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“You work in an office, right?” said Honeydew. “This should be simple.”
Mr. Grey stared expressionlessly over the inert sprawl of cranes and cubicles. He said, “Normally they move.”
“You… work in this place?” asked Tom. His eyes climbed up the jumbled cube piles, like letter blocks left out in play. He wore a mixed face of wonder and fear. He added, “Actually, that makes sense.”
Tom’s lantern shed the only light in the room; a struggling shine of dandelion-petal rays, populated with fish shadows. Even with the hedge lying motionless; with the heavy cubicles of fired ceramic left in a haphazard, stacked, sprawling mess on the office floor; with its cranes reaching out overhead, joining their skeleton-shadows with Tom’s fish on the vaulted stone ceiling; with the curtains of old man’s beard dangling from those same cranes, like the webs of old man spiders; with its hollow half-walls rebounding the clickety clacking, not of word machines, but of pursuing lobster monsters; even with these subtle regional considerations, Mr. Grey felt a pang of homesickness in The Lost City of Fountains’s Change of Address Department Cubicle Hedge.
He thought fondly back to his homely cubicle, with its smooth metal pusher’s desk, and the particle-board wall which Jodee’s foot had punctured. He remembered his boss, Jack York. How Jack York roared like a beast in that hedge! He recalled, with odd feelings of thirst and warmth, the sloshing of Jack York’s shaker. He then thought of Jack York’s letter to him in the Defense Force prison. Of Jack York’s friend… Pollo? Was that his name? Perhaps Pollo too, like Mr. York, had lost himself a hedge. Mr. Grey angled his neck and listened. He tried to pick out some similar sloshing, some familiar roaring.
He only heard clicking - lobster legs following them up the stone steps. Honeydew added a click of her own. She uncrossed her arms and said, “Where to from here?”
Mr. Grey said, “If it’s a kindred layout, we’ll find a stairwell. On the other side.”
“I don’t understand. Why’d we go upstairs to reach a back exit? Is it a fire escape?”
“We have to ascend, then take another stair down. It’s meant-”
“That’s stupid.”
“We should kick the dust,” said Tom. He’d regained some of the breath stolen by their dash through the streets and their march up many flights. He looked back at the dark threshold arch of the stairs. Not just their clicking steps, but also the gurgles of the giant crustaceans, came rumbling through the hole.
Honeydew said, “So, we navigate this maze? Should be easy.”
Mr. Grey said, “It’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean? This is your thing.”
“As I said before, it normally moves.”
“Then this’ll be easy. We just take all lefts.”
“And normally there aren’t crabs,” Mr. Grey mused. “Pursuing behind.”
“Forget it, I’ll lead,” Honeydew stepped toward the nearest gap in the ceramic walls.
A light flickered on overhead and a voice whined down at them. “Pause! Consider with great care, delightful young… young… What’s that name again Blackjaw?”
Another voice barked, “Honeydew, Slake.”
“Ho-ney-dewwwwwww. Yes! That’s the lovely young miss accompany Mr. Grey on his fortune-starved tour.”
Honeydew, Tom, and Mr. Grey looked up to their left at the domed ceiling. A glass bubble adhered to the stony surface, an overseer’s office. It clung on the ceiling with iron, spiderlike legs. A lone lantern tossed filmy light from within. The light cast two silhouettes; the taller slick-haired shape of Slake, and the stocky, sharp-sideburned one of Blackjaw. The dark of their robes and backlight of the lantern turned them into flat, one-tone outlines on the glass bubble. The only distinguished feature was the pales of their sharp, smiling teeth, and the occasional glint off their round, gazing sunglasses.
Mr. Grey saw, between the two, the thin shadow of a short pole. Blackjaw and Slake each had silhouette fingers wrapped around the handle of a lever.
Honeydew’s voice vibrated among the abandoned cubicles. “Right now? We don’t have time-”
Slake’s whining vibrato cut her sharp one short. “No time to think of one’s future?! Now in all my epochs as a finder, that is the most shortsighted statement I’ve ever heard uttered. Don’t you agree, Blackjaw?”
Blackjaw’s bark rattled the ceramic. “Asking for disaster.”
“When all future trials and troubles might be circumvented by way of simple signature.”
Honeydew stepped towards the hedge again, but Blackjaw stopped her. “Not so fast!”
Slake added, “Excitable actions will incur exceptional consequences, miss Honeydew. Unfortunately, our hands quiver holding aught but contract and quill. None of us here wants to bring into existence all this archaic machinery!”
“Keep your head,” suggested Blackjaw.
Honeydew sanded a heel on the stone floor. She and Tom glanced back at the dark arch, where the sharp clacking and crustaceous breathing rumbled louder and louder, closer and closer. Mr. Grey stared steadily at the shadows on the bubble. He said, “What are you proposing, sirs?”
Honeydew turned a sharp and annoyed look on Mr. Grey. Blackjaw and Slake barked a short, unison, yipping laugh. Then Slake said, “I do love to hear such fine words from a prospect’s sweet lips. Don’t you, Blackjaw?”
