Chapter 13 - Moon Over the Desolate Castle

A double-helix of chocolate and malted milk smacked Mr. Grey and Tom in their noses. The combo-scent split from a bulbous growth of candy coral, reconvened in the air around the platter and servant who carried it, circled up from the courtyard, and attacked the pair in their place of hiding atop the rampart roof. Mr. Grey ignored the smell.

Tom’s stomach rumbled.

Mr. Grey held his breath - and the chocolate and malt milk - in his nose.

The servant and platter passed by underneath. Mr. Grey exhaled slowly and quietly. “That must be one of the lures,” he whispered.

“I imagine so,” said Tom.

“The kind the captain spoke of.”

“I heard her say it.”

Mr. Grey glanced sideways at Tom. “I thought it worth repeating.”

“I can’t help my stomach sounds,” said Tom with a moody shuffle.

Before Mr. Grey could begin an apology, Tom pointed across the courtyard. Mr. Grey saw shadows passing through the dark gardens atop the parapet roof opposite. The shapes prowled like racoons between rows of tall flowers, silhouetted against the starry night.

“You keep watch for the signal,” said Tom. “I’ll nibble some mints. Will you hold this, please?”

Tom held out his mallet. Mr. Grey shifted on his rooftop perch. “My hands are full Tom,” he said apologetically.

As proof Mr. Grey showed Tom his hands. He held what the captain had coined a ‘threshold device’. She’d placed it in Mr. Grey’s hands during their moonlit journey to the castle. In his hands it had been ever since.

Tom grunted a quiet acknowledgement. He tried setting the mallet on the sloped roof. It slid when he let it go. Tom picked it up and sighed hungrily.

Mr. Grey kept one stone eye sliding with the shadows through the roof garden. He waited on the captain’s signal. This was not a simple task. The loud and wild activity in the castle courtyard below attracted eyes.

The courtyard thronged with singing, dancing, madly-laughing people. They made merry in every nook and cranny. In circles of stones set for training and wrestling, men and women linked their arms and capered through a whirling salsa. Beneath one canopy a line of enchanters played disjointed, out-of-tune music. Another group tapped an uneven beat as they skipped across the bridge of a decorative wine pond. Children rushed through the sliding doors and leapt through the sliding windows opening onto the court, playing a neckbreaking game of tag.

And yet everyone - except the children - looked miserable. In every face, tearstained bags hung under long-dry, bloodshot eyes. In every mouth, the wide grin was the kind made by a jaw-clenching, electric bolt. The people laughed and danced and sang, and looked as though they loathed it. No one seemed happy about their celebrations, yet no one stopped. Some managed to pause for a tock or two. Only to swipe wine or candy from the platters of equally-boisterous servers. Then they whirled back into the anguished, desperate party.

“Too few leisure nights,” the captain had said. She’d explained the situation - the soldiers’ reason for quitting the castle - on the trip. “Our lord’s cares are wide: Tourists lost in the forest, public relations, honor and courage. He summoned a toymaker. To help him relax. Our lord was deceived; Toymaker is an Ogur. Now our keep is cursed. A plague of leisure.”

Tom had bristled at the story. He’d asked if she was mocking Mr. Grey. But now, seeing the people in their desolate revel, neither doubted the captain’s tale.

Mr. Grey switched his attention to a higher slope of the castle roof. But what he saw wasn’t the signal. It was the moon’s spectral luster on mountain snow, flickering behind the turning blades of a creaking castle windmill.

Tom’s stomach grouched again. The hungry man’s eye followed a platter piled with gummy-fingers. Followed too closely for Mr. Grey’s liking.

“Do keep your lids up,” said Mr. Grey. He wanted to pull Tom’s attention off the food. “If we see the Ogur first, we’ll reach him faster.”

“The Toymaker’s your duty,” said Tom. He jerked a testy elbow at the device in Mr. Grey’s hands. “I just keep them off of you.”

The captain had called Mr. Grey, “The perfect man for the job.” The gravest, stoniest creature she’d ever seen. The very way he blinked (when he blinked) was stern. He alone might resist the curse. Mr. Grey knew she spoke the truth.

The plan had sounded simple in the captain’s briefing. The soldiers attract the attention of the unwilling revelers, freeing Mr. Grey. Tom stays at his side to handle the party’s loners. Mr. Grey finds and confronts the Toymaker. Device in hand, he vanquishes the Ogur and break’s the charm.

She’d outlined the plan the way Jack York outlined work reforms; confidently. Something easily begun and sure to succeed. Mr. Grey couldn’t help but feel that, were it pencil-pushed onto parchment, the plan would need some major revisions and the usual addendum gamut.

“Oh Tom, I’m not sure…” Watching the revelers, Mr. Grey couldn’t picture himself joining them. “Even if we’re successful, they’ll need lots of sleep. The captain said days. We’d be stuck till they’re restored. We’d miss the contest. This seems dangerous.”

