Jingle Jangle: The Invention of Jeronicus Jangle Read online

  Eventually, Jessica could stand it no longer for it was clear she hadn’t lost just one parent, but two.

  One day, once she’d grown, the time came for Jessica to leave home. Suitcase in hand, she climbed into a carriage, where she stared out the back. Her eyes welled with tears as she watched the shop—the only home she’d ever known—fade away.

  And Jangles and Things, once a world of wishes and wonder, was no more.

  And Jeronicus Jangle,

  once the greatest inventor of all,

  vowed never to invent anything ever again.

  Chapter Seven

  By looking at Pawnbroker, it was hard to imagine the thriving toy shop as it had once been.

  Thirty years had eroded the marquee into a sickly, sunburnt hue, and filled the shop with the dust and darkness that comes in the wake of any devastation. Gone was the World of Wishes and Wonder—in its place clung a world of woes and worries. Languishing furniture and junk with grimy numbered placards littered the cobwebbed nooks and crannies. Items for buying or selling included the likes of broken bicycles, crooked chairs, cracked sleds, and upright pianos missing a few keys. One sign threatened NO REFUNDS, NO EXCHANGES, NO NOTHING. The cold freeze of Cobbleton had won out, seeping into every inch of the shop down to its splinters.

  And Jeronicus, like the shop’s rubbish, had become a thing in need of mending. Old and hunched, he wore a shabby patchwork waistcoat over a ratty shirt. His black beard hid most of his face, which had fallen into disrepair, with frown lines where smile lines once lived. The hair on the top of his head had grayed. He sat staring at a cuckoo clock through his thick magnifying glass, examining its elegantly carved case. He’d have to take it apart and put it back together again.

  “The cuckoo inside just doesn’t cuckoo,” said the customer sadly, looking aristocratic in a dark purple dress and green feathered hat. “It’s a bit of a family heirloom. Do you have family?”

  The question struck a nerve with Jeronicus, who shifted in his chair.

  A loud crash shook him from his thoughts.

  “I’m okay! I’m okay!” a squeaky voice piped in. There was another loud bang, and a boy appeared from behind a stack of old travel trunks and a fringed lamp. He had his curly black hair parted in the center, a green polka-dot bow tie, owlish eyeglasses, and a sheepish toothy expression.

  He approached the counter with a mop in his hand. “I’ve swept the shop, wiped down the counters, and mopped the floor,” he said in a self-satisfied manner, resting the mop against the counter beside Jeronicus, who didn’t bother looking up at him, wiry glasses fixed on the cuckoo.

  “Did you clean the pantry?” Jeronicus asked.

  “Ugh!” his apprentice sighed. He’d forgotten. He’d do better.

  The lady turned her attention back to Jeronicus. “It would mean a lot if you could fix it.”

  Jeronicus peered down at the clock’s hopelessly rotten bellows.

  “Of course he can fix it!” the boy chimed in. “I mean, he’s the greatest inventor of all,” he said, flashing Jeronicus a look of admiration.

  “Children,” Jeronicus mumbled dismissively. “Active imaginations.”

  The boy reached for a tool on the counter, and Jeronicus swatted his hand.

  “I’ll give you half a crown for it,” Jeronicus said to the lady.

  She nodded, pleased.

  “After he fixes it, it’ll be worth ten pounds. Or even a hundred!” the boy declared with a defensive shake of his head. He refused to let Jeronicus sell himself short.

  Soon, the boy saw the customer out. “Bye!” he buoyantly called, waving from the door.

  From down the busy lane, a stern voice called out: “Edison! Time for your chores!”

  The boy opened the door wider and craned his neck out. “Mom! We’re inventing!”

  Jeronicus appeared behind him. “This is a pawnshop,” he corrected, handing Edison his coat before steering him out of the shop. “What don’t you understand about that?”

  Edison looked wistful. “No, it’s not! It’s a magical, mystical—”

  “Goodbye, Edison.” Jeronicus shut the door in his face. There was no longer room in his life for exuberance—only exasperation. The rusty bell above the door jangled as if in agreement.

