Of course he stole it in the end — it was not fitting for the Mouse King to resist toy trains, and as for steel trains with miniature people lovingly sculpted inside the cars, well, the matter was sealed right from the start. The detail was extraordinary; the artist (never let it be said that makers of children's toys are not artists) must have been a commuter. How else could he have so lovingly crafted the stiff backs of men glaring into woeful newspapers, the old woman in the fifth row knitting a red sweater — even in silver metal, the Mouse King knew the sweater must be red —, the anxious cheeriness of the panhandler with a guitar heckling for business with pleading song? The lives through little glass windows were complete in their stillness. Forget the sword; true metalsmiths make trains, and that was why the Mouse King came back to the stern woman's toyshop every day: to stare at and through a master's work.
The woman knew better than to let the Mouse King out of her sight, and never let his body touch that train. Perhaps that was why he stole it: he had to know if the train felt like he always imagined it would feel. Or, perhaps, one touch would have begot another, and another, and he would have stolen it far earlier than he did (two weeks, five days from his first entry into the lady's shop) if she had permitted him that craved-for caress.
He would enter the shop and head immediately for it. Or sometimes he would meander, if he saw the lady's back stiffen; he would browse through the brightly lit books with fun colors and interesting fonts, just like on television. Or he would try on hat after hat. Only in toyshops can one become a cowboy, a knight, an astronaut, and a pretty, pretty princess all in one go.
He had exactly twelve minutes to peep; he counted. Two minutes of looking got a Look from the lady; at ten her nails clacked on the counter, stopped, started, stopped; at twelve that she would ask if he, the young man, had gotten his allowance that week. Then off he went, the woman's glare not able to wipe clean that darkness in his mind — the whistle in his brain stem that desired nothing less than oiled fingers all over the miniature people, pushing at the windows until they broke apart and his members could enter into that train, nudging at figurines until their steel melted at his warm humanity.
So he plotted. He did not save his allowance; no, the train was much too expensive, and besides, spending money now and then in the toyshop assuaged the lady's suspicions. The train could not weight too much. It could be done. On the day of the snowstorm the Mouse King took his chance. The woman was busy trying to wrap a giant teddy bear when he seized the train with both hands. The windows, smeared with his oil, popped suddenly, and his fingers thrust inside.
The curious thing was what happened to his fingers, now burrowed deep inside the train. They felt warm, warmer in the train, and the warmth felt like it was spreading throughout the steel — as though the metal was coming alive at his clutch. He felt people brushing against his fingertips, pounding them with adorable fists, pleading for their lives in the sweetest of high-pitched wails.
To the Mouse King's credit, he got as far as the second of the steps before he slipped on the new ice. Then he flew, the steel train hurling through the air, only to come crashing down on the pavement, all windows shattered now, the surly men wrenched apart, the little old lady sputtering her last, choking on her own blood. On the ground he could see inside. And with the windows broken it was as if the figures inside had come to life for that instant of thievery, only to be destroyed by the Mouse King's abuse: bones crunched, throats caved in, miniscule death rattles as the snow penetrated the train.
But not one of the little people inside the steel train cried as much as the lady from the shop, who rushed past the boy on the ground, and knelt by her dead creation. She reached into the carcass of the train, pulling her people out one by one, breathing hot air on each, trying to melt the ice that already glittered on their skins. One by one she placed them gingerly aside, laying them in a row out of respect for the dead. Until finally, one of her people — the panhandler with broken guitar — stirred at her breath. She rushed him back into her shop, uncaring to anything else, and slammed the door behind her. The Mouse King ran. The toyshop closed for a week, and the train stayed outside, rotting so it resembled a dead cat, until a boy came to take it away.
Eric Berg is an undergraduate at Tufts University double majoring in Computer Science and English. He has previously been published in Contemporary Haibun Online and Scifaikuest.