Her legs did not feel her own, but Kaspar was there to catch her as they crossed the shopfloor and made the ascent to the Godmans’ quarters above. Sirius followed, announcing their arrival with one of his cotton wadding yaps.
It was Mrs Hornung who answered. She gave Kaspar the same disconsolate shake of the head she had given him every time he was caught out as a child and, in return, Kaspar put his arms around her and held her tight. Then, Cathy followed him through. In the chamber, naked without the paper trees of Christmas, Emil was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, lining up soldiers as if to make war against himself. Perhaps he was making another war against himself too, for he barely looked at Cathy as she crossed the battlefield. Ahead of her, the heavy oaken door etched with Emporium insignia that led to Papa Jack’s study was hanging open, a portal of blackness with dancing firelight beyond.
Kaspar bowed to Cathy (why did he have to pretend to be so ostentatious, even after last night?) and, leaving her behind, marched through.
‘Papa,’ Cathy heard him begin, ‘you’ve every right to be …’
And after that, Cathy heard nothing: only the miniature explosions of Emil’s cannonade, the invective he muttered at his soldiers as they made battle, and the whimper of the baby asleep against her shoulder.
Soon, Kaspar reappeared. Resting a hand on each of her shoulders, he whispered four words – ‘He’s only my papa’ – and stepped back to reveal the way through. She saw the embers of an old hearthfire, alcoves steeped in books. On a perch, a patchwork owl with snow white plumage was constantly revolving its head.
With Martha nuzzling into her neck, she entered the room.
Papa Jack was sitting in a rocker, needle and thread in his brutish hands. There was little room to approach, so instead she stood on the tiny square of exposed carpet, and felt an unnatural chill as the door creaked shut of its own volition. Of all the rooms in the Emporium, this was the smallest. Its walls seemed to taper in like the walls of a cavern, or the inside of a great kiln. Books hung precariously from the uppermost shelves, every one of them the clothbound tomes in which Papa Jack had inscribed his best designs. The only light came from the hearth’s dying embers, the firefly jars pushed in between the books. And Papa Jack’s face was illuminated like that: snowfall lit up by fire.
After a moment, the old man lay down his needle and thread.
‘It’s Cathy, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Papa Jack took her in, as if he was seeing her for the very first time. Was it Cathy’s imagination, or was he looking through her, at some imaginary horizon?
‘Tell me, have you named her?’
Cathy’s blood beat black. ‘She’s named Martha,’ she replied, shocked at her own steel. ‘Sir, I understand you’ll be angry. I know people have come here, before, to steal from you. That’s not me.’
‘I don’t like liars,’ he whispered. ‘But I understand why you’d lie. Tell me – is there going to be trouble, Cathy? Trouble in my Emporium?’
In reply, she said, ‘She’s not yet a whole day old.’
‘With your family, Cathy.’
‘My family’s right here, sleeping in my arms.’
‘You’re a runaway. I see that now.’ His voice, like stones in snowfall. ‘Had I seen it before, Cathy, you could still have spent winter in our Emporium. You might still have had your baby down there, in my Wendy House. So let there be no misunderstanding. The Emporium is yours for as long as you want it. There are rules, rules of hospitality I learned long ago, and I don’t mean to work against them now. This child was born here, born in space I chipped out of the world with these two hands. That means a thing, to a man as old as me. But … when people run, people chase. So tell me, is that how it’s going to be?’
Cathy was still reeling, trying to listen to her own thoughts. The Emporium – hers for as long as she wanted? Her child, born into space Papa Jack chipped out of the world …
‘They don’t want us,’ she finally said. ‘My family were sending me away. To a home … And if it had been that way, there would have been a matron and she’d have been wresting Martha out of my arms, right here, right now, and then she’d have been with somebody else, with a different name, with a different …’ She paused. She would not tremble, not now. Strange how seeing Martha in the flesh had made her a mother; she had been a mother all of this time. ‘I’m sixteen now. Girls younger than me have made it on their own. That’s what I’ll do if you …’ She thought she had the courage to say it, but when the moment came it was too much an ultimatum, and her tongue would not let her go on.
‘Cathy, may I?’
Papa Jack opened his hands. For a moment, Cathy tightened herself – but it was only an instinct; she knew she was safe, here in the Emporium. She knelt and gently placed Martha on his lap, where his hands closed around her. How huge they were; she might have rested in his palm.
‘This Emporium of ours, it has always been a place for runaways. I spent so long running, Cathy Wray, until I founded this Emporium. Mrs Hornung and our very first shop hands, all of them lost, with no place to go. It takes a special sort of person to make the Emporium their home. Now there’s you …’
Martha awoke, to see the gnarled face of Papa Jack looking down.
‘A child born into my Emporium ought to know how my Emporium was born, don’t you think?’
Cathy brought Martha back to her shoulder.
‘If you’re to stay, if you’re Emporium through and through, it’s important that you know. It isn’t a story I’m fond of telling. It’s important you know that as well.’
Papa Jack clapped his hands and, from beneath the shelfing, a toy chest picked itself up, shuffling across to him on a hundred pinewood legs. At his feet it lowered itself to the ground and opened its lid. Inside were rags, worn leather gloves, a nest of silver fur as of some eastern wolf. Sitting atop the nest, there lay a wooden contraption painted in dark forest green and sparkling white. Papa Jack lifted this up. Set down on his lap, it looked a simple toy: a diorama of dark pine forest and endless snow, a crank handle and simple figurines of men in brown coats, iron-capped boots, felt and fur hats.
‘I made this long ago, so that I would always remember. So that my boys out there would know. If you’re ready, Cathy, you might help me now …’
She paused, suddenly aware of the door closed at her back. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Trust me, Cathy. Please.’
Cathy knelt again at the old man’s feet and, at his behest, took hold of the crank handle on the end of the toy. Papa Jack’s hand closed over hers. She was surprised to find his skin as soft as the baby she was holding.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, ‘though I was more afraid than I could possibly be.’
Then, with his hand still over hers, the handle started to turn.
It began like this:
The crank handle turned and, with it, Cathy’s hand.
Deep in the contraption, the cam shafts rose and fell, propelling the figures to begin their march. The toy kept them in place, rotating the diorama of icy tundra and black pine forest against which they walked, but this march was endless.
Cathy felt the first wave of cold as the numbing of her fingers. She tried to draw back her hand but Papa Jack’s lay over it, holding her fast. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he whispered, and something in his voice gave Cathy the courage to continue, even as the cold reached up her arm, even as crystals of frost coated every hair hanging from her head.
She looked about. A whiteness, swirling and indistinct, was rising up the walls around her, obscuring the books on the shelves, the mortar and brick. Soon the walls fell away. The whiteness was absolute. It plucked her out of the Emporium and cast her down here, in this otherworld of Papa Jack’s creation. A single snowflake landed on the tip of her nose and, when she looked down, she saw that she was wrapped in fur, that Martha was swaddled up tight beneath a fur-lined hat.