Author's Note: Well, it's not the first time I've had a year between chapters, is it?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the point where I must confess that I've done no research about this time period or location. But it's a fantasy story so you're probably not here for historical accuracy anyway, right?

Willy's head hurt.

He's been sleeping so soundly, but now that he'd noticed the pain he couldn't un-notice it. With a sigh, he blinked his eyes open. Focusing them seemed unusually difficult, but at last he recognized the ceiling of the Inventing Room and realized he was lying flat on his back on the floor. What experiment had gone wrong this time? He frowned as he struggled to remember.

There was a muffled groan somewhere off to his right and he rolled his head in that direction. Oh yes, Amalda. Ms. McCaine. She was carefully pulling herself into a sitting position, wincing with each movement. She flinched and shifted her weight away from her left hip, then probed gently at her elbow on the same side.

"Good morning, Starshine!" Willy said cheerfully.

She looked over at him, blinked, frowned, and tilted her head to the side as if puzzling over something. "You...ahh...I think...you're covered in taffy."

Willy inhaled deeply. Oh yes, even the smell of taffy was somehow sticky, overwhelming all the other odors that usually sifted about the room. "I don't mean to alarm you," he replied mildly, "but I can't move."

Ms. McCaine stared at him. "Because you're covered in taffy."

"Shh!" he hissed, eyes darting around the room. "I think," he continued in a conspiratorial whisper, "that I might be covered in taffy." When she didn't immediately react, he added an exaggerated wink.

With a sigh, she dropped her face into her hands. "I don't know how much more of this I can take," she muttered, running her fingers through her tousled hair. She flinched suddenly, staring at her fingertips. "Not much more apparently," she whispered, face pale.

Willy craned his neck around. Was that...blood? He wriggled within his sticky prison, but couldn't so much as budge. Quickly, he replayed their conversation in his mind. Had she been slurring her words? Was she just groggy, or could she have a concussion?

He looked around as best as he could. They had been thrown across the room and were quite near a wall, which would have been an even more unpleasant impact than the floor. A few Oompa Loompas were stirring, but they were pinned down just as much as he was. Ms. McCaine seemed to be mostly taffy-free; she must have been just behind him when the explosion happened. Ms. Stolp...Ms. Stolp!She had been looking at the taffy-pulling machine! "Oh dear," he murmured. "Ms. McCaine, do you happen to see Ms. Stolp anywhere?"

Ms. McCaine started to stand, then swayed and leaned against the wall with one hand. She stayed in an awkward crouch as she slowly scanned the room. "No," she said at last, "but it's smaller."

"Smaller?" He lifted his head again, but he just couldn't see very much from the floor.

"I think that whole wall is just some of your machines stuck together with taffy. That's why...I can't find the door." There was a thread of panic in her voice.

"The alarms will have gone off," he reassured her quickly. "The Inventing Room is one of the most closely monitored areas of the entire factory. I'm sure the Oompa Loompas on the other side are already working to clear a path, and hopefully they've found Ms. Stolp as well."

He could see her focusing on his words. She took a deep, steadying breath and nodded, then winced. He wasn't usually one to babble, but perhaps in this case a distraction would be best.

"Usually whenever something explodes it's because we were trying a new experiment, so we know it might explode and everyone is a safe distance away. I don't know what could have happened today; they would have only just finished cleaning up the icicles from this morning." He snorted in frustration, dropping his head back to the floor with a bump. "Ow," he grumbled.

Ms. McCaine winced again, but it wasn't until she scooted over to him and pulled his head into her lap that he realized she was worried about him instead of her own injuries. "Icicles?" she asked, staring fixedly at the mess of taffy and machinery around them. If her voice trembled a little and her cheeks were a bit rosy, surely it was only due to their unusual situation. Surely?

"Er, yes...vanilla ice cream-cicles, actually. You should have seen it. First we had to make it snow, naturally."

"Naturally."

A smile curled at the edges of his lips. He did enjoy how she casually accepted what probably sounded completely nonsensical.

"And then we had to make it melt. Just a bit, you understand. Just enough to drip into icicles."

"Ice cream-cicles," she corrected, leaning back against the wall. She had left her hands on either side of his head and now her fingers began to comb absently through his hair. It was...unexpectedly calming.

He let his eyes drift shut as he continued, marveling that he could feel so relaxed in such an unusual situation. And what was unusual about it had nothing to do with taffy and everything to do with the woman holding him in her arms.

"So then we tried to add the candy coating, and that's where something went wrong. The candy needed enough heat to melt, but the icicles needed enough cold to melt."

She hummed a noise of agreement. "Makes sense."

"And you would think too much heat would just melt them both and not enough heat would just not melt them both but...the heat and the not-heat didn't...they don't mix...no, wait...they mix...but they don't blend…"

"Mix but don't blend," a drowsy voice echoed him.

