“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.
“I don’t usually do this sort of work,” Bespoke sighed. “It’s a dirty business. But if Charlie says I’m to look after you, I’ll hold my nose.” He laid down the Brannocks at their feet.
“But why?” asked Tamburlaine. “Why do we have to wear ‘identifying footwear’?”
“My dear girl, do you recall that I said shoes get you where you’re going and tell you where you are? It was only a moment ago, but there’s been a spot of excitement since.” Tom Thorn nodded. “Well, a Changeling’s shoes…are the other way round. They make sure you don’t go anywhere at all. Make sure you don’t float off back to your own world or go gallivanting about kicking up trouble and stories and quests. Humans do have a hankering for that sort of thing. And so that no one mistakes you for…for one of us. But you! You’re not human! You are one of us! I don’t see why I should have to do it. Who ever heard of a troll in Changeling shoes? Or a Fetch.” He said it as though it was a naughty word. “Forgive me, little sapling. I have a filthy old mouth, everyone says so.”
Tam shrugged. “It’s what I am.”
Bespoke laughed. “I forget how plainspoken you hardwoods can be. Yes, dear, but in polite circles Fetches refer to themselves by the sort of wood they’re chopped out of. You can call yourself Walnut if you like. It’s a perfectly respectable species.”
“You mean there are others? Like me? Fetches? Walnuts?”
“Of course—the spriggans make them by the cord every Autumn, which is every day in spriggan country. I had such a nice set of Tulipwood twins in the other week for holiday clogs. Now, I am sorry, I am, but please put your feet here and here, my lambs.”
They did, slotting their heels at the same moment into the shells of the Brannocks. “If your shoes are ambitious,” said Tam thoughtfully, “and know where they’re going, can’t you make them so they know how to get to the Spinster? Whoever she is. I think the King forgot to tell us that bit.”
Bespoke Espadrille adjusted the sliders. Tom looked down and read the silver writing on the Brannock. Curling letters arched over the toe slider, spelling out the Cobbler’s Creed: Wheresoever I Shall Go, Bear Me Thence Without Blisters or Sorrow. Below this, he read the measurements marked out on the black footpad from smallest to largest: Cloudcuckooland, Under Hill, Under Dale, the Road Most Traveled By, Through the Wasteland, After Love, Far to Go Before All’s Done, Wanderlust, Around the World Seven Times, Back of Beyond, Never Resting Long. Tom Thorn’s foot, a troll’s foot now, stuck out quite far beyond the end of the Brannock. He waggled his toes in his school socks, which were stretched so badly the weave had split in two places. Tam’s feet just barely touched Far to Go Before All’s Done. She fidgeted in her lap.
Bespoke walked over to the left-hand shoelace wall. He tugged on one of the laces and the wall popped open like a Summer window, revealing bolts of shining leather and goatskin and rabbit fur in every color. He stroked the golden quills on his great chin with one hand and tugged on his tusk with the other. “Can’t do that if I don’t know her address, my loves. I’ve never met the Spinster myself. She doesn’t go in for fancy shoes. She’s an old woman possessed of great powers—but aren’t all old women possessed of great powers? Occupational hazard, I think. She’s a Strega with a terrible gaze. I have heard through the textile underground that she always wears blue. Her curses are black and strong as bulls and they never end. Usually a curse gets bored and wan
ders off after awhile. But not the Spinster’s hexes. They show up to work first thing and go home last. Used to see her in the city buying bread and onion dip and crow-eyes and whatnot, but she disappeared. Spinsters do that sometimes. Hole up with their cats and their knitting somewhere and complain about children playing on the lawn. Wearing sensible shoes, can you imagine? Poor Charlie. He must think she can curse him back to his ferry. But he doesn’t want one of her curses. Not really. The last soul she slapped about never saw the light of day again. He asks everybody he meets, you know. Every new face. Find the Spinster and I’ll give you anything you want.”
Bespoke Espadrille selected a bolt of deep, dark green leather and one of plummy purple, along with bright, puffy sky-blue rabbit pelt. “This one, this, and that,” he said loudly. Perhaps there was an assistant in the back. Blunderbuss snuffled at the fur.
