The Magic Toybox – Part 1

It was a cold, December night and snowflakes large as goose feathers fell upon the ground, making a snowy carpet so deep that even a tall man, walking through it, would have struggled not to get snow upon his kneecaps. The moon above was white and enormous like a glittering ball of snow and the stars looked like jagged crystals of ice.

The royal palace, that stood on one side of the great city square and which, in summer, would sparkle in the sunlight showing off all its elaborate golden and jewel encrusted ornament,
was also shrouded in thick snow so that its two towering minarets, on either side of a vast snow covered dome, looked like melting candles and their spires like wicks of gold.

Looking out through her palace window, the little princes Katzerina thought it was just magical.
“Oh, snow is a miracle”, she said, hoping for the sun to rise quickly so that she could run out to
play in it all.

“It really sounds wonderful. You must tell me what it’s like”, said her brother Prince Tyan who was bedridden, through the fault of a terrible disease that made his skin as pale as snow and his bones as brittle as icicles, “I can’t go out myself”.

“Snow is snow and winter is winter”, said their Father, a gruff old man with a large grey beard, walrus moustache and severe eyes who had seen many winters, “Dark and bitterly cold”.

“Do you think it snows upon the moon, Father”, asked Prince Tyan, for whom the moon with its regular visitations to his window had become like a smiling friend.

Their father took out his monocle and held it so that it perfectly encircled the moon but he had long ago ceased to wonder about such things, “I only know that it is snowing here and that it is dark and bitterly cold”, he said.

But then, suddenly, little Katzerina looked out at the city square and saw a poor old man
trudging, with difficulty, through the heavy snow towards the palace gates.

“Look!”, she said, turning towards her brother and father, “There is some old man. An old peasant in ragged clothes walking towards the front gate. I wonder what he wants?”.

“He wants to beg, no doubt!”, said her Father, angrily, his grey face turning red , “The audacity!”.

But the old peasant did not want to beg, in fact quite the opposite, he said that he had a gift for the kings children.

“I am a carpenter”, he told the sentry who was guarding the palace gates, “And I have made this box and these wooden toys for the young prince and princess. I would like to hand them over”.

“Don’t you know that this is the palace of the king?”, asked the soldier, not moving and looking straight ahead, “I cannot just let anyone enter ”.

“Then let me leave the toys here”, said the carpenter, bending down and placing the box full of toys at the feet of the guard, “And you may take them to the King’s children”.

But the guard just kicked the box over, tipping all the painted wooden toys out into the snow, “The King is a wealthy man”, he said, “His children have toys made by the finest craftsman in Paris and Rome covered in gold and silver and shiny crystal. What do they need with wooden toys made by a poor carpenter. Begone and take your toys with you”.

But then, to his amazement, the sentry saw the wooden toy box that had been kicked over sit itself upright again and all the toys that had fallen out of it start to climb back inside it.

“As you see”, said the Carpenter, “This is no ordinary toy box and what is contained within are no ordinary toys. I am quite sure that the young prince and princess will like them”.

The Sentry thought for a moment, gazing down at the toy box from the corner of one eye and then said, without moving, “Very well. Leave the toys here and I’ll take them to the king”.

But then the Soldiers rigid face couldn’t help but gawp in sheer amazement for he saw the old carpenter vanish into the moonlight and even the trail of deep footprints that the stranger had left in the snow now vanished one by one.

Startled, the guard abandoned his post running into the palace carrying the toybox and certain that the king would want to know about such a bewildering magical occurance.

But the king was a very sceptical man and, when the soldier told him about the vanishing carpenter and his amazing box, he only accused the soldier of being a drunkard and a liar, tearing off his stripes and medals and saying that he was not fit to guard a hen-house before kicking the unhappy soldier out into the snow.

And he was about to do the same with the wooden toy box when its varnished, brightly painted lid popped open and a troop of wooden soldiers jumped out and, to the sound of a beating drum and blaring trumpets, carried the box into the nursery where the young Prince and Princess were.

The eyes of the young boy and girl lit up when they saw the marching soldiers but they were even more surprised when the lid of the box flipped open once more and out came a little doll dressed as a young peasant woman followed by three other little dolls which they took to be her children and then, in a sorrowful voice, the doll mother began to sing.

“Bright as any gold are the eyes of my daughters;
when it’s bitter cold, they are like my warm water.
Pretty as the grandest and richest princesses,
even without shoes and in old, ragged dresses
and my heart cannot help but worry about them
for my life would be endless winter without them.

Three little poor girls,
in a cruel, cold world;
what will become of you?

If I cannot feed you
aswell as I need to,
one may die and then I’ll have two.

Two little poor girls
in a cruel, cold world
what will become of they?

Perhaps they’ll get a chill
and one will shake until
merciful death takes her away.

One little poor girl
in a cruel, cold world
what will become of she?

Perhaps she’ll get sick and then
I will have no medicine
and sickness will steal her from me”.

And as, in the song, the old peasant woman described each of her children dying from hunger or cold or sickness, one of her little doll children disappeared until she was left all alone and weeping and, seeing this, the prince and princess also started to weep.

“Oh, that is awful”, sobbed the Princess, “Surely no one has such a terrible life in this world”.

“Sadly, more than the tears you may shed”, sighed the old doll, “In your fathers kingdom there are millions of poor people who have terrible and tragic lives because the wealth of the nation is in the hands of a privileged few and your father, for all his power, does nothing to help them”.

But then both children heard their father roar with anger as loudly as a cannon booming and it startled and frightened them both, “What’s this I’m hearing?!”, bellowed the king, “I will not have my children’s ears stained with such treasonous talk”.

The little doll was not frightened of the king, however and she replied, “I would rather speak treason before a tyrant than betray the truth. The King and all the wealthy and noble who support him are wicked and do nothing but exploit and neglect the poor”.

And, hearing this, the King got so angry that he intended to trample the wooden doll into the ground
but his daughter snatched up the doll and hugged it close to her chest and refused to let him have it.

Then, to the further amazement of them all, the magic toy box became a wooden rocking horse
and the little doll in the princesses arms said, “If you don’t believe me, then climb upon the rocking horse and you will see how all the poor people of your kingdom live”.

And, against the stern command of their father, whose bearded face now looked very much like a beetroot, so purple was it with rage; both the children climbed upon the magic rocking horse
and, a sudden, sharp blast of wind blowing through the room, its large gold framed windows flew open and the rocking horse shot out of the palace as fast as a cannonball, leaping over the high palace gates and carrying the children off.

Immediately, the king summoned his household cavalry and, mounting his own large black stallion, commanded them to chase after the flying rocking horse but no matter how fast they galloped or how hard they whipped their horses they could not keep up with the wooden horse and, just as their horses were beginning to tire the rocking horse put on an extra burst of speed and vanished, quick as a shooting star, into the distance.

Then, his face so hot with anger that large flakes of falling snow turned into steam as they fell upon it, the King shouted to his soldiers, “The carpenter! The carpenter who made that blasted magic box! Search my whole kingdom, high and low! Bring him to me!”.