Free Firefly Rain by Richard Dansky Page B

the pencil bending under the strain; that box was heavy for its size. My wrist ached to hold it, and my steps got a bit faster. A turn to the left and I was facing the sink. That’s where I put the package, thankful that the sink basin was dry.
    The whole time I was moving it, the box failed to rattle, buzz, or explode. For that, I was deeply grateful, but I knew better than to push my luck. I briefly considered running tap water over the thing, like I’d seen in a movie. That notion only lasted a moment, though. The odds of it being paper or something else that would get soggy were a lot better than the odds of it being something dangerous. Instead, I went to the kitchen counter and got out a good, sharp knife from the block. Knife in hand, I turned to the sink and addressed my problem.
    The string was humped up in the place where the pencil hadbeen. Gingerly, I sliced through that spot. Nothing happened, except the twine broke neatly into two pieces.
    “You’re a paranoid dumbass,” I informed myself, and I tugged the string away. It slithered out from under the box and dangled from my finger. Nothing but package string, the same as you’d get at a butcher or use for flying a homemade kite. It was clean and new. There was no dirt or fraying to it, and no smell. In other words, it told me nothing, except that whoever had wrapped the package had done it not too long ago. Nodding at my own perceptiveness, I put the string down on the counter and turned my attention to the box itself.
    I stared at it for a minute. Then I tucked the point of the knife under one of the corners where the tape came up. A little shove and the knife went through the paper. Then, carefully, I sawed along the line of the box edge, cutting the paper as I went. When I’d made it all the way across the top, I turned it and did the same down the short side. The knife caught in a couple of places on particularly thick layers of tape, but a moment’s patient back-and-forth with the edge cut through even that easy enough.
    With half the paper on the top flapping free, I put the knife down and lifted the corner up. Underneath was an old cardboard box. It smelled musty and looked frail, and I found myself reluctant to tear away the rest of the paper for fear the whole thing would just fall apart.
    I settled for pulling the stuff on the sides away, then sliding the rest out from under the bottom. Whoever had wrapped the box hadn’t been too interested in being neat. They’d just swaddled that thing in paper and tape as best they’d been able, probably to keep it from spilling its cardboard guts when they’d set it down.
    The top of the box was a flap that ran lengthwise. An oldpiece of Scotch Tape, long since gone yellow, held it shut. The knife took care of that. That left opening the lid.
    I looked around. Most of the day had gone, and shadows crept across the kitchen. Outside, birds made their evening calls, getting ready to bed down for the night.
    Night. I definitely did not want the mystery of what the box had in it gnawing at me all night. Sleep was hard enough to come by, without adding another round of “what-ifs” to keep me restless and pondering. Bare-handed, I leaned forward and flipped the lid open.
    I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I’d seen too many bad movies. Even as that lid came up, I thought I might see, I don’t know, maybe a dead animal. Maybe some kind of threat, or a piece of my Audi someone had hacked off. Maybe a body part from someone I knew, though I wasn’t sure what good that might have done.
    Instead, there were toy soldiers. They were the good kind, too—molded lead with broad, flat bases and the sorts of guns that someone would call a “choking hazard” today. Their paint jobs were chipped, scarred, and dented from a thousand hours of play, but I still recognized them. Red for Wellington’s British, blue for Napoleon’s French—I’d seen these before. Slowly and with reverence, I took the first one