Cloaked

by Alex Flinn

  “Your wife?” I say.

  He nods. “I guess she was a little shocked. I don’t blame her. It’s been fifteen years.”

  “You’re saying this is your wife?”

  “Unbelievable, right? She probably thought I was dead.”

  “Cornelius said that all the used-to-bes have families who think they’re dead,” I say, because the man I’m talking to is the fox. Todd. “So you mean to say you’re my . . .?”

  “Your father,” says my mother’s voice from the floor. “But how can it be? Where have you been all this time? And why did you come back now?”

  I look at the fox who is now my father, then back at Mom. “I think, maybe, you ought to sit down.”

  Meg, who knows the story, agrees. “Why don’t I get you some water, Mrs. Marco?”

  We walk over to the sofa, and after Mom can breathe right, Todd, the former fox, begins to speak. Meg holds my hand, and I squeeze hers, glad she’s here.

  “Many, many years ago, I had an argument with my wife.” He nods at Mom. “At this point, I don’t even remember what it was about.”

  “Work,” Mom says.

  Todd nods. “Work. I was young, and I was proud, and while I should have apologized to my dear wife, who was always right about everything, I didn’t want to. So the next morning, instead of going to work, I went fishing.”

  “Fishing?” Mom says, and I remember the rat saying that the fox had been a fisherman.

  “Yes, fishing,” Todd says. “I went early, four in the morning. I stood on the MacArthur Causeway like an idiot. I didn’t catch anything, and just as the sun was rising, and I was about to give up, I felt a tug.

  “I was happy because, by that time, I had realized the error of my ways, and I thought I’d return home with a huge fish for dinner, so my wife would forgive me. When I reeled the fish in, it was better than I expected—a beautiful, big snapper with fine fins and red scales. But just as I was rejoicing, the fish spoke to me.”

  Mom gasps. Me, I’m not surprised at all.

  My father continues. “‘Please do not kill me,’ the fish said very clearly, ‘for I am a magic fish, with the power to grant all your wishes.’

  “‘All my wishes?’ I asked. I didn’t believe it, of course. ‘I’m just overtired.’ But the fish said, ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’

  “So I did. I wished for the first thing that came to mind, a boat, since I’d been feeling sorry for myself for not having one. And almost as soon as I said the word, I was standing in a twenty-foot open fisherman.

  “And that should have been the end of that but I was young and stupid, and I said, ‘What? This boat’s too small. If you’re such a magic fish, I want a bigger boat, a huge boat.’”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “He got mad.”

  “No. In fact, he smiled in a way you wouldn’t think a snapper could smile and said, ‘Fisherman, you drive a hard bargain.’ The next thing I knew, I was standing on a yacht, sixty-four feet, twin engines, and steps leading down to what I’m sure were extremely luxurious cabins.”

  “You had a wish, and you used it for a yacht?” my mother says.

  “That’s exactly what I thought! As soon as I saw it, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Here I was on a yacht fit for a billionaire, but I wasn’t a billionaire. How was I going to explain it to my wife, you, who would be upset because we had so many things we needed? So I said to the fish, ‘Wait! There’s one more thing. I’d like a big house, a mansion.’

  “The fish rolled his eyes, but finally, he inclined his head toward the right. ‘Look over there, on Hibiscus Island. That big pink house is yours now.’ And I looked down and saw a set of keys by my feet.”

  “And we’re not living in a big mansion because . . .?” My mother shakes her head. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Give him a chance, Mom,” I say, still amazed that this is my father, my for-real father I thought I’d never see. I grin at Meg, and she grins back.

  “We’re not living in a big pink mansion,” my father says, “because I was young and stupid, and in the moment the fish made the house mine, I realized I couldn’t even afford the taxes on a place like that. Better the money, I thought, an annuity, maybe. ‘Could I win the lottery?’ I asked the fish.

  “And the next thing I knew, I was standing on MacArthur Causeway with nothing but a fishing pole, and the fish spoke to me.

  “‘You have asked too much,’ he said, ‘So you get nothing.’ Well, needless to say, I was pretty mad about that. So I said that if he didn’t give back what he’d taken, I was going to kill him, and stuff him, and hang him on the wall.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  “Exactly. I’d forgotten that he was a magic fish. Next thing I knew, the air was filled with the stench of garbage, an odor surprisingly pungent to me. I was in a place I’d never been before, and everything was very big because I was very small. I now know I was at the Port of Miami. I ran to the water’s edge, and there, I saw the fish.

