Chapter 6
When Elanora stepped over the threshold of Ashden’s neat white cottage wondering how his mother would react to seeing her again, she had to physically restrain herself from pirouetting on the spot by faking an itch on her knee. Each wall was painted a different colour and each different colour was dappled, stippled or washed with another so that being in the house was like standing in the birthplace of a rainbow. There were walls of dolton blue, crimson daubed lavender, forest green with lime stripes. If she spun, she was sure she they would blend into white.
“This is incredible,” she said, scratching hard.
“It’s my mum’s thing. She likes to paint. She did like to paint. I used to come home after school and find everything repainted. I can’t tell you how many colours my room’s been. The doctor said it was good therapy, but I don’t see that it worked too well.”
Elanora nearly danced behind him along the candy striped hallway to the kitchen. But when she passed the yellow drenched sunroom where Ashden’s mother sat in a nest of cushions like an enchanted princess in a chest of jewels, Elanora grabbed Ashden’s arm as a dizzy spell hit. As if she really had been spinning.
“We won’t disturb her,” he whispered and Elanora wondered if that was because they were planning on being really quiet or because she was catatonic and wouldn’t notice if they set the house on fire. Stories about Ashden’s mother ran rife at school and, looking at her so vacant faced, it was hard not to give them credit. They passed the doorway in an instant but Elanora could barely wrench her eyes from the woman as Ashden led on.
“There’s so much to tell you, it’s hard to know where to start,” he said, pulling her into his kaleidoscopic room. “I had no idea I’d find another person like me, especially not at the same school. Especially not now!” he added, his voice smoothing out.
“First of all, I want you to meet Eskatoria.” Ashden put into her hands his companion. A plush brown monkey with fur in miniature twists from years of affection. Her long arms were set wide beckoning a hug which Elanora promptly gave.
“Eskatoria is alive,” began Ashden. “Not just in my imagination, or yours, but in reality.”
He paused. Elanora felt light headed again.
“You’re a bit different to me, but I can tell you what I am and what I know. It’s only right, after all.” Ashden sounded older than his fifteen years as he geared himself up. “Let me explain.
“When I was seven my dad left for work one night and never came back. There was no note, no sign that things were wrong, nothing at all. He just didn’t come home. We didn’t know if he ran off with someone else, was killed, kidnapped, nothing. Mum completely fell apart. Just shut down to nothing. She’s never been right since,” his expression clouded for a moment and Elanora wanted to say something comforting but he continued. “To be honest, I kind of coped OK, which is probably a really bad thing to say. I mean, I didn’t at first. But then I started spending a lot of time in my room with Eskatoria. I guess because I was so young I turned to a toy for comfort.
“At the start she was simply that; a toy, but slowly a change came over her.” He paused again as if expecting her to scoff. Elanora, however, was drinking it in. “I knew because there was light in her eyes. It was like a language and I could read it. She was thinking and responding to me and to things that happened around her. There was real thought in there.
“Another thing was that when I looked into Eski’s face I could see clearly for the first time in my life. And I mean that literally because I was born with…hopeless eyes.”
“Oh,” she said. Elanora had heard something about Ashden’s eyes. “What about glasses?”
“They don’t help.”
Why am I talking about glasses? she thought. He’s talking about toys with brains!
He waited but Elanora kept her lips shut.
“So Eski became my closest friend,” he continued. “She can’t move or anything like that, but she feels.”
Elanora glanced at the monkey. “Should I see it?”
“Don’t you? Here, hold her again. Look into her eyes.”
Elanora stared hard. Her brow creased. “I don’t see anything. But I...”
“Do you feel something?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. “I just feel love...coming back? Is that it?”
“Probably. Like I said, you are a bit different to me.”
“OK, tell me the rest,” she said, clasping her hands in her lap.
“Later I found a toy donkey squashed in the bottom of the wardrobe. It was one that mum used to have on her bed before Dad left. When I held it, an energy flowed out from me, connecting us. That’s when I figured there was definitely something...different about me,” he said sweeping a hand through his fringe in the way that he did to shield his eyes.
“Not only can I reach into them but they can reach into me and send me their feelings. What came back to me from inside this donkey was sadness. Painful sadness. I gave him back to Mum knowing she was connected to him like I was to Eski and when she held him, he was happy.
“I started looking at a whole lot of toys. Most did nothing to me. They were just cloth and stuffing, but every now and then I’d find one with a light inside it that called me with such desperation that I’d have to rescue it. I had no choice. I used to carry them around wherever I went.”
“Is that why they started teasing you?” asked Elanora, before closing her lips even tighter and feeling her cheeks warm.
Ashden lost his train of thought. “Yes, I s’pose it was.”
“Sorry,” she said.
He laughed, “Don’t worry, it worked out for the best. Anyway, a new teacher arrived at school when I was in Year 4, called Mr Johnson. Everyone thought he was a bit mad. One day he brought in a whole pile of fluffy toys and we had to vote for our three favourites. I counted three that I could see life in. They were the mangiest of them all. The scrawniest and most faded but they were alive.
