a scrap of wood or metal—struck the side window of Victor’s car, directly in front of his face. He flinched. The glass did not crack.

  Behind Victor the truck pulled out onto the rainy highway, carrying the robot and marionette and other toys away into the storm. Victor pinched himself.

  “Ouch!”

  Then he frantically turned the car around. The chase had begun.

  2.

  AFTER MUCH STRUGGLE AMOS and Patch finally secured the loose flap of canvas at the back of the army truck. Having sealed out the wind and rain, they joined the other Oddkins who were huddled together in the gloom.

  The truck’s cargo space was only three-quarters full. It was carrying bales of olive-green wool army blankets. The only light was a grayish glow that came through a small, wire-covered window between the rear area and the cab.

  The Oddkins had settled into a shallow, empty space among the bales of blankets, where they could just barely see one another in the faint light. They could not be seen by the driver or his partner if either man happened to look back through the narrow window.

  Amos was saddened by his friends’ wet and miserable appearance. But he was also beginning to feel better about his leadership, for he had gotten them onto a truck headed for the city. He was doing what his Uncle Isaac had trusted him to do. A low flame of pride had begun to burn in him.

  They spoke quietly even though the rumble of the engine, the howl of the wind, and the roar of the rain were sufficiently loud to ensure that they were not overheard. They remembered how they accidentally had let themselves be seen by Uncle Isaac’s nephew, Victor, and they were determined not to reveal their presence to another adult—except, of course, to Mrs. Colleen Shannon at her toy shop.

  At first, as if they were experienced adventurers enjoying the memory of a major triumph, they talked about their flight from the toy factory and their frightening encounter with the mongrel dog on the footbridge.

  “I taught that beast the meaning of fear,” Skippy said. “Did you see the way he flinched from my witty insults?”

  Amos knew Skippy was not sticking to the facts. But he thought it might do their morale some good if they allowed themselves to exaggerate the courage they had shown.

  Skippy said, “If you make jokes at a bully’s expense and make him seem foolish, you reduce his power over you.”

  “It might be true that being able to laugh at a bully makes him less frightening,” said Burl, nodding and waving his trunk. “But you didn’t scare that mongrel, Skippy.”

  “Sure I did,” the rabbit said. “He was shivering and whimpering by the time I was finished with him.”

  “No, dear rabbit, you misremember,” Burl said kindly.

  “Whimpering and whining.”

  “No, your jokes only angered him. He barked and snapped at you, and you had to scamper out of his way.”

  Scowling, Skippy said, “He whimpered at least once.”

  “No,” Burl said.

  “I’m sure I remember a whimper,” Skippy insisted.

  “It was your own,” Burl said.

  “Surely not,” Skippy said.

  “Yes.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yes. I’m the elephant, after all, and elephants never forget anything. You can count on my memory of the incident being better than yours.”

  “I’m so grateful tha
t you set me straight,” Skippy said sourly. “Thank you. Thank you so much, so very much. Oh, yes, thank you, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Burl said, smiling. He was unaware that the rabbit’s thank-yous were scornful and insincere.

  A fierce gust of wind moaned at the truck’s tailgate. It made the canvas walls and roof flap and flutter against the wooden frame to which they were tied.

  “It was I who frightened the monster,” Patch said. He had pulled a corner of a wool blanket from one of the bales and was wiping the mud and bits of weeds from his clothes and fur. “What a mess I am. I’m so ashamed. Cats must be neat at all times, a good example to less well-groomed animals. Anyway, that dog saw my sword and was frightened of it. Oh, I really am embarrassed by the horrid condition of my costume. I’m disgusting. Please don’t look at me. Lower your eyes. Have mercy, please. But the dog, yes, well, the dog saw the sword and realized that I was skilled with the blade, and that’s when the fight began to go out of him.”

  “It’s interesting,” Burl said, “that cats have memories no better than those of rabbits. My dear Patch, you never had a chance even to poke your sword at the beast. And even if you had gone after him, he would have been unimpressed. In that encounter Butterscotch was the only hero among us.”

