Jingle Jangle: The Invention of Jeronicus Jangle Read online

  “It’s only a couple of days,” Jessica told her. “So remember to mind your manners and eat your dinner. All of it. No matter how it tastes.” At the gate, she took Journey’s hands, crouching down. “And be kind to your grandfather. Even if he isn’t everything you’ve imagined he’ll be.”

  Journey’s eyes shone. “He’ll be more. I just know it.” She beamed.

  Jessica sighed. Although Jessica wouldn’t be going to see Jeronicus herself, she was still nervous, and wondered if it was a mistake to be letting Journey visit him on her own. In all those years, he’d only sent one letter. Well, even if he hadn’t measured up as a father, perhaps there would still be hope for him as a grandfather. She quickly dashed her worried expression, straightened, and pulled from her sleeve an envelope addressed to Jeronicus. “Now, remember when you get to Cobbleton—”

  “Mom!” Journey cut in. “I got it,” she reassured her, accepting the letter.

  “All aboard!” the driver shouted from the horse-drawn omnibus on the road.

  Journey’s face lit up in excitement. She couldn’t wait!

  She was going to live up to her name—a most magical journey was about to begin.

  Jessica pulled her in for a hug smelling of chamomile and cocoa butter.

  “I love you, Mom.” Journey squeezed her tighter.

  Jessica kissed her forehead. “I love you more.”

  The two large horses neighed impatiently, breaking their moment.

  Arms flailing, Journey rushed to the road. “Wait up! I’m coming!”

  Jessica watched with a heavy heart as Journey climbed into the carriage and waved through the window. Waving back, Jessica watched the carriage roll off down the pine-lined road, praying her father would know that she had sent Journey to him with love. Maybe Journey would be able to bond with him over their shared magical ability, or, with any luck, bring his smile back, the one he’d lost long ago. She pulled a necklace out of her red dress and cradled it in her hand. She kept it, all those years later, right above her heart. It still ticked and glowed, a reminder of her father, of the happy life she’d once known.

  From the omnibus, Journey gazed at the passing landscape. While most little girls her age had visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads this time of year, she had equations and formulas buffeting around instead—and butterflies. She was overjoyed to visit her grandfather at long last, even if it was only for a short time. It would be a nice change from a town where people stuck up their nose at her for being different, or mocked her for the color of her skin, or for the kinks and cogs in her hair, or for her notebook full of strange and wonderful things that mattered. It would be nice to be someplace she felt like she belonged for once. She hoped, more than being able to confirm if they were as similar as her mother had always noted, more than meeting her grandfather who was also a great inventor, that Jeronicus would like her.

  She paused her daydreams to jot fresh ideas in her notebook, inspired by the blue birds flitting by, and by the exponentially busy road, and by the people seated around her in the omnibus. When it rolled into Cobbleton, she was surprised by how quickly time had passed, and how very close her grandfather had been to her all her life. Out the window, she caught glimpses of the unfamiliar town bustling with holiday shoppers. Her heart began to soar.

  Before she knew it, she was walking among the boisterous crowds, backpack slung over her shoulders, taking in the picturesque town with wide eyes, eating up the hustle and bustle.

  Men tipped their hats kindly at her. Horses clomped by. People in clumps chatted and laughed on every sidewalk and curb despite the cold—people of all shapes and sizes. If it wasn’t enough to get her imagination fired up, it was certainly enough to warm her heart.

  She raced down the teeming street and descended a staircase leading to a gingerbread-smelling square fenced in by shops and restaurants, and boasting an enormous pine tree decked with lanterns, candy canes, and tinsel. A throng of people parted to reveal the spot where Jangles and Things was supposed to be located, per her mother’s exact instructions to get safely to its 260 Chancer Street address.

  Journey’s heart pounded faster, and she hastened toward it, but halted.

  JERONICUS JANGLE

  PAWNBROKER

  BEST SECONDHAND GOODS IN ALL OF COBBLETON

  BECAUSE TWO HANDS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

  Her eyes flitted from the sign to the grimy windows taped with more signs. Many said NO REFUNDS. She blinked, beholding the faded marquee, the words for a toy emporium illegible.