“Mr Johnson called me back after the bell because I was the only one who had correctly identified them. He was even more excited when he found out I’d been raised in Scrubstone, just like him. He said he’d been hoping to find me.”
Elanora scrunched up her face in concentration. “I remember him,” she said. “He did the same in my class. He brought in all those toys and we had to choose.”
“Let me guess, you chose all of them.”
Elanora grinned. “But I wish I hadn’t because I think I’ve missed out!”
“Maybe,” said Ashden, lifting his eyebrows. “Anyway, he said I was special...chosen, I think were his words. He told me I had the ability, just like him, to see the soul inside a toy and that now my role was basically to take care of them. The ones that communicated sadness to me, he said, would never be happy unless I helped them.”
Elanora shivered, “A soul.”
“As for you, I’m sure you’re like us but I think you might be something more. Those two toys I left you with in the playground definitely didn’t have any kind of life. After you had them for just a couple of hours, they did. Your whole room is alive with them and I can tell they are all connected to you.”
“Are they happy?”
Ashden nodded, “Really happy.”
“That’s a relief,” she said, a smile on her lips. “But why is it so amazing that I have so many. Lots of people collect toys.”
“Well, it’s not about having a collection.” Ashden tugged at the neckline of his T-shirt, “I’ve only ever known one living toy connected to one person. I’ve only got one. Mr Johnson only had one. He didn’t suggest you could make more...”
“Make more?” Elanora was rarely tongue tied, but at last Ashden had it double knotted.
The clatter of dinnerware came from another room.
“Wait there,” he said and hurried out.
The confirmation that her toys were truly alive made perfect sense and Elanora couldn’t wait to get back home to hug them all. So that’s why I’ve
never fitted in! I’m special! she thought. “I hope so”, she sighed and threw herself backwards on Ashden’s bed, letting the colours spiral into her.
Minutes later, Ashden returned with two cups of creamy hot chocolate, the perfect thing to loosen tongues. She raised herself back up, noticing how marble sleek his eyes were. He watched her over the rim of his cup. There seemed to be more he wanted to say but he drank instead.
“I think it sounds fantastic,” said Elanora. “And it’s just awful to think of those little soulings suffering like that alone in the world.” She scooped a marshmallow out with her finger and swallowed.
“Soulings?” Ashden interrupted, looking from her to Eskatoria and back again.
“Yeah, soulings. Do they have another name? It just kind of came to me.”
“Soulings.” He ran the word over his tongue then smiled broadly. “That’s exactly what they should be called.”
Elanora blushed and swirled her hot chocolate. “You know, I’ll help you collect them. Nobody likes me anyway, so it’s not like I’ll lose a bunch of friends if I start helping you.”
Ashden chewed his lip. He put his cup on the bedside table. It shifted a book and Elanora caught a glimpse of the photo.
“It’s not quite as simple as that,” he said, straightening the pile.
“No, I’m sure there’s a lot to it,” she said. “Like, whatever happened to Mr Johnson?” she asked.
“Now that, I don’t know. It was all a bit mysterious. He’d just given me instructions about where to take the...soulings, which I did, then when I came back, he was gone. And that was it, I never saw him again. The other teachers said that he’d had a fall but I also heard whispers that he’d gone insane. When you’re only a kid it’s hard to get the truth. None of the adults gave me a decent answer and they certainly didn’t pass on any information about where he was. They were a bit worried about the things he’d been telling me, I guess.”
“Did you try the phonebook?”
“Of course,” he said. “It was a silent number. I even ended up finding his old house but by then it was sold off to some other family. They didn’t know anything. I stopped asking in the end and just got on with the job he left me to do.”
“Collecting soulings?” Elanora asked, gathering her feet up under her.
“Yes.” He stopped and turned away, scratching his neck. “Look, I said it wasn’t simple.” He stood up and circled the room, hands on his head. “You have a right to know. And I’ve blurted everything anyway. I don’t just collect them, I take them somewhere,” Ashden’s eyes sparkled despite his reluctant manner.
“Somewhere where?” Elanora grabbed his arm.
“Somewhere...sort of...different.”
“Where?”
He leant over and dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper, “That’s the funny thing. I...”
An ear splitting scream suddenly rang out. Ashden rushed to the hall.
“Elanora, you’ll have to go.”
“What is it?” she asked, jumping to her feet.
Another scream. A woman.
“It’s Mum. Look, I’ll pick you up tomorrow before school and I’ll tell you more about it.” He grabbed her arm and bundled her to the front door. Elanora didn’t mean to resist him but found herself weighted to the spot.
“Is she okay?”
Ashden’s face was heavy. “She will be. She needs me.”
His mother screamed again which broke into wrenching sobs. Elanora saw the door shut in front of her and every light in the house switch on.