When the snowflakes start to taste like sugar And when the carolers begin their Holiday songs
Look for gingerbread men dancing down the merriest lane And you’ll know the Great Holiday has begun …
The sound of carolers singing in harmony greeted Tella as soon as she stepped onto Garland Street. The sidewalks were covered in the sort of snow she thought would crunch beneath her boots, but it was so soft she could feel her feet slowly sinking.
Every shop was a lustrous white with rows of cheery red rosebushes that lined the snow-dotted paths leading to doors with perky welcome signs and gleaming golden handles.
The windows were all trimmed in garnet-red bunting or bright green garland that filled the air with the fresh, crisp scent of Holiday trees.
It was perfectly lovely.
But it didn’t actually feel perfect.
As Tella took a few more steps over snow that still didn’t crunch beneath her boots, she sensed a peculiar air of otherness to the street, as if the shops weren’t really shops but pieces of a porcelain town that had been plucked from a giant’s window display and used for decoration.
Scarlett had said Mr. Garland’s Toy Chest was open for only one day out of the year. But Tella wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the entire street only existed for this one day. That before this moment, Garland Street hadn’t been here at all, and that after tonight, it would disappear once more. The shop, the street, the carolers—poof! In the morning, they would all be gone, leaving nothing but a few errant snowdrifts.
Tella imagined that if she returned tomorrow, this picturesque scene would be replaced with crowded streets lined in narrow shops packed as close as matches in a box and crawling with pushcart vendors crying out the prices of their wares.
There were no pushcart vendors here today, no street children tossing snowballs at shoppers. Tella didn’t even spy so much as a stray cat.
This is wrong, said a tiny voice inside her head. You shouldn’t be here, it added.
But warnings like this only made Donatella Dragna more curious. The first shops she passed all sold sweets.
The Gumdrop Palace had displays of enormous apothecary jars full of brightly wrapped candies. They were all topped with gold-dusted lids that had delicate labels attached to each one.
Tella wanted the labels to promise that the candies did magical things, like turn your eyes into stars as you ate them, or make everything you said sound a little bit sweeter.
She didn’t want to give Legend candy for the Holiday. But if the candies in the shops were magical, then it would, at least, have made her feel as if she were headed in the right direction.
Tragically, the labels promised ordinary things, such as peppermint candies and red-flavored licorice. Although, Tella didn’t think red was actually a flavor.
She hoped that Mr. Garland’s Toy Chest would have more inspired offerings.
Tella took a cold breath as she neared the end of the street. The toy store was smaller than she had expected. Unlike the other shops on the lane, which all looked as if they might not have existed until today, Mr. Garland’s Toy Chest looked as if it had always been here.
Tella imagined the little store sprouting up at the beginning of time. She pictured the cranberry-red door growing up slowly like a tree and then forming windows and walls and a quaint little roof. Everything was red and white and green and gold.
The gold tinsel hanging across the windows made her think of leaves that grew in winter and would fall away in the spring.
Behind one tall window stood the greenest Holiday tree Tella had ever seen, with perfect white packages sitting beneath, tied up in crisp red bows. The other window had packages as well, but instead of sitting at the base of a tree, they circled the feet of a life-size porcelain ballerina.
The ballerina wore a sparkling white tutu with Holiday bells lining the skirt. One arm was posed above her head, the other was curved around her waist, and both were covered in red gloves and attached to golden strings that went up, up, up to a marionette’s cross.
There was no one holding the cross. Yet Tella watched the ballerina slowly turn on the tips of her toes as the golden marionette strings began to move.
There must have been some clockwork in her.
Or maybe she wasn’t a toy at all?
Tella had assumed the ballerina was a toy because she was standing in a window. But the longer Tella watched her, the more lifelike the ballerina looked. Her skin and her hair and the graceful way she held herself, all of it looked human, except for her wide unblinking eyes.
Another passerby oohed before entering the shop. But Tella felt vaguely disappointed.
She had seen much stranger things than a lifelike doll, or a very doll- like person.
Tella had battled ghosts and death; she’d seen people trapped inside playing cards. This realistic toy was less impressive than it should have been.
But maybe there would be more exciting things inside the shop.
Tella started toward the door, until she saw something else in the window—
A reflection of a black top hat.
Immediately, she spun around, blond curls whipped across her face as her heart began to race.
