The Tinkerer's Daughter (2 page)

When I woke the next morning, I found my doll in my arms. Tinker must have found her in my personal belongings after I’d gone to sleep. I squeezed her, and buried my face in her hair. That scent carried a wave of familiarity, and for a moment I was back in my father’s cabin, sleeping in his bed. And then the moment passed, and I remembered just how alone I was. Father was gone. The only thing I had left was my doll.

I cried for a while, until the pain subsided and I noticed the smell of food drifting up from below. Then I dried my tears and climbed down the ladder. Tinker was outside working on some noisy project, but he had left me a plate of breakfast on the table. I clutched my doll in one hand and ate with the other. Only when my belly was filled did I finally venture outside the cottage.

It was another frosty morning in that shaded valley, though I could see the sunlight glistening on the plains to the south. The river was there, and the trees were just as breathtaking as they had been the day before. Somehow, I felt a little more at home.

I found Tinker behind the cottage, sawing and hammering, and I watched him for a while. He used a strange metal device and a string to measure and mark the lengths of wood. Then he cut them using a variety of handsaws and chisels. It was a long, mysterious process, which ultimately seemed to leave him with nothing but another stack of wood. Eventually I found the courage to ask what he was doing.

He paused and wiped the sweat from his brow across the back of his sleeve. “I’m making a surprise,” he said with a wink.

I wasn’t ready to trust him yet, but my heart did flutter a little. “What is it?”

“If I tell you, it won’t be a surprise,” he said. Then he went back to work.

I watched him for another thirty minutes, determined to figure out what the surprise was. It seemed to consist of nothing more than several stacks of oddly cut wood. Eventually I tired of this, and began to suspect that Tinker’s “surprise” would not be nearly as spectacular as it had initially sounded. I went for a walk.

I followed the stream along the hillside, pausing here and there to take a closer look at the stuff scattered around the yard. I doubt there ever existed a stranger collection of miscellaneous junk. Two things became immediately apparent. The first –which was obvious from the start-was that the Tinkerman was a junk collector. While I could imagine some of the items being useful in some way, it was unlikely that they would ever be desperately needed, or irreplaceable. Most of it hardly seemed worth keeping.

The second thing I realized was that if the man ever did need anything, he would almost certainly never be able to find it. This became quite clear as I stood gazing at those misshapen piles. There needed to be some sort of order. The wood should not go with the metal. The black metal parts should not go with the yellow metals. The big pieces should not be piled up on top of the little ones.

Unfortunately, the mess was so expansive that I couldn’t imagine how a person might ever get it organized. It seemed the best way would simply be to bury it all, or toss it over the mountainside and start all over again. Somehow, I suspected the Tinkerman would not be happy with that solution. I let my mind work on the problem as I wandered further downstream.

I located a small waterfall about halfway down the hillside and stopped there, listening to the sound of gurgling water and watching the shivering wind through the trees. My thoughts began to drift, and I gradually became aware of a low murmuring sound just at the edges of my perception. I glanced around, thinking at first that I’d heard a distant voice.

The sound came again, and I almost thought I heard a word. “Wind,” it seemed to say. Another voice echoed the word. Then, a second later, I felt a chilly gust blow up the valley. The trees shook under the force of it for a few moments, and then it settled down into a gentle breeze.

I sat there for a long time, listening to the trees sigh and moan, certain that they were talking about the sun and the breeze and the creek. I was so lost in this study that I jumped when I heard the Tinkerman call my name. Reluctantly, I followed the sound of his voice back to the cottage.

“Dinner’s ready,” he announced as I entered. A bowl of soup and a slice of buttered bread were waiting for me at the table. I settled on the bench across from him, in the same place I’d sat on the previous day. I hadn’t even realized it was getting dark outside, until I sat under that strange glowing creation on the ceiling and saw the darkness through the windows.

“You were gone for a long time,” he said. “What were you doing?”

“Listening to the trees,” I said.

He cocked his head. “Is that so? What were they saying?”

“I didn’t understand everything,” I said. “They seem to like the sun. I think the wind disturbs them. They seem very sleepy.”