  “‘You have done too little,’ he said, ‘and asked too much. You have threatened someone who did you a kindness. Now you will pay the price. You will remain in this form until you find the feather of a golden bird. Once you do, you must ask the person who brings it to you to cut your throat with a knife, but you must not tell him why. Only when you have done this will you be human again.’

  “‘Human again’? I asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  “The fish flipped his tail in the water, and beside it, I saw a reflection. But it wasn’t my face I saw. Rather, the face was red and whiskered with sharp teeth and a pointed nose, a nose with a rather strong sense of smell.

  “‘You’ve turned me into an animal?’ I yelled at the fish, and I lunged without thought into the water. But when I went beneath the surface, there was no fish to be found. I would have thought that it was my imagination, but since that day, I have been a fox. I called myself Todd, which means ‘fox.’ I lived on garbage and avoided dogs and waited for the day when someone would come to save me. How could I know that that someone would be my own wonderful son?”

  My mother takes a long drink of water, fans herself, then looks from my father to me. “You expect me to believe this?”

  My father shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me. But you can ask your son—our son. He was the one who found me, the hero who saved me.”

  She places her hand to her forehead. “This can’t be happening.”

  “You were the one,” I say, “who believed all along he wasn’t dead, that he wouldn’t leave you. You were the one who believed in magic.”

  “But I didn’t think he was a fox!”

  “I saw him as a fox, Mom. It’s true.”

  My father moves closer to her, carefully, and places his hand on her arm. “I never forgot you, either of you.”

  I say, “Stranger things have happened—and recently too.”

  My mother takes my father’s face in her hands and gazes at him a very long time. “I thought you had left because of our fight. I looked everywhere.” There are tears in her eyes. “We’ve lost so many years.”

  My father takes her in his arms. “But we have so many years left.”

  “You know your son, then?” my mother asks.

  Todd—my father—nods. “Fine boy, even if he did kill me. He kept his promise to me, though it was hard to do. Those are the type of values I’d have wanted him to learn, and you taught him.”

  My mother nods. “He’s like that.”

  “I’m glad.” My father stands and holds out his arms to me. I step into them. This has been a crazy day, a crazy week, a crazy world.

  Chapter 49

  That night, I go to the beach with Meg because I need to relax, to get my mind off what happened, to be with Meg. When we get there, we take off our shoes. I notice she has a pedicure, a silly one with flowers on her toes, and I wonder if that was for Philippe. “I’ll have to get the brownies to make you some special shoes,�
� I say. “Victoriana shouldn’t be the only one with Gianni Marco originals.”

  She squints at her toes but doesn’t smile. “Are you going to regret it?”

  “Regret what?” I grasp her wrist as we start toward the water.

  She follows but slowly. “You know what. Giving it up—the chance to marry the princess, the most beautiful woman in the world, and one of the richest.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d hate that.”

  “Hate being rich?”

  “Hate being stuck in a glass tower. If I were with Victoriana, there’d be a hundred paparazzi on this beach. And I’d hate . . .” I stop, listening to the waves as they hit the sand.

  “Hate what?”

  “Hate not being with you.” I pull her toward me and try to kiss her. “You are literally magical.”

  She smiles but says, “Won’t it be boring, being with the same old girl you’ve known your whole life?”

  I pretend to think about it, then I do. All my life, women, my mom and Meg, then girls I wanted to make out with, have been dragging me to these chick flick movies. You know the ones, where you know from the first minute that the couple’s going to end up together. But first, they have to overcome some obstacle, like a hurricane, or one of them being engaged to someone else, or having a horrible secret, or needing to meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day, or—my personal favorite—the one where the woman’s in a coma, but her ghost is walking around the guy’s apartment anyway. I always thought those movies were a little predictable and a lot unrealistic. But after what’s happened, I’m less sure. Maybe you actually do need to face obstacles with someone to know that they’re the one you’d sacrifice for.

  I shake my head and say, “I’ve got a quote for you.”

  She groans. “When did you have time to look one up?”

  “I just remembered it. It’s by Victor Hugo. He said, ‘I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes—and the stars through his soul.’”

  Chapter 50

  As long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all his undertakings prospered.

  —“The Elves and the Shoemaker”

  When I open my exclusive shoe shop in the lobby of the Coral Reef Grand, Princess Victoriana returns to South Beach for a visit, which means the press comes too. Paparazzi swarm the lobby, and I pretend it’s because of me.

  “So you’ve been okay?” I ask her as she models a yellow-and-white T-strap sandal with a Louis heel, yet another pair of shoes she’s buying.

