Greenie sat on a workbench inside the abandoned toy factory, one felt paw pinned under a bolt of green fleece. The bolt weighed more than he did. He had dragged it across the floor for an hour and moved it four feet. Outside, Marshwood was quiet the way it had been quiet since the children vanished. Inside, dust drifted through broken windows onto rows of empty cutting tables. Greenie had counted the missing children twice. Two hundred and eleven. He needed two hundred and eleven plush copies of himself, one for each empty bed, so that when the children came back there would be something waiting that remembered them. He could not cut fabric. He could not thread a needle. His paws were sewn shut. The industrial serger stood at the end of the row, four spools of thread still loaded from whoever left last. Green. Pink. Orange. Blue. Greenie climbed the stool and pressed his whole body against the foot pedal. The machine screamed and jammed. Thread snapped. A needle bent sideways. He climbed down and stared at the bent needle for a long time. Then he opened his catalog to a blank page and wrote: cannot be done alone. He walked to the doll repairer's shop before dawn. Sawyer Goodwin was already awake, sorting through a pile of small clothes on his stoop. A one-eyed cloth rabbit sat in the window behind him. Greenie set the bent needle on the step. Sawyer picked it up. He looked at Greenie for a long moment. "Two hundred and eleven," Greenie wrote on the page and turned it toward him. "For which children," Sawyer said. "All of them." Sawyer folded a small shirt and set it on top of the pile. "I can thread the machine. My hands shake. I can't run it fast." "I found someone who can," Greenie wrote, and hoped it would be true by nightfall. He found Jordin Yu at the park bench, the one with the missing lace still cataloged in Greenie's book. Jordin looked like he had not slept. He was drawing the same street corner over and over on the back of a receipt. "I need hands," Greenie wrote. "Two hundred and eleven copies. A factory. An old man who can thread a needle." Jordin stopped drawing. "I made this town wrong." "Then make one right thing." Jordin folded the receipt into his pocket. "Show me the machine." By midnight the serger ran clean. Sawyer threaded. Jordin fed the fabric. Greenie stood on the table and marked each cut with a pin from his hat. The first small green body came off the machine at 3:14 a.m., limp and unstuffed, no eyes yet, no hat. Greenie set it in a crate and wrote in the catalog: one. Then he looked at the empty crates stacked to the ceiling and understood he now needed stuffing, eyes, hats, and rainbow spikes for two hundred and ten more, and had until whenever the children came back to finish.

The serger had run for six hours when Greenie heard the scrape outside the loading door. He climbed off the cutting table and pressed his ear to the metal. Something heavy was breathing on the other side. It shifted, and a nail popped out of the doorframe. Jordin froze at the machine. Sawyer set down a bobbin. Greenie opened the catalog to a fresh page and wrote: something is at the door. Do not stop the noise. He tore the page out and gave it to Jordin. Then he slipped through the gap in the wall where the bricks had crumbled, so whatever it was would follow him and not the sewing. In the alley he saw the boy. Maybe eight years old, barefoot, in a hospital gown gone gray at the hem. Steam rose off his shoulders in the cold. When he turned his head, a trash can lid two feet away lifted an inch and dropped. Greenie had heard the rumors from Sawyer weeks ago. A doctor. A basement. Children changed into something that could bend metal by being afraid. Greenie went stiff the way he always did now. Then he made himself move. He waddled into the middle of the alley where the boy could see him and pointed down the street, away from the factory, toward the glow of the convenience store sign three blocks off. The boy followed. Greenie kept ten feet ahead. Every time the boy's breath quickened, a bottle rolled or a fence rattled, and Greenie stopped and waited until the shaking stopped. It took twenty minutes to cover three blocks. The green and orange awning came into view, the window full of plush copies of Greenie himself, grinning behind glass. Greenie tapped the door with his hat. CeeJay Ahuja opened it in pajamas. He was the shopkeeper's son, eight years old, and he slept in the back room some nights to guard the display from the thief who kept leaving upside-down price tags. He looked at Greenie. He looked at the boy behind Greenie, at the steam, at the bare feet. He did not scream. "He's cold," CeeJay said. Greenie wrote on his page: he breaks things when he's scared. Do not touch him fast. CeeJay nodded once. He went to the shelf and pulled down a folded pink and cream blanket from the baby aisle. He walked slow. He set it on the floor between them and stepped back. "It's soft," he said. "You can have it." The boy sat down on the tile and pulled the blanket into his lap. The steam thinned. A candy rack that had been trembling went still. CeeJay looked at Greenie. "I'll keep him till morning. My dad won't come down till six." Greenie wrote one word and left it on the counter: thank you. Then he walked back toward the factory, where two hundred and nine empty bodies still waited for eyes.

