“Any way it likes, I expect,” shrugged Crunchcrab. “But of course you don’t know! You haven’t got a crowbar for my crown in your back pocket. I know that. I’m not addled, boy. Nobody knows. Except the Spinster. And she won’t tell. Mostly because we can’t find her to ask. But you’ll find her for me, won’t you? There’s a good boy. And girl. And gramophone. And whatever the yarn-pile is.”
CHAPTER XIII
UNHAPPY FEET
In Which Thomas and Tamburlaine Are Introduced to Pandemonium, Fitted for New Shoes, and Meet a Gang of Changelings, While a Walrus Gets a Nasty Cough
Any city looks a bit like its mother and father. If you peer closely at New York, you will see that the old girl has Dutch ears and English eyes. London cannot hide her Roman nose—and Rome has a way of laughing that is awfully Greek. This is why you may see streets in one city with just the same name as the streets in another, and even cities with identical names, like two Joshuas or Amys in the same class. To be a city is to belong to a family, each taking after another, remembering fondly their old grandfathers and great-aunts, all the way back to the very first hut and fire and lonely cave with horses painted on it that had no name at all. In one city, if you are very clever and sneaky, you can spy out the whole world it belongs to, just as you can spy out a few thousand years of singing and dancing and making bread and putting babies to bed in any single person’s face.
I tell you this so that, when I say Pandemonium looked just like Fairyland, you will know what I mean. (Traditionally, all cities are politely referred to as “she,” though the actual situation is somewhat more complicated. As we should not like to look up a city’s underskirts, we shall hew to tradition.) Pandemonium is the Capital of Fairyland, as a large Wyverary once informed us. But more than that, she is a miniature, moving, hyperactive copy of Fairyland itself, made and sewn and stitched and tied all of cloth, of wool and silk, of yarn and ribbon, of batting and bunting.
And she is rather prone to indigestion. You really cannot see it unless you are a roc or a pterodactyl or some other beast who does not need much air and can fly horribly high. Let us pretend we are pterodactyls! Look! There, in the northwest quarter, you can see all the crinoline apartments and customhouses and concert halls are orange and red and chocolatey brown, just as in the north and west of Fairyland the Autumn Provinces are forever colored in October’s fire. In the southern part of the city, clusters of houses with bombazine chimneys make a stumpy, smoking forest that looks so very like Skaldtown. You must squint your eyes in the Seresong District, for nothing lives there that is not covered in organza origami flowers and birds and butterflies, in every shade of pink, of green, of violet, of gold, just as the Springtime Parish will scald your eyes with happy greens if you do not wear your glasses. (Only beware, the butterflies are quite vicious, being an ancient nation of warriors without mercy.)
From up here, we can see the Barleybroom River flowing in a circle around Pandemonium. Can you believe it was once plain, blue water? Such strange days! Now it is tea again, afloat with sugar lumps and lemon peels. Wyverns and dragons and griffins and hippogriffs and Fairies dive and flutter down into the city like great bright feathery bombs, scattering to Pandemonium’s four labyrinthine districts: Idlelily, Seresong, Hallowgrum, and Mallowmead. Though folk come and go, are coming and going even now, even as we come, something like ten thousand souls live in the satin and brocade and calico towers, walk the muslin alleys and cashmere boulevards, and cheer when the black lace streetlamps flare up with white oilskin lanterns at dusk. The highest point is Groangyre Tower, home of the Royal Inventors’ Society; the lowest is Janglynow Flats. Some common imports include: grain, wishing fish, bicycle parts, children, sandwiches, brandywine, silver bullets—and Changelings.
All this Tom and Tam and Blunderbuss and Scratch saw as they left the Painted Forest—though not from an angle quite so wonderful as ours. Let us fold away our pterodactyl wings and hide them for a later evening—I promise we will strap them on again! No, Tom and Tam and Blunderbuss and Scratch saw Pandemonium from her streets, quite dwarfed by her shining, fuzzy, ropy buildings soaring up to tufted, ice-cream-colored cupolas in the sunshine. They walked very quietly, in the company of the King, for though they had grown up in Chicago, a very grand place indeed, Chicago does have rather fewer centaurs than Pandemonium, and no turquoise rhinoceroses at all. Blunderbuss capered happily through the avenues, giddy to find herself a scrap-yarn wombat in a scrap-yarn city.