"If you only repeat, you'll never…Charlie, why were you playing in the Inventing Room? We have to water the star seeds."

Wait, what was he saying? Willy twitched, startling himself back to wakefulness, embarrassed heat flushing through him. He had almost fallen asleep mid-story! He forced his eyes open and looked up at Ms. McCaine.

Her eyes were still closed and he found himself studying her. The way her hair, somewhere between waves and curls, framed her face and teased her neck and shoulders. The way her lashes lay against her cheeks, with their smattering of freckles that indicated she often spent time outdoors in the sun. The slight crease between her eyes that belied her physical discomfort. The light curve of her lips, as if she smiled often enough that her face held the expression naturally. He knew how soft those lips were. His gaze wandered along the line of her jaw, down the slope of her neck. She was breathing deep, slow breaths.

"Amalda!" he barked, the word loud and harsh, startling them both. Ms. McCaine actually jumped, her hands tightening on his hair enough to make his eyes water. "Stay away, my dear," he quickly soothed. "You might...have a concussion." But why was he having trouble speaking?

The fingers in his hair loosened, smoothing it gently and then giving him a little jab when he let his eyes close again. He looked up into her eyes and saw her giving him a small smile. "You too, mister. Aren't we a pair?" she sighed.

"I didn't hit my head," he told her. "Just the floor."

"As far as we know."

"And you."

"You hit me?"

"I hit on you."

"You...what?"

"Politely. I think."

"I think you definitely hit your head."

"I think we're definitely a pair."

She laughed. "Mr. Wonka, I sincerely hope we're both concussed and neither of us remembers this conversation."

"Willy," he said quite seriously. "You should call me Willy."

She peered down at him. "Should I? You don't call me Amalda."

"I did," he said, sounding ridiculously proud of himself.

"Oh, right." She frowned, then her expression cleared into a shy smile. "Okay. Willy."

He grinned.

She giggled.

"I'm still stuck to the floor," he told her.

That only made her giggle more.

The sound was infectious, and soon they were both giggling madly, unable to say exactly what was so funny and completely, utterly unable to stop.

When they finally caught their breath, Willy hunted for a new topic to keep them both awake until they could be rescued. "Amalda?"

"Yes?" she asked, still wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes.

"Will you tell me about the gorilla now?" He made he voice as plaintive as possible, even adding a pout. She looked at him in surprise and burst into laughter again. His own lips twitched as he struggled to keep the pout in place. "Pretty please, with ice cream-cicles and-"

"If you say taffy, I'm not telling you a single thing!"

He grinned, an expression full of such boyish mischief that she felt her cheeks redden in response. She leaned her head back against the wall, trying to focus her thoughts.

"Well," she began slowly, "since we've nothing else to do, I suppose I should make a proper story out of it."

Willy made a pleased sound. "I do enjoy a good story. The Oompa Loompas are quite clever with them."

"It's not going to rhyme," she said in a wry tone. "Nor am I going to sing it."

He laughed and she smiled in response, but her eyes were distant as she organized her thoughts.

"You see, I work at the zoo."

My father was a zookeeper.

He used to say animals made sense in a way that people didn't. But in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, what he really wanted to do was travel. He wanted to see the exotic natural habitats of his favorite creatures, to see how they really lived and behaved when they weren't trapped in cages to be gawked at.

He used to make up fantastic stories about them. The lion, the king of the jungle, had given up his crown voluntarily in order to save his people, and now he was merely biding his time until he could escape and return to them. The walrus was a wizard who descended from the stars and was studying the lost languages of sea creatures. The monkeys were actually studying us, not the other way around.

Sometimes he would tell his stories to the children and families that visited the zoo. It's how he met my mother. After he told the story of the walrus, everyone laughed at him. It wasn't unkind laughter, for the most part, and was what he expected. My mother, however, was staring at the water that circled the walrus' rock, head tilted as if she was listening very carefully for the sound of some long forgotten voices.

After they married, Mother worried that a wife and a family would make Father feel too tied down, like his dreams of travel would never come true, but when I was born all of her doubts evaporated. She said he never loved anything as well as he loved me, and when he looked at me it was like the light of all the stars he'd wished upon was shining from his eyes.

When I was old enough, I would follow Father to work whenever I could. He let me help with simple things, told me all of his stories, and taught me more about animals than probably most of the zoo's workers knew. Those were the best and happiest years of my childhood.

Then Mother got pregnant again. I never knew for sure if they'd deliberately not had more children after me or why they might have waited so long, but everyone knew the pregnancy would be risky for Mother. My brother, if he'd lived, would have been about the same age as Charlie. But something went wrong, and the baby and Mother both died.

