She frowned and tipped her head to the side. “Puzzled?”
“Are you sure you need me?”
She laughed. “Of course I do. Prom season is less than six months away.”
I wasn’t so sure I believed her and opened my mouth to say so, but she went on.
“It will be nice to have another person to share the living space. We have three bedrooms at the back. Each one with its own a small kitchenette, though, we have a professional kitchen in the main living space, next to the formal dining room.” She winked. “They have doors. We like privacy when we sleep, no?”
Her home wasn’t the tiny, cramped space I expected. I had been invited to live in a hidden palace, and I didn’t know how to react.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not very.”
She swept toward the middle of the living space. “Of course you are.”
“No, I don’t need a fuss.”
“Follow me, love. Traveling makes famished all who partake.”
My grandmother’s poise and posture gave me the impression that she could be a queen banished from her home. She glided through the room as though she had books balanced on the top of her head.
Nobody I knew walked that way, except models on the runway.
Maybe she was ex-royalty on the run, and that’s why grandmother had settled in Paris, Texas, to sell fancy clothes.
2
The One
Principe
“I can be naked as long as I’m wearing the right pair of shoes.”
– Anna Dello Russo
THE FIRST TIME I SAW her, I knew she was the one.
I didn’t know she was the one because of my own intuition on the matter, but by the way my uncle muttered to himself after she moved past our shop window.
When I stepped inside the shop, Uncle stared through the nearest window at the young lady that peered in, transfixed by the lovely, kind face on the other side of the glass. She lingered.
I shuddered. His lips moved but no sound came out. But, as the lowly shop slave, I could only watch with horror as a plan formed in his mind.
The attractive young lady had been sunshine on two feet as she handed me the key to Mouston. Her fingertips grazed mine. The sensation jolted me, an unexpected joy in the middle of a lifetime of drear. When she grinned, her eyes smiled, too. Nothing like Uncle.
If I kept my chin down, nobody noticed me. But she had, and she returned the one precious thing I owned. Ainsworth had gifted it to me when I brought medical supplies after a cat attack. We both wished then we would both find a way to be free of Uncle and those cursed shoes.
How her being chosen saddened me. My heart twisted in my chest, and I jabbed the edge of the broom beneath the counter, crowned with evil crystal shoes.
The shoes chose her, and they spoke to him. So he said. As lowly shop help, I never heard the speaking soles. I never wanted to. I’d seen the bones in the basement. The young woman would join the others in the sarcophagus.
My stomach churned as I swept behind the counter for the third time, hiding my upset by keeping my face pointed at the ground.
I grabbed my broom and pulled it across the ground. I didn’t know how to stop what came next. Cleaning, I knew; evil symbiotic footwear, I didn’t.
“Easy, Principe,” my uncle murmured, stopping in front of the glass box that held the cursed crystal shoes.
He never asked me to clean those. That remained his responsibility alone. He didn’t let me touch the magic shoes. I could never tell whether he meant to protect the shoes from me or protect me from the shoes.
The man didn’t respond to me. Rotund at an average height, Uncle featured in my earliest memories, yet wasn’t related to me. Fifteen years earlier, he’d found me in the alley behind his shop, rifling through his dumpster.
With a chuckle, he had invited me inside. “Come in, Principe.”
He fashioned a small room beneath the stairs that led to his apartments. He gave me tasks and fed me only when they had been completed. As a child, I knew his fist more often than his kind words. He named me Prince in Italian, his native tongue, yet treated me as a slave. We guessed my age at twenty-two, but neither of us could be sure.
“Yes, yes, I know. I know,” Uncle muttered, pacing from one side of the store to the other. “I will see what can be done. Who is she, Principe?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she is related to the woman next door?”
Uncle scowled. “The French woman?”
“Yes. I know she has family that live far away.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sometimes we bump into one another at the dumpster.”
Uncle whirled on me, his voice threatening. “Do you talk to her, Principe?”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Dark things happened in The Godfather’s Closet. But I owed him my life, and no one would believe the stories I could tell of shadows and magic. I swept harder.
“Well, Principe?”
I shook my head, guiding a non-existent pile of dirt into the dustpan. “No, Uncle.”
He let the silence stretch. “Very good.”
“Is my work satisfactory, Uncle?”
Uncle paused to glance at the floor. A long-suffering sigh rolled out of him. “No, do it again, Principe. It must be clean.”
I began again, wishing I could warn the young woman about the magic of the shoes.
She had loitered in front of our shop, her eyeballs glued to her smartphone, frowning at something on the screen. She was dressed in a green retro shirtdress and horrid beige flats. Paris bustled on behind her, a blue sky overhead. I nearly dismissed her as just another girl in the city.
Then she glanced up and tucked a strand of platinum hair behind her ear. Sunshine danced in her pale tresses. She kicked off one of her shoes and rubbed the top her foot against the opposite calf, and Uncle’s eyes glittered. Even through the glass, it had been obvious.
That’s when I knew. She had been marked.
She didn’t need to be “the one.” But, when she tipped her chin up, her guileless smile glimmered like a beacon. Her eyes widened slightly when she caught sight of the cursed crystal shoes, and I knew she would give in like the others had.
