The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies Read Online Free

looking at me with a satirical twinkle in his eye. I tried to pretend that I had not been close to tears myself. ‘Well, well,’ I said weakly. ‘That was a show.’
    ‘It’s not done yet. What say you? Shall the maker answer his creature’s prayer?’
    ‘I say,’ I answered, standing on my dignity and defying him to notice that I was being as soppy as a schoolgirl, ‘that you would be worse than a cad if you did not. She— it— What I mean is, she may not be real, but her performance is real enough. She deserves a better ending.’
    ‘So be it,’ said Droll quietly. He gave the key another half-turn in each of the keyholes. The music started again, a funeral lament, overflowing with sorrow. The dancer slumped on the floor as one dead, arms and legs all in a tangle.
    Then the tin soldier raised his head. His eyes were only painted on, but it seemed to me that he actually opened them somehow. He sat up; he climbed painfully up to his knees, and touched the face of his lost love. Now it was his turn to face his creator. He stood in a pose of righteous wrath, feet wide apart as if for fighting, arms akimbo, and lifted his chin to glare at Droll and me. He raised his fist and shook it in defiance; then he bowed his head. He brought his hands together over his tin heart, then pulled them violently apart, as if he were tearing open his coat and shirt.
    Bearing his heart to be pierced: his life for hers.
    Droll gave each box another quarter-turn.
    The tin soldier turned to the dancing girl, knelt tenderly beside her, took her by the hand. As he lifted it, life and movement came slowly back into the rest of her limbs; she lifted her eyes, and looked in his face, and she knew him. His roughly shaped, club-like fist brushed her finely sculpted cheek; she folded her hands about it, and pressed it to her metal lips. Then they turned together to face us, and he made an obeisance, and she a courtesy; and then they turned back to face one another, and her sculpted lips met his painted ones with a loud click as the music came to an end.
    ‘I call it Love’s Last Kiss, ’ said Droll, rather shamefaced. ‘Yes, yes I know, I’m as wet as a trout with the dropsy. Tell anyone, and I’ll fillet you with a dull knife – understand?’
    ‘Who, me? I didn’t see anything. But tell me, what is it for? You don’t seem like the type to make such things for fun.’
    ‘Well,’ said Droll, scratching thoughtfully at the patches of his beard, ‘I do partly – not that you heard me say it. But you’re right, my own tastes would run more to blood and thunder and less to dancing and osculating.’
    ‘It’s cunning work, no matter whose tastes it runs to.’
    ‘Why, thank you,’ he said, sketching a bow without leaving his stool. ‘I’m glad you noticed. That’s Dwarf-magic, that is – the real article. My father could have shown you more than this before he died. I had a bit of help from a friend, mind you; a fellow who knows some of the odder bits of the Defenders’ lore. He knows how to make the story tell itself, as you might say; so the figures suggest what they can, and your eye sees them move in ways that they can’t really do.’
    ‘Faërian drama,’ I said.
    ‘You know the art?’
    ‘Only by name, alas. One can’t get training, not in my country. But look, have you got a customer for all this?’
    ‘I’d be a richer man if I had, I’ll tell you that. But nobody appreciates this kind of work except the children up in the town, and they haven’t the money for such toys.’
    ‘Then who—?’
    Droll looked wistful for an unguarded moment; then he was brisk and businesslike. He clapped the lids on both boxes and shoved them rudely aside, and hopped down from his stool to stamp towards the door. ‘Never you mind, sir. I’ve got my business to attend to, and I expect you’ve got yours.’
    He nearly got away, but I caught his elbow just inside the doorway and would not let him go. ‘Tell me who