Father wasn't the same after that. He always looked so tired. He didn't know how to take care of a daughter by himself. I tried to help as much as I could, but I was still only a child. We moved from the little house I'd grown up in to the zookeeper's residence at the edge of the zoo property. It wasn't really suitable for a family and had been mostly used for storage up until that point, but now that there were just the two of us, it made it easy for Father to juggle his work with his responsibilities as a single parent.

Not that he had much interest in his work after that. He still did his job, but he didn't talk about traveling anymore. He still told stories, but they had lost their magic and sometimes even turned a bit dark. After a while, no one gathered when they saw him. He became invisible to the outside world. The animals were fed and cared for, but no one outside of the zoo staff knew or cared how it happened. I still followed him around sometimes but he quit teaching me things, so I had to either learn purely by observing or stay home and take care of our new house. I knew more about taking care of animals than I did about cooking or cleaning, but I tried my best.

Eventually, his health started to fade, as if he had given up on life. As he grew weaker, I started taking over some of his duties at the zoo. At first, only the most necessary things and only on the days where the weather was the worst or Father was the sickest. Later, he stayed home in bed most days and I was glad for how invisible he had become at his job. It allowed me to step in almost seamlessly with no one paying any attention, as long as the work got done.

This past winter was his last. I'd known it was coming. Winters were always hardest on him, and it had been months since he'd managed to leave the house, let alone go to work on his own. We were lucky, in a way, that he went peacefully in his sleep. When I woke in the morning to find him gone, I had time to call an undertaker, who promised to begin making the necessary arrangements while I was at work.

I took extra care with all of the animals that day, and then at the end of it I went to the director's office. I had never been there before, though everyone knew where it was and I'd seen the director a time or two walking about the zoo. His face had always been stern, not kind but also not cruel. I only hoped he would listen to me.

I explained to his secretary who I was and informed her of Father's passing, and before too long she ushered me into the director's office, even offering me a hot cup of tea. I accepted it gratefully, after the long day outside working.

The director sat behind his large desk and spoke the empty words that so many people say when confronted unexpectedly with loss. I nodded my thanks, then confessed to him that Father had been sick for some time and I had been the one attending to his job while he was ill, and I had been helping with the work for even longer. When he at last understood that I wanted to take over Father's position, he was astonished. It wasn't considered a proper job for a woman, and even if it was he couldn't simply replace a very experienced zookeeper with a half-trained one for the same salary.

I had arguments prepared for all of that, but it had been a very long day and I had not even had time to properly mourn Father yet, so instead of presenting my case logically as I had intended, I stared blankly at the man for a moment and then burst into tears. It wasn't sweet, ladylike crying either but great ugly hiccuping sobs, loud enough that the secretary heard and came running. She made me a new cup of tea and put her arms around me comfortingly while the director came around his desk and stood nearby, wringing his hands helplessly.

I babbled to the secretary about how I had no other family, no other home except the zookeeper's hut, and I would do any job they would ask of me if only I could stay and not be turned out on the streets. She told me of course I wouldn't be turned out, penniless and alone as I was, and glared at the director. It was only then that I realized they were married.

In the end, he agreed to let me stay in the house and provided a small salary, a mere pittance that covered my meals and a few other necessities but not much else. He didn't want to let me continue the work of a full zookeeper, but in the end I think the fact that I'd been doing it for months with no one the wiser overruled any concerns he'd had about someone noticing the impropriety of a woman in such a role. That, and it saved the zoo a lot of money not have to hire a new employee at a full proper salary.

So I continued to work and winter passed into spring. The zoo was always a slow and sleepy place during winter, but in spring it began to come alive again and I began to emerge from my grief.

One day some children, two boys and a girl, ran up to look at the lion as I was sweeping outside of its cage. They began to try to guess where it had come from and how it came to be in the zoo. One of the boys was convinced it had been a circus lion that was too old to perform, but the girl thought it had been captured wild in Africa. A small argument broke out, with the two boys siding together against the girl. It seemed rather unfair and I could see tears brimming in the girl's eyes, so without much thought I stepped in and told my favorite story about the exiled lion king. The children were enraptured, and though the one boy scoffed about how it couldn't possibly be true, the girl's eyes were shining.

I saw them again the next week, and after that children began to look for me and ask for stories. Sometimes I wouldn't, if there were too many people around. Especially too many adults. But most times I tried to give them at least a little fantasy.

Then one day a well-dressed woman came striding up to me very deliberately, very angrily. I had been cleaning cages that morning so I doubt I smelled very nice and she let her full opinion of me show in the sneer on her face. She had a little boy with her, one who I vaguely recognized. She loudly accused me of putting strange notions into her boy's head.

