Chapter 10 - Frogchairs
The warty old woman gave Honeydew a frown. Honeydew shrugged and smiled too-sweetly. The woman let out a gurgly huff, then held forward an armful of golden vouchers. Honeydew snatched them with one hand and pumped a fist with the other. She wore an expression of supreme, bare-toothed, wide-eyed exultation. She spun away from a stone gaming table of tiny stone pyramids - tetrahedral dice - and shoved the golden pile into Mr. Grey’s hands.
“Here,” she said. “Find a game you’re good at. I’ll keep winning this one.”
“We shouldn’t linger too-” Mr. Grey began. Honeydew, however, set her other hand against his shoulder and shoved him away from her attraction.
The stream of carnival-goers further jostled Mr. Grey from Honeydew. He caught himself with a few short trots, but waves of visitors now separated him from the stone dice-table where Honeydew played.
A dwarf with a beard of rubies and a mithril cardigan robe bonked his nightcap against Mr. Grey’s elbow. He heard the dwarf say, “Bad place for a signpost.”
Mr. Grey stepped off the main thoroughfare to a spot of grass at the base of one the carnival’s stalls. Still holding the golden tickets, Mr. Grey took a moment to decide where he’d use them.
A forest of tall, menhir-tents displaced Dreamland’s looming trees in the clearing set for the carnival. The menhirs looked a few rungs shorter than Mr. Grey and Honeydew’s ladder-tent; they’d left it in the ladder-check at the carnival’s stone entry arch. But, Mr. Grey reflected, these obelisks were sturdier, and the long seams in each rock which served as doorways to the dark interiors didn’t flap when The Old Wind blew. Unlike the rolling, lumpy, hilly land of roots and leaves and needles, the carnival lay in a flat plot. Dewy grass and big, shiny puddles surrounded the games. A muddy path - with here and there a mossy stepping stone half-sunk into the syrupy sludge - wound its way between stone tents and stone attractions. Stalls of heavy granite leaned and sank into the soft road at its edges, where visitors could reach them easiest.
Mr. Grey smelled a cloying sugar-scent Glory-Days cotton. It drifted from the stall across the road. He shifted on his feet; his shoe sank into the mud. Off to his right, Mr. Grey heard a croaking calliope-drone. He turned and watched the passage of the dragon-engine-driven carousel. It rolled on a track - also stone - ringing the whole carnival. He decided the carousel didn’t appeal much.
“Who is this that wants to play?” said a voice from behind. At the same instant Mr. Grey felt a sharp poke on his shoulder. He turned to the stall by which he’d taken shelter.
Behind a thin, low table of shale - little more than a flat wall with two goal post pillars covered in old-man’s-beard - another crone sat atop a polka-dotted, amanita mushroom. She wore a ragged cardigan robe of oilskin, slimy with mud and dew. Her eyes were spread so widely apart on her lumpy, pale face, that the wrinkled creature angled her head to catch him fully in her left, unable to see him with both at once.
The old woman saw she had Mr. Grey’s attention. She spoke again; a procedure where she repeatedly dropped her lower jaw only, never moving her hairy upper lip, and with each word let her tongue loll out from a soft, silky, toothless mouth. “Stick a stoat, win a golden comb. Three vouchers. Cro-aak, cro-aak.” The old woman ended with two gurgly coughs.
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Grey. He held the vouchers close to his chest.
“Stick a stoat, win a golden comb,” repeated the carnie. She took a giant oyster fork from the stall wall at her feet, and waved it behind her. Mr. Grey looked.
A collection of ironstones formed a ring behind the carnie on her mushroom stool. A glaze of moss topped the ring, and tiny moss flowers served as accents, like maraschino cherries. The disk of short grass surrounded by the stones looked like a reflection of the full moon above; sheeny, wet grass serving as the alabaster face, while burrows in the turf became the craters.
A group of players stood on the grass moon’s surface at the moment. They wielded giant oyster forks of their own, and kept watch on the holes. Mr. Grey saw a stoat suddenly pop up from one crater. One woman close by jabbed at the stoat with her fork, but it retreated just in time. A moment later another stoat, which looked exactly like the first, popped up from another hole. The scene repeated, over and over. None of the players managed to stick the stoat, though a few came close. Mr. Grey never did see more than one stoat pop up at the same time.
