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“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—”