“No wonder,” he said. “It’s nearly winter. All sensible creatures know winter is a time of rest. Only we
civilized
beings are silly enough to work through the winter.”

I smiled at that, and he smiled back. I think he was starting to enjoy having someone to talk to. “Well, next time you’re listening to the trees, tell them we need some firewood. I haven’t had time to stock up yet.”

“I’ll try,” I promised.

I went to bed that night, cuddling with my doll, my head full of thoughts. I missed my father, and the thought of him brought tears to my eyes. Still, the feeling wasn’t as bad as it had been before. I told myself that he would soon return, and that thought comforted me a bit. He had promised to come back. I held on to that, and it tempered my sadness.

Eventually my mind strayed to the trees, and in my half-sleeping state, I imagined that I was out there listening to them. “Wood Folk, here in the vale,” one of them said. “Strange times these are.”

“I’m not Wood Folk,” I said.

There was a creaking and groaning among them. “What do you want with us?” another said.

I thought about it. “The Tinkerman needs firewood for the winter,” I said. They murmured a response that I couldn’t quite hear, and their voices seemed to drift away on the wind. Soon, I fell asleep, and lost myself in the dreams of a child.

The next day was much the same as the first. The Tinkerman went straight to work on his project, and I wandered down to the quiet end of the valley where I could listen to the trees and gaze out over the plains. Perhaps I thought that if I stared long enough, I’d see my father coming back across those fields. Or perhaps I feared he wouldn’t, and found some small comfort in the beauty of nature around me. Either way, it wasn’t long before I was lost in daydreams.

The trees started to murmur again as I wandered around, and I climbed the hill at the edge of the woods, thinking I might understand better if I was closer. Gradually, one word became clear to me.

“Fire,” the voices said. I tilted my head, stepping closer. I didn’t smell smoke, so it seemed odd that they should use that word. Then suddenly the trees all along the mountainside began to shake and shiver, and branches began to rain down around me. There was a lot of noise for a minute or two, and then suddenly it stopped. “Firewood,” the voices murmured. “Fire. Wood.”

I surveyed the hillside, hardly able to believe what had just happened.
I wasn’t dreaming
, I realized. I had actually spoken to the trees… and they had given us firewood for the winter!

Then I glanced around and realized that they had given me more wood than I could carry. It was going to take a while to gather it all. I started picking up the smaller branches. I had an armload ready to take to the cottage when the Tinkerman appeared. He’d been running, and he was breathless.

“You’re all right?” he said. “What was that noise?”

Then he noted my arms full of wood. His eyes widened as he glanced up the hillside. “Firewood,” I said cheerfully. “The trees gave it to us.”

His jaw dropped, and he watched in silence as I clambered up the slope towards the cottage, struggling with an armload of branches that must have weighed as much as I did. On my way back to the trees, he passed me on the trail with a load of his own.

We spent the whole afternoon clearing the hillside. As I gathered my last load, I paused to thank the trees. Tinker witnessed this and did the same, though his face reddened before he rushed up the hill ahead of me with his eyes downcast. The trees didn’t seem to notice his embarrassment. They simply gave me a warm feeling and returned to their dreams.

It was on my third day that the trouble started.

It was midmorning. The weather was cool but not uncomfortable, and the sun was warm on my skin. I had gotten used to Tinker’s routine, and though I wasn’t by any means settled, there was a certain comfort that came with the sense of familiarity and the acceptance that my father was far away and that I wouldn’t see him for a long time. This led me to seek other distractions. One thing had been weighing heavily on my mind since I arrived: what to do with all of Tinker’s junk?

I hadn’t quite settled on how to deal with Tinker’s mess but clearly something had to be done, and clearly I was the person to do it. Not that Tinker had asked or in any way even hinted that he was unhappy with the situation, but it was obvious to me that he was too distracted by his work to even acknowledge that there was a problem. Therefore, I set my mind to it, determined that anything I came up with would be better than what he had.

