They set the fire, p.3
They Set the Fire, page 3
“What is a courthouse?” Nothing asked.
“It is a house,” Proto said dramatically, “with a court.”
Buddy didn’t think that was much of an answer, but it seemed good enough for Sunny.
“That’s where we’ll go then, right, Proto?” the yellow teddy asked.
Proto nodded at the yellow teddy. “Very good, Sunburn.”
“Sunny,” she corrected. “But thanks.”
“All right, the courthouse it is,” Buddy said. “But how are we going to find it?”
Proto abruptly swiveled to face the others. He wore the bold smirk that, long ago, must have persuaded the Originals to do whatever he said. Buddy wished he had a smirk like Proto’s, or big fancy gestures like Proto’s. He knew he was just as good a leader as the old blue teddy. Maybe even better! But he didn’t have half of Proto’s charm.
“Do not fret, young teddies,” Proto said. “Once we’re outside, I’ll know just what to do. Let us return to the lobby and break our way out of here.”
Sunny slapped Proto’s arm. “You know I’m ready! Lead us on, boss!”
Proto’s smirk widened, and he took off, retracing his route from the chair, to the upside-down trash can, to the box of tissue paper, back down to the floor. The others hoorayed and hurried after. Only Buddy stayed in place. His chest hurt, right where his Real Silk Heart should have been.
Sunny just called Proto boss.
Did she—and Reginald and Nothing, for that matter—forget that the attractive and charismatic Proto had no idea how treacherous the world was outside these walls?
5
The birthday hats made Proto harrumph. While the hatted Buddy, Sunny, Reginald, and Nothing pushed, pulled, wrenched, and wiggled the board on the lobby door, Proto alternated between unhelpful pointers and warnings that the hats would only draw attention.
The second Buddy made it outside, he was glad he was wearing one.
The weather was neither the stinging sun of the trashlands nor the rainy autumn of their trek to Furrington Industries. Overnight, winter had come. Millions of snowflakes corkscrewed from the blue-gray sky, dodging tree limbs thorned with frost and rooftops fanged with icicles. Flakes made tiny piles on Buddy’s plush, sparkly as sugar.
The birthday hat kept his head dry. His three friends emerged, gasping at the speckled infinity. Sunny, of course, marched straight into it, taking the snow head-on. Nothing, who’d never felt fresh air on her plush, cringed back against the building, her mismatched head oscillating as snowflakes stuck to her plastic eyes.
“It’s only snow,” Reginald assured her. “It can’t hurt us. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Nothing asked.
“Unless we get buried in it,” Reginald replied, and Nothing’s plastic eyes seemed to widen. “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Never fear, teddies!” Proto wiggled through the gap in the door. “Snow has to fall much harder than this to bury anyone. I lived through two winters with the Mother. Maybe four. Possibly fourteen. But plenty!”
“But have you ever traveled through snow?” Buddy pressed. Proto’s lack of experience continued to worry him. A treacherous journey lay ahead of them.
Proto grimaced at the white flakes and shivered.
“Not very cozy-wozy,” he admitted. “Anyone bring an extra birthday hat?”
Reginald held up the bag of balloons. “No, but I have these.”
Pulling balloons over their feet sounded simple, but with fingerless teddy paws, it proved impossible. Plus, they had to play dead anytime a car passed. After many minutes, or possibly hours, of effort, the teddies gave up. At least the bright balloons on the sidewalk looked cheery—until the snow buried them.
“All right, boss,” Sunny said. “Which way?”
Buddy peered down the street, past the snow.
“I think the snow should hide us pretty well until—”
“Excellent question, Sunblock, and one that I’m pleased to answer,” Proto said. “The police spoke of the courthouse as a place of remarkable significance. Every one of them was headed there with their plastic bags of evidence. From what I could tell, the courthouse was the most important place in the city.”
Buddy knew he needed to listen. But suddenly every snowflake felt like a knifepoint. Sunny had called Proto boss again—and Proto had cut Buddy off in reply.
“So we just follow the people!” Sunny clapped her paws. “Whichever direction people are going, that’s where we need to go too.”