Behind him, Mr. Grey heard the carousel calliope decelerate. Its operator called out in a gurgly voice. “Join the court. Next turn in two tocks. Five vouchers a ride.”
Mr. Grey’s eyes returned from the stoat moon, his ears left the carousel, and he brought his attention to the old woman. She frowned and shook the giant fork at him, saying, “Stick the stoat or no? Cro-aak, cro-aak.”
“It’s not my game,” said Mr. Grey. “Can you tell me, do you know a girl named Jodee Coats? She’s got-”
“Come on mister,” said an impatient man behind him. “Go join the court if you want to stand idle.”
Before Mr. Grey could retort - were he the sort - the impatient man grabbed him by the shoulder. With a shove, Mr. Grey stumbled back into the main thoroughfare. The people-stream pulled him toward the carousel, and tossed him in its waves. First a troop of faeries in minty robes ran between his knees. Then a prince wearing an old stove molded into the shape of a cardigan nearly knocked him to the mud. Mr. Grey managed finally to stumble out of the carousel-drawn current. He leaned heavily against one of the menhir-tents. Somehow, he still had Honeydew’s golden vouchers tucked under his shoulder, though a few had fallen in the bustle.
“You there, in the grey!” growled a voice from a clearing beside his resting-rock. “How about it sir? Have you the might of royalty?”
A crowd of onlookers blocked Mr. Grey’s view of the speaker. Two of them turned, however, and took Mr. Grey by the arms. They dragged him into the crowd.
Once within, Mr. Grey saw the lure of the crowd; a single, smooth, limestone boulder. It took a shape roughly that of an anvil, and lay in a large puddle. A bullish man with a thick neck, ruddy face, and bulging eyes stood in the puddle with waders. His right hand rested on the rounded rock. In his left, he held aloft a heavy iron mallet. The man used the mallet to idly swat at a cloud of huge horse-headed-flies buzzing about his neck.
The crowd shunted Mr. Grey to the front. The bullish man pointed the mallet-barrel at him and said, “Will this man of stone be the one to crack his kind?”
Mr. Grey fixed his gaze on the iron mallet. He avoided the forest of staring crowd-eyes. He said, “I’m sure I lack the strength.”
“Common is the person, great at boasting and ill at doing. Perhaps Stone Man is the chosen opposite?”
“I hope I’m neither. I don’t mean… Well you get my point.”
“Two golden vouchers; chance to be king of the carnival.” The mallet-man’s growl vibrated his neck. “All at a single stroke!”
Mr. Grey craned his neck above the crowd. Down the muddy road, between a cluster of the towering menhirs, he saw Honeydew. She still played at the table with the pyramid dice. She must have won again just as Mr. Grey looked. Honeydew threw back her hair and let off a howl of victory, and Mr. Grey saw the old dice master reluctantly pass another pile of vouchers into her hands. Honeydew shoved them right back, putting them all on the next pyramid tumble. Mr. Grey watched her hunch, with an enthralled face, over the dice.
A dragon engine gurgled into action and the song of the calliope squeezed through the carnival air. Mr. Grey watched the raised carousel ring spin to existence above Honeydew’s head. One of the people ringing him in with the anvil-shaped stone said, “That’s the only court he’ll ever be king over,” This got a chuckle from the crowd. Mr. Grey turned back to the bullish man. He saw a different contender had already braved the puddle-water. The man grasped the mallet. The man stepped up to the anvil-shaped rock. The man swung. The man failed. The crowd booed.
Mr. Grey - grateful at having the attention diverted - slipped back through the ring around mallet and anvil-rock. He turned in the direction of the dice table and stepped atop one of the smooth flagstone islands in the muddy road. He stood on the stone in the muddy road and paused. Like a colossus atop a lonely cliff-island, visited only by gulls (or, in this case, horse-headed flies) in the middle of a murky sea. Nothing he saw in the henge of carnival games appealed to Mr. Grey’s taste. He was more of a ‘quiet cell, classical music, and a word-machine’s worth of parchment’ kind of guy. He wanted to regroup with Honeydew. Her wide-eyed focus - obsession, even - over the dice table left him uneasy. Mr. Grey would suggest they call it a day at the carnival, and seek for Jodee elsewhere.