  She traipsed to the doors, and unhooked a sign from a knob that read BACK IN 5 MINUTES. OR LESS. OR MORE. OR MORE OR LESS. She hung it back up, and treaded down the icy sidewalk.

  “Excuse me. Do you know where I can find Jeronicus Jangle?” Journey asked a lady.

  She pointed. “He’s right over there.”

  Thanking her, Journey cut across the lively square toward a trolley selling knickknacks, where a man in a faded blue-and-yellow tartan coat was turned away from her, inspecting the wares. She slowly approached him as he paid the vendor, and took a deep breath, bracing herself.

  “Are you . . . Mr. Jangle?” she asked delicately.

  “Depends on who’s asking,” Jeronicus said without looking at her.

  She took a step closer. “I’m Journey. Your granddaughter.”

  “My granddaughter’s name is Jackie, or something with a U.”

  Journey’s resolve faltered.

  Jeronicus moseyed from the stand, opening a book and then beginning to read it.

  She marched after him. “It’s Journey,” she said softly.

  “That’s a J-O-U,” he said, continuing to read. “Okay.”

  She reached her fingerless-gloved hand into her jacket and procured her mother’s letter. “My mom told me to give this to you.” She offered it to him, but he slighted her, continuing to pore over his book and mumble to himself, clearly not wanting to be bothered on his errands run.

  Journey decided to take matters into her own hands. As they passed the pine tree and a little bench, she opened the envelope, unfolded the letter, and read aloud. “‘Dear Father.’”

  “Allegedly.” Jeronicus glanced at her. They arrived at a stand where he purchased an egg.

  “‘I’ve decided to let Journey stay with you until Christmas,’” Journey continued.

  Jeronicus took his egg. “Journey. That’s an interesting name,” he remarked.

  “‘She’s an inquisitive girl, but well mannered.’” Journey relished that line. “‘Like you said,’” she kept reading, “‘it’s time you both got to know each other.’”

  He paid the vendor. “Did I say that? When did I say that?” he mused.

  She followed as he moved back through the square, where scents of cinnamon and nutmeg (or was it warm apple pie?) mingled with the smells of cypress and woodsmoke. “‘I’ll be there to pick her up on Christmas morning. I hope you are well. Love . . . Jessica,’” she concluded.

  Gingerly, he reached out and took the letter to read.

  Journey held her breath, hoping it would soften him to her arrival.

  He handed the letter back. “No.” He beelined to his shop. “My granddaughter would never be allowed to visit me anyway.”

  Her face fell as she tailed him. “But I have nowhere else to stay.”

  He ignored her, reaching his shop’s stoop.

  She stepped in front of him. “I have nowhere else to stay!” she said again loudly.

  Jeronicus brushed past her. “You can’t stay here. Not now. Maybe next year. Or the year after. Maybe five or ten years from now. You know what they say about children. They’re a creative vacuum.” He passed through a door. “I can’t have that right now,” he added. “I’m working on something private.” He shut the door on her, leaving her alone on the cold stoop.

 
* * *

  Moments later, Journey entered the disarray of the shop, climbed the curving mahogany steps, and emerged on the upper-level landing overlooking the ground floor as Jeronicus tinkered with a glass cube at a little desk.

  “Symmetry brings synchronicity.” He fit a cog into the cube and twisted a screw. At the sound of Journey’s clomping boots, Jeronicus turned to her. “I-I don’t have time for this. Didn’t you understand when we talked outside?”

  She tore her sights from the ground floor and deftly slipped a photo out of her inside jacket pocket to show him.

  He craned to look at it, and gave in to the urge to take it.

  The black-and-white photo was faded, showing a chipper child, her inventor goggles perched atop her head like a coronet.

  “Your mother,” he breathed, in a state of disbelief. “She wanted her own pair of inventor goggles. ‘I want a purple band, Daddy. They have to have a purple band.’ And so that’s what I did. Her mother thought she wasn’t ready for it, but . . . I knew that she was.” A nostalgic warmth filled his chest. He was remembering. The memories had been covered in so much dust, like all of his inert inventions. He took a deep breath and set down the photo. “You can stay,” he said.

  “Great!” Journey cheered.

  “After you sign this.” Jeronicus stood and pulled a folded sheaf of paper from an armoire. “As clauses of confidentiality to protect the specialty of the personality whose mentality transcends the continuum between fantasy and reality.” He thumbed through the many panels of unfurling pages as he read, each filled with numerous lines of complicated terms.

  She looked at him, eyebrow quirked, unsure what all that gobbledygook meant.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “It means you don’t touch, you don’t move, you don’t bust, you don’t break, you don’t take anything from this shop. You understand?” He held out a fluffy white-feathered quill.

  She nodded. Now that she understood.

  “Okay. Sign it right here,” he instructed, putting his finger at the bottom.

  Journey began to sign, but no ink flowed from the quill’s tip. She tested it on her finger, to no avail. “The pen is out of ink,” she reported.

  “Keep going. The pen is full of ink,” Jeronicus promised her.

  Obeying, she tried again and signed her name, though no name appeared.

  When she finished, he held the contract under a lamp. Under its glow, her signature materialized in neon-blue letters.

  “Your signature’s right here.” He folded it up. “You signed it. You’re under contract.”

  Journey was still too impressed by the invisible ink to care.

  As her grandfather stuffed it back into the armoire, she lifted the glass cube off his desk and inspected its many gears, angled in every direction inside. “What’s this?” she asked.

  Jeronicus rushed to her. “It’s none of your business,” he said. “It’s exactly— It’s none of your business. Okay?” He took it and sat back down.

  Journey shrugged, unfazed, and marveled at the shop some more, seeing all its potential, and imagining what it had once been. If she listened hard enough, she could hear joy from long ago.

  “You hungry?” Jeronicus asked. “I have one egg. We could split it.”

  Journey looked at him, mouth set in a sorry line, and shook her head. Like the shop, she could tell he had potential, too—and that he was struggling in more ways than one. He suggested she take her bag to a bed downstairs on the ground floor. She nodded then gave a sympathetic look before walking off, and Jeronicus put his head down and got back to work, tightening a tiny gear. She raced back to him and enveloped him in a giant hug. She hadn’t needed a detailed design of Jeronicus to tell that he’d needed one, that he’d been missing one.

  He froze. “What’s . . . going on?” he asked as she nuzzled him.

  Journey realized she’d needed a hug, too. Her grandfather smelled of the soothing scent of zesty oranges and argon oil. “Is it all right if I call you Grandpa Jeronicus?” she asked earnestly.

  “Could you not?” he replied softly, despite the urge to submit to her endearing wish.

  “I guess you’re right,” she agreed quietly. “Grandpa J sounds so much better!” she corrected with an elated smile. She pecked him on the cheek several times, despite his insistent protests to stop, until finally she broke off and scurried to settle in. “See you soon, Grandpa J!”

  Why wouldn’t anyone call him by his name?

  “Well, you hurry back as slowly as you can,” he mumbled, though he didn’t really mean it. He thought about how he hadn’t had a hug from anyone since . . . When he was sure he was alone, he picked up the old photo. He couldn’t take his eyes away. Journey had her mother’s smile.

  Finally, he lowered it again, and got back to work on his something revolutionary.

  Jeronicus wasn’t the only one

  who needed something revolutionary.

  Gustafson, too, was searching.

  Driven by Don Juan’s greed and thirst for power,

  Gustafson’s empire soared.

  For nearly thirty Christmases, Gustafson unveiled one stolen invention after the other . . .

  until there were no more pages in Jeronicus’s book!

  Yes, and with Christmas just days away, Gustafson had no choice but to revisit an idea of his own.

  After all, he was an inventor, too . . .