  “Better zan okay,” she says. “I am starting college in ze fall—wiz proper bodyguards, of course, so my parents will no longer worry about me being kidnapped or disgracing zem.” She turns her foot to display the heel, and there are at least a dozen flashes.

  Behind the counter, I hear Meg saying, “Gianni. That’s G-I-A-N-N-I.”

  “Who’s that?” a reporter asks her.

  “That’s the designer, the reason you’re all here. Have you looked at the shoes?”

  “Excuse me,” Victoriana says, and she walks over to the reporter and lifts her foot onto the counter, just like she did the day she asked me to meet her. “Zese shoes, you can say zey are ze favorite of ze princess of Aloria.”

  More flashes, and the reporter says, “How did you say that was spelled again?”

  “G-I-A-N-N-I,” Meg repeats. “When he’s a household word, you’ll be able to say you broke the story.”

  “Exactement,” Victoriana says. “My future sister-in-law, she will wear his shoes on her wedding day.”

  This is news. Philippe’s fiancée is an American actress. Philippe had met her before his transformation, but they kept their romance secret. Victoriana told us that her parents would never have approved of the match, but after what happened, they thought it best to get Philippe married off as quickly as possible so he wouldn’t be caught in any more witches’ snares.

  “Oui,” Victoriana says. “Ze shoes, zey are in Hollywood too now!”

  Mom and Dad come in. My father surveys the reporters and the customers and laughs. “To think, a few weeks ago, I was living in a Dumpster!”

  My parents closed the shoe repair to do shoe sales instead. Parents. It’s weird to think of them that way. They’re taking care of the money part of the shop now. When I finish high school, I’ll be able to go to college and learn to run the business myself. It will be hard work, but I’m used to that.

  Our first order of business has been finding a factory to make the shoes. It was too much work for the brownies, and we don’t have them anymore anyway.

  That’s Mom’s fault. When I told her about the brownies, she was really grateful. But when I described the one I’d seen, I mentioned his ragged clothing, and she felt bad. “We should make them some clothes, sort of a thank-you gift.”

  So, all week, while my father ran the shoe repair, Mom sewed little outfits out of scraps of fabric. Saturday night, she left them in Meg’s coffee shop.

  Sunday morning, the clothes were gone, and the place was a mess.

  “I don’t understand what happened,” Meg said.

  Mom shook her head. “I thought they’d be so grateful for the new clothes.”

  “Clothes?” Meg said. “You gave them new clothes?”

  Then, she explained that it’s okay to leave food out for the brownies, but never any kind of payment, and that when brownies are given clothes, they always leave. “No one knows if they get offended, or if they think they’re too grand to work. No brownie has ever stuck around to explain.”

  My mother was very apologetic, but Meg brushed it off. “Oh, it’s okay. My brothers can do some work for once. I never felt right about having the brownies.”

  The press has been covering the princess’s visit, and the reason for it, like crazy, so it’s no surprise that the phone’s been ringing with calls from socialites, wanting to own a pair of Marco originals, and boutiques wanting to carry them. We even got a call from Wendell, the park ranger, congratulating us on our success and telling us about his own: He just booked the giants as a featured act with the circus. As their manager, he gets ten percent of the take, which is way more than he could have gotten for the frog on eBay.

  Mom’s been kind of enjoying taking all the calls, so I’m surprised when she hands me the phone. “I think you should take this one yourself.”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Mr. Marco?”

  “Yeah, this is Johnny. I mean, Gianni.”

  “This is Carol Ellert. I’m a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue.”

  My mouth goes dry. Still I manage to choke out, “I’m sorry. I’m having trouble hearing you.” I motion to Meg, to anyone, to please get me some water. “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  “Saks Fifth Avenue. We’d like to set up a meeting with you about stocking your shoes in our store.”

  Meg’s back with the water. She mouths, “Who is it?”

  I mouth back, “Saks,” and we do a little happy dance right there.

  “Hello?” the voice on the other end says. “Hello? Did I lose you?”

  “Oh no. I’m sorry. I just . . . there was a customer.”

  “I understand. Soon, you’ll have a lot of customers. Now, as I was saying, we’d like to meet. Is next Thursday good for you?”

  I come from a long line of shoe people. My grandpa called us cobblers, but that sounds more like a dessert than a person. My family has run the shoe repair at the Coral Reef Grand, the fanciest hotel on South Beach, since before I was born, first my grandparents, then my parents, now my mother and I. And my father too. So I’ve seen the famous and the infamous, the rich and the poor, wearers of Gucci, Bruno Magli, Manolo Blahnik, and Converse. I know the beautiful people. Or, at least, