In this chap­ter titled Lead Sol­diers, the sto­ry begins with the unstop­pable advance of a fire devour­ing a once-grand cathe­dral, illu­mi­nat­ing the sky with its cru­el bril­liance. Smoke spi­rals upward while stained-glass win­dows crack and melt, unable to with­stand the blaze’s assault. The flames move like a crea­ture unleashed, curl­ing around door­ways and beams, swal­low­ing relics, man­u­scripts, and lives built over years. Cit­i­zens scat­ter, their pan­ic no match for the fire’s focus, and even the rain—steady, persistent—fails to offer mer­cy. An elder­ly woman is left behind, a poet races toward dan­ger rather than away, and an aging schol­ar remains frozen in his study, unwill­ing to aban­don the frag­ments of his intel­lec­tu­al lega­cy. The scene is not only trag­ic but strange­ly mes­mer­iz­ing, as though the fire’s hunger is both sense­less and sym­bol­ic, strip­ping away every­thing with­out remorse, remind­ing all who watch how frag­ile even the most sacred spaces can be.

As the flames roar beyond con­trol, the nar­ra­tive slips into a qui­eter realm where imag­i­na­tion offers shel­ter from destruc­tion. The set­ting shifts to Tommy’s nurs­ery, where a group of lead soldiers—silent, expressionless—await his com­mand. With a delib­er­ate hand, he arranges them into columns, assign­ing each fig­ure a pur­pose, a voice, a fate, all under his com­plete con­trol. Here, order reigns; the fire on the hearth crack­les in warmth, not fury, and shad­ows dance harm­less­ly against the walls. The old man­darin doll watch­es with eter­nal calm, his rose fixed to his chest, his paint­ed face unread­able. Each sol­dier Tom­my moves becomes a char­ac­ter in a world where courage has clear rules and every loss is reversible. The nurs­ery becomes its own kingdom—one where pow­er is shaped by play, not destruc­tion, and beau­ty is born from imag­i­na­tion rather than con­quest.

Tommy’s tiny bat­tle­field brims with pur­pose. He gives his sol­diers mis­sions, speech­es, and silent oaths of hon­or. They march not to con­quer but to uphold a sense of duty and order that he impos­es with absolute clar­i­ty. It’s a vision far removed from the ran­dom­ness of the fire out­side, where chaos swal­lows pur­pose and dev­as­ta­tion leaves no room for mean­ing. Inside this warm room, the rhythms of war are orches­trat­ed, ele­gant, and devoid of real con­se­quence. The sol­diers do not bleed or scream; they fall only to rise again when Tom­my com­mands. Even the man­darin fig­ure seems to grant approval, his per­pet­u­al nod sug­gest­ing some ancient wis­dom in these rit­u­als of pre­tend.

The chap­ter uses this con­trast to reflect on humanity’s long­ing for con­trol in a world often gov­erned by entropy. Just as the fire shows how eas­i­ly every­thing can be erased—no mat­ter how revered or care­ful­ly constructed—Tommy’s sol­diers reveal how even a child seeks to under­stand con­flict, death, and resilience through struc­tured play. In his hands, the nurs­ery becomes a mod­el of the larg­er world, sim­pli­fied and made safe, where jus­tice and courage fol­low a script he writes. The fire, by con­trast, writes its own story—violent, form­less, and final. Through this jux­ta­po­si­tion, the sto­ry pos­es a silent ques­tion: is it bet­ter to live in the imag­ined safe­ty of the nurs­ery or to con­front the ter­ri­fy­ing dis­or­der out­side the win­dow?

Even with­in this small room, the imagery of the fire seeps in through metaphor. The hearth flick­ers with a more for­giv­ing flame, echo­ing the larg­er blaze but tamed into com­fort. Tommy’s gaze is steady, but his game—so neat, so composed—may be his sub­con­scious answer to the larg­er chaos he sens­es but does not ful­ly under­stand. The destruc­tion he can­not stop out­side is recre­at­ed inside, yet made beau­ti­ful, man­age­able, and reversible. His world of lead and lac­quer offers more than entertainment—it pro­vides struc­ture in a uni­verse that often with­holds it. Through play, Tom­my per­forms his own qui­et resis­tance, reshap­ing hor­ror into some­thing he can hold and learn from.

As the chap­ter clos­es, both worlds—one of ruin, one of ritual—remain vivid. The cathedral’s remains will smoke long after the sol­diers are returned to their box. Yet both spaces linger in mem­o­ry because they express the same truth in oppos­ing ways: every­thing built can fall, but from every fall, some­thing can be made again. Lead Sol­diers becomes a med­i­ta­tion not just on war and fire, but on how we car­ry forward—whether through imag­i­na­tion, mem­o­ry, or ritual—when the world reminds us that per­ma­nence is an illu­sion. The chap­ter ends not with despair, but with a qui­et insis­tence that mean­ing can be shaped, even if only in the hands of a child.