Greenbolt would help us. We saw light glimmering out from the cracks around the door to the back room, and followed it.
“...be toyed with no longer. I can’t go on like this,” Greenbolt said to some as-yet unseen guest. His voice, muffled at first, grew clearer and louder as we wound our way through the boxes of parts to his toy lab.
The sign on the door to the lab read “Absolutely No Unauthorized Entrance!” but our toys assured us the sign did not apply to us. We were beyond the rules of grown-ups, now. Greenbolt would see to our futures. We had been chosen. The lot of us rounded a corner and found ourselves flooded in a green light that shone from a giant brass lantern on the professor’s huge wooden workbench. The smoke that had wrapped around us outside the building flowed thickly here, crawling up the walls, stifling the air. It felt warm and moist against our skin, like the breath of a beast. A licorice-and-oil scented behemoth.
“It is the same here as it was in the city, and the city before that,” Greenbolt said. “I have done all that I can to fulfill my end of the bargain, and yet you demand more wealth! More conquests! When will you be satisfied?”
His voice held a terrible sadness in it, but also a hunger. Our toys, clutched tight to our chests, trembled slightly. We came to understand that his sadness was not for us, but for himself. Nevertheless, we stayed, though some faint part inside us screamed to run.
When will you be satisfied? The smoke from the lantern spoke in a strange language of mists and the hum of machinery. Greenbolt hung his head and nodded.
“I am thrice damned already, another time or two will make no difference upon my soul.” He pulled a pair of brass goggles down over his eyes and turned to us, waving our small band over to his side. “Come, children. Would you like to see a marvel?”
It seemed at the last minute that our toys had changed their minds. They did not want to go with this man, this monster’s slave. The toys shook with fear and wept tears that somehow poured from our eyes instead of theirs. Our feet would not obey, though, and so we marched further into the fog until it was all we knew. The breath of a monster as it swallowed us whole. Our eyes, wide with terror, reflected in Greenbolt’s goggles.
When we awoke, the shop had moved and taken us with it. Burr Ridge was a hazy postcard on the wall. We were in a city, now, surrounded by tall buildings made of window panes that sang songs of commerce and triumph when the light of the sun hit them just right.
Children we did not recognize clapped their hands with delight as we were unveiled. They passed us around, and their fervent love for us was like a balm. Parents we did not belong to paid Greenbolt to wrap us in paper and place us in bags to take home. He sold us off, one by one, and declared us a wonder of science and innovation.
At night in rooms that are not ours, we speak the language of aetheric smoke. Our eyes sometimes glow green. We whisper the professor’s secrets into the ears of children that we have come to love and hate. Through my glinting scales and dragon’s maw, I give midnight lessons on how best to conquer a kingdom.
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