“We’ve always tried to avoid people,” Reginald cautioned. “Now we’re going to head straight into them?”
Proto patted the gray teddy’s shoulder, the same way Buddy often had in the past.
“See, Romulus, how well snow hides the world? It will hide us just as well.”
Buddy’s fur heated up despite the winter cold. He’d just tried telling his friends the same thing! No one had listened when he’d said it!
Nothing pointed with the higher half of her body. “Most of the vehicles are turning at that corner.”
“Excellent work, No—” Buddy began.
“Excellent work, Nubbin!” Proto interrupted. “Single file, teddies! Let’s march!”
It was a cold slog. Buddy’s mood only made it colder and sloggier. They came upon the flooded gutter that had once whooshed the teddies into the sewer, which had led them to the teddy village. Now the gutter was frozen over. Proto didn’t know how easy he had it! The teddies scampered across it without problem.
After that, the walk was much like the one they’d made from the trashlands to the Store. As Proto—and Buddy!—had predicted, the snow concealed them almost as well as night. Very few people walked on foot and most vehicles passed too quickly for the teddies to worry about being seen. When a slow, chugging, rattletrap car did creep near, the teddies scurried beneath the nearest post-office box, bench, or bike rack.
But things got tougher, as Buddy knew they would. And Proto didn’t have a clue where to go, like Buddy knew he wouldn’t. Sunny, Reginald, and Nothing, however, seemed inspired by the legendary blue teddy. A good leader wouldn’t take away that inspiration. So Buddy resolved to guide his friends safely, even if he didn’t receive any credit for it. In fact, each time Buddy assisted, he made sure to give Proto the accolades.
Example: “Proto, you’re taking us toward that broken-down sofa to hide, aren’t you?”
Example: “Proto, I can’t believe you noticed those tall buildings over there behind all the snow!”
Example: “Proto, you turned the wrong way on purpose to see if we’d notice. You’re so clever!”
It was tiring, and thankless, but Buddy knew it was the right thing to do.
The teddies doggy-shook snow off their plush and plowed ahead. The wind blew in the same direction they walked, pushing them onward. Finally, a lance of yellow sun stabbed through the clouds. Nothing halted, causing a pileup. Unlike the others, she’d never seen objects of this magnitude.
“Tall,” she said. It was only word she could manage.
The skyscrapers they’d once seen from the long distance of Garden E were suddenly right here, bigger than the world, miles of glistening steel and blinding glass shooting into the heavens until they vanished inside clouds. Reginald had once guessed that hundreds of people were inside each skyscraper. Surely he’d been mistaken. There must be more people inside than there were snowflakes in the sky.
“The Mother used to speak of this area,” Proto said. “She called it downtown.”
“Down?” Nothing frowned. “But the buildings go up.”
“Downtown is the city-est part of the city,” Proto continued. “People here move fast. They don’t say hello or pardon me. It wasn’t a safe place for those with bad backs and sore feet, like the Mother.”
“Or those made of fabric and stuffing,” Reginald added.
The wedge of sunshine cracked open the morning. The teddies hid in billows of steam that rose from steel grates. People charged from doorways, swerved around corners, emerged from cars, and filed from buses. They wore winter hats pulled low and scarfs tied high, their faces obscured by the rolling white clouds of their own breath. None of them looked where they were going. They stared at gadgets and adjusted plastic buds in their ears.
Buddy dizzied with sensations. The bitter whiff of coffee from a hundred plastic cups. The oily warmth from a diner door swinging open. The ouchy stab of salt crystals underfoot, apparently spread to melt snow. The squawks of cars, the clops of heels.
The sidewalk under the teddies’ feet rumbled. Buddy motioned the others beneath a recycling bin. He thought of how Mad’s donation box had shaken before the monster teddy had risen from the rags. What threatened now? There came a subterranean screech, a ding-dong tone, and a muffled robotic voice. Dozens of people hustled from a rectangular hole in the sidewalk, a moist burst of noise and heat.
“An underground train,” Reginald deduced. “Like the one we rode with Daddy.”