The easiest –and in my opinion best-solution was to toss it all down the mountainside. I suspected Tinker might not approve, so I kept working on the problem. It occurred to me then that there might be room to store some of that junk in the barn. I decided to investigate. So far I’d only seen the barn from a distance, but it didn’t look much different from my father’s old barn. If anything it was slightly larger, but I suspected it would be much the same on the inside. I was wrong.

Strange odors assaulted me as I slid between the partially-opened doors. I paused, suddenly reluctant, with my nostrils burning from the scent. It made my eyes water. I hesitated there, at the threshold of something new and potentially wonderful.

It wasn’t grease or oil, I knew those scents well already. It was subtle, and yet in it’s own way even more potent. It was the smell of the foundry; the smell of burnt coal and soot, and the acidic tinge of molten metal and cooked flux.

The barn’s interior was dark, illuminated only by random beams of light that broke through the slats in the walls. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my courage began to build. I swept my gaze across the shadowy interior and saw tables and workbenches covered with miscellaneous parts of machinery and tools. Beneath the tables I saw more junk, packed into boxes and stacked as tightly as Tinker could fit them, and still more dangled from hooks and nails on the walls. The stuff was piled up in the corners right up to the rafters.

Tinker’s clutter problem was ridiculous beyond belief. I was astounded. The cottage had been bad. The front yard was downright hazardous. The barn… Ah, the barn.

At some point, as I gazed across that minefield of chaos, my mission changed. I forgot my naïve idea of organizing the yard. I had found a new world to explore. It was a world of strange things: of gadgets, tools and trinkets from the far corners of the world. Somehow they had all landed here, and their mysteries beckoned to me.

I found myself drawn towards a workbench at the far wall. It was the tidiest area that I had seen since my arrival. Glass and stone beakers filled with colored liquids lined the back corner. One of these cast a pale glowing light across the tabletop. At the center of the table rested a small rectangular metal tray. It held a dozen balls of varying sizes, the largest being about the size of my fist and the smallest the size of my thumb. They all appeared to be made from some sort of stone. I picked up one of the smaller balls and felt its weight in my palm.

Like everything else in the room it gave off an odd scent, but it looked and felt just like a stone. I don’t know what came over me, but for some reason I got the idea to test my aim. Perhaps it was because I had seen my father throw rocks to chase off rodents around my old home.

I took aim at a tin pot hanging on the far wall, and let it fly. I missed, and when the rock hit the wall, it exploded. The thundering
BOOM
! that followed tore a hole right through the side of the barn. It sent splinters and boards flying in every direction. The concussive shock threw me back against the table. The noise was so horrendous that it left my ears ringing. I could only barely hear myself screaming.

“Tinker!” I cried, as loud as I could. “TINKER!”

Sunlight filtered in through the enormous hole I’d made in the wall and smoke drifted in and out of the shadows. Tinker appeared in the doorway, horrorstricken. He eyed me up and down, making certain that I hadn’t been damaged, and then snatched me up and hauled me back outside. He sat me down outside with an accusatory look.

“Don’t ever, ever go in there child! That barn is dangerous, do you understand me?” I nodded. I was terrified, and I burst into tears.

“There now,” he said, lifting me up. “I didn’t mean to yell. You just frightened me, that’s all.”

I sobbed for a few moments and then lay there with my head resting against his shoulder. Tinker’s shoulders were smaller than father’s, and he was very bony. He wasn’t comfortable the way Father was. It was comforting, however, to be held.

He carried me up to his work site behind the cottage, and set me down on a stump. I was surprised to find that his stacks of wood were nearly all used up. A large box-like structure with bare plank siding rose before me. The far end was attached to the back wall of the cottage. He reached for a hammer and then paused as he saw me staring.

“It’s almost finished,” he said. “Would you like to take a look inside?”

The shock of my previous experience faded instantly. Tinker saw my wide eyes and smiled. He turned and motioned for me to follow. We went inside the cottage, and he led the way to the back door. I’d never even realized there was a back door because it had been hidden behind shelves. Tinker had moved all of this aside, and now he opened the door into the newly-built room. It was little more than a box with plank floors and bare walls. He stepped inside and I followed.