  Chapter Ten

  The giant G glinted and glittered from Gustafson’s Factory atop the bluffs, casting a shadow on the peaked, snow-blanketed roofs of the little shops and homes. With its steely domed turrets, spindly chimneys, and wall that segregated it from the rest of the humble town below, the building looked like more of a fortress than a factory, save for the stacks belching a dark, noxious smoke.

  Inside, international toy buyers crowded into a cavernous showroom with ornate green woodwork paneling the walls, bloodred pillars, and stained glass double doors overlooking a dais with steps leading down to a floor of cold marble. The milling buyers were impatient to see what lay in wait beyond those doors. Could it be another legendary toy for boys and girls? One with the promise to rise to the top of every wish list? They practically frothed at the mouth in anticipation.

  The double doors flew open and lights flicked on to show a formidable silhouette, which spun around to reveal a man in an exquisite gold-trimmed cloak with tasseled epaulets. Every inch of his garments was made of the finest fabrics and jewels, from his waistcoat with lustrous buttons and royal-purple necktie, to his glossy top hat, which made him appear even taller. He wore rings on every finger, and clutched a staff topped by an incandescent green gem. His face sported a short, sculpted beard. Gone were the days of the lowly orphan boy in tattered rags. Gustafson had become what he’d always dreamed of being, a true showman, one of magic and mystique known throughout the world—the Magic Man G—and he was thrilled to show off what new invention he had up his emerald-green sleeve. He pulled a cloth off his latest shiny new toy.

  There sat a far-improved version of the Twirling Whirly from thirty years prior—composed of finely crafted metals and precious plastics—rebranded as the Werly Twerly. It whirred, chortled, and took to the air, hovering over the wonderstruck buyers. It could sing and whistle and change directions on a dime. The buyers swarmed Gustafson on his dais, thrashing their hands and feverishly placing orders for the toy in the hundreds—no, in the thousands.

  Suddenly, the invention smoked and sparked.

  It nose-dived into the crowd, and buyers screamed, ducking and dodging, until it suction-cupped itself to an old man’s cheek. Despite his shouting efforts to pry it off, it remained stuck.

  “It’s frying my face!” he cried.

  “Somebody help that poor man!” a woman pleaded.

  Some lifted him from the room as others rescinded their orders and
cleared out.

  “Let’s get out of here!” shouted a buyer.

  The sense of déjà vu turned Gustafson’s stomach.

  His jaw hung slackly, his brows furrowed as he looked on in horror. Not for the uncertain fate of the roughed-up buyer, but for his own future. He was starting to lose his spark, and he refused to let that happen. His days as a fool and a failure were far behind him. He’d made sure of that. But while he had become the greatest inventor that ever there was, it was a lie, for all Gustafson’s inventions had been born of the stolen designs he’d indefinitely borrowed when he was just a boy. Now he’d just tried producing a Gustafson Original, and it hadn’t worked. Any idea of his own was missing something. Or someone . . .

  While the magic in Gustafson’s Factory was lacking, back at Jangles and Things,

  Journey was discovering a magic of her own . . .

  Chapter Eleven

  Across town, night fell over Jeronicus’s shop, and all at once it was cloaked in twinkling stars.

  Journey burnished the bannister on the upper landing. “So, what are you working on?”

  Jeronicus bent over his desk, and peered through rotating glass lenses. “Is someone talking to me?” He kept his head down. “No, it couldn’t be somebody talking to me because the only person talking to me couldn’t be talking to me because they’re so busy doing their chores.”

  Journey stopped polishing. “But Grandpa, I don’t want to—”

  “Talking,” he said tersely, but not unkindly.

  “I was just trying to—”

  “Chores,” he cut in again.

  Huffing, Journey turned and walked away, then stopped. Slowly she spun back around. While Jeronicus rotated a colorful green lens and squinted through it, Journey snuck back up behind him, spying on what he was starting to scrupulously write down. She’d recognize a mathematical notation anywhere. If she couldn’t get him to like having her around, then at least she could learn from the greatest inventor of all.