Tom grunted. He’d lost interest in everything except the passing platters of candy. Mr. Grey looked to the court. He followed the sack-eyed residents through the forced romp. He thought again of catching that curse. He tried once more to picture his body stripped of decorum, stiff legs forced into slapdash, unchecked larks.

“They did rescue us,” Mr. Grey mused further. “I suppose it’s neighborly. Helping them to bed.”

“I’d like to help them,” said Tom with a nod. “But with their candy and wine.”

Mr. Grey felt he had to be forceful with Tom. He had to remind the hungry man of the curse on the food and fun. He was just about to do that - he was, genuinely - when he saw the sudden flash of a parchment lantern among the rooftop flowers. A chorus of new shouts joined the existing revelry. The captain and her serious soldiers charged down the wooden rampart steps. The revelers turned forced friendliness upon the newcomers.

Mr. Grey clutched the soft, plushy threshold device tight in his grey fingers. He and Tom slid slowly down the roof.

---

“AAAAYYYYYYyyyyy ha hahahahaha…”

Another partygoer flapped his arms in moonward flight. This one soared between the windmill’s blades. The celebrant laughed at liftoff, his silhouette laughed as it passed the fine China moon, and the poetrees probably laughed when the Icarian wanderer landed beside them, outside the castle.

The main force of the courtyard party enveloped Mr. Grey and Tom’s allies. Mr. Grey could see the soldiers gradually cracking smiles or breaking into dance. Their cursed family and friends carried the merry infection in a sore-throated song and enervated dance. One by one, the healthy ones succumbed to the sick.

But not every dweller in the cursed castle swarmed their sober comrades. Some slipped suddenly from a sliding door or window. These ones stumbled directly into Tom and Mr. Grey.

Tom solved these people. When a dreadlocked old woman hopscotched up to them over the wine pond bridge, beating a wooden rhythm on the boards, Tom made her fly. When the laughing man with wine stained teeth had rushed Mr. Grey with flapping arms, Tom launched him on his mission to the moon. One by one, Tom and his mallet handled the stragglers.

“Still have… the threshold… device?” Tom asked breathlessly between swings.

Mr. Grey lifted the threshold device - a pillow - for Tom to see.

Tom glanced at Mr. Grey and the pillow. He gave Mr. Grey an encouraging smile. Then another cursed servant leapt from the nearest courtyard window. She smiled too, wide past joy. She dragged a kite behind her, clattering through the window and across the grassy ground. She sprinted at them. She held the string of the kite up and shook it at Tom. Tom dropped his grin. He stood like a batter at the plate. As she reached them, he introduced the wild woman to his mallet.

The woman flew back. She cannonballed into a chicktail hay pile lying near the double-doors of the castle gatehouse. Mr. Grey watched a mushroom of hay dust bloom in the air. His nose twitched involuntarily.

Mr. Grey looked to the beset soldiers.

The ranks of their noble allies dwindled. The cursed partiers lured them with song, with dance, and, of course, with myriad toys. Twirling hoops, skipping ropes, bouncy balls, dice, jacks, cards, tiny sets of building stone, parchment dolls, clay figures, toy mallets, and toy guns. Gradually each stoic soldier was enticed to play.

Mr. Grey forced himself to focus on the plan. Find the Toymaker. Banish it with the threshold device. “You will pick it out,” the captain had reassured. Mr. Grey shucked his eyes and threw them at the face of every partier within view. So far he’d only seen in each the same tear-streaked, miserable joy.

Standing there with his pillow, while Tom hefted his weapon against stragglers, and the soldiers pummeled the main party with their own mallets, Mr. Grey didn’t feel like he had the most important job.

Tom and Mr. Grey approached the entry to the castle foyer. A pair of doors separated them from the interior. The doors slid on wooden frames filigreed in scaly copper, with rope-handles of tasseled gold. Tom and Mr. Grey each reached for a handle.

The doors split wide with a sharp snap, like the castle itself cracking a smile. A gang of new partiers gushed from within. They pranced, and chanted, and played with new toys. Tom threw his mallet into desperate arcs. Mr. Grey searched for his target.

One of the revelers ducked beneath the mallet’s swing. Before Tom could reverse the reveler came up beneath his face. This was the same server they’d seen earlier, holding the platter of malted milk and chocolate coral. He still had the platter. He still had the coral. He raised the candy right under Tom’s nose.

Tom’s stomach howled. His arms went slack.

In his loudest inside-voice, Mr. Grey said, “Remember that it’s cursed, Tom!”

Tom dropped the mallet, broke off a piece of candy coral, threw it behind his teeth, and chewed. A wide grin split his cheeks. He began leaping from foot to foot in an earth-pounding crab dance. He yanked the platter out of the reveler’s hands and threw his powerful jaw against the coral tree. The other members of the new gang pranced around Tom in rings, and Tom twirled at their center.

