It was her mother’s face that looked up. Her papa seemed not to have heard. Surely he couldn’t have forgotten the days and nights they’d camped up here, the stories he’d told her, the games they’d played across the cloud castle floor? It was here he’d told her about the birth of Sirius (or at least the first time he’d been wound up), the day he met her mother, the time he’d grown a labyrinth out of his paper trees and got trapped inside it for six days and seven nights, eating only papier maché fruit to survive. She had doubted the veracity of that last story, but she’d loved it all the same.
From this distance, it was difficult to tell – but it seemed that her mother was glaring. Possibly she was instructing her to stay away, but since she couldn’t be sure, she felt no great desire to obey. With one hand still restraining Sirius, she skirted around the castle walls to return to the dirigible. A few more sandbags heaved aboard would send her crashing back through the paper trees. Down, down, down they came. So filled by thoughts of reaching her papa was she, and so distracted by the delirious twirling of the patchwork dog, that she misjudged the landing. The dirigible came down hard, struck the roots of a paper oak, and listed wildly. By the time Martha had picked herself up and checked Sirius for tears to his fabric, the shopfloor was empty again.
Too late, her mother had taken her papa into the quarters above. Martha hesitated before following. All of her excitement had evaporated, and in its wake were only nerves. She stamped her foot. It was not fair. Nerves were what happened to other people.
‘Let’s make him a present!’ she declared. ‘Something to welcome him home. Something he can’t possibly ignore …’ Turning on her heel, she marched back into the aisles. ‘Well, are you coming?’
Behind her, Sirius looked suddenly downcast. Denied his master’s return, he hung his head and sloped after her, grovelling as he came. Human beings, he had decided, were the most inscrutable things.
‘Here we are,’ said Cathy. ‘Might I take your boots?’
Kaspar stopped in the bedroom doorway, tilting his ragged face up to take in the room. Cathy hoped it was stirring something in him, for what he saw was a snapshot of the day he had left the Emporium behind. In the three years since, she had not touched a thing, dusting carefully around each ornament, making certain every toy soldier would be standing to attention just as on the day he had left. If only to have something to say, she bade him sit at the end of the bed.
Levering off his boots was easy. He winced as the shock waves worked through his body, but his legs were weak and they slipped right off. So many parts of his body were unfamiliar. His left foot had only three toes and on the right the ends of each were worn down to stumps. Yet there was a silver lining in every black cloud; Kaspar was so detached that he did not see her recoil, nor how her left hand grappled her right to stop it from lifting to her mouth.
Did he need rest? Did he need air? Did he need company? She had no way of knowing – and so, falling back on the lessons they had learned together as they watched Martha grow, she promised to return with milk for his bedside and a hot water bottle for his bed.
By the time she came back, Kaspar was propped up in bed, an angular form beneath the blankets. In his lap the music box played its lament while the mice danced erratically on top. His head was hanging down, lost in the twirling of the mice, but all around him were splinters and shards of broken wood. Every toy soldier who had stood so proudly on the shelves, waiting for their general to return, was destroyed. All that was left were pieces of painted faces, peering expressionless out of the ruin.
That night, she crawled into bed beside her husband, not knowing if it was the right thing to do. The heat from his body had warmed the sheets and that was the most alien thing. His back was turned to her. She tried to hold him but it felt all wrong. She turned against him and that felt wrong as well. So instead she lay awake. Some time in the night, Kaspar must have woken too (or perhaps he never slept at all?), for she heard the lilting melody of the music box. Soon after that, he returned to his slumber, more peaceful than before. The melody did nothing for Cathy. In the morning she woke and went about her business, but Kaspar remained.
Sometimes he could be seen in the workshop. He took out tools he had not touched in years and tinkered with the music box, then retreated with it to his room, or some unseen cranny of the Emporium floor. The shopfloor itself had changed since he had been gone; Cathy was afraid he’d get lost, but Sirius took to following him at a distance, always ready to lead him back. In the evenings, Mrs Hornung brought him food. At first the plates came back untouched, but soon she understood that he had reverted to the dishes of his boyhood, that he found comfort in those old textures and tastes. After that she made only his vareniki and kasha broths. Sometimes Papa Jack sat with him as he ate. Other times Emil came. He was desperate to introduce Kaspar to his wife, to fill Kaspar’s head with the stories of the seasons he had missed, but Cathy pleaded with him not to. Kaspar took it all in but said nothing, returning each time to the music box in his hands. Whether it was day or dead of night, his fingers were never more than a whisper away from it. Even when Martha stole through to sit at the end of his bed, he would not acknowledge her. He wound and rewound the music box and lay back, stupefied.
‘He doesn’t want to be back, does he, Mama?’ Martha sobbed as Cathy put her to bed at night.
‘Your papa is very unwell, Martha. But one day …’
‘It’s the music box. Why does he always listen to the music box?’
Cathy did not know, but she resolved to find out. That night, when he slept, she teased it out of his hands. Without its touch, his sleeping grew fitful. She took care not to wake him and sat at his bedside, her fingers trembling over the crank. Why she hesitated, she did not know, and yet it took some courage before she began to play it. The contraption turned at her command, the mice began to dance, and the music drifted up to bewitch her.
It was a sensation like so many other Emporium toys. The sounds were so perfect, the dance so particular, that she no longer felt like Catherine Godman, twenty-seven-year-old mother and stalwart of Papa Jack’s Emporium; the toy had touched her, somewhere deep inside, and now she was Cathy Wray, five or six or seven years old. The edges of the bedroom she shared with Kaspar seemed to evaporate, and out of the haze appeared the furniture and fittings of that little room she and Lizzy used to share, in an age that seemed so long ago. The longer the music played, the more real things seemed, the richer the colours, the deeper the textures. On the bedside sat the copy of Gulliver’s Travels; on the shelf, the wooden rabbit. She had felt this way once before, that moment many years ago when Papa Jack gave her one of his pinecone ballerinas, and soon the only reason she knew it was not real was because, when she looked down, it was the hand of an adult still turning the handle of the music box.
The music soared and, suddenly, she could perceive the Emporium no longer. Whatever spell the toy was weaving, her childhood had grown solid, undeniable around her. There was movement in the corner of her eye and, when she looked up, the door opened to reveal Lizzy, five years old. By instinct, Cathy opened one arm to receive her. It was then that she saw: she no longer had the arm of an adult. It was a child’s arm that reached out to Lizzy. She was wearing the white pinafore dress that her mother kept for Sunday best. Lizzy nestled into her shoulder and Cathy gave in, returning the embrace. ‘Let’s play, dear Cathy!’ Lizzy cried (and the voice, so familiar, echoed in her body). ‘Do you remember Polly?’ Cathy did; it was the name of a game of skipping they used to play, up and down the estuary sands. She found herself saying, ‘But I can’t, dear Lizzy.’ And, ‘Why ever not?’ asked her sister. ‘Don’t you see?’ said Cathy. ‘I’m not really here. I have to keep winding. If I don’t keep winding, none of this exists …’
Her sister looked at her quizzically. ‘Winding what, dear Cathy?’