People kept coming, and coming, all sizes, all shapes, all colors. When Buddy was still in his box on the Store’s shelf, crowds were a good thing, a chance to find a child and Forever Sleep. Now, though, so many people only made him fearful. One of them would surely take notice of five unattended teddies—and that was no longer a good thing.
He looked both ways, said a prayer to the Mother, and dashed into a nearby alley. Reginald and Nothing followed. After a moment, so did Proto and Sunny. Buddy felt a rush of pride. See? He knew better than Proto what to do out here in the real world.
The five teddies huddled behind a bin that smelled way too familiar: trash.
“I never dreamed the world had so many people,” Reginald gasped.
“I admit,” Proto said nervously, “I didn’t expect quite so many myself.”
“It’s too crowded,” Buddy insisted. “We’ve got to find another way.”
“Buddy,” Sunny groaned—Buddy, not boss. “The last time we left the main road, Reginald got stuck on chewing gum and the two of you got chucked into outer space by a truck! Proto knows what he’s doing.”
Buddy boiled. Proto did not know what he was doing.
“Leaving the road is out of the question,” Proto agreed. “It’s these droves of people that will lead us to the courthouse!”
Buddy couldn’t take it anymore.
“I don’t care who you are! I won’t let you get my friends thrown away again! Maybe you don’t understand how roads work, Proto, but I do! Most roads have other roads that run straight alongside them. If we move just one road over, we can peek over at this street all we want. We’ll still be able to tell which way people are walking!”
The alley filled with the sounds of clomping boots, gasping buses, and the hiss of gray snow splattering under tires. Buddy felt very hot, then very cold. Had he just ordered around Proto? Proto? Reginald’s round plastic eyes told him that yes, he had.
Proto stared at Buddy in disbelief. The grand old teddy stood tall. Then taller. Buddy braced for a raging rapid of biting insults.
Instead, the tall, strutting teddy shrunk into a shuddering blue ball.
Buddy didn’t know what to say. “Proto … are you…?”
“Please don’t yell at me,” Proto begged quietly. “I’m trying to be the Proto you teddies want me to be. If I’m insufferable sometimes, it’s only because I’m scared. Yes—I, Proto. Scared. I think I’ve been scared since the Mother dropped me off at Furrington Industries so long ago.” Proto turned his shiny marble eyes up at Buddy. “She didn’t come back for me, you know. I think about that every day.”
“I’m sorry,” Buddy said. “I didn’t mean to—”
Again he was interrupted. This time, though, it was Sunny. Her dirty yellow paw was against Buddy’s chest to stop him from talking. Buddy’s anger rose back up—but there was only regret in Sunny’s expression.
“Don’t apologize, Buddy,” Sunny said. “Proto didn’t mean it, but he was leading us into danger. It had to be said … and you’re the only teddy with enough guts to say it.”
Buddy’s anger melted into gratitude. He added his blue paw atop Sunny’s yellow one.
“I am sorry, Sunny,” he said. “For not telling you the truth. I should have known you could handle it.”
Sunny replied softly enough that Proto couldn’t hear. “And I’m sorry for overreacting, Buddy. Following Proto reminded me just how hard it is to be a good leader.”
Buddy nodded. It was hard. And that meant it was hard for Proto too. Buddy knelt down and stroked the sad old teddy’s silken fur.
“We don’t want you to be any Proto except the Proto you are,” Buddy said.
Proto managed a smile. “Thank you. And I agree. We should take the other road.”
Buddy grinned shyly. “I didn’t know I could be so convincing.”
“You were,” Proto praised. “But that thing up there did some convincing too.”
Proto pointed at the brick wall behind the teddies. Buddy, Sunny, Reginald, and Nothing tilted their heads upward. Pasted on the wall was a large piece of paper with the Furrington Industries logo. This logo, however, was circled in red and had a line slashed through the center. Beneath the crossed-out logo were four words.
DEMONSTRATION / 1 P.M. TODAY / COURTHOUSE
“Reginald,” Buddy asked warily, “what’s a demonstration?”
“I’m not sure,” the gray teddy replied. “But that red slash gives me the creeps.”
“Someone does not like us,” Nothing said.