As Mr. Grey descended from his flagstone and jostled through the mud, his nose caught a familiar smell. He didn’t trust it at first - the nose had never been his most reliable sensory organ - but soon his eyes confirmed the sense. There they were; atop a stone stall; underneath a chiseled sign that read, ‘Food from Across the Odormoats’; a glinting silver tray, loaded with clear plastic bags of shiny, striped beans.
When Mr. Grey saw that favored delicacy, his stomach rumbled. He thought of all the apples, and corn, and gourds he’d nibbled on, these long epochs of Dreamland travel. He thought a small bag wouldn’t hurt. He still had an armful of tickets from Honeydew. The bags were only one golden voucher apiece.
But - Mr. Grey thought - he shouldn’t have smelled the beans at all. His cologne had worn away. He didn’t have any left either. He’d used the last of Ms. Maysey’s stone-scented bottle before they took the noose lift from Stone-Head Town.
The striped beans took a sinister aspect in Mr. Grey’s mind; like a barber’s pole spinning askew and alone on an abandoned street. Not a dangerous odor themselves, the beans reminded Mr. Grey there might be other vicious smells lurking nearby. Mr. Grey lost his appetite. He stepped atop another flagstone platform in the muddy road. He looked along the path and stopped his eyes at each stall and menhir lining the way. He searched for signs offering cologne for vouchers. Or for treasure. Even a sample bottle would be better than nothing. At last, Mr. Grey’s eyes settled on a possible scent-defending source. He plunged into the mucky road.
After passing through a troop of tramping gnomes, Mr. Grey arrived at the wide legs of a stone arch. Tufted lichen bloomed on the rough surface, transformed to a soft, woolen coat under the silvery night. Where it hung down from the curving top, the lichen became stringy and opaque, though not so much that Mr. Grey could see through to the other side. It hung over the inside of the arch like a fog curtain. Though the strings drifted a little each time a pedestrian squelched by on the muddy carnival street, Mr. Grey could never quite catch what lay behind.
What had drawn him to the arch was a bright little carnie flanking the arch in a carved fungal armchair. Sitting down, the thin fellow wasn’t much taller than the pack of gnomes who’d run by Mr. Grey a bit ago. He had an enormous head, however, with eyes that were larger still. Wrinkles migrated across his face in herds, and only a few strands of greasy hair ran down his forehead. These last were oily slivers of varied gemstone: tiger’s eye, jasper, beryl, topaz, heliotrope. His cardigan robe hung baggy and loose over a skinny frame - Mr. Grey could see the outline of the man’s collarbone - and was patterned in glass bottles. The man also wore real glass bottles sticking on each of his fingertips. These latter features, more than anything, had drawn Mr. Grey to the stall.
“Here for a shot?” asked the man. His voice was high but wet, like an underwater trill.
“I wondered if you had any cologne?” asked Mr. Grey. “I have vouchers.”
“Sure, that’s a fair prize… Six tickets a play.”
Mr. Grey handed over the 6 leaflets of gold. “What’s the game?”
The carnie reached with an arm which would have fallen past his knee had he stood, grabbed the foggy lichen curtain, and pulled. Behind the filmy strands, set at a distance away in the grass, were row after row of stone shelves, with empty glass bottles resting on top.
On a mossy stone lectern in front of Mr. Grey lay a gun.
Mr. Grey turned his eyes aside. “Sir, I think I’ll… You keep the tickets…”
Mr. Grey stumbled into the road, feeling not himself. His feet splashed, turning his robe to a wet mottle of stone and mud. He walked with the crowd, not attending where it led, until he found himself at the foot of a short, carven stairway. He looked and saw he’d arrived at the base of the carousel circling the carnival. The conductor in a horsehair robe waiting before the steps held out a hand for Mr. Grey’s vouchers.
Mr. Grey waved absently. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ride,” He turned to go.
As he about-faced he saw something at the back of the line. Two skulking, familiar shadows. They gazed at him behind twin sets of round, moon-reflecting spectacles.
Mr. Grey turned back to the conductor. He shoved the whole pile of Honeydew’s golden vouchers into the man’s hand, and mounted the carousel.