Mr. Grey used the distraction afforded by Tom’s defeat. He moved quietly around a support beam and edged along the stretched leather wall. He watched the new group - Tom a part of them, gormandizing the malted milk chocolate - charge the remaining soldiers.

Some short tocks passed while Mr. Grey held still. He avoided the partiers’ notice by staying flush against the wall. He was alone. He had no Tom for protection. Not even a mallet of his own, just the pillow. Honeydew would have called it bad stakes, he thought.

Mr. Grey remembered the captain’s words. “The perfect man for the job.” He breathed once through his nose. He snuck back around the support beam. He slipped through the filigreed doors.

The party raged just as wildly within the castle. Plucking and drumming sounds reverberated down stretched leather corridors and hollow reed floors. The sounds echoed dizzily around Mr. Grey, so that he couldn’t guess their source.

He shrugged, picked a left hallway, and set an even stride.

Parchment lanterns hanging from ceiling chains dropped cheery brightness over walls, floors, doorways, potted plants, and benches like crescent-moon. The lanterns lorded their light over everything in the hallway. Everything, that is, until they reached Mr. Grey. Who did these lanterns think they were? When the overhead lamps at Starharbor’s Change of Address Office, with their glaring glow, balked before his imperturbable greyness; would these rustic lights be the ones to reach him with their shine? As if… No, Mr. Grey strode the hall with carven features untouched by light or shadow; looking more than anything like the castle’s haunting specter.

Mr. Grey stopped when he came to the first hall door. He slid it open.

A cursed inmate fell upon Mr. Grey. They tumbled together into the hallway. The man’s skull hit the floor with a crack, but he leapt immediately to his feet. He leered at Mr. Grey with eager eyes beneath greasy hair. A tiny trickle of blood ran down his temple. He sloshed dregs of wine in a bottle before Mr. Grey’s nose. He screamed, “DRINK. Drink. DRINK. Drink. DRINK,” in Mr. Grey’s face; over and over; volume varying with each utterance; lips spewing spittle.

Mr. Grey raised the pillow to whack the reveler. But he instantly dropped it back to his waist. The threshold device was sacred according to the captain. Even if it was just a pillow. Mr. Grey felt the wrongness of using it as a tool of violence.

Instead he stood and stared at the wild man. Mr. Grey thought he’d failed. He considered running, but the partiers moved at jerky, quick paces.

The man chanted at Mr. Grey with a toothy, open mouth. Mr. Grey cowered coldly.

Something in Mr. Grey’s unflinching exterior gave the partier pause. His smile flickered at its corners. Instead of forcing the bottle of wine and backwash on Mr. Grey, he ran. Bouncing off walls, tumbling and rising, the man disappeared down the corridor from which Mr. Grey had come.

Mr. Grey fluffed the pillow and pressed on.

The wicks shuddered in the lanterns. Mr. Grey made 12 even steps down the hall, unchecked by the shivering lights. He reached the next door. He slid it open with the wooden snap.

Nothing within. A dusty storeroom. Tattered old couch cushions. Neat stacks of ceremonial robes.

Another 12 strides under flickering lights.

Another door snapping.

Another empty room.

12 more.

Flickering.

Snap.

A laundry room.

The door opened into a dilapidated laundry room. Mounds of soiled cloth - the accumulations of days and days of revel - lurked in the corners, or perched precariously on wobbly wooden tables. Buckets lay scattered over the floor; some tipped over and full of crusty grime; others holding miniature ponds of algal water, and hosting clans of huge flies which filled the room with an invasive drone. Bleach and pine-soap added an unpleasant caustic quality to the mildewy dampness. Arranged against the far wall, a row of metal laundry mangles waited in the shadows, giant roller-lips shut tight in silence, looking like instruments of torture.

Atop one of these mangles, a figure sat.

It had arms and legs, torso and head, all in the usual arrangement. It had fingers. It had hair, eyes, and mouth. It had a voice.

The arms, legs, torso, and head were made of metal bones, glossy plastic skin, and gearwork joints. The body moved with a mechanical industry Mr. Grey himself couldn’t match. The legs dangling from the mangle swung, up and down, with the rhythmic pumping of a machine-loom. The arms and torso jigged from side to side in artificial dance. The fingers - made of chisels, scrapers, scalpels, and hooks - snipped and chipped a wooden block into the shape of a horse. The hair looked like hair, in the same way a doll’s hair does. When the head tilted to regard Mr. Grey, the eyes were buttons. The mouth hinged open on marionette-string sinews, displaying a broad, marble, detachable set of teeth. From some deep chamber in the throat, without moving the jaw or the teeth, a scratchy voice like a record player asked, “Would you like a toy?”

The Toymaker held the half-carved horse out to Mr. Grey.

Mr. Grey breathed once through his nose. He walked up to the Ogur, held out the pillow, and said, “It’s past your bedtime.”

The Toymaker fell to pieces.