Engle walked into the third shop—a toy store.
Melda sighed and rolled her eyes.
The toy shop had striped spinning tops that were enchanted to never stop, streamers that changed color and whipped wildly around—nearly hitting Tor in the face as he entered—galloping wooden horses, and kites that seemed to be flying themselves. A group of dolls were arguing on a table, then turned suddenly when they saw they had visitors. Their frowns quickly disappeared, and they smiled brightly, curtsying as one unit.
“What beautiful hair!” one doll said in a tiny, high-pitched voice, blinking its eyes very quickly at Vesper with eyelashes made of curling black feathers.
Another subtly pushed past her and said, “Silver is the best color, I think! Look, just like my dress!” She twirled for good measure.
A third doll laughed, and Tor saw her pinch the other as she skipped past. “You’re about the prettiest person I’ve ever seen! We’d be great friends, I think.”
“I don’t need friends,” Vesper said curtly, before walking away.
The dolls turned to each other, and Tor had to listen closely to hear them arguing again.
“Your fault, always yours!”
“Her hair wasn’t even that pretty, plain if you ask me, just like your dress!”
Tor continued through the shop. He picked up a ball that immediately bounced against the wall, then back into his hands. He moved swiftly out of the way of a tiny train that produced real smoke and didn’t seem to require a track. Engle was at the very back of the store, where an old man had appeared from behind a curtain.
“Didn’t I tell you not to come back?” the old man said, sounding exhausted. Tor wondered how many things Engle had broken.
“I didn’t touch anything this time! I swear it!” Engle said. Then, he motioned for Vesper. “We need help. Do you think you can fix this?”
Vesper held up the tiny ship, slice down its side, which did, in fact, look very much like a toy.
The old man squinted at it through his spectacles. “I suppose. I have a woodshop…” He looked uneasy.
“We’ll pay you,” Engle said, though Tor didn’t know how. Melda was the only one who had currency, and it wasn’t more than a few dobbles.
The old man sighed. “No payment. Just promise never to come back to my store.”
They followed the man into another room filled with wood, machinery, and buckets of paint. He sat at an old desk and placed the ship carefully in front of him.
With a sharp creak, he turned a giant magnifying glass attached to the table so it was in front of his eye. His eyebrows came together, and he squinted, as if not believing what he saw.
He turned to look them all up and down, his gaze landing at Vesper. “You’re a magnificate, aren’t you?”
She swallowed, then nodded.
The man turned back to his desk without saying a word.
Using tiny tweezers, he lifted the hatch of the ship, then turned it over, releasing a stream of seawater. He mopped it up with a rag, clicking his tongue. The boat now dry inside, he grabbed blindly for a long, silver tool that resembled a quill. It hissed when he pressed its end, and a tiny spark of power came out its other side.
The toymaker grunted as he ran the strange instrument along the hole in the ship’s hull, sealing it. Still not looking satisfied, he stuck a finger into a gray plaster from an open container, then smeared it on top, his eye never leaving the giant magnifying glass.
He muttered to himself as he got up to walk to the other side of the room. When he returned, he had a tiny bucket of dark paint, and a brush so small it seemed to contain just a handful of hairs.
He painted over the mark, then nodded, pleased. “Can still tell it’s been broken, but this is the best I can do in such a short amount of time.”
“It’s perfect,” Tor said. “Thank you.”
Following the terms of their agreement, they turned to leave. Everyone except for Melda, who was staring at the old man.
“Yes?” he said, tired.
“That’s an animator emblem,” Melda said, motioning toward the man’s finger. There was a tiny golden spark there. “Can you really make any inanimate object real?”
“No.”
Melda reddened, clearly disappointed. “Oh.”
She turned to go, and the old man said, “There are levels to animation.” He sighed. “The item itself decides whether or not it wants to be real.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
The man shrugged. “Then it never wakes up.” He peered at the ship in Tor’s hand, then at them, before sighing once again. “Sometimes, when I animate something, it has a lot to say. I took a trade for an old nutcracker this morning, and it gave many warnings. In its place in a store window in Siren’s Wharf, it had seen someone appear and disappear. The Calavera captain, it claimed.”
Tor stilled. When they’d been in Siren’s Wharf he could have sworn he’d seen the captain’s hat, in the corner of his vision, just before they left.
Were they being followed?
The toymaker shook his head. “I would go inland, if I was you,” he said. “If the Calavera’s curse has been broken, the sea and its cities are not safe places to be.”
* * *
They were silent on the haphazard walk back to the marina. The toymaker’s warning rang through Tor’s head.
He wished they could heed his advice and go inland. Instead, they had to sail toward danger, into the eye of the storm.
And hope the Calavera captain, the traitor, and the spectral didn’t beat them to the pearl—or didn’t attack them before they had a chance to find it.
The toymaker’s fix had worked brilliantly. When Vesper grew the ship in the harbor—making sure to avoid the shipfixer, who had drifted and