“Be-lov-ed Mr. Grey! You will find that events have mounted to… That you have reached a crisis of… That at this juncture there is… there is… Blackjaw, the words?”
“Nowhere to run.”
Mr. Grey heard Slake moan, as if in ecstasy. “Oh, verily the phrase I wanted. Reallytruly, Mr. Grey. Reallytruly, sir. What shelter have you left to flee for? The court bells toll for every man in his time, Mr. Grey. The subpoenas must come home to roost, Mr. Grey. It is now the eleventh epoch, every epoch. You are summoned, sir. Queen’s law finds our documents binding.”
Blackjaw summed Slake’s words with two barks. “You’re wanted. Queen’s court.”
Mr. Grey turned and stepped quickly behind a giant, stone chess-bishop. He set his hand against the piece and breathed, steadily but heavily through his nose. His arm moved up and down; in time with the pistoning dragon engine, driving the checkerboard stone ring; in time with the hurdy-gurdy, croaking calliope-song; in time with the bishop, as it rose and fell with the carousel.
A boy with a freckled, flabby face looked at Mr. Grey from atop the bishop. He said, “How now, mister? Fare thee poorly?”
Mr. Grey tried focusing on the question, and not on the mix of carnival scents flooding his nose as he breathed. “Just fine, young sir,” he said. He could taste the buttered corn and caramel apple air in his mouth. “Play on.”
He heard Slake’s voice again, and the finders’ footsteps too, tapping behind him through the chess pieces. “You mustn’t be upset with us, dear Mr. Grey. Mustn’t be contrary in your thoughts. Shed thee not tears of betrayed stone. Mine deep that heart of yours, and you’ll recognize that Finders Slake-”
“-and Blackjaw-”
“-have only acted in the manner most lawful and honorable. We lament your cross encounters with us thus far. And as a result, your financial difficulties have reached a necessary crisis. But! Despair not, stoical chum. For these finders for hire have equal license for business under queens law. And as that wise saying goes: If you’ve trouble at home-”
“-take out a loan.”
Mr. Grey raised his voice against their taunt. “That’s all well, but I’m a king’s servant.” He tried adding conviction to his words, but they ran in the usual monotone. Besides that, Mr. Grey’s heart beat out of time with what he said. Whether Dreamland obeyed King’s Law or Queen’s Law, Mr. Grey was a lawful man.
The pair of soft footsteps had now closed upon Mr. Grey. He pushed himself off the hopping bishop and walked triple-speed through the court of stone chess pieces. Each piece rose slowly, with a click, click, click like a rollercoaster. Then they dropped; hard, but with the soft impact of felt on felt. The checkered floor shivered only a little as each piece slammed into its square. The children sitting on the noble stone steeds - and a few adults also - juddered with each drop, and clutched tight to the silver poles impaling each piece. The riders laughed and cheered, sometimes at Mr. Grey, sometimes at the finders, sometimes in simple carnival joy.
Mr. Grey ran from Blackjaw and slake; countertockwise along the tockwise spinning carousel. To the carnival-goers in the muddy lane, the finders and Mr. Grey seemed to run in place, while the chess pieces danced past. Mr. Grey circled by galloping horses and prancing kings, all pumping up and down to the slow gurgle of the dragon and calliope.
He charged for a group of crenelated granite rooks, on which rested a murder of dark birds. At his heels, Slake said, “All this fleeing, all this hiding, all this skulking about. Mr. Grey! This is beneath a man of your carven character! You have, perhaps, not considered that we gentle, helpful, generous finders, might be…”
“In your corner,” said Black.
“I would have said ‘on your side’. But I love the way you put it, clever Blackjaw, so much better! If you were our client - wayward Mr. Grey! misguided Mr. Grey! troubled soul of the lord in grey! - you would find, in the corner of every loan, in the bottom left of every document, our seal.”
The gurgly old dragon engine hiccupped. The calliope slowed for a fraction of a moment, like a warped record. The spinning ring of the stone carousel, and all the chess horses, and all the chess men, tilted. The riders clung to the poles. The finders scampered across the tiles behind Mr. Grey. Everyone struggled for balance. Everyone except Mr. Grey. He stood like a stone, among the pieces of stone, atop the floor of stone.