“We must find her,” Tom Thorn said.
“We promised,” Tam nodded.
But Bespoke was not listening. He’d sunk his head into his great chest, deep in thought.
“I can’t let you leave without shoes,” he sighed. “The Court would have my tusks. But I can do you something. I can. It’s not much, but I’ll sleep better.”
The walrus-cobbler coughed. He coughed again. His throat rumbled, a deep, belly-cough, the kind you get at the end of a cold, the kind that means to bring everything up so you can be rid of it at last. He coughed one last time and up out of his gullet came a pair of pretty lavender tongue-and-buckle shoes lined with black fur and close behind them, two of spring green. They clattered onto the floor and Bespoke started up his rattly coughing again. This time, a pair of kelly-green wingtips popped free of his mouth, and then bright-violet loafers. They joined their fellows on the ground. With a final, satisfied cough, the great walrus leapt up—higher than they would have thought he could—and stomped on all four lovely shoes, splintering them to bits.
Then he knelt at their feet and tapped the Brannocks with his long brown fingers. “Up you get,” he barked.
The silver Brannocks began to wriggle and writhe. They shaped themselves round Tom’s and Tam’s feet. The silver crawled up over their toes and clasped their ankles. The metal was cool and tingly, like soda pop. They squirmed and exchanged worried glances.
“No dawdling, now,” admonished the cobbler.
And the silver settled down against their skin and became, as fast as you please, two pairs of sensible shoes with strong, flat soles, the deepest green and purple dyes can dream of. They were something like mary janes, except that they seemed to yearn to run, which yearning no mary jane would admit to.
Bespoke showed them a long mirror. Tom Thorn stared at himself. He hadn’t seen his troll-face yet. He hadn’t had a chance. He was glorious. Bits of amethyst and emerald showed through his skin at his elbows, his collarbone, behind his ears. His nose arched and jagged like a sea crag, his eyes had grown huge and deep and soft. His hair hung down under his knit hat, trailing over the jewels of his jacket, mossy strands against golden chains. He looked like himself.
Scratch shook his bell with delight and dropped his needle:
Those weary blues
Can’t get into my shoes
“There,” Bespoke Espadrille sighed. “Now they’re the third pairs I’ve made for you.”
“Why does that matter?” asked Blunderbuss, who had gotten quite bored, as she neither wanted nor needed such silly things as shoes.
“You’re going to have to get your savvy on right quick, the bunch of you. Don’t go around asking questions that make it perfectly clear you’re tourists without maps. Haven’t you ever seen a newsreel? Just last week some German milkmaid wore through three pairs of iron shoes trying to find the man she loved, and she didn’t find him till the second-to-last pair fell apart. You have to wear through three pairs of shoes to get anything done. Everyone knows that. Once you wear through the third pair, whatever story you’ve got yourself into has to hurry up and finish its business so the next one can get going. Call it a head start.” He sniffed, and tears filled his great, liquid walrus eyes. “That’s why my friend Charlie won’t change his shoes. He’s on his third pair, and when they’re done, he’s hoping he will be, too.”
Tom and Tam left the Imporium. They looked north, toward the Financial District, and south, toward Riddle Row, though they had not the first idea what they were looking at.
“Well,” Blunderbuss rumbled, “what about the Bingo parlor? Old ladies love Bingo. Do they have Bingo here? In the Land of Wom—”
“Psst,” interrupted a little voice. One of the Changelings that had been playing with green fire outside Bespoke’s shop whispered at them from an alley. She had warm brown eyes and red hair and wore fifty or sixty paisley cravats tied into a long scarf that turned into a dress somewhere along the way.
“I know,” she said. “I know where you can find the Spinster. Give me something nice and I’ll tell you.”
“We don’t have anything,” Tom sighed.
But Scratch leapt forward, eager to please, to fix what he could fix. His crank spun and his sky-blue voice played softly:
Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…
“Oh, that is nice!” cried the redheaded girl, clapping her hands. “Come on, then!” She took up Tamburlaine’s wooden hand in hers.
