‘You see, it’s all about perspective. You can do the most extraordinary things if you keep the perspective of a child. That’s how our papa’s training us – to never lose that perspective. To make a toy, you’ve got to burrow into that little part of you that never stopped being a boy. Because, hidden down there, are all the ideas you would have had, if only you’d never grown up.’
Cathy had not lived such a sheltered life that she had never been buttered up by a boy before. Boys talked to Lizzy all of the time, but there had been moments when it had been Cathy forced to listen to some simpleton prattle on about how his father was getting a motorcar, or the crabs he’d hauled in from the traps that morning. She looked at Kaspar with the same glassy expression as she had with those boys, but she was ashamed to admit there was a little corner of her that wanted him to go on. The idea that one of the paper trees decorating the alcove could spring from a box so small seemed absurd. She looked up at one now. The display was ringed by yews of crêpe paper and corrugated card, a hazel tree with catkins of newspaper curls. Even the smallest of them stood twice as tall as Cathy. The biggest, whose canopy stretched across the rest, reached as far as the gallery above, its branches rimed in hoarfrost of confetti.
‘I don’t know where the idea of trees in boxes came from. Only – I can still remember the little village where we Godmans used to live, and how big the trees seemed there. I was barely a boy when we left, but those images always stayed with me. And, at the end of the day, that’s what toys do, isn’t it? They take you back there, where a part of you always remains. And I knew – if I could only fix that memory in my mind, I could make the paper do anything I desired. Well, it took me a thousand-and-one attempts to make it work. One wrong fold, you see, and the magic just collapses. Some of the early ones opened up into great shredded nests. One became this gnarled archway of branches and bones – it looked just like a ruined temple. But then …’
He had been toying with the boxed-up black larch all along, and now he cast it at the ground. Where it hit the hard Emporium floor, the varnished box cracked. As soon as the seal was open, whatever forces pinned the tree within grew frenzied and wild. The box whirled on the spot like a spinning top as the paper fought to break free. Then, it erupted forth. The box stopped dead, anchoring the paper as it tore upwards. In fits and bursts of unfolding, the trunk revolved and filled out. Low boughs sprang outwards, with yet more branches and twigs unfolding from them, and a myriad of brown paper leaves unfurled at their ends. Higher up, the pressure exploded and out rolled a canopy of interlocking branches and vines, a bird’s nest of shredded paper. From a hole in the trunk, the stencilled eyes of an owl gazed watchfully out.
All of this had happened in seconds, but for long minutes afterwards the tremors worked in the tree and all of its details fell into place. The sound of the paper leaves settling was like the rustling of an autumn wind, even though the Emporium was already in the grip of deepest winter.
‘It’s … magical,’ breathed Cathy.
‘Would that it were,’ Kaspar replied, gazing into the branches above. ‘But some things aren’t magic at all. Some things are only mathematics.’ He stopped. ‘Cathy, I have to apologise. Ordinarily, when new shop hands enlist, I’m the first to welcome them. But you must understand, the night you arrived, it was …’
‘Opening night,’ finished Cathy.
‘And you arrived not a moment too soon. We’re understaffed this year, as every year. We never know how busy things are going to—’
A cry went up, somewhere on the Emporium floor. Kaspar cut short whatever he was about to say and whirled around just in time to see two boys hurtling out of the aisle, their faces contorted in terror. Immediately, he knew what he had done. The bears between the bookshelves, they had been too real. He had aligned the eyes and teeth too well, taken his work too far again. It was not the first time. Probably one of those boys had dared to put his hand in the bear’s mouth, and when he had, he had felt the deep rumble from inside its belly, seen the gleeful malevolence sparkling in its eyes. It was all make believe, but to boys that didn’t matter. Once his father found out, the lecturing would last long into the night: until Kaspar knew what he was doing, until he properly knew his craft, he should contain himself. Things could go drastically wrong with a toy ill made; games turned sour on an instant. No doubt Emil would watch gleefully from the corner of their quarters, because any black mark against Kaspar was a golden star for Emil.
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.