Uncle’s breath left him in a shuddering, almost unhappy sigh, and he took a seat in an upholstered chair near the fireplace.
He steepled his fingers, already scheming how to get her into his shop. “She’s the one, Principe. The shoes have proclaimed it.”
“Yes, Uncle,” I answered. Sometimes I believed he wasn’t an accomplice but somehow forced to obey the evil that bound the shoes.
The bell on the front door jangled as a local businessman entered and took a deep breath, no doubt enjoying the leathery scent emanating from the dozen candles we kept lit to cover the smell of the workshop. Instead, each customer believed it came from the leather we carried in the storage rooms, and Uncle never showed them the shop in the back.
Uncle climbed to his feet and lumbered from behind the counter around to the front. The customer scanned our narrow shop, taking in the cut fabric and chalk lines.
The customer raised an eyebrow as though surprised by all of it. His reaction mirrored every other modern man that entered. They didn’t know what to think of a tailor that still made suits the way they had been made over a century ago.
Uncle’s next words boomed loudly as they always did. “Welcome, welcome to the finest men’s clothier in the state. How can we help you today, sir?”
Uncle flourished his movements like a great circus ringmaster. He led the customer into the sitting room to explain why The Godfather’s Closet prices made sense for an up-and-coming wealthy man. The customer lost himself to the well-practiced show.
I leaned my broom against the corner. Uncle would be busy for at least two hours, and I needed to check on the progress of the latest order. I slipped out through the leather strips that separated the front of the store from the world in the back and into the world hi
dden from the public. No customer could see into the back of the store.
I glanced over my shoulder to check I hadn’t been followed. Uncle’s warnings circled in my thoughts. “One cannot be too careful, Principe. People would not understand.”
Seeing no one, I crossed to the bookshelf at the back of the storeroom. Metal clicked against metal as I drew a fragile copy of The Ash-Tree Girl from the bottom shelf. I pressed the nose on the bust of someone Uncle had called Charles Perrault.
Inside the walls, mechanics groaned and the floor shuddered. A mighty whoosh echoed in the room as the soundproof seal released, and the bookshelf creaked toward me, belching dust across the floor. Inside, high-pitched voices sang in harmony.
I entered the hidden passageway and pulled the bookshelf closed behind me.
Unable to see anything more than shadows and darker shadows, I followed the melody downward toward the hidden basement, drawing my fingers along the stone wall. At the end, I rounded the corner and stepped into a cavernous workspace and warehouse.
Hundreds of mice scurried this way and that across the ancient stone floor. Some carried needles and thread, chittering to one another as they worked. Teams of others positioned paper patterns against fabrics that would become suits for the upscale businessmen of Paris, Texas.
To the left, little, furry bodies darted up and down mannequins that wore those almost-completed suits. Ainsworth should be conducting quality-control inspections at the end of the production line. I took a step without looking, and somebody squeaked. I’d inadvertently cut in front of a line of hardworking mice.
I lifted my foot and took a step backward. “I beg your pardon. Please go ahead.”
A chorus of ‘thank you, sir’s answered as the line of workers went through in a long line to go about their work. Once they passed by, I angled toward the copse of standing mannequins. Each one wore a suit of a different color, in various stages of assembly, huddled together like planted trees.
I paused beside a tall set of mouse-sized stairs that led up to a platform, level with my shoulder. A tasseled rope stretched from a bell on the ceiling. “Reports, Mr. Ainsworth?”
A hush fell over the workers, but none stopped their assignments.
A moment later, a larger mouse darted up the stairs and stopped on the platform. He settled on his back legs, adjusted his spectacles, and then bowed.
“Ah, Mr. Ainsworth. There you are.” I spoke with more authority than I ever held in the front of the shop.
“Good day, Principe.”
“I’ve come for the daily.”
Ainsworth’s tiny cheeks pinched in a smile. He clasped his hands in front of himself. “You will be pleased.”
“Oh?”
“By all counts, we are ahead of schedule.”
“Good. Uncle will be relieved to hear that. He’s procuring a new order now. I expect he will convince the man to refit his wardrobe. The order will be large.”
Ainsworth nodded. “We will be ready.”
“I will have your rations sent down the dumbwaiter as soon as I am able, with extra besides.”
“You are a prince among men.”
A prince among mice, I thought.
I wanted to sling the words at him, but then I would offend the character of the single individual that I hoped to live up to someday. So, instead of complaint, I said nothing.
Ainsworth adjusted his spectacles. “What troubles you, Principe?”
I considered what words I might say, but what use was it to go over our plight once more? What could he do? What could I do? We were both trapped in a mess not of our making, bound by a magic we didn’t control.
I waved away his concern. “Nothing.”
His nose twitched and his whiskers quivered in the way they did when he spotted a miss-sewn seam. “I think you forget that we have worked together for more than a decade, Principe.” He paused. “What troubles you?”
I let the silence stretch.
He waited.
I scrubbed my hand over my eyes. “There is a girl.” The words burst out of me.
“What does that matter?”
“Uncle let the truth about the identities of the bones slip once... during a fever.”
Ainsworth quavered.
“I’ve seen the bones of his wife and stepdaughters. I searched for a year, and I found the names of all the others in Uncle’s secret journal. As far as I know, it’s been at least fifteen years since they’ve consumed anyone. They must be ravenous.”
He sighed, a breath longer than the length of his mouse-y body. “But you’re certain the shoes have fallen in love?”
“Uncle said so. He’s worked himself nearly into a fit.”
Ainsworth sighed. “It will be our first time to observe the process. I haven’t seen it myself. Only heard of it from my grandfather.”
My shoulders drooped. “There’s only one way to beat the evil. That’s what it said in the back of the journal.”
Ainsworth tugged the tassel that hung beside him, and a bell on the ceiling tolled. The work force froze to listen.
“Ten-minute break, everyone,” he squeaked down from his platform.
A rush of employees moved from their tasks and spread over the mouse park situated in the corner, near the front of the stacks of living quarters at the back. Inside the lower levels of Uncle’s store, a flood of brown mouse bodies moved as one.
Ainsworth waved at me, pointing to my hand.
I offered my palm, and he leapt from the platform. He tapped my thumb. “Come, let’s take a seat in the corner.”
We crossed to the only piece of furniture large enough for me to sit on. He nudged my thumb again, and I lowered him to the floor.
We didn’t speak again until the workforce lingered in the tiny park in front of the apartments. The miniature, hidden world thrilled me, but no one would ever see it. No other but me.
Ainsworth scurried up my chair and settled on the arm. “It’s not your fault.”
I shook my head and drummed my fingers on the other armrest. “We know how it will end. If I do nothing, she will wither and die before her time. What a horrible waste of life. Doesn’t that make me responsible?”
He crossed his arms and leaned back, stroking his whiskers as he considered me.
I frowned at him. “What?”
“Would you do something if you could?”
“Of course.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Absolutely. I would save her if I could.”
Ainsworth glanced over his shoulder first one way and then the other. “Then I have a plan.”
I leaned forward. “What do I have to do?”
3
Glimpse
Cindi
“Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”
– Marilyn Monroe
CAREFULLY, I STACKED the breakfast china and moved it from the small table into the kitchen, thinking of the way the gorgeous shoes had sparkled. Surely, the sparkle had been a trick of the light. I shook my head.
When Mémère caught a glimpse of me eating toast off of a paper towel earlier, she gasped and clutched at her Victorian collar. Her bustle trembled more violently than she did.
Then she insisted that we eat a full breakfast off of the fine china, proclaiming my first day in Paris a holiday and worthy of dragging out the real stuff. She pulled the ready-made three-course meal from the refrigerator, brioche and sausage somehow still hot. The woman had all sorts of tricks up her sleeves.
Now she twirled around the domicile, singing French lullabies to her plants as she watered them. I scowled after her. She didn’t have any trouble getting around, but the woman wasn’t altogether “there.”
She rotated by, and I stared, unable to figure her out.
“Stodgy is as stodgy does, dear.” She sing-songed the words as she moved across my path. She whirled back the other way, giving no thought to efficiency of movement.
I couldn’t meet her gaze so
I studied my toes. She always seemed to know what I was thinking.
Still, she danced and sang her way through her chores, as though she didn’t care what anybody thought. Was this the first sign? Could she be losing her grasp on reality? I turned back to the sink and opened the small window over it to let the cool air in through the screen.
A blue bird tweeted in the Magnolia tree outside as the clouds lazed by. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Something sweet scented the breeze, and I didn’t miss the mind-numbing traffic noise from San Francisco.
Maybe I’m churlish.
The grown-ups I knew acted, well, like grown-ups. My roommate in San Francisco took herself too seriously, and singing while twirling through plant-watering was frowned upon. Foolishness wasn’t to be tolerated on the path to success. Nobody had time for everyday sorts of magic.
Gus hopped up onto the counter and strolled from one end to the other, checking the dishes for interesting remnants. His tail flicked from one side to the other; his irritation over our move still as obvious as it had been the day before.
I filled his food and water dishes, then scooped him into my arms and scrubbed behind his ears. “I know, sweets. It’s not what we’re used to.”
He rubbed his head along my chin and started purring.
“We can figure it out, though, can’t we?”
He purred some more before jumping back to the counter and down to the floor. The sound of his crunching filled the kitchen.
I lowered the short stack of dishes into the sink. “Should I wash these, Mémère?”
“No, dear,” she called.
I frowned at the chore in front of me and then turned toward her. “I shouldn’t let you.”
Humming, she dipped the spout of the watering can into the pot beneath a feathery fern of some kind. “Not to worry. I won’t wash them.”
“Then I’ll do them.” Someone had to.
“Don’t utter such nonsense. Let the dishes do themselves. They knew where to go, dear.” She moved toward some sort of succulent.
I scowled at the back of her head. Maybe she didn’t need somebody around... physically. I hadn’t even been here a full twenty-four hours, and I doubted her sanity.
Cindi-Ella Page 2