It is very boring to follow people all the way from interesting place to interesting place. They do take so terribly long to do it, and we are important people with busy eyes, so I shall hurry our motley band along until they arrive where King Crunchcrab intended: Bespoke Espadrille’s Shoe Imporium. The Imporium was a sweet little shop nestled in fashionable Little Buyan, in the Hallowgrum Quarter. It had just the sort of littleness and sweetness that whispers: I am very expensive and exclusive; in fact, there is only room for yourself and Mr. Espadrille, for we do not want any gawkers peeking in at the wonders which are yours alone. It whispers such things, but everyone in Pandemonium ignores it and piles into the Imporium till the windows are full of arms and stocking feet and the cash register quits in a huff.
But not today. Today only a few boys and girls in rags lag around outside the shop—though rags in Pandemonium are quite fine, cut sneakily with delinquent scissors from the back corners of buildings and dug up from the glimmering streets, leaving potholes like groundhog dens. The kids stood in front of the window, passing a bit of green Fairy flame from hand to hand, making it get up and dance in the shape of a ballerina, a witch, a gondolier, a toad. They giggled. One looked a little like Max, Tom Thorn thought. Taller, perhaps.
“Hullo,” said Tom. He put out his hand to shake. “What’s your name?”
The oldest girl flicked her eyes from him to the King. She curtseyed a few times, awkwardly, like a broken doll.
“You shouldn’t be talking to us, Mr. Friendly,” the boy who looked like Max hissed, snapping his hand shut and extinguishing the green flame. “We’re Changelings. You don’t want to be seen getting
chummy with the wrong sort. Which is us.” He curtseyed, too. But both of them were watching Tamburlaine as they spoke, as though they weren’t talking to Tom at all. He felt quite invisible.
The boy who looked like Max started to say something else, but he was interrupted by a great lumpy shape in the doorway of Bespoke Espadrille’s Shoe Imporium—that of Mr. Bespoke Espadrille himself. He was rather more walrus than man, with great long tusks carved with scrimshaw and long, shining quills of golden hair on his brown muzzle. But despite his great, drooping head, he had a man’s thick arms and stout legs, and over his chest—which might have been walrus or human, for both can grow a majestic belly if they try hard and work at it every day—he wore a cuirass all of shoe buckles. The buckles shone, perfectly polished, silver, brass, ivory, gold, bronze, tin. Below this ballooned bright hot-green pantaloons, stuffed into the least interesting shoes. Mr. Bespoke Espadrille, the greatest cobbler in a hundred Fairylands, wore the plainest shoes imaginable. They weren’t Fairy-like at all! Tom could not really hide his disappointment. His father might have worn such shoes and not counted himself the least bit unusual at the office. Yet even Tamburlaine could tell they were completely, breathlessly perfect. Their black leather gleamed softer than clouds, their laces braided from the hair of some exquisite animal that had never known a late fee at the library. Their heels looked as though they could stomp out injustice, no matter how great, and tucked into the top of each one gleamed a single blue-silver sixpence piece like a tiny mirror.
Mr. Espadrille let out a bubbling, grumbling, booming mutter of a grunt. The boys and girls by the window had not moved. They didn’t look twice at Tom—what’s another troll in Pandemonium? But their eyes had hit on Tamburlaine like darts finding home. Bespoke had her in his sight, too, and did not let her go. Tam blushed, a mahogany color moving across her dark, carved cheeks, and Tom saw in a moment that he was not strange in this place, not really. But she was. He put his arm around her. His troll-arm. His strong arm. His mother’s jewelry tinkled comfortingly against her wooden spine.
“Well, don’t stand there in the street,” said Mr. Espadrille, who, Tom suspected, did not know how to curtsey. As they walked through his door, bells jingled, and buckles jingled, too, as King Crunchcrab corralled the walrus-creature into a rough hug, squeezing him fiercely.