“Sense-talking, point-reaching,” said Blackjaw.
“We propose to lighten your loads, Mr. Grey, Mr. Tom, Miss Honeydew. Ease your burdens - not just financially, goodness no! - but burdens of every character. All you need do is scrawl your name on a few dozen inconsequential pieces of parchment.”
“Generous terms.”
“Gen-er-ous in-deed! Why, just think what you might have spared yourselves, with some financial security? You might have employed a better guide. You might have passed the dreary desert dunes in comfort, aboard an environmentally friendly steam-swan, instead of spending your night in a mummy’s wraps. Oh yes, don’t let surprise take you so, Miss Honeydew. We keep a tender eye on all our prospects.”
“No missed opportunities.”
“You might have already uncovered this legendary Lure. You might have bought an enchanter’s service to drop you right in before it. Ensured your quest’s success! And if you had found it? Why, it’d surely sell for thrice the amount of any loans taken in the venture. And if you hadn’t? Well as it tickles dear Blackjaw to say, ‘terms are generous.’”
“Low interest.”
“So take a load off your mind, a pen in your hand, and sign a finders’ loan today, with…”
“Blackjaw…”
“And Slake...”
“Finders for Hire!” They finished in unison.
All through Slake and Blackjaw’s whining, barking, coaxing pitch, the clamber of monsters coming up the steps echoed among the ceramic hedge cubes. Mr. Grey could now pick out the individual heavy taps of their legs on the stone. The leading creatures could only be a flight or two down. They might at any moment burst forth from the shadowed stairwell arch. Honeydew ground the floor with both heels now. She looked between Mr. Grey and the two silhouettes with their hands on the lever.
Mr. Grey, despite all this, spoke evenly. “That’s all very well, gentlemen. But I’d like to hear, in plain words, the offer as regards the lever you hold.” Honeydew’s eyes shone at Mr. Grey with bright rage and glossy wonder.
Slake said, “As if our terms could possibly be plainer. Sweet Mr. Grey, it’s simple as… as…”
“Sign contract, ease passage,” said Blackjaw.
Two gleaming smiles shone from the two dark shapes in the bubble. Mr. Grey only folded his arms and looked on steadily. His face looked carved from the stone floor on which he stood.
Blackjaw and Slake gazed down. Mr. Grey stared up. A blinking contest - a surefire victory for Mr. Grey - began.
Honeydew, however, lost her last vestige of patience. She grabbed Mr. Grey’s anchor shawl and tugged him. She meant to navigate the maze even if Blackjaw and Slake intervened.
Honeydew’s pull unraveled Mr. Grey’s anchor wrap. It fell away. What remained was Mr. Grey in his truest aspect.
The room shook. Tom trembled. Honeydew stopped short and stared. The shadows of Blackjaw and Slake quivered, suddenly uncertain. Even the clacking from the stairs paused; as though the climbing monsters, though they couldn’t see it, sensed a grey eminence.
There stood Mr. Grey. Stoicism unfiltered. Existence cast in stone. What use were words, or contracts, or even lobster claws, against unyielding stone? Stone had neither give nor pity. Stone could not be bargained with. There could be no covenants between finders and stone; rock and lobsters could never be of one mind.
For many tocks - slow tocks, when even the ticker hesitated to move at such unwavering patience - the room shuddered around Mr. Grey. And Mr. Grey stared at Blackjaw and Slake. Arms folded. Waiting.
After an eternity’s passage, Slake spoke. “Well, then… plain terms. If you sign a contract… and pay Bugwitch’s debt… we won’t pull this lever.”
“Nothing… can’t be… plainer,” added Blackjaw with a struggle.
Mr. Grey, mercifully, nodded. “Thank you sirs. We decline.”
Blackjaw and Slake pulled the lever.
A new sound rumbled in the hedge. The waking roar of an ancient, colossal, long-slumbering dragon engine kicked up across the inert ceramic. Dust and fern vines fell from the old wooden cranes. They creaked and swayed. The first cubicles, the ones caught in the crane’s claws when the long slumber began, scraped awake. The great ceramic cubicle hedge, deep within The Lost City of Fountains, stirred.
The lobster monsters roused themselves as well. A pair appeared under the dark arch, followed by more crustaceous shades. Tom hefted his mallet. Honeydew groaned and readied a shoulder. Blackjaw and Slake brightly grinned.
Mr. Grey turned to his two companions. “Oh it’s no trouble,” he said. He nodded towards the newest opening in the hedge. “We should probably head in.”
“But it’s in motion,” said Honeydew. She jerked a shoulder at the charging monsters. “And they’ll follow us.”
“It’s easier now, for me anyway. I think I can lead us through.” Mr. Grey stepped towards the hedge. Blackjaw and Slake’s grins flickered. Mr. Grey added, “And the crab creatures; they’ll get lost inside.”
Tom and Honeydew followed Mr. Grey into the hedge.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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