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Authors: Sherri L. Smith

The Toymaker's Apprentice

BOOK: The Toymaker's Apprentice
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ALSO BY
SHERRI L. SMITH

Orleans

Flygirl

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

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A Penguin Random House Company

Text copyright © 2015 Sherri L. Smith.

Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Sarah Watts.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Sherri L.

The toymaker's apprentice / Sherri L. Smith.

pages cm

Summary: Journeyman toymaker Stefan Drosselmeyer is recruited by his mysterious cousin, Christian, to find a mythical nut that will save Boldavia's princess and his own kidnapped father from a fanatical Mouse Queen and her seven-headed Mouse Prince, who have sworn to destroy the Drosselmeyer family.

[1. Fairy tales. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Toy making—Fiction. 4. Apprentices—Fiction. 5. Princesses—Fiction. 6. Kidnapping—Fiction.] I. Hoffmann, E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus), 1776–1822. Nussknacker und Mauskönig. II. Title.

PZ8.S4132Toy 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014045980

ISBN 978-0-399-54516-0

Jacket art © 2015 by Sarah Watts

Jacket design by Annie Ericsson

Version_1

For my brother, Derek,
who distracted our piano teacher while I read Hoffmann's wonderful
book.

Contents

Also by Sherri L. Smith

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Toymaker's Apprentice

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

The Prince of Mice

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

The Nutcracker

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Epilogue

Appendix

Author's Note

IT WAS A DREARY DAY
for the time of year in Nuremberg. Gray clouds hung low over the peaked roofs of townhome and hall. The cobblestoned streets seeped with drizzled rain. A little gray dove leapt into the air from a great oak tree that stood in the graveyard. From his perch in the limbs of the tree, Stefan Drosselmeyer watched as the bird flew over hundred-year-old graves, and the newer crypts adorned with weeping angels and family names.

A thin line of mourners followed the coffin in a sad parade through the cemetery gates and into the mossy rows of the dead. In the distance, two gentlemen on horseback, clad in the same black as mourners, regarded the scene from a nearby rise.

A hitch developed in the smooth strokes of the dove's wingbeats and it faltered. Stefan frowned as the wings froze and the bird glided back toward his tree, where he snatched it from the sky. One of the men on horseback looked up, revealing an eye patch and a single bright blue eye.

Stefan scooched farther back into the shelter of the tree. He bit his lip, turning the dove over in his hands. Up close, the bird looked less like a dove and more like a child's approximation of a bird. A solid shape, no feathers, and only a dark spot of paint for the eye. He had just completed his apprenticeship as a toymaker and was proud of his bird. His father, who also happened to be his master toymaker, was the old-school sort who thought
toys should only move when lifted. But Stefan was more interested in the modern trend toward automation. He brushed a shock of damp hair out of his eyes and frowned at the damaged wings. The paint had failed to seal the joints completely, and rain had gotten in, swelling the wood.

In the graveyard beneath his tree, the procession had come to a stop before a low black crypt. He could hear the priest droning on, the sound of his father in tears.

“Where is he?” a sharp-nosed woman whispered. Stefan's absence had been noticed.

“He's just a child,” a plump woman murmured. “The church service was more than enough.”

It
had
been more than enough, Stefan agreed. The gloomy cathedral, soot blackened, candles barely bright enough to see by. And his mother, cold and pale in the narrow coffin.

His father had insisted on building the casket himself, a tribute to his beloved wife. He wished to be alone with only his tools, not his son. Left to his own devices, Stefan had decided to make the dove.

Murmured condolences covered the gossip of the two women. Stefan examined the wooden bird. When wound by the pegged tail feather piece, the wings would crank to a point of tension and then, with the tail cocked just so—the bird would take flight. Light wooden wings beating a frantic blur. A favorable wind could keep the dove aloft for minutes at a time.

But today the wind blew strange. He stuffed the bird into the pocket of his redingote and pulled out a sketchbook. The wool coat was too big for him, and too heavy for the weather, but it
was his only black coat. He'd grow into it, his mother had said. For now, it kept out the worst of the rain.

He jotted down a few thoughts in his notebook beside a sketch of the bird device. Below, he could hear the priest's blessings come to an end. He risked a glance down at the gathering. The door to the crypt stood open, black as night, blacker than the lacquered coffin. Above the lintel, a name was carved deep into the stone:
Drosselmeyer
.

With a slide of wet leaves, Stefan dropped out of the far side of the tree and hopped the fence, his coat snagging briefly on the rusty iron bars. He dragged himself free without looking back. A tear in the wool would be more easily mended than a tear in his heart, and that was what would happen if he watched them roll his mother into her grave.

Don't look back,
he told himself. His hair was in his eyes again, the same blue-green eyes as his mother's, the same dark blond hair. He pushed the locks brusquely out of his way. “Never look back,” he said through clenched teeth, and walked out into the gray world. His boots clattered onto the cobblestones, gaining in tempo as he broke into a run.

• • •

ON THE HILL
overlooking the graveyard, the men on their strange black horses shifted. No breath rose from the nostrils of their stone-still mounts. The men shook their reins, and with a soft click of gears, the horses followed Stefan into the street.

BOOK: The Toymaker's Apprentice
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