“You moron,” Bespoke scolded warmly. “Your boots are half worn through. Is that your third pair? If you don’t stop it I’ll beat you with my best stilettos. You know how dangerous a worn-out shoe is. Who brought you up?”
“I brought myself up, you pinheaded pinniped. Never you mind my shoes. I know what I’m doing. I’m here for my little friends. They’ll need shoeing.”
Bespoke disentangled himself and looked over Tom and Tam with his walrus-eyes. The shop was neat as can be, glittering single shoes on display, long blue and green and gold couches for trying things on, the walls decorated with thousands of shoelaces woven into a thatch.
“What are they wanting? Glass slippers? Red-hot iron oxfords? Flats to keep you dancing for a decade? Impertinent mules that think they know what’s best for you? I’ve got them in ruby or silver. Winged slingbacks guaranteed to outfly good news and bad? Thousand-league galoshes? Steel-toed hip-waders made from genuine first-molt rubber-fiend skin? I’ve got them all, my lovelies. After all, what is a body without its feet? And feet, you must admit, are very poorly designed. Such little, soft things to carry you through your lives! Of course, all shoes are magic—they get you where you’re going and tell you where you’ve been. They tell your secrets, can’t hold their tongues a bit. A man in finery whose shoes are caked in mud and cracked with use”—Bespoke glared at King Crunchcrab—“is surely selling something. And a lady in rags with jeweled heels, her toes clad in sapphires with a silver tongue as curved as the lip of a sleigh? Well, she’s probably a thief, but she might be a witch. Either way, best leave her be. My shoes, however, are better than the rest. I am a Skokhaz, and my people are great Wizards of the Wardrobe. My mother knew the devilry of dresses, my father the hocus-pocus of hats. And I am a sorcerer of shoes. My shoes are sought like talismans! And why?”
“Why?” asked Tom, quite caught up.
“Because they know that they are shoes, my boy. They know they have a purpose and they are eager to accomplish it. They have ambitions, aims, ardor! They are the most shoely shoes that will ever shoe, and as you are a friend of Charlie’s, I shall shoe for you.”
King Charlie looked at his feet. Even his wrinkles were embarrassed. “’Fraid not, Bessie, old boy. They’re…they’re Changelings. They just need their slips.” He spread his hands at Tom and Tam apologetically. “It’s the law, you know. All Changelings are required to wear identifying footwear. Didn’t make it; don’t like it. But if I don’t abide I get…I get ailments. My fingernails turn black and my hair falls out and Simon gets to chain me in the basement until I come to my senses.” He waggled his fingertips. Six of his fingernails were dark as spilled ink. “I try and all. I do.”
Tamburlaine patted his shoulder. His wings fluttered weakly. “It sounds awful, being King,” she said sympathetically. “I’m sure you do your best.”
“Oh, that’s not part of the King business.” Crunchcrab shook his head morosely. “That’s their bit of fun. My Parliament. To keep me in line. Rather have a Magna Carta, myself. They wouldn’t have it. So last season.”
And as they watched, his pinkie finger, nicely clean and pale, began to darken. “Oh, no, no, I’ve been away too long,” Charlie Crunchcrab wailed. “I’m not allowed to wander. Bessie’ll look after you, he will, I promise. I have to go, I have to go or it’s the basement for me. You haven’t seen it. I can’t go back! Help me, kittens. Find the Spinster—she’ll know what to do. She has to! I’m sorry! For everything that’s bound to happen!”
The King ran from Bespoke Espadrille’s Shoe Imporium with tears in his eyes, up the gabardine boulevard and away. Bespoke shook his walrus-head and bent behind his counter, rummaging in the shelves. He came up with four silver-and-black devices like fish on a string. Tom laughed. He knew those very well! It was the sort of measuring contraption he had to wedge his stocking foot into whenever he outgrew the shoes Gwendolyn bought him last month. It was called a Brannock. This one had curving silver wings on its sides and scalloped silver seashells on either end. The middle part was all shimmering black with silver writing on it.
“Don’t even think about it,” Blunderbuss barked. “Wombats don’t need shoes! Or want them! My paws are too magnificent for your little machine, anyway.” The walrus cobbler shrugged and put two of the Brannocks back under his counter.