Les Petites Merveilles
The first time you find yourself in Les Petites Merveilles, it’s usually by accident.
You take the turning too soon or too late, the sat nav flickers with confusion, but sure enough, there it is. Tucked away into a bend in the road where the hedgerows spill a little too generously onto the tarmac. It backs onto a small, quintessential riverside pathway with a couple of benches set to the rear of the shop. The sign above the beautiful wood doorway reads “Les Petites Merveilles,”. The name beautifully and artistically carved by hand into a plank of gnarled chestnut, the lettering mesmerisingly bold, simple, yet breathtaking.
When you walk inside, it’s the smell that meets you first. It’s the pine shavings, the beeswax and something faintly herbal. Then your eyes wander over the shelves. Entirely alive with curious figures, whimsical animal characters, dragons curled around castle towers, entire villages in miniature, built from sun-bleached timber and completely unique looking fabrics.
Somewhere behind all of this wonderful ostentation, is Maya.
No one knows exactly how old she is. Her hair is always bound up in a somehow beautiful mess of scarves. She wears paint streaked aprons over soft linen shirts and boots that look like they’ve walked on every surface imaginable. There’s a kind of calm in the way she moves, like she’s lived enough lives to know when to rush and when to simply watch things unfold.
Even locals say that they can’t remember what was there before the old building had suddenly flickered back to life. But they remember scaffolding, the sound of hammering late into the evenings, the laughter of children even before the doors had officially opened. Then came the toys, unlike anything people had seen. Character creations seemingly from a Pixar cutting room floor, mobiles made from driftwood and sea glass that chimed in the wind, puzzles depicting incredible worlds the people had never seen before, yet somehow felt familiar.
People started driving in from neighbouring villages, then towns, even cities. The shop had no online store and certainly no Instagram page. It didn’t need one. Maya’s creations weren’t the kind of toys you clicked into a basket. You really did have to feel them. The cool, rippling grain of wood, the otherworldly textures from the fabrics, the gentle rattle of stones trapped inside hollowed eggs.
Somehow, she had turned a shop into a place where time slowed down.
Children adored her, of course. She never spoke down to them. She got on her knees to speak eye-to-eye, let them try everything. She remembered their names and birthdays, made things just for them. A beetle box for a boy who liked bugs, a floating boat for a girl who lived near the river.
Parents often lingered longer than they needed to. Maybe it was the coffee she offered them in chipped mugs, or the way she listened without judgment. There was something grounding about her. Like she held a kind of knowledge you couldn’t learn in books about weathering storms. She didn’t give advice, exactly. But you always left with the sense that you knew a little more about what you already knew.
The mystery of her past hung lightly in the air, like woodsmoke. People guessed. Maybe she’d been an artist in Berlin, or a humanitarian in South America. Someone once said she’d trained as an architect, another person once said she had owned a bar in Rabat, Morocco. No one knew though. These suggestions were nothing more than a blanket thrown over a mystery in an attempt to give it a shape that we’d recognise.
The village changed around her. Cafés started stocking more local produce. A local seamstress opened her own fashion store next door. Someone started a zero-waste grocery stall that now visits weekly. The change to the village was slow and subtle, but the community character had become bolder within the small village.
Years later, the kids who grew up with her toys still visit as teens, running their fingers along the shelves like they’re greeting an old friend. Parents bring their second or third child, grateful the shop is still here. People sit on the bench outside and chat, strangers finding common ground.
Maya, for all her quiet, is at the centre of it. The soul of the shop very much attached to her own. But when she is asked by a stranger what she does, she responds “I just make toys.”
But that’s the thing about places like Les Petites Merveilles. They remind you that depth doesn’t have to be loud. That not everything real comes with a headline. Some things are good enough, exactly as they are.
Worn wood, child’s soft grin
Roots curl deep beneath the floor,
Magic grows unseen.