Page 15 of The Nutcracker
My awe was washed away by a wave of logic and I laughed. I was willing to admire this work of craftsmanship from an architectural point of view… but my sense of wonderment stopped short at believing in wish machines. “No really. What is it?”
Curtis looked puzzled. “I just told you.”
“But you’re joking, right? I mean, nobody could possibly invent a machine that makes wishes come true.”
“Just as nobody could possibly open a brand new store on Main Street without old Mrs. Clements getting wind of it and gossiping about it all over town, right?”
He had a point. He had already pulled off a miracle by doing just that. Or had he? “Wait a minute, this is all starting to sound a little too strange. Is this a prank? Am I having a dream? That’s it, isn’t it. This is all a dream, right?”
Curtis gave a mischievous smile. “That’s open for interpretation. In the meantime, aren’t you curious to see howThe Nutcrackerworks?”
“Sure, why not. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.”
“First you need to know one thing. The machine can’t do all the heavy lifting for you. To make your wish come true, you’ll need to work for it. You’ll need to think clearly, you’ll need to act fast, you’ll need to work with the machine if you want your wish granted.”
“Okay, now I’m intrigued. And a little nervous.”
“Don’t be nervous. All you have to remember is… everything is connected. Everything.” He took my hand and I flinched at his touch. “It’s okay,” he smiled.
He led me over to a gadget near the curtain. We had passed it on the way into the room and I hadn’t even noticed it was there. There was far too much else in the room to swallow my attention.
The gadget sat on a table. It looked like something you’d find in an old antique store in a town hidden in the mountains and lost in time. The contraption had a steel funnel at the top and a hand crank on the side. Next to it was a wooden bowl filled with walnuts.
“This is where it begins. All you have to do is choose a walnut, make a wish, and put it in the machine.”
“Make a wish?”
Curtis nodded.
“On a walnut?”
“You do have a wish you’d like to come true, don’t you? Just one little wish?”
I did. Of course I did. More than anything I wished that my grandmother would remember the love of her life. More than anything I wanted to hear her say my grandfather’s name. I wanted to listen to her tell me stories of their life together, the way she used to when I was young.
“Yes I have a wish,” was all I said.
“Then make it. Pick up a walnut and make your wish.”
I looked into the bowl. All the walnuts looked the same. There didn’t seem to be anything unique or special or at all magical about them. They just looked like… walnuts.
I reached into the bowl and let my fingers dance over the bumpy edges of the walnuts, then settled on one in particular. It sounds odd, but for some reason it felt like the walnut for me.
I picked it up and glanced at Curtis, as though he might burst out laughing and shout ‘Pranked!’. But he didn’t. He simply nodded and said, “Go ahead. Make your wish. Then drop the walnut into the top of the machine.”
I closed my eyes.
I held the walnut to my lips and mumbled my wish into the nut so quietly nobody but me could hear it.
Then, opening my eyes, I dropped the walnut into the funnel in the top of the contraption.
“Now turn the crank,” Curtis told me.
I placed my hand on the crank and began winding it. Inside the machine I heard a whir and rattle, then a loud crack.
From a small opening at the foot of the machine came a perfectly shelled walnut, wonkily rolling onto a narrow chute almost like a little slide made especially for nuts. The chute carried the walnut off the edge of the table and along the wall of the room where it came to rest on the end of a long wooden spoon.
I looked at Curtis, somewhat confused. “Is that it?”