A sealed bag of the striped beans - the same he’d wanted earlier - soared at Mr. Grey from the watching crowd. A favor from a spectator, he thought. He caught the bag. After a few shaky tocks the dragon engine hiccupped again. The calliope, carousel, and court, rolled back into a rhythm.
Blackjaw and Slake hadn’t been tossed by the little warble. Mr. Grey looked back and saw them pursuing once more. The finders padded from piece to piece in a spine-curved, ducking skulk.
Mr. Grey kept the bag of striped beans ready in his hand, but didn’t yet pry it open. He ran for the cluster of rook pieces rolling like a castle in an earthquake. The caps were pennanted by midnight feathers. Grackles, ravens, and crows perched as one flock atop the heaving towers. They seemed unbothered by the noise of the carousel song, or its motion, or their human counterparts. The birds were, at that moment in fact, deciding on where to go for dinner.
Mr. Grey chose for them. He took his bag of beans, pulled it apart, and threw the bright ruby-and-pearl pieces behind him, between a corps of knights. Some beans were instantly splattered between the pumping pieces felt hooves, while others began a vibrating dance on the rolling stone ring. The birds descended in a dark cloud from the rooks and dove among the beans. They squawked and cawed in thanks as they fluttered past Mr. Grey, with one old raven even barking out a “Toora-loora-loo!”
The birds hopped and gobbled the beans while Mr. Grey plowed through the dancing towers. He looked back and saw the trick had some effect. Blackjaw and Slake’s skulking, sneaking, prowling pace dropped to inching little steps. They edged carefully around the gathered feathered fiends so as not to disturb the feast. But even so, the finders followed still.
Mr. Grey pressed the advantage and picked up his pace. He placed pawns, and knights, and even a tall, bouncing queen between himself and the finders. He took care not to set too quick a pace. The carousel being one huge ring circling the carnival, he’d only end up pursuing the finders. Slake called after him as he fled. “Mr. Grey, be reasonable. Search your history. You’ll find these finders for hire have never - I mean never! - acted opposite your well-being. These finders have, in fact, only offered help in the dilemmas you’ve thus far faced. We extend our finder fingers to you even now. That you may take hold, and find courage for what you’ve yet to confront in existence.”
“Be reasonable,” echoed Blackjaw.
“Give us the time of day; or night; in front of the queen’s court; perhaps with a binding contract established between both parties concerned. You’ll find us reasonable. And besides, Mr. Grey, Blackjaw and Slake always find the treasure, one way or the other. We shan’t quit you, Mr. Grey. Come along. Give finders a try.”
“Take a chance on us.”
The finders’ voices had become faint as Mr. Grey approached the opposite end of the checkered carousel ring. The calliope droned in his ears, nearly drowning their offers beneath its plodding, piping song. Even so, Mr. Grey paused when he caught the distant words. He stopped in the middle of a marble tile, next to an onyx queen dancing to the tune.
Mr. Grey considered the finders’ offer. He didn’t trust their legal authority, even under Queen’s Law. As Honeydew had rightly pointed out in The Lost City, Mr. Grey hadn’t actually signed his name. The finders built their case on forgery. An accidental forgery - probably - on the part of the stoop dweller Bugwitch. Yet a forgery regardless.
The thought occurred to Mr. Grey, however, that perhaps ‘Finder for Hire: Blackjaw and Slake’ derived pleasure from this contractual pursuit. Perhaps they liked the chase. And Mr. Grey - though he didn’t admit this part to himself - wanted to keep from them that satisfaction. He didn’t think they deserved it.
To further knot his quandary, Mr. Grey wanted to prevent Honeydew’s catching Blackjaw and Slake in the chase. He worried how she’d confront the finders. Thinking of Honeydew reminded him of her last look, pouring over the dice.
Finding himself now in a vacant part of carousel, Mr. Grey walked diagonally across a span of shiny onyx tiles. He went and stood at the carousel ring’s inner edge. Two marble pawns bounced at his flanks. He watched the mossy menhirs and the shiny, dewy grass roll slowly by; the former an arm’s length away, the latter a short hop down. He searched for Honeydew between the tall stones. Finally he spotted her. Still at the dice table. Still pouring over the little stone pyramids. Still raking in armfuls of golden vouchers.
