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Time poured forth…
For Mr. Grey…
To be frank, time poured forth in a dull way with Mr. Grey. Not dull for Mr. Grey himself. After all, how could time pass dully when one is caught between the twin interests of fiddling and pencil-pushery? Mr. Grey spent his fiddling time practicing scales, and playing many accidental notes, and playing some intentional ones. He spent his pushery time correcting tax forms. This is all to say that the way Mr. Grey spent his time makes for a boring story.
We’ll skip Mr. Grey’s training. He isn’t running up steps, or flowing through the ornate and delicate stages of a dance. Mr. Grey is running over the same notes, and flowing through the ornate and delicate pages of Pots’ Deductions Declaration.
“But wait!” you may say, reader who has persisted thus far. “Am I expected to lay this account back on the shelf from which I took it? To wait until sufficient time has passed for Mr. Grey to finish his training and Pots’ taxes?”
No.
Through perspective, we take flight from Mr. Grey’s angular shoulder. Our view hurtles through Pot’s portrait door and up the long darkness of the Oh Well. It hurtles with such speed that only one clapping cycle of the flightless old raven taps against our ears, before we leave that tunnel-king alone in his tunnel-castle. The rugged ridges and discarded treasure slide by unseen in the dark. We jump from the Oh Well’s marble mouth, back into light - but a glowering light it is! - and the unfurled air of a stormcloud day. We soar into the sky. We glide in reverse over the landscape’s tablecloth of four-leafed-lilies, striated by vintage veins. We pass lumpy hills of chicktails and gorse. We pass polka-dot lakes of pinot grigio and pinot noir. Finally, the thatched roofs and stretched leather walls of Toscamo sprout into view below. Our perspective plummets, and we land unceremoniously upon a new shoulder.
Honeydew’s.
Honeydew swatted a fat water globule which attacked her shoulder after massing on the pigskin umbrella-hat. With shrewd eyes she surveyed the hosts of raindrops swarming over Toscamo.
The Wind that Smelled like Rain had dredged this downpour from many pools of wine, separating the water from the alcohol. The Wind had carried the rain in her clouds and - being of a flighty character, with shifting fancies - had abandoned it. Now the rainclouds loomed over Toscamo.
Endless ranks of liquid-glass soldiers formed ranks as sleepy sheets of water. Some of the water landed in bowls and buckets and pots. The fallen-soldier raindrops would later be consumed or used in robe washing. Some of it crashed against reed-umbrellas floating above the pedestrian’s heads. Most of the water simply splashed onto the roofs and roads. All of it would eventually flow down and out and away from Toscamo. It would slip beneath the surface of ponds and rivers and lakes. It would ferment with coral candy. In the end, once again, it would be wine.
Honeydew searched between the swarms of falling raindrops. She looked past the drifting tops of the reed umbrellas. Her shining, oil-spill eyes - still carrying that hot sunlight reflection despite the overcast day - settled on her quarry.
An empty wheelbarrow-cart plied the pedestrian traffic, defended from the rain by a large reed roof. A burly man with muscly arms (and a stoat-ish set of sideburns) pushed it.
Honeydew flagged the cart pusher. She climbed into the upholstered tray of the wheelbarrow, took off and folded her pigskin hat, and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Where you riding, Miss?” asked the cart-pusher when Honeydew had wriggled herself comfortable.
“That’s a fair question. Got a busy day to host,” she said. She spoke the local dialect, having learned it in a few days. “Start with Where-the-Foxes-Skulk. Can your legs push fast?”
“Faster than a swooping bird,” said the enthusiastic cart-pusher. He stated the cost. The moment Honeydew transferred the handful of shiny pebbles from her own purse to his, the man heaved to. He entered the hissing rain and flowing traffic like a war galley into a fleet of canoes. His pumping quads moved like pistons. His cart rolled wildly, weaving through pedestrians, heedless of the road’s watery slick.
Honeydew and the cart pushers traveled to the tune of falling rain and the occasional rattle of the barrow’s wheel across a stony section of road.
“Been in town long, Miss?” asked the driver.
“For a few days now,” answered Honeydew.
“I thought ‘that’s the case’, when I saw you standing there. Your robe betrayed you.”
Honeydew glanced at her robe, patterned in sunflower-eyes, cut in the longer, sleeker Starharbor style. “I’ll buy a local one soon. I’m keen on your style.”
“That your mission in this wet?”
“I’m on a job prowl. Any chance you know of work?”
The pusher veered around a puddle. Honeydew held tight to the barrow’s rim and grimaced. The pusher apologized, then said, “You don’t mean that though! You don’t look a hard-up sort.”
“It’s not for me - click,” she said snappishly.
The cart pusher sensed he’d asked something irritating. He let the rest of the trip pass without conversation. He knew to walk on eggshells for a patron with a busy day.
Honeydew felt that every street they entered ran thick with traffic. Her cart twisted through alleys crowded with idling strollers and playing children, or slugged up sloping byways in a snail-race with other cart pushers.
