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Click. The door closes with a quiet finality, and children’s footsteps retreat down the hall, their nanny hushing the little voices. “Time for bed,” you hear her say. Fainter and fainter they grow, until the playroom is quiet, tendrils of smoke rising from the lifeless candle. The cat, forgotten by its masters, lounged in the window. You drink in the stillness, the quiet before the tempest.
The signal is given, the candle is relit, and everyone moves at once. The ballerina in the music box begins to dance, the birds in the cuckoo clock commence their nightly fly-around, the jack-in-the-box wipes sleep from his tastefully painted eyes. They are all in wait of the main event, the nightly ritual that officially the starts the evening, the toy soldiers’ march. In their militarial grandeur, the soldiers spring from their box, each one taking his place behind the other until they form an unyielding line of redcoat officers, and from there marches the tiny army.
You, in no ways a new addition to the playroom, are a small tin detective figurine, a slight character clad in a great-coat and complete with a tobacco pipe, which you now place between your lips. Your feet are firmly secured to a sort of platform below you for the purpose of keeping you upright, but it greatly hinders walking to the point that you must hop from place to place. It is rather tiresome– you could’ve concocted a more efficient method.
When the click-clack of the soldiers’ feet nears you, you scramble to witness. If you can just strain your neck a little bit more, you can see past the toy blocks, and ah yes, there they are, the men in uniform. You’ve never missed a parade since your first night.
They march, all stiff shoulders and glossy paint, and you can’t help counting each one, each identical face strutting by. For some reason, perhaps some odd movement detected in your periphery, your eyes slide down the line to the very end, or rather, the soldier behind the end. Your lips part, your breath hitches.
This soldier has but one leg.
The one-legged soldier puts on airs of marching, yet he has fallen so far behind his men that the others are preparing to do an about face and march past him. Hopping along, musket slipping from his grasp, he presses on, even when the rest of the line passes him by, strain and determination evident on his face. Several times he falls, only to regain his footing once more. Although he is crafted identically to the other soldiers, his inner strength seems to make his features ten times handsomer. Right then, in a moment of admiration, you decide to call him your soldier.
A tapping sound just to your left tears your eyes from him, and you see the ballerina waving gingerly from her music box, ruddy cheeks set against creamy porcelain paint. Her delicate hands reach for her lid, tilting it ever so slightly in your direction, which causes the small mirror on it to catch your reflection. Your face is alive, eyes wide, smile beaming. The image catches even you by surprise, and the giddy, amused grin on her face is enough to make you want to hide in embarrassment. Disgruntled by your obvious display of emotion, you swiftly erect a barrier of toy blocks to block the ballerina's wandering eyes.
Your soldier has now made it to the cuckoo clock which lies parallel to your small shelf, and here, you have an unobstructed view of him as he reclines against a box, finally resting. Up and down his chest heaves. He looks so very tired, you feel a compulsion to leap from your shelf and help him, to stroke his face and say Everything will be okay, to tell him that he's been so brave already, that he deserves his uniform more than any other toy in the world, yet on your dusty shelf you stay. You cannot bring yourself to his side. No matter how much you want to embrace him, you know that he is out of your reach, that he would rather love the ballerina, whom he eyes even now, that you are sure to be the outsider in his mind. This is dangerous territory you tread, and he places you in uncharted waters which your brain cannot compute. There is no algorithm, you are finding out, no simple deduction to this feeling you have.