She looked up and noticed his glance. She met his blank, sideways-drifting face with a wide-eyed, euphoric expression. She held the tangled voucher pile high overhead in both hands. She gave the vouchers a triumphant shake and grinned. Then her expression suddenly turned serious; the oil eyes turned crude. She dropped the vouchers on the table and poked her finger violently. Mr. Grey turned around.
The finders had caught Mr. Grey in his distraction. Their teeth gleamed at him. Mr. Grey stood between the two globe-topped pawns; they, with their own grins of pearl, among a host of onyx bishops with carven frowns. Mr. Grey and the finders stood perfectly still - aside from their sideways carousel-drift - while the chess pieces surrounding them danced to the piping song. Mr. Grey stared at the finders, and they at him, though their eyes hid behind the twin sets of inky lenses.
In their hands, Blackjaw and Slake held quills and contracts. Slake said, “Mr. Grey… Tisk. Tisk. Tisk. How long shall we run this circuit, sir? How long at this farce must we three play? I’m afraid, my dear Mr. Grey, that this exact scene is the inevitable end of every scenario you might dream in that grey matter of yours.”
“End of the line,” put in Blackjaw.
“Whatever you plan next, Mr. Grey, I assure you, ours is the easier way. Follow us to the queen. Sign a contract. Take a weight off your shoulders, and a worry off your mind. See how light a thing this quill is? How its feathers flit? How easy it runs on the parchment? Why, there’s nothing to it.”
“Easy treasure.”
“And my dear sir, what else is there? Where else can you run? Behind a king? Between more pawns? Up the turrets of the rooks, or down the knights’ snouts? No matter which piece you run to, Mr. Grey, you stick out. Shall we play our day - or rather, our night! - away on this carousel? Running in circles? Or shall we get down to business?”
Slake cackled. Blackjaw chuckled. They waited for an answer.
Mr. Grey stepped off the carousel…
…and into a cramped cave. He stood in the dark and felt the air whisk chill against his exposed hands. Not an uncomfortable chill; far from it. Compared to the warm, buttercorn-thick air of the carnival, this felt pleasantly cool. And chemical too. Not unlike Starharbor’s climate-controlled Change of Address department.
Mr. Grey had only stepped two paces into the entrance-crack of one of the tall stone menhirs-tents, after using the crowds and the obelisks to break line of sight with the finders. He hadn’t foreseen the abrupt plunge into blinding-darkness. But the two-stride tunnel leading into the menhir-tent ran thick with parchmentary strands draping from the tunnel roof. When he finished the second stride, and the last strand fell into place behind him with a rustle, the curtains swallowed the outside light of both moon and lantern.
Mr. Grey thought at first to let his eyes adjust. Then he thought there might be someone within. He heard nothing; not the calliope, nor the crowds, nor the games. The light-stopping curtains swallowed sound as well, it seemed, and left him the silence. Still, Mr. Grey hadn’t verified if this tent formed an attraction. It could be some stall operator’s private den.
Mr. Grey said, “Pardon me, is any-”
An overhead candle flared partway through his sentence. The sudden light caught his eyes by surprise and transferred him to the stunned kind of blindness. Mr. Grey blinked his way through gemstone flashes in his vision. In time he saw that the new light came from a censer, chained to the ceiling and set under a stone trapezoid. The light shot down in a harsh, angular way; again, much like the lanterns in his Regional Justice Center. A tiny horse-headed fly plinked repeatedly on the stone and created a low buzz.
The light fell, until it struck the smooth surface of a sandstone office desk. Behind it, a middle-aged woman sat on a mushroom chair. The woman stared at Mr. Grey with eyes made huge by thick spectacles. She rested an elbow on the table and her chin on her palm. More precisely, she rested a large, round, jaundiced goiter on her palm. Without breaking eye-contact she shot her other hand to a stone filing cabinet, one of a dozen such filing cabinets waiting around her office-desk like cupbearers. She pulled a drawer open with a heavy scrape, and dragged a painted nail over the tabs of manilla-leather folders.
