Cave of Wonders: Dollmaker

In a little town in the middle of nowhere, there used to be a great family of toymakers. Dolls with porcelain hands, soldiers with lead little rifles, small trains made of wood, animals made with the softest fabric, and lovely mobiles for the newborns. Little music boxes along with singing birds adorned the window of their store. And every day children and adults would visit them with new ideas to help them create new and wonderful toys.

The Grandfather would work on the fine mechanisms inside the toys hearts. Giving them ticking hearts that would flutter full of life and laughter. Grandmother dressed them with the prettiest fabric she could find, something acting as if she was taking suggestions from the toys themselves. Mother liked to pain their eyes, and sometimes she would take some pretty stones and use them to give them shiny accessories for the toys to wear. And the Father would go through great lengths to make the best bodies for the little toys. In porcelain or wood or lead, he would always spend entire days trying to create the best toy he could ever make.

“I give them life so other children can laugh and grow full of hope”, he would say while ruffling his little boy’s hair.

The son, the little boy with a big smile a sharp mind and the hands of a tinker, would spend all his time trying to learn from his family. And his first toy, was a doll with the shape of a boy with hair blue as the see and eyes red as a ruby. He named his doll “Serge”, much to the surprise of the family.

“Where did you get such a name?” his mother asked, surprised and confused.

“He said he liked that name.” The boy replied, much to the amusement of the adults in the room.

From that moment on, the boy never stopped helping and making dolls alongside his family, naming each with new and different names that raised eyebrows among the family and customers of the store. He even worked in a white rabbit dressed as a fine gentleman, holding a cane and a top hat.

“This is Li Bai” he would say. And by that time, everyone would simply smile and nod, introducing themselves to the toys as if they were other people. Overall, it was a fun time for both family and township.

But then, as life spins and takes as much as it gives, and accident struck.

“Accidental fire” whispered hushed voices around town. But at an even darker corner of the mind, “arson” was the word that chased the little boy ever since.

He didn't remember much from that night.

Only the sudden smell of smoke, the screams of his family trying to put off the fire before the roof caved in, and the laughter of a group of drunkards on the side of the street.

He lost everything that night, his family, his dreams, his voice, even his priced first doll. At the dawn of the next day, he walked through the wreckage in hopes of finding anything. The town folk remained silent, and the local police could only lock the culprits for one night. They were innocent of ill intent, merely drunken fools that would regret their actions for the rest of their lives.

But the little boy only looked at their faces. Memorized everything about them, and gave them no word of absolution. He disappeared, along with his dolls, and that family was forgotten. A nameless tragedy that only a few children remembered by hugging the toys that they had made for them.

But this little boy, this little dollmaker, did not forget.

And later, a long time later, he came back for revenge.