“Where are we going?” said Tam shyly.
“Don’t worry. I’m your friend. You’re one of us.” She glanced down at their shoes. “Sort of, anyway. So I can show you our secrets. I have to, actually. It’d be cruel to let Changelings loose in the city all alone. Like letting puppies play in a fox den. We wouldn’t do that to you. I stayed to collect you once you had your anchors.” The shoes, again. The urchin was wearing rose-colored shoes not so different from theirs, though hers looked painfully tight, as though she’d long ago outgrown them. “Come on! Would it mean anything if I told you where I was taking you? I could say we’re headed to Atlantis by way of Interstate 5 and that’d make as much sense as anything. I’m taking you to friends.” She laughed a little. “You know what a friend is, right?”
“What’s your name?” Tom Thorn asked, determined to get something out of her before they dashed off with another stranger.
“Penny,” she said, and gave them a brilliant, dazzling smile. “Penny Farthing, at your service.”
INTERLUDE
THE GIRL WHO LOST OMAHA
In Which Events Have Consequences
Far away from Pandemonium, a woman is crying. Her name is Susan Jane. It’s a very Grown-Up name, and she’s never liked it very much, but then, Susan Jane is a Grown-Up. I’ve not told you her name before now because most children who are not secretly trolls do not call their parents by their Grown-Up names. But you have met her before.
Susan Jane’s sister and her husband make tea and hold on to her and then swap places. Their eyes are so red, poor dears.
“What’s happened to her? Where can she have gone? It’s been three days—where is my little girl? How can she just disappear like that? Just—gone one morning like the sun erased her?” Susan whispers. Her dog, a small, amiable soul who doesn’t know how to make a single thing better but won’t stop trying, licks her limp hands.
“She’ll come home, darling,” whispers her husband, who is called Owen. “She has to. She’s so clever, you know. She’s all right. Somewhere, she’s all right. I came home, after all, against the odds. Remember?”
Susan Jane reaches out for her sister. Their dark eyes lock, the same eyes. The late afternoon Nebraska sun peeks in to see if it can be of any use.
“Oh, Margaret. Tell me September will find her way back to us. Tell me and I’ll believe it.”
Aunt Margaret drinks her tea. She can’t bring herself to answer.
It’s not always such fun, being a narrator. We must stand by and say nothing so very often, even when we know the very thing that would dry every eye and wake up the house again.
I’ll put a new kettle on for all of us. Hold tight, Susan Jane. Don’t cry, Owen. Hush, now.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CHANGELING ROOM
In Which Tom Thorn Meets a Certain Someone, Finds a Secret Hideout, and Suffers a Calamity of the Foot
Penny Farthing led them through corkscrew streets the color of pumpkins and closes where tassels sprouted up in the dark like mushrooms. They ran past doors boarded up with bolts of sailcloth and windows both broken and whole. No one looked at them as they ran. Everyone seemed to try very hard not to look, in fact. A lady Fairy with long black wings spattered with colors like an opal whipped her head toward them once, and followed them with a hungry glare, but did not come near. They came nearer and nearer to the center of the city. Penny did not falter once, turning this way and that without once stopping to get her bearings. Finally, she brought them up short in a tiny dead-end cotton alley. The service doors of a little hotel would have emptied onto the pillowstones of the street, but they’d been covered over, rather sloppily, with taffeta bricks. A funny brass stump rose up in the middle of the street, a bit like a fire hydrant. It had big satin rope hoops hanging from it and said TIE UP HERE on its brass cap. An old nag horse with white fur and a black mane had been lashed to the hitching post and left blinking sleepily in the sun.
“All trails lead to ice-cold Coca-Cola,” Penny whispered. From within the brass hydrant a voice whispered back:
“Are your whiskers, when you wake, thicker than a two bit-shake? Burma-Shave!”
Penny Farthing grinned again and, still holding on to Tam’s hand, jumped up into the air—and straight into the ear of the old nag. Somehow, when Penny jumped, the ear got ever so much bigger, as big as a door, and before they could wonder at it, they were through, and standing not inside a horse, but in a cozy little room.