In a deep voice which shook her poster-parchment cardigan-robe, the lady said, “My my my! What prince comes?”
“Pardon, I didn’t mean to intr-”
“Does your lordship have an appointment?”
“I came by accident. I wanted- But I’ll not waste your time.” Mr. Grey turned towards the passage of parchment curtains, which he saw now were strings of post-it notes.
“No no no. Sit down, sweet prince. Your coming was foreseen. Probably.”
Mr. Grey hadn’t really wanted to go. Not when Blackjaw and Slake might still be close. He thanked the woman and sat in the soft chanterelle stool opposite her. He said, “I should tell you, I’m not a prince.”
The woman frowned down to her goiter. “Not even a little one?” Mr. Grey shook his head. “Pity.”
“And, as I said, miss…?”
“Princes have galloped in before, you know. Kings too. Sat in the same, felty chanterelle. Made wishes of me. Wishing was still of some use in that age.”
“What I wanted to say was, you won’t find me in that cabinet. I’m not a client.”
The woman’s hand slid the drawer shut with a stone grinding. She pulled the drawer right below open, and spider-walked her long fingers over the leather folders. She laughed; from her throat, but booming like the belly variety. She said, “Treacly child! Wouldn’t you know your future?”
The mushroom chair squeaked under Mr. Grey. He did want to leave now, but courtesy kept him seated. “I’ll pass. Some other time, perhaps.”
“No great cost. Only, you must promise me the thing which has just been born in your house.”
“Again miss, I mean no offense. I think you’ve confused me. Perhaps you’ve another client? A similar mustache, or shawl?”
“Come, come, come. It is likely only your cat that’s given birth, or perhaps your dog, which litter you can part with easily.”
“Actually I lodge in a workers’ prison. I don’t think the deal applies.”
A pause. Mr. Grey saw the candle flicker and heard the fly strike the stone trapezoid. The woman’s hand stopped its folder crawling; her glasses-swollen eyes narrowed. Mr. Grey rose, and said, “I’ve taken plenty of your time. Sorry to-”
She waved him back down with a flurry and warble of her poster-parchment-clad arm. She said, “Bah, what does it matter? I will find your fortune for free.”
“But I’ve never been to this tent. Nor this whole carnival, even. I just arrived in Dreamland. Well, perhaps not ‘just’ arrived.”
The woman fanned her arms wide, indicating the whole space: the filing cabinets, an 8-ball, an advent calendar, a spinning top, a family photo, a panorama of space-personalizing knick knacks sitting atop the filing cabinets, the dingy light, the climate-controlled air. She said, “You have not guessed yet, dainty boy? ‘What is her secret art!?’ he wonders.”
“I would guess - pardon if I’m mistaken - you’re a filespex?”
The horse-headed fly whirled down through the hard ivory light. The woman swatted at it annoyedly with a wobble of her goiter. On one side, the shadow of her left arm flew across the sandstone desk and the unopened cabinets. On the other, her right pressed forward in its creep over the open drawer and leather folders. She said, “Has your fortune been told before?”
“I bid on one last auction. But not by a filespex.”
“Then you have only heard of strange tales. Of the weird seer living in the pillar of stone. She who reads the odd folders others cannot.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard that legend mentioned somewhere or other. No doubt you’ve a reputation worth the fable. But we have a resident filespex in the Change of Address Office. Which, I think, is how I actually got the knowledge.”
The woman smacked one of the leather folders onto the sandstone desk. Mr. Grey tilted back at an acute angle and nearly fell from the mushroom. She’d missed the fly, and it buzzed loudly back to the candle. The filespex left the file on the table. She said, “Here is your fortune, just inside this skin. Shall I read it?”
Mr. Grey heard a cheer from the outside push its way through the muffling curtain, as of someone winning a great prize at the games. He turned pointedly toward the exit. “Genuinely, there’s no need to trouble yourself.”
The woman pulled the folder to her face and hid most of her glasses and goiter behind it. “Before thy sixth epoch, thou shalt begin a great journey. Thou…”
She stopped reading and narrowed her eyes at him from over the folder’s top. Mr. Grey said, “Unless you measure epochs differently based on the circumstances, I am a little past my sixth. Perhaps this future-telling’s… from the past? But I don’t remember any great journeys.”