The wheelbarrow whispered to Honeydew when they reached Where-the-Foxes-Skulk. It let her know by the way the wheel rolled softly over pliant grass, instead of jolting her through the thin upholstery at every pothole. Here, the most opulent homes and shops in Toscamo - fabricated from the richest stretched leather and poetree wood, and roofed in clay shingles instead of thatch - crowded in idyllic harmony. True, the distinction between these homes and the surrounding boroughs was lesser than between Starharbor’s stilt-houses and its slums. Honeydew’s eyes, wide notwithstanding, climbed the pagoda-like homes; where the rain dropped in boisterous cataracts from sloping roof onto sloping roof.
Her eyes jumped next to warmly glowing, lantern-lit storefronts. Tailors displayed fine silk and velvet robes. Chocolateries unleashed clouds of sweet, syrupy thickness on innocent passersby.
Honeydew willed her eyes away at each juncture. These enticements appealed to her tastes. But they had to be earned. Honeydew only wanted fine things when they resulted from worthy effort. Honeydew’s priority now was making treasure. For herself. And for Mr. Grey.
Honeydew waited until they reached the front of a lavish Toscamo hotel. Then she had the cart pusher halt. The sliding windows and doorways of the building shed a comfortable glow into the sodden day. It sat atop a wooden platform. This in turn sat atop a small hill, surrounded by a moat of mixed water-and-wine. An arching bridge of curly, filigreed wood gave access to a wooden pair of doors, carved with symbols of pillows and laced in ivy. Honeydew told the obliging cart pusher to wait. She donned her pigskin hat and prowled across the bridge.
The pusher wasn’t long under the rain. Only two other wheelbarrows rolled by him - with secret signs of the trade shared at each passing - before the sunflower robe and its wearer reappeared in the hotel’s doorway. The rain bounced off her umbrella hat as Honeydew returned to the cart.
“What’s the order, Miss?” asked the cart pusher. He rubbed his calves.
Honeydew pulled some shiny pebbles from her treasure purse and grumbled. “No fortune in there. Take me Where-the-Banner-Rests. It’s my next target.”
“A feather then, Miss. Streets are congested today.”
Honeydew grumbled but returned the pebbles to her purse and drew a feather. “Take the faster routes; I’ll find scenes on my own time.”
“Faster than cattle,” said the cart pusher. (The cart pusher considered all creatures with an amble faster than his own to be a species of rocket.)
They shuttled on once more, through a rain so thick they might have gone by butterfly stroke. Honeydew called out course correction from her hunched seat in the bucket. The pusher had an irritating habit of traveling the roads most congested with slow-moving grandfathers, or mother geese crossing the street with adolescent gaggles.
“So what were your chiefest gripes? Back at that hotel?” asked the cart pusher. He spoke in a jovial tone. Neither the rain nor Honeydew’s reproach upset his mood.
“They wanted a chef,” said Honeydew curtly.
“Not one for cooking?”
“There’s no bean dishes. It’s all gummies or toffee.”
“Our candy’s not for all kinds.” The man laughed at some private joke. Honeydew gave a single, keen, terse click. They resumed a steady silence.
Twice more the driver deposited Honeydew before sites of potential employment. The first was a crumbling tower of worm-eaten wood and ragged leather walls. The roof leaked, and the residents hid behind low-lit doors. Honeydew walked away from that job as well. Not because of the dilapidated conditions, but because the tower’s industry was licorice stretching. The second time the driver stopped Honeydew didn’t bother disembarking. She’d come to a burg named ‘Where-the-Iron-Hooks’. She’d expected a meatpacking district. Honeydew did not quiver at hard labor. The cart pusher, however, had taken her to the wharf. She sat before a coral-candy farm, a fishery abutting one of the long wooden docks stretching into the pale lake of wine.
“Every job relates to food,” Honeydew complained. She told her driver to move on, after paying a fourth, and still greater, fare. “It’s all for candy.”
The cart pusher said, “We’ll be serving beans soonish.” He veered the cart into a herd of wine cows before Honeydew could direct him otherwise.
She clicked long and slow, like a resigned sigh, and leaned back in the bucket. “How long is ‘soonish’?”
“Just planted ‘em recently. But they’ll shoot up fast, that’s what Miss Coats said.”
“Who?” asked Honeydew. She sat up suddenly and twisted in the bucket to face the pusher. He wrinkled his brow and shrugged, tilting the barrow. “Who said they’d grow fast?” she elaborated.
“Why, Jodee Coats, Miss.”
“How’d you chance upon that name?”
“Same chance as others. She’s famous around these parts! Came through epochs back, and changed tradition.”
“Which ‘tradition’ did she change?”
“Wasn’t enough food, but she solved the issue’s heart. Motivated folks. We dug our gardens, and traded flowers for beans. Now we’ll have plenty.”
Honeydew faced forward. She let off half a quiet click - confusion. It astounded her that Mr. Grey’s ‘vacation job’ - his weird obsession, she’d thought - had made actual waves since fleeing Starharbor.
“It’s not all perfect,” the cart pusher went on. “The city don’t smell as nice. There’s more odor bites. But in general, I’m for the extra bean meals.”
“Where’s Jodee Coats now?” asked Honeydew.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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