You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
Missed the Appetizer?
See The Menu for more treats.
Mr. Grey, Tom, and Nesting-Inside-Pots leaned back from a barn-door table. The splintery wooden rectangle supported an array of empty, unmatched plates, the remains of a supper of chewy algae candy and imported beans. Mr. Grey shifted delicately into a formal posture. He didn’t trust his chair of interwoven hair combs. Tom reclined with a satisfied sigh and closed his eyes. He evinced no concern over the despairing creaks from the ceiling rafters, as they bore his weight in a shoelace hammock. Nesting-Inside-Pots, or ‘Pots’ as she said they should know her, sat cozily on a giant peach pit.
The sugary scent of the devoured meal filled Mr. Grey’s nose, alerting him of foreign odor danger. Mr. Grey reached into the pocket where he kept his antiodor cologne.
He felt no cologne bottle.
Mr. Grey instantly forgot his distrust of the hair comb chair. He shifted forward and patted desperately over his other pockets.
Tom peeled a lid back and rolled an eye over Mr. Grey. “Why do you always fidget?”
Mr. Grey turned on him; blank in expression, alarmed in motion. “I’ve lost the cologne. I’m without odor defense. We’ll have to go back...”
Tom’s single open eye narrowed. Pots interjected, her voice building to a boom that rattled silverware in the walls. “Just wash carefully. Use the water of the lake. It’ll keep you clean.”
Mr. Grey glanced around the room, searching for other sources of dangerous odor. He saw some dried mushrooms. They dangled from fat fishnet sacks above a stretched tapestry which formed the kitchen counter. Mr. Grey could almost feel the spores dancing in his lungs.
Pots yawned. “Nearly my bedtime. Let’s get down to pebble tax. On to your purpose. You came for lessons. You have your fiddle with you; let me feel its make.”
She held a wrinkly, pale palm out to Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey reached down and undid the buckles on his violin coffin with two clicks. He passed the instrument to her. She clutched it by its neck; felt along the curves of its body; rubbed a finger over the f-holes. Tom rose unexpectedly and stomped to a nearby wall. He began fiddling with a collection of old toy racing swans decorating a curtain-runner shelf. Pots didn’t seem to mind.
After rubbing her wrinkled hands all across the violin, she said, “This is nice enough. But it’s not careworn with love. It’s dusty, unused.”
Mr. Grey false-started his words a few times. “The thing is Ms. Pots, I’ve been busy with my work. There hasn’t been time.”
“No, that’s not quite right. You don’t budget for practice. This was a hobby.”
Tom tapped a finger on a hollow gourd, filling an otherwise awkward silence. Mr. Grey considered for a moment. “True, it’s not my job. But I respect the hobby. It's my most-liked sound.”
“I’m not your Wisdom. It’s not a personal thing. Your passions differ.”
Pots’ huge nose widened for a stretching yawn. She started rising from her peach pit seat. Mr. Grey said, “One more moment please. I did learn diligently, when I had the time.”
Pots sat down. “Will you quit the quill? Time tocks like it always did. What’s changed for you now?”
“Limited options. I need a treasure income. Bandits took my purse.”
“Why not pencil push? Ain’t that your chosen career? You must be gifted.”
Mr. Grey thought for a moment. Tom bought time by upsetting a bowl of glass ladybugs. “We couldn’t find work,” said Mr. Grey slowly. “But it pushed us to seek you, so it’s for the best.” Mr. Grey tried to sound enthusiastic, in his own way. The thought of sitting in a sterile Starharbor office, however; working a Clickety-Clackety-Word-Machine, surrounded by the cubicle hedge hum; that thought did appeal.
She smiled at him, wide and consoling. “Sorry to hear that. But my answer’s still ‘no sir’. I cannot teach you.” Mr. Grey readied a rebuttal but Pots went on. “This ain’t your main flame, and I won’t force it to be. You’d get resentful.”
The peach rolled away from Pots as she stood. Her bent spine cracked. Mr. Grey rose from his own precarious perch. Indignation rushed to his head. He said, “I think that’s hasty. I enjoyed playing before, I just got busy. Now there’s fresh motive. I’m not just interested; I need to learn it.”
Pots had angled her ears to better hear this new case. When Mr. Grey finished, she ambled around the barn-door table and stood before him in a dignified hunch. Mr. Grey resisted the urge to lean away. He stood motionless as she brought a single chalky hand up to his face. He thought for a moment she meant to twist his nose or flick his forehead. She only patted his shoulder.