She grumbled, tossed the envelope onto the open shelf, and opened up a new one on the other side. “Many there are who come bearing an object which marks them alone. Do you have identification?”
Mr. Grey instinctively brought a hand towards his pocket, but dropped it immediately. “I- Not at the moment.”
The filespex whisked both hands over the newly opened drawer, reached the end, slid it shut, and started on another. Mr. Grey tried shifting his seat nearer the curtain, but the chanterelle’s roots dug deep in the floor.
After a moment the filespex pulled a new folder with a leather squeak. She shook her head and huffed - clearing her thoughts - and worked her face back into a mysterious, wild-eyed grin. With as deep a timbre as she could affect, which was quite deep, she said, “Here is what your future holds!”
“Alright.”
You, Harold, thirty-sixth of your name, born into…” The woman glanced at him. “Your name is Harold?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Close, perhaps? Gerald? Or Harold’s your childhood nickname?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Grey. The filespex made a gurgling sound. She tossed the folder at the fly, causing the angular light to flicker. Mr. Grey asked, “Are you sure you’re not grabbing rough draft fortunes? Or test fortunes?”
“Search for it yourself! If you’re so knowledgeable about readings. It’s no simple fetching job, you know, combing these folders.”
“No doubt; countless ages memorizing sorting algorithms.”
“And a Dragon’s Hoard™ in the college of divination.”
“I meant no offense. It’s just that the format sounds off. Compared to those I’ve seen at home.”
“Oh, and how are they formatted where you’re from?” The woman folded her arms and leaned back, her goiter bulging from her sternum.
“Normally there’s a timeframe, then content. I probably don’t need to tell you this.”
“Oh those kinds of fortunes. No, I don’t foretell those.”
She sat, silent and contemptuous, out of the angled light. Mr. Grey pulled his ticker from its pocket and made a show of checking the time. The seer, on seeing the device, leaned suddenly forward. Behind the glasses, her eye’s turned rounder and larger than ever. Mr. Grey saw her hands creeping out of the dark toward his ticker.
He put the device back in its pocket. He rose with a squeak of the mushroom seat and said, “I think that’s enough fortune telling for one day.”
The seer laced her fingers and set her arms on the sandstone table, and sighed deeply. She said, “None has yet entered this cave and left without foresight. But if you must be the first - first of so, so many! - to leave without fortune? What means have I to stop you? A humble seer who has seen too much.”
Mr. Grey remained where he was. He shifted on his feet and said, “Could you give me a quick fortune maybe? One that doesn’t need identification. Or something in the Starharbor style, generally applicable.”
The seer took the two folders she’d pulled and tapped them against the table to straighten the contents. She returned the folders to their respective shelves, and closed them with two final thuds of scraping stone, like the sealing of two heavy sarcophagi. All this she did with a brusque air. She said, “Cheap telling is what you want? It’s only bitter little lads who beg futures shrouded in mist.” Mr. Grey rubbed awkwardly at his neck. Before he could speak she went on, “This I’ll tell; there’s a girl in your future.”
She said the last part in a sarcastic way, meant to be trite. Mr. Grey dropped his hands from his neck to his pockets and turned fully back to the goiter-seer. He said, “Really? You’re sure?”
“Am I sure? Does a fowl’s yowl affect fear in phantoms?”
Mr. Grey brightened, internally. “Well, that doesn’t sound unpleasant or vague.”
She swatted at the fly while glaring at him through her thick lenses. “You need your eyes washed in dew.” She gestured over Mr. Grey’s shoulder.
Mr. Grey turned, and found Honeydew standing behind. He didn’t know how long she’d been there; she’d passed noiselessly through the parchment curtains. A cunning, smug smile overspread her cheeks. She said, “We can go now. I’m done here.”
“Reallytruly?” said Mr. Grey. “I thought you were engrossed with that dice game?”
“Did you?” She spoke with affected indifference. “Well I wasn’t. This place is too like the wheelhouse. Not to my taste. I can see all the plays.”
“I thought you’d been lured in by the prizes. And by your winning streak.”
“You shouldn’t have worried. I won their grand prize.”
She held up a giant, gaudy (albeit, valueless in treasure-based economics) golden egg.