Chilly's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Chilly wanted one more show. Not for himself, but for the whole band that used to play the old parlor. He had performed there for years, a stiff animatronic penguin on a small stage. Then the parlor closed. The staff loaded the other performers onto trucks and drove them away. Chilly ended up here, propped behind an arcade prize counter, staring at rows of stuffed bears and gumball jars all night. He wanted to find the others and put on one final grand show. There was one problem. He had no idea where any of them went. Every night the arcade powered him down and left him standing beside the bright prize display. He could not move, but he could hear. He listened for any clue about the old band. He heard nothing useful. The gumballs settled in their jars. The ticket prizes shifted on their shelves. A drummer, a guitar player, a singing fox—all gone, and no address, no name, no trail. Most nights Chilly listened to the janitor instead. The slow man pushed his mop past the prize counter, then doubled back to spots he had missed. Chilly had memorized every step of his route. Tonight the janitor stopped. He set his mop against the counter and pulled a folded paper from his pocket. "Look at this junk," the janitor muttered. He smoothed the paper flat on the glass, right in front of Chilly's frozen eyes. It was a flyer. Chilly read it in the glow of the prize lights. The flyer showed a broken guitar-playing animatronic. Below it were three words Chilly knew well: penguin animatronic repairs. It was a repair shop. The picture was the old parlor's guitar player, dented and missing an arm, waiting for someone to fix him. The janitor grunted and crumpled the flyer. He tossed it toward a trash bin. It missed. The paper rolled under the edge of the prize counter and stopped an inch from Chilly's flat orange feet. Chilly stared at it all night. The guitar player was alive. Not scattered to nowhere—sitting in a repair shop, broken but real. If one bandmate had landed there, others might have too. For the first time since the parlor closed, Chilly knew where to begin. He also knew the truth of it. He could not walk. He could not pick up the flyer. He was bolted behind a counter, powered down every night by people who thought he was only a toy. The trail finally had a starting point. Reaching it was another matter.