The Toy Prince

4. Niklaus

When morning came he watched them step through the door into Konigreich. He would follow them soon enough but first he had to find the journal.

As soon as he'd learnt that Conrad wanted the journal he'd started searching the Silber mansion, starting in the most obvious places. His search had turned up nothing. After that he'd searched anywhere and everywhere, hoping against hope that he would find it. He'd exhausted every single room except one which was where he headed now.

The attic was separated from the rest of the mansion by a locked door. He made little work of the flimsy lock and after that he walked up the steep stairs into the biggest room in the house. Surprisingly it was also the emptiest.

Niklaus' heart sank when he saw the empty space. There weren't many places to hide a book up there so his cursory search was over quickly. Then his imaginative search took over.

The journal was extremely precious so it wouldn't be somewhere obvious. It had to be in the attic though so he tried to think of the best hiding places that the attic had to offer.

First he checked the floorboards but none of them were loose. Next he knocked on the walls to see if there were any hollow spaces that it could be hidden in. Again, he came up empty.

Niklaus grunted in frustration, kicking out at a nearby cardboard box. The kick made the box shift to the side revealing the sliver of an alcove. With nothing left to lose, Niklaus pushed the box aside and looked inside. Hidden deep in the shadows of the alcove was something he hadn't expected. It was a dollhouse. A perfect miniature replica of the Silber mansion, recreated down to the smallest detail.

Niklaus opened the front of the house and lifted the flap to reveal the attic. The amount of attention the creator had put into the dollhouse was simply breath taking. It stole all of his attention for moment but not for too long. He had a mission after all.

The floor slash roof of the attic and upstairs bedrooms was too thick. Immediately he suspected that the diary was hidden there but how did it open?

After pondering the problem for a moment he crouched down so that he had a better view of the parlour room. At the back, in exactly the same place as in the real house, was the clock. One a hunch he lightly pressed the clock face which moved under his fingertip and a panel in the top of the dollhouse fell down, revealing a secret compartment and the long searched for journal.

Niklaus took the journal with shaking fingers and rested it on his lap.

To look at it was nothing special. A plain leather cover with a piece of string used as a tie to hold it shut. The only valuable thing about it was the information held inside for this was the journal of Axel Meiger, the genius who'd manipulated reality to create his own world. Everything he'd ever done, every thought, every experiment and every one of Konigreich's secrets were in this journal. Whoever had it would have a lot of power.

Niklaus didn't want that power. He wanted to make sure that it didn't fall into the wrong hands so he intended to give it to the right person. He had someone in mind which meant that it was time to follow Ursula and her acquaintances into Konigreich.

He stood up, slipping the journal into his jacket. He slid the box back in front of the alcove, hiding the dollhouse from plain view. With that done, he walked out of the attic and didn't look back.