My Dear Lady Misericordia,
I hope this letter finds you well. It certainly leaves me quite rested, excited but still heartily mystified.
I was awoken in the early hours of the morning with a gentle shake from Harry. The fire was burning low in the grate, but the room was still warm, even as the first glimmerings of dawn were showing in the window.
I was about to ask why he had felt it necessary to wake me when Harry held up a hand, indicating I should listen.
And there it was, somewhere in the distance, a happy noise of breakfast, of crockery and cutlery banging and ringing, of cheerful voices singing as they worked. Somewhere in this strange place something was going on: how could we resist?
Our room was quiet and Tom, our host, was nowhere to be seen. Harry beckoned me over to a door tucked behind the fireplace that Tom had bustled in and out of the evening before, bearing food and drink from some kitchen beyond.
We tried the handle. Locked. What was it that they were so desperate to keep from us? Surely some clue to the mystery that had dogged us since our adventure began: what this place was, what our whole expedition was for.
Which was when Harry surprised me once again. This time by digging out of a pocket a lady's hair pin, which he deftly slid into the keyhole of the door and jiggled around inside, listen intently to the noises it made as it danced over the workings of the lock. And then with a click and a clunk, the handle turned and the door stood open before us.
Ahead was a bare, warm passageway leading to a long, low room, almost entirely taken up with a long, low table at which were set twenty or thirty bowls of steaming porridge. Welcoming though the room was, it was empty. No singing here.
Beyond that was a cavernous kitchen, where ovens roared and pans bubbled, where a cloud of flour still hung on the air and ladle steamed gently on a bench, but no one stirred, because the kitchen, too, was deserted.
So, too, was the bake house beyond, pungent with the smell of gingerbread, and the small square beyond that, where the snow was churned up with footprints, but no feet stood now.
Empty though all these places were, there was a sense that the moment before we had turned the corner and opened the door, they had been bustling, hectic with life. Whoever had been there had fled moments before us, and now hid somewhere just out of sight, watching us pass.
Eventually we came to a wide set of double doors that led through into a vast, brightly lit hall, filled with long lines of tables and benches. And on each table: machinery. Lathes, saws, screws, wood carving and metal working, every kind of tool and device was laid out here. And at every place was a piece of work, something half made, or almost assembled, and all of them toys.
Here a nutcracker soldier, his stiff jaw not yet hinged on, there a spring wound ballerina, beneath her tutu still only bare metal where her mechanism showed. Here a solid little wooden reindeer on wheels, there the delicate cut-out of a paper doll, surrounded by the patterns of her costumes.
And here a clockwork train and there a little, tin putt-putt boat. Do you know them? I had one as a child and delighted in it - you place a candle in a small metal boat and it heats up a tiny boiler to make steam, driving the boat forward. Seeing one again brought me up short and I stared at it, and the train at the work bench next to it.
"Harry," I said, "I think I've just had an idea."
It probably seems like a silly thing, but it's easy to get carried away even with silly things and Harry and I soon lost all sense of what we were about and the whole mystery that surrounded us, so excited were we in our little project to make the clockwork train steam driven instead.
It was relatively easy to remove all the clockwork and put in a watertight boiler and transfer the candle heating mechanism from the boat, but we had a tricky time with the pistons, a problem Harry solved with the innards of a brass fountain pen that he found on a nearby table.
We were so absorbed that it wasn't until we had filled the boiler and prepared the candle that we realised that all the workers who must have fled this workshop at our approach had stealthily reappeared, creeping out of the shadows to surround us, watching our every move with eager attention.
Slightly unnerved by their watchful silence, we set the train on the ground and waited, with bated breath, for the candle to heat the water. And slowly, with a clear 'putt-putt-putt' in the stillness of the hall, the wheels began to turn and the little engine began to steam across the floor.
Although no one made a single noise, the wave of delight that spread through the crowd around us was as evident as if they had all started applauding. Like Tom, they were all much smaller than us, making me wonder whether we had stumbled upon some tribe of Arctic pygmies, but as the train trundled across the stone flags, I felt a heavy hand descend upon my shoulder and turned to find myself looking up at the largest man I had ever seen.
And I mean, in all senses, large. He seemed almost a foot taller than me and was considerably wider, although, perhaps because of his height, he appeared more exaggerated than actually fat. His head was surrounded by a great cloud of white hair and a vast white beard tumbled down over his massive expanse of green Sami-style coat.
But even in that first glance, his character seemed as large as his frame. Of a man that size I might have easily been afraid, but his face was so wide and so open, his eyes sparkled so with some suppressed laugh, his smile beamed out such a huge happiness and welcome that I could never be afraid of this man, not in my whole life.
He seized me by both shoulders and shook me up and down, joyously.
"Marvellous work, young man, marvellous! And you, young..." and he paused for a moment and smiled to himself, "My boy!" and he shook Harry vigorously by the hand.
"Steam trains! A capital idea! Of course, it'll need tidying up before we can let the children at it, but its marvellous, a veritable marvel. Nilka."
He said the last word and stuck out his hand again. I took it automatically, without knowing what he meant, so caught up was I by the force of his personality.
"No! Silly old man. In English. What would it be? Klaus? Nick? Nicholas! That's it! Nicholas." Ah! It was his name. He pumped at my hand, happily, "And your are Timothy and, I think, Harry - is that right?"
"Harry, yes," stammered Harry, apparently just as confused as I was.
"Capital, marvellous. Wonderful! Just what we need here, this time of year: brains! Craft! You all will, of course, stay for supper. Talk the fellows through the steam train, will you - he needs topping up, I think. Wonderful to meet you, Timothy and you... Harry. See you at supper!"
And he swept from the room in a great cloud of the little people, who all scurried in his wake, suddenly chattering in a language I did not recognise. This could only be the man in charge, I realised, our host, who must hold in his keeping the secret for which the Professor had led us here, to this extraordinary factory hidden out in the endless wild.
I had no time to speculate further, for we were quickly surrounded by more of the tiny workers, and in particular and cunning looking old man who introduced himself as Alf, or something that sounded like Alf, and who began to turn over our little engine in his clever little hands, asking us questions in his broken English.
And so, for the rest of the day Harry and I have been huddled over a bench in the workroom, with Alf and an ever-changing crowd of willing observers and helpers, refining the steam-driven engine and making it safe for children's play.
I have barely had time to snatch to pen these few words - and I haven't even had time to thank you for your kind letter bringing me so keenly up to date on all the doings at Ghastington - how terribly far away it all seems now.
But I must go, Alf has more questions about the train
Yours
Busy yet puzzled
Timothy Hope, Esq, Tutor