“A whole lot of someones,” Sunny corrected. “Look around.”
The teddies tottered in circles as they gazed up and down the alley. Dozens of anti-teddy posters were plastered over both alley walls. Buddy looked back at the main street, over the mist of people’s breaths and the pom-poms of their woolly hats. On a telephone pole, on the back of a road sign, on the side of a lamp: more and more posters.
Proto had been right that lots of people were headed toward the courthouse. What none of the teddies had guessed was that there was a specific reason for it today. The downtown folk were on their way to a “demonstration.”
And they were angry.
Buddy whirled back to the other teddies. Their birthday hats were askew. They held one another. They were frightened.
“We need to get out of here,” Buddy said.
6
The teddies slunk down the alley. Buddy, Sunny, and Reginald were expert slinkers, and Nothing had picked up a good slink or two while collecting stuff in the cellar. But Proto’s nature was to swagger, parade, and promenade. Mindful of her Teddy Duty, Sunny took on the job of tugging on Proto’s tail to bring him back into slinking order.
They hunkered behind a battered box at the other end of the alley. It was full daytime now. Sunlight leaked through cracks in the clouds, turning the snowflakes into a billion drops of sparkling honey.
There were fewer people on this road, but they were literally on the road, marching right down the middle stripe past barriers that kept cars away. Unlike the main road, every person moved in a unified direction: toward the tallest clump of skyscrapers, toward the demonstration, the courthouse, the evidence.
Toward the Suit.
Still, Buddy grinned. It was a parade! He’d heard of them before but never expected to see one.
“Look at those nice trees,” Nothing observed.
Buddy was beginning to realize that Nothing, having never been outside, was fantastic at noticing things Buddy and the others had gotten too used to. This time it was a long line of trees across the road, still thick and green despite the winter.
“Good eye, Nothing,” Buddy praised. “If we can get across the road, we might be able to move tree to tree, all the way to the courthouse.”
“I hope we’re not spotted,” Reginald said. “These posters made me jumpy.”
“These posters?” Sunny echoed. “How about those posters?”
Sunny signaled in the direction of the parade. Most people downtown carried things. Bags, backpacks, briefcases, purses. The paraders carried signs. Unlike the big metal signs Buddy had seen all over—STOP, SLOW, DO NOT ENTER, ROAD WORK AHEAD—these were homemade pieces of cardboard colored with the same kind of markers Darling used to have.
Buddy’s enthusiasm for the parade evaporated as he began to read the signs.
FURRINGTONS BELONG IN THE FURNACE!
JUSTICE FOR THE CHILDREN!
TIME FOR TEDDIES TO BE DEADIES!
Buddy knew adults hated Furrington Teddies. He’d even come to sympathize with them—they were only trying to protect their children. Yet these signs made him terribly sad. Many featured drawings of Furrington Teddies. Some in mangled pieces. Some engulfed in flames. All drawn with menacing eyes and snarling jaws.
The teddies ducked as a large group thundered past, jabbing their nasty signs hard enough to swirl snow.
“Perhaps we should not attend this demonstration,” Nothing suggested. “Perhaps we can find our way back to the cellar.”
“I did not spend all that time in a glass case to go running back to it,” Proto declared. “Nor did you teddies travel so far for nothing. We must press on!”
Buddy heard rustling behind him. He spun around, picturing one of the marchers towering above, eyes burning, driving downward with the sharpened handle of an anti-teddy sign.
It was only Sunny. She was sifting through trash gathered alongside a dumpster. All the teddies turned to watch. There were far more important things going on than garbage. What was the yellow teddy up to?
Sunny found something that satisfied her—a small box with a dented lid. Sunny shook the lid open and turned the box upside down. Little sharp sticks rained down, bouncing a few times before they became glued to the sticky ground.
“Toothpicks,” Reginald whispered. “People use them to dig food out of their teeth.”
“I did not know that people were disgusting,” Nothing said.
Teddy paws aren’t adept at handling items as small as toothpicks, but Sunny concentrated intensely. Before long, she’d rolled a toothpick between her grungy paws. With great care, she set its pointy end to one of the Cherubim fork-holes punched into her body.