Greenie came back to the factory at four in the morning. Two hundred and nine plush bodies lay stacked on pallets by the door. Jordin sat on the floor beside them, hollow-eyed, threading the last hat. Sawyer had gone home an hour ago. Greenie opened the catalog and wrote the problem plain: too many bodies. No truck. If a convoy of green plushes rolled through town at dawn, whoever took the children would see it. He tore the page out and set it in Jordin's lap. Jordin read it twice. "We need a vehicle no one looks at," he said. "And a place no adult checks." He pulled out his phone. "I know one truck. It parks behind a barn on a farm outside town. The man who owns it hasn't driven it in a year." He did not say the name. He only said, "He owes me a quiet favor. I'll leave the keys on the seat by five." Greenie wrote: and the beds. Where. Jordin thought. "The preschool on the corner. Front door's locked, but the side latch is old. No one's been inside since the kids went." Greenie waddled out the loading door and crossed four blocks of empty street. He stopped at a small pink house across from a gingerbread cottage. Orange cones still blocked the driveway. He tapped the window twice, then twice again. Daisy opened it from inside. Pink plush, white bow, dark eyes that did not blink. "You look bad," she said. "You've been busy." Greenie held up the catalog. He wrote: 210 bodies. One truck. One night. I can't lift them alone. Daisy read it. She stepped over the sill onto the porch. The tape at the end of her driveway snapped when she walked through it. "The permit was fake," she said. "I figured that out last week. I just didn't have a reason to leave." They met Jordin at the barn. The old pickup started on the third try. Greenie and Daisy rode in the bed, loading arms full of soft green bodies from the factory into the truck three trips in a row. Daisy stacked them tight. She counted under her breath. She did not miss. At the preschool, the side latch gave with one push. They laid the plushes on the small cots row by row, hats straight, spikes up. Two hundred and ten green bodies, each waiting for a child. Jordin locked the side door from inside and slipped out a window. By five-thirty the truck was back behind the barn. The streets had stayed empty. No one had seen. Greenie stood on the preschool step in the last of the dark. He opened the catalog and wrote one line: they are hidden. Then his hand stopped. Because a light was on inside the preschool that had not been on when they left. Someone was already there.

Greenie stood on the preschool step and watched the light shift behind the curtain. A shadow moved past the window, tall and unhurried. Whoever was inside was not looking for a way out. Two hundred and ten green bodies lay on the cots one wall away. If the shadow opened the classroom door, the whole plan ended before sunrise. Greenie stepped off the stoop and slipped around to the side latch. He pushed it up an inch and looked through. A man in a white coat stood at the teacher's desk, flipping through a roll book. Doctor Jerry. Greenie had seen him at the parade, clapping in the second row. The doctor set the book down and turned toward the classroom hall, the one that led to the cots. Greenie's hand closed on something on the floor by the coat rack. A blue bouncy ball, forgotten under a child's cubby. He rolled it hard down the tile hallway, away from the cots. It cracked against a metal cabinet and pinged off a wall. The footsteps stopped, then turned toward the noise. While the doctor followed the sound, Greenie waddled into the classroom. The cots stood in four neat rows. Two hundred and ten hats, two hundred and ten sets of spikes. Against the back wall sat a wooden chest as tall as he was, its lid carved with painted blocks and dolls. Greenie had passed it a hundred times and never opened it. He lifted the lid. Inside, the space went deeper than the chest was tall. The wood hummed under his palm. He worked fast. He carried the plushes two at a time and laid them in the chest. The chest took them. It took ten, then fifty, then a hundred, and the pile inside never rose. Down the hall, the doctor's steps came back. Greenie moved faster. Daisy would have counted. He counted for her. Two hundred and eight. Two hundred and nine. Two hundred and ten. He closed the lid as the classroom door opened. Doctor Jerry stood in the doorway. He looked at the empty cots. He looked at the chest. He looked at Greenie on the floor beside it, catalog under one arm. "You're the mascot," he said. Greenie did not move. "There were supposed to be beds made up." The doctor's eyes went slow around the room. "Someone told me the preschool was ready." Greenie stared back with painted eyes. The doctor crouched. He picked up the blue ball from the hallway floor and set it on a cot. "Whoever laid the beds," he said, "tell them the delivery is Thursday. Twenty at a time. I need the room cleared by then." He walked out the front door and did not lock it. Greenie sat with his back against the chest. Thursday. Twenty children. The cots were meant for them. He opened the catalog and wrote one line: he is bringing them here.

Greenie sat by the chest until dawn. Thursday was two days off. Twenty children would be delivered, and he did not know from where. Without that, he could not stand between them and Doctor Jerry. He shut the catalog, tucked it under his arm, and slipped out the preschool door. The school district office kept the lists. Every child in Marshwood had an address in a drawer there. He reached the district building before it opened and hid behind a planter. When the front doors unlocked, he waddled in behind a delivery man and slipped under a row of waiting chairs. The lobby smelled of copier toner. A woman in a pink blouse sat at the front desk, arranging bonbons in a glass dish. Secretary Bubble. Greenie had seen her at the parade, clapping without smiling. He crossed the tile and stopped at the foot of her desk. She looked down over the edge and did not startle. "Well," she said. "Look who walked in." Greenie held up the catalog. He opened to the page where he had written "he is bringing them here" and turned it so she could read. Bubble read it. She unwrapped a bonbon and set it on the desk without eating it. Her eyes went to the closed door behind her, then back to Greenie. "Superintendent's out till ten," she said. "You got until then." She stood and walked to the file room. Greenie followed. She pulled a folder marked TRANSFERS - PENDING and laid it flat. Twenty names. Beside each name, an address. Beside each address, a pickup point and time. Thursday, 7 a.m. All twenty were being collected from one place. "Park courts," Bubble said. "Summer program sign-up. Parents drop them at the swings. A van's supposed to take them to a field trip that don't exist." She tapped the sheet. "Signed off by a name I don't know. Came through last week. I flagged it. Tim told me to file it." Greenie looked up at her. "I got two nieces on this list, baby." She closed the folder. "You take a picture in your head. I can't let it walk out." Greenie stared at the page until the names sat in him like stones. Marshwood Park Courts. Seven a.m. Thursday. The swings by the wooden playhouse. He nodded once. Bubble slid the folder back into the drawer. She walked him to the side door and cracked it open. Before he stepped out, she crouched and set the unwrapped bonbon on top of his catalog. "Whatever you're doing," she said, "do it Wednesday night." Greenie waddled down the alley. In the catalog he wrote three lines. Park courts. Seven. Twenty swings, twenty children, one van. He had a place now. He had a time. He had one day to reach the parents before the van did, and he was a plush toy with no mouth.