The boy looked embarrassed and was trying to get his mother to leave me alone in any way that he could. He tried to tell her people were staring, which they were, but she seemed to enjoy the scene she was creating. He said he didn't feel well but she just told him to go sit in the shade and kept her full attention on me. He said he was hungry and could he go buy an ice cream, but she said he'd already had a treat. But he continued to wheedle and whine until at last she thrust her hand into her purse to find a coin for him.

Instead, she found a candy bar.

It was a Wonka bar, of course. The boy's eyes lit up when he saw it. At the time, I thought the temptation of good chocolate had made him completely forget why he'd been begging in the first place. I also didn't understand why his mother hesitated rather than just giving him the bar to quiet him down. In hindsight, I can see that she probably bought that chocolate bar hoping to win the contest herself and her son knew it, making it a great source for a distraction.

He reached for it with both hands and she stepped back to keep it out of his reach. They began to bicker and I began to quietly edge away. It was a good distraction, but not good enough.

I'd only made it a few steps before she realized what was happening and spun to point at me, ordering me not to move. Unfortunately, she pointed with the same arm that was holding the chocolate bar and her son, now fully involved in his role, jumped after it. He didn't get the chocolate, but he did hit her arm, knocking the chocolate flying.

It landed in the gorilla cage. The boy wilted as his mother began to berate him, but she almost immediately turned to me and ordered me to get her chocolate out of the cage.

I was dumbfounded. The gorilla wasn't paying any attention to the chocolate. It was almost feeding time so it was lounging lazily in front of the little door near the back where it knew food would emerge. The chocolate bar was near the front of the cage, almost within arm's reach if one was brave enough. But I wasn't that brave, or that foolish. I knew how quickly the gorilla could get from the back of the cage to the front with its rolling four-limbed lope and I knew it was strong enough to rip my arm off if it got hold of it.

But the lady was still screaming at me, drawing a crowd. I was supposed to be invisible. I was used to being invisible. I worried what people would think, or more importantly what the director would think. I couldn't lose this job.

So I was slightly panicked and not thinking very clearly when I stepped closer to the cage. The mother quieted, which was a relief, but also...the gorilla turned to look at me.

It didn't move, just watched me approach the bars. I went right up to them, closer than guests were allowed. I was used to being that close to the cages and the animals were used to me being there. Still, my father used to tell me, no smart zookeeper treats any animal like a pet, or a friend. They aren't tame animals, after all.

I put my hands on the bars, not taking my eyes off the gorilla, which continued to watch me alertly. Then I looked at the candy bar, gauging the distance, then back at the gorilla. It had noticed and was looking at the candy bar too. It shifted its weight as if it might get up. There wasn't much time. I stuck my arm through the bars and reached as far as I could, fingers almost reaching the candy bar.

A shout warned me. I snatched my arm back just as a shadow fell over me and the gorilla's body slammed against the bars a second later. I flinched away from the cage, but the gorilla wasn't really interested in me. It scooped up the chocolate in its enormous hand and began to examine it. Behind me, the lady shrieked in protest.

The gorilla continued to ignore everything else, slumping against the bars comfortably while it examined the candy. I stepped carefully to one side so I could see what it was doing. It held the candy to its face and its nostrils flared as it inhaled. Then it put fully half the bar into its mouth and took a bite, paper and all.

It chewed slowly, and studied the remaining bar in its hand. The paper had torn some and the gorilla seemed confused by how it was peeling off. It tugged clumsily at the edges, then abruptly lost interest and dropped the whole thing on the ground. It rolled to one side, away from me, and turned to look out at the gathered crowd.

I saw my chance. I darted forward again, reaching. The gorilla started to react to the sudden movement, but I had the tattered bar in my hand and was backing away before it could even turn all the way around. It looked at me, then lost interest and turned away again.

I took a few more shaky steps back and found the lady. I offered her the candy bar, but she just sneered at me again and asked, who wanted something that a dirty animal had touched? That made sense to me, so it was only after a few titters went through the rest of the crowd that I realized she wasn't talking about the gorilla. I looked down at my clothes, smudged with muck from my morning's work, and my face heated. But she was leaving, at least, and the sooner everyone forgot about what had happened the better. I shoved the chocolate into my pocket, pulled my hat down lower over my eyes, and hurried away.

I worried that night that I would get a call from the director. If the lady had complained or if anyone else had mentioned anything to him, or if anyone wondered about why a woman was dressed as a zookeeper...but nothing happened.

It was only the next night when I was washing my uniform that I remembered the chocolate.

"And that's when I found my golden ticket."

Amalda looked down at Willy. His eyes were closed but he was smiling.

"Was that story worth the wait?" she asked teasingly.

He didn't respond and she nudged his face gently with her fingers.

"Willy?"