  That didn’t stop Edison from continuing to speak to him, even if it was through one of the frosted shop windows. “World of Wishes and Wonder!” Edison concluded jubilantly.

  But Jeronicus had left that world behind long, long ago.

  Like the silent bird stuck in the cuckoo clock,

  Jeronicus felt his singing days were also over.

  Chapter Eight

  “Good morning, Edison!” the local postal woman called out happily. “Invent anything today?”

  “Not yet!” he replied as he ran past her.

  She looked gorgeous in her red cloak and luxurious black hair tucked and pinned neatly under a flat-brimmed hat, and her heart was as big as the giant bag of mail she had slung over her shoulder. She strolled through the street, pushing her mail trolley with its large wicker basket.

  Around her, Cobbleton was aflutter. Townspeople finished hanging the star on top of the evergreen that stood like a lonely sentinel in the square. Everyone was bustling to and fro, lunching or shopping for Christmas, which was in a few days’ time. Ms. Johnston abandoned her mail trolley and marched straight for the pawnshop. She stopped and took a moment to collect herself before she turned the corner and pushed open its double doors. Jeronicus, still tinkering on the cuckoo clock at the counter, barely registered her. She turned and clamorously attempted to shut the doors behind her before taking a deep breath and spinning excitedly back to face Jeronicus.

  He stood. “Good morning, Mrs. Johnston,” he said with the semblance of a smile.

  She twirled her midnight-blue skirts. “Good morning, Jerry.” She took a few steps into the silent, squalid shop as Jeronicus sat back down. “It’s so dark in here,” she remarked. She hit buttons, one by one, on a switchboard, and sconces and chandeliers flared to life, much to Jeronicus’s chagrin. Ms. Johnston rejoiced. “Perfect!”

  “I kind of liked it the way it was,” Jeronicus told her matter-of-factly.

  Ignoring the comment, she sauntered up to him. “How’s my favorite pawnbroker? Hmm? Who’s not really a pawnbroker but wants everyone to believe he is? Hmm?” she teased. “Jerry?”

  He set down the cuckoo. “I’d be better if you called me by my name.”

  She lifted a defunct telephone and spoke into it in a low, sultry tone. “Hello, Jerry.”

  “It’s Jeronicus,” he corrected, but not unkindly.

  “It’s Jerry!” she sang with a playful wink.

  Jeronicus blinked again. “You have something for me today, Mrs. Johnston?”

  She scowled and leaned over the countertop. “It’s Ms. I’m widowed, remember? He’s dead. Gone. Ain’t never coming back.”

  Jeronicus looked up at her. “I’m sure he’s in a better place.”

  “Jerry the Jokester.” She fished a letter out of her mailbag and handed it to him. “Here. You might want to open this one. You’re three months late on your gas. Actually, it’s four, but you overpaid the month before, so they gave you a credit.” She dangled the letter in front of him.

  When he reached for it, she yanked it back a few times until he managed to grab it.

  “Mrs. Johnston, I would appreciate it—”

  “Ms.,” she interjected.

  “If you refrained from opening my mail,” Jeronicus concluded. He opened the letter and considered it for a glum moment before stashing the overdue bill into a jumbled letter drawer.

  She feigned surprise. “It’s just a sixth sense I have.” She extended another few letters for Jeronicus. “A gift . . . knowing what’s inside . . . without seeing it,” she proclaimed, j
erking the letters away every time Jeronicus reached for them, until finally he seized them. This time, she held tight and began giggling. Finally, she let go, and he fell backward in his chair, dropping the letters, knocking over Edison’s mop, and falling against an archaic grandfather clock whose pendulum no longer swung, succumbed to a timeless existence.

  He straightened. “Mrs. Johnston, I don’t have time for this today.”

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Jerry!” she growled. “Lighten up! You’ve just got to smile.”

  Jeronicus did his best to ignore her, but when he wiped off the counter with a rag, Ms. Johnston rang its little bell, jarring his senses. And when he crossed the floor to buff an antique violin with snapped and fraying strings, Ms. Johnston followed like a relentless shadow. She knew Jeronicus was down on his luck ever since he lost Joanne to her sickness, and since Jessica packed up and left home. But she also knew that there was still hope for him to be happy again, maybe with someone like her by his side to let in some light. She glided on a tall ladder.

  He shook his head at her behavior. “You do realize people can see you from outside.”

  She leaned close to him, fluttering her eyelashes.

  Just then, a man burst into the shop, looking prim and proper in a dark blue cloak and top hat with a burnt-orange waistcoat and gray muttonchops connected by a thick mustache. He regarded Ms. Johnston.

  “Mrs. Johnston was just . . .” Jeronicus made to move away from her. “Delivering the mail.”

  Ms. Johnston sighed and spun away from him. She dug into her mailbag and handed a letter to the man. “You know, your cousin is visiting for the holidays,” she told him. “Merry Christmas.” She reached the double doors.

  “Hopefully my favorite cousin,” the man mused, eyeing the letter.

  Ms. Johnston twirled back around. “Nope.” And with that, she left.

  The man flipped the letter over, seeing that it was indeed sealed.

  “Mr. Delacroix,” Jeronicus said, drawing his attention.

  The banker regarded him with tenderness. “Jangle.”

  Jeronicus crossed to a tiny table. “Just the person I’ve been waiting for.”

  Mr. Delacroix followed close behind. “Yes. Which is why you haven’t answered any of my inquiries.” His voice dripped with sarcasm, despite being one of Jeronicus’s biggest believers.

  Jeronicus gulped. “Yes, I’ve been thinking—”

  “Jangle,” Mr. Delacroix cut in, loosening the cuffs of his jacket, “for the last thirty years you’ve been promising something sensational.”

  “Yes. And I have a thought,” Jeronicus said with a nervous little chuckle.

  “Yes! Something spectacular,” Mr. Delacroix stated.

  Jeronicus picked an empty gravy boat off the table. “Silver.”

  Mr. Delacroix sighed. This was what he’d had in mind?

  “You melt it down,” Jeronicus continued. “It’s a three-point-five. It’ll be a four-point-five next year—”

  “Something stupendous,” Mr. Delacroix cut in. “Something that will show the bank they’ve made a return on their investment.”

  “Which is why I need more time.” He began flipping madly through a book. “Look, I can show you—”

  “I’m sorry, Jangle,” the banker said, “the bank can’t wait any longer.”

  Jeronicus kept flipping. “Just take a quick look—”

  Mr. Delacroix stuck a hand in the book to stop him. “Jeronicus, listen to me! Either come up with the money you’ve borrowed by Christmas—”

  “Which is just a few days away,” Jeronicus griped.

  “Or show me the revolutionary invention you once promised,” he finished.

  Jeronicus racked his cobwebbed mind. “Something revolutionary?”

  Mr. Delacroix nodded curtly.

  Jeronicus thrust an old domed adding machine onto the counter and his once-skilled fingers punched the keys. “Take the circumference of spectacular . . . divided by the second derivative of sensational.” He hit a final key, and the machine printed out a little square of paper. “It’ll take approximately . . .”

  Mr. Delacroix snatched the page and read it, his bushy brows vanishing into his deepening wrinkles. He let out an unamused exhale and handed the paper back to Jeronicus. “Two thousand years?” he asked skeptically.

  “That may be a miscalibration on my part,” Jeronicus excused.

  Mr. Delacroix turned and strode away from him. “The invention, or the bank will seize Pawnbroker and all its assets,” he warned.

  “Wait!” Jeronicus followed on his heels. “Mr. Delacroix!”

  Mr. Delacroix paused in the doorway to humor him.

  Jeronicus raised his hands in surrender. “I would lose everything,” he pleaded.

  “I’m sorry to say it, old friend”—he looked around at the scattered shop—“but it looks like you already have.” His eyes settled sadly back on Jeronicus. “Merry Christmas.” And with that, he was gone.

  “Merry Christmas.” Jeronicus’s lip trembled as he dissolved to tears. He had to think. He had to do something. He felt as off-kilter as his shop. It was all he had left. It may have changed, but it was still filled with so many fuzzy memories of his wife and his daughter and his delighted customers. “Something revolutionary . . .” he mused. “Something revolutionary . . .”

  Within moments, he was padding up the spiral staircase to his secret workshop. He slid a trunk out from under a desk and hoisted it up. It was a dusty old travel trunk, one painted with flowers and stickered with papers from around the globe. He traced his fingers along the stickers before taking a deep breath and creaking open the lid. There he found, buried among knickknacks and scrolls of paper, a sleek red notebook. The letters JESSICA J printed on the front shone just as they had in Jessica’s happy, cozy childhood.

  He opened to the first pages of a child’s doodles and found words like EXPLORE and TRUTH and LOVE and FOCUS, and there was a crayon-drawn Jangles and Things with the phrase THE MOST MAGICAL SHOP IN THE WORLD. There were even stick figures of the three of them together.

  What he’d give to go back in time, to cherish those moments once more.

  He turned to a page marked by a glossy red ribbon. It showed the designs of a smiling robot with giant eyes and a cherubic face: THE BUDDY 3000. His fingers grazed the illustration.

  The shadow of a long-lost smile twitched across Jeronicus’s lips.

  Then, something else in the trunk caught his eye, something small wrapped in a soft brown cloth. He removed the fabric to reveal a dusty glass cube with a gold-trimmed door. Through it, he saw dozens of little gears angled in every direction. He used his sleeve to lovingly polish it.

  “There you are,” he breathed.

  Could this robot be his something revolutionary?

  He may have found the one thing to change everything, but still, something was missing.

  Someone was missing . . .

  Over the years, Jessica sifted through mail, searching for a letter from her father.

  Many times he sat to write. And though she had moved far away, the heart, it seems, isn’t bothered by distance. Only by what it loves and wishes loved it in return.

  But Jeronicus couldn’t figure out the words.

  Perhaps I’m sorry hadn’t quite been invented yet. And Jessica, lowering the mail onto her desk one cold gray day, grew weary of the wait. She had a life of her own now. And a daughter—a peculiar little girl. Curious. Magical, even, some might say . . .

  Journey Jangle.

  Chapter Nine

  Woodsmoke trailed out the chimney of Nesbitt Cottage on a pale morning much like any other.

  The little home and its snowy square yard were hemmed in by hedges and a wrought iron fence crystallized in ice. Inside, Journey was hard at work on her latest invention�
�a bird automaton. The little girl reached for a piece of wood resting on her desk. She wore a blue ribbon studded with cogs in her puffy black hair, a leather tool belt looped around her shoulders, and a rainbow jumper with whimsical ruffled shoulders. If the details of her appearance didn’t give her away as an innovator, the pages of designs papered around her bedroom certainly did. Journey was an inventor, like the grandfather she’d never known but had only ever heard so much about, including his magnificent shop, his whimsical inventions, and his ability to see things . . .

  Journey may have been small, but she had big, brilliant ideas and a brave, mighty heart.

  She measured the wood, chiseled out a piece, and fit it onto her bird automaton. Then she checked her pages of designs in her notebook. Content, she pulled the piece of wood, which made the bird’s wings move up and down. She wrote a line in her notebook, and stood to look out the fogged glass of her window. Like her bird creation, she, too, was born to spread her wings and fly. She’d longed to make the trip to meet her legendary grandfather. Her mother had promised that one day they’d visit Jangles and Things, but if, and only if, they were invited.

  Then, one day . . .

  Journey spun around as the door opened, and Jessica stood there clutching a letter. Jessica was older now, with her hair in a long, luxurious side braid, and adorned with decorative cogs on top, a nod to her creative childhood. But like her notebook that she’d put away long ago, a nod was all she had left. Well, not all. Her daughter was just as bright-eyed and optimistic as she had been once. Journey grinned at her from ear to ear.

  Moments later, their boots crunched across their front yard, Journey bundled up in a royal-purple jacket with cogs stitched to the lapel and carrying a striped backpack of her scant belongings.