“Let me ask you this; What’s your special enchantment? What’s your signature?” Her growing echo-voice boomed over Mr. Grey’s face and shook his ears.
Mr. Grey brushed his robes and became interested in a shrunken peacoat decorating a wall. “I’m not sure, per se… I haven’t decided yet. I’m sure yours is grand,” he added, attempting to divert Pots from further questions. Mr. Grey wasn’t sure what she meant by ‘special enchantment’.
Pots wasn’t diverted. “Passion makes power, at least for a performer. It takes high treasures. And perfect moments. The enchantments are grandest, from shows of that kind,” Her voice took on a firm and proud tone and she unbent a little. “Mine’s on the water. I send up the memories. For Oh Well patrons.”
Mr. Grey’s face was stone. Pots went on, “The Well’s voice is mine. The Well’s moss becomes my skin. My soul’s in the Well.” She patted him again on the shoulder. “You’d get one someday. But you’d need the full passion. And to loosen up.” The eyeless witch bumped Mr. Grey’s shoulder with her thin hand. She smiled widely in his face. Her breath smelled of mushrooms.
Mr. Grey said, “Would that win contests? If I learned my own, I mean. That’s our final goal.”
Pots did her best old lady cackle. Her voice’s accelerating echo transformed it into the high, maniacal laughter of a mastermind in their cavernous lair, albeit without the evil flavor. “That’s your only chance. Contests aren’t won with rough work. It takes real effort.”
Pots clapped Mr. Grey on both his shoulders, then turned and shuffled towards a curtain of Wind chimes which separated her bedroom. “I’d search through the towns,” she said. “You’ll find a better teacher. I’m an old recluse.” Mr. Grey unhinged his mouth to object, but Pots again went on. “You’re welcome tonight. I’ll reel you up come morning. Kids need that often.”
Just then Tom accidentally dislodged the curtain-runner shelf from the wall made of weapons. The knick-knack collection crashed across the Tupperware-tile floor. Mr. Grey feared an outburst of witchy enchantment, but Pots only grumbled about Tom’s clumsiness. She shuffled over to help sort the mess.
While the two of them set the shelf right, Mr. Grey stood beside his chair of combs. He pondered. To his own surprise Mr. Grey felt disappointed that the eyeless, cave-lake-dwelling, old crone wasn’t going to be his tutor. He tugged distractedly at the anchor shawl and looked over his violin. He’d left it sitting unplayed for so many ages, back in his workers’ prison cell, that it’s surface had gathered a dusty fur.
But Pots had rubbed the dust away with her inspection. Now the steel strings and the polished wood of the top plate shone with a primal zeal; like a gleam in the eyes of a hunting cat.
Mr. Grey tightened his shawl and set his hands at his sides.
When the mishmash of knick-knacks had been reassembled and Pots was dusting off her cathair robe, Mr. Grey turned to her. He spoke in his most formal way. “Excuse me Ms. Pots. I wish to ask one more time; please teach me to play. I know that I’m new, and not the perfect student. But I’d like to learn. I feel slightly lost, and out-of-my-element, since we disembarked. Fiddling could help me. It would occupy my thoughts. You’d have all my thanks. And I’d repay you. Have you any parchmentwork, or taxes to file?”
Pots clapped her hands (they did not reverse echo). She bustled through the curtain of chimes, making it tinkle cheerily. Mr. Grey and Tom glanced at one another. They heard boxes shifting and scraping in the next room.
Presently the witch returned, setting off the curtain’s chime again, carrying an enormous cardboard cube. She huffed it across the room and slammed it onto the barn-door table. She removed the lid, revealing enormous stacks of legal documents. Mr. Grey recognized them as incorrectly filed taxes, accumulated over eons.
Pots explained that they could start lessons - and tax corrections - tomorrow morning.
Far above them, The Wind that Smelled like Rain let fall heavy tears. The downpour came in sideways sheets, striking the inside of the well. It dripped and slithered and dropped along the long stone walls. It passed the blind Hyoshigi-raven. When it reached the subterranean chamber where Mr. Grey would take his violin lessons from the eyeless Pots, it struck the lake with light, echoing splashes.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
Still hungry? See The Menu.