  “I distinctly remember the monster whimpering when I made jokes at his expense,” Skippy said.

  “Perhaps what you heard,” Gibbons said, “was us whimpering at the jokes.”

  For a minute or two they were silent, listening to the rain and to the hissing of the truck’s tires on the wet highway.

  Then, one by one, they began to speak of things they had spoken of a hundred times before: their impossible dreams. Burl talked of one day going to Africa and taking his “rightful place” among real elephants. “I can see myself striding majestically across the plains, leading my herd to better grazing and sweeter water.”

  “But Burl,” Butterscotch said gently, “you don’t graze or drink water. You’re a stuffed-toy elephant.”

  “Well, sure I am, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t lead other elephants to good grass and water.”

  Gibbons said, “Real elephants would step on you and squash you flat before they even saw you. You’re only twenty inches high.”

  “I’m only twenty inches high,” Burl said, “but I could hold my own!”

  “I want no part of Africa,” Amos said. He sighed dreamily. “But someday it would be nice to live in a pretty little cottage on the edge of the woods and write poetry with a quill pen. Rupert Toon wrote all of his poetry with a quill pen—”

  “Sounds as if he wrote it with a sledgehammer,” Skippy said.

  Amos ignored him. “If I had a cottage and a quill pen, I’m quite sure I could be a good poet.”

  “What I could be if I had a chance,” Skippy said, “is a stand-up comic. I’d be a smash hit in Las Vegas. Do guest spots on TV shows. Maybe have my own series. Get a big house in Beverly Hills next door to Mickey Mouse. Be a star.” He leaned back against a bale of blankets and crossed his forepaws behind his head. “Yes, sir, I could be a Big-Time Funny Bunny if someone would give me a break.”

  “I have no interest in fame,” Patch said. “What I need to be, what I long to be—”

  “Is an elephant, of course,” Burl said. “In his heart, everyone wants to be an elephant.”

  “No, a cat,” Patch said.

  “Cat? But you are a cat,” Burl said.

  “A real cat,” Patch said. “I long to be a real cat because real cats lead terribly exciting lives and have great adventures every day. Cats are nature’s true swashbucklers. If I was a real cat, I could chase mousies.”

  “Chase them?” Burl said, obviously horrified. “What a hideous idea. Terrible little creatures, mice. You should avoid them, not chase after them.” The elephant shuddered.

  “Chase mousies,” Patch repeated softly, so pleased by the idea that he had temporarily forgotten about grooming his fur and clothes. He sat as if in a mild trance, staring above Amos’s head, apparently thinking about mice.

  “What’s so great about chasing mousies?” Skippy asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re not a cat,” Patch said. He suddenly noticed the condition of his boots and began to scrub furiously at them with a corner of the wool blanket.

  “Well, Patch,” Skippy said, “if I do become a Big-Time Funny Bunny and get that Beverly Hills house next door to Mickey Mouse, you can’t come to visit if you’re going to go chasing my neighbor.”

  Raising her head from her crossed forepaws and blinking her large brown eyes, Butterscotch said, “I just don’t understand this at all. Why aren’t you happy to be magic toys? Isn’t that enough? Why, it’s certainly enough for me. Being a magic toy is a wonderful thing.”

  “The lady is always the voice of reason,” Gibbons said, putting one finger along the side of his snout and squinting at each of the Oddkins. “You’d be well advised to heed what she says.”

  Butterscotch put her head down on her paws again. “I must admit I regret that I’ll never have a litter of pups to nurture and raise. I would enjoy mothering them.” She lifted her head again and looked both sad and stern. “But it’s not to be. And if you’re always dreaming about being something you’re not, then you’ll never have time to appreciate the joy and wonder of what you are.”

  They were all silent, thinking about what the dog had said.

  Amos knew Butterscotch had spoken words of wisdom. Nevertheless he would not mind having a chance to live in a cottage by the edge of the woods, where he could write poetry with a quill pen. …

  In time the truck stopped. The driver and his partner got out of the cab and hurried away in the rain.

  Amos and Patch untied one of the canvas flaps at the rear and led the others out of the truck.

  They were among a hundred cars in a dimly lit, deserted parking lot behind a large white seven-story building with many bright windows. Signs along the rear of the nearest wing said VETERANS’ HOSPITAL and STAFF ENTRANCE and EMERGENCY ENTRANCE. Around them, rain drummed on the windshields and roofs of the cars, pattered into puddles, and gurgled down storm drains.

  It was not the veterans’ hospital that seized the attention of Amos and the other Oddkins. What gripped, astonished, and stunned them was the city that encircled the hospital. On all sides great skyscrapers soared into the rainy night, so tall and massive that the mere sight of them sent a shiver of wonder and fear up the center of Amos’s back. The high rises were so huge that they seemed to be tilting forward, looming over the parking lot, in grave danger of crashing down on top of Amos at any moment.

  And lights! Everywhere, lights. There must have been a million lighted windows rising up, up, up into the stormy night, vanishing in the mist.

  Turning, gazing heavenward, Amos was sure that the tops of the surrounding buildings must arch together and meet at some impossible distance overhead. He grew dizzy. He longed for a cozy cave in which he could curl up and hibernate. Or if not a cave … at least a nice, snug, dark toy chest. He closed his eyes, let the rain wash away some of his tension, and told himself to be brave.

  “I didn’t think it would be so big,” Burl said shakily. “Why … it must be bigger than all of Africa, bigger than the veldt!”

  “No town’s too big if you’ve got talent,” Skippy said, straining to sound confident. “If someone here would give me a break, a chance to perform on the stage, I’d have this city at my feet in a week. I’d be the toast of the town. The most famous Big-Time Funny Bunny there ever was.”

  “Gosh,” Butterscotch said, “how will we ever find Mrs. Shannon’s toy shop in a place as enormous as this?”

  “Cities,” Gibbons said, pointing at the skyscrapers with his cane, “are laid out in orderly fashion. Isn’t that so, Amos?”

  Amos opened his eyes and blinked at the giant buildings and said, “Uh … orderly … yeah.”

&nbs
p; “There is a system to the streets, a pattern,” Gibbons said. “Isn’t that right, Amos?”

  “Ummmm … pattern … yeah.”

  “Therefore,” Gibbons said, “with Amos to lead us, we’ll be able to find our way.”

  Skippy said, “Okay, so lead us, big fella. Lead us out of this miserable rain and into Mrs. Shannon’s bright toy shop.”

  Amos looked left.

  He looked right.

  He looked forward and back.

  “Lead us,” Burl said.

  “Okeydoke,” Amos said. He threw his shoulders back, pushed out his chest, and tried to look like a leader. With great authority he pointed toward the north end of the parking lot. “That way.” He set out at a brisk pace between the parked cars, splashing straight through puddles when he encountered them, never hesitating—even though he had no idea where he was going.

  3.

  REX AND THE OTHER Charon toys had to jump off the pipe truck when it stopped at the gates of a construction yard. The only other traffic was a slow-moving car a block behind them, so Rex was sure that he and his comrades had slipped from the truck, under it, through the slanting rain, and into a nearby alleyway without being seen.

  Though streetlamps stood at both ends, the middle of the narrow alley was dark. The Charon toys gathered in deep shadows in front of a row of garbage cans.

  “This is more like it,” Jack Weasel said in his cool, whispery voice, which almost sounded as if it were the storm’s voice formed with lips of rain and a tongue of wind.

  He streaked away from the others, looped and circled around the center of the alley. His steel wheels clicked and hissed on the wet pavement. When he sped through a puddle he cast up small, twin plumes of water behind him.

  “No more muddy fields, no more bumpy forest trails,” Jack said gleefully. “The whole city is paved with blacktop, concrete, brick, and cobblestones. Oh, it’s made for wheeled creatures like me.” Giggling, he zoomed to the other toys and braked in front of Rex. “Those soft-bellied Oddkins won’t get away from me when I spot them ’cause I can roll twice as fast as they can run. I’ll get them for you, Rex. I’ll get them for you. I’ll run them down.”