Free The Thief of Broken Toys by Tim Lebbon Page B

seen it before.
Not been there, but seen it. And now I’ve
something to show you.”
    Ray glanced at the gorse, the hawthorn
bushes.
    â€œIt’s easy if you know where to tread,” the
old man said.
    So Ray followed, because he had the sense
that this was the culmination of something,
or the beginning of something new. At first
he tried to judge just where the old man was
stepping and follow his lead, but he soon found
that the plants appeared to be parting around
his legs. There was no sense of movement, no
sound of them rustling or twisting out of his
way, but his route was unimpeded. He stared
at the old man’s back and, past him, the sea.
Moments later, he saw the angular shoulder of
the stone hut.
    â€œHome,
sweet
home,”
the
man
said,
chuckling. There was something not quite
right about that sound, and Ray paused, the
plants suddenly pressing in around him again.
A thorn stuck into his thigh; a stem was curled
around his ankle. As he tried to pull back, he
was pricked and spiked again, more wounds
to add to the scabbed punctures on his fingers
and hands.
    â€œCome on, now,” the old man said. “You
want to know what it is I do, don’t you?”
    Ray looked from him to the overgrown
structure, and back again.
    â€œDon’t you?”
    Ray nodded. He moved forward, and the
man let him.
    â€œThen step inside,” he said. “Gotta fix this
broken toy.”
    He waited until Ray stood beside him. They
were maybe ten feet from the cliff here, the
actual edge blurred by the plants that grew out
over the terrible drop.
I thought about stepping
from there once
, he thought, and looked back
along the cliff to where he’d stood.
    â€œTwo men built it almost seventy years
ago,” the old man said. “They were already
middle-aged then. Fishermen, they’d seen the
cruelties man can inflict on man in the mud
of Ypres. So when the second war started,
they wanted to do their part. Fish, they were
told, help to feed our nation. But fishing to
them was like breathing to us. It seemed . . .
helpless. So they built this thing as well, and
for the duration of the war, they took turns
sitting up here, watching.” He looked out to
sea at the three large ships on the horizon,
and the smaller vessels bobbing closer in.
    â€œHow do you know all that?” Ray asked.
    â€œBecause I came here, and sat here, and they
told me.” He stared at Ray as if challenging
him to question.
    â€œSo why bring me here now?”
    The old man looked again at the broken toy
in his hand, and this time he seemed to give
it serious attention. He turned it this way and
that, held it up to the light, shook it, breathed
onto it, and then held still, as if listening.
    â€œTo show you how this whole thing works,”
the old man said. “To show you how to perform
wonders.” He edged past the hawthorn tree
crowding the end of the stone building, and
Ray followed.
    He didn’t know what to expect when
they walked inside; he’d spent no time
contemplating it. The instant before he saw,
he imagined the insides to be overtaken with
nature. There was no roof to the shelter —
whatever had been built there had long-since
collapsed and been subsumed — and the heads
of the walls were crumbled by frost and plant
growth. Inside might lie the rotting remains of
the roof, piled into the corners and smothered
with plants. Perhaps some wild rose bushes
might have taken hold, sheltering against
the walls. It was possible that the place had
been found and used by lovers or drinkers,
or those who simply wanted to be alone, and
maybe evidence of their loving or solitude was
still there — initials carved into the walls, an
atmosphere of melancholy.
    What he saw was so far removed from
what he had, briefly, imagined that he paused
and closed his eyes, waiting for the image to
vanish. But when he looked again, he saw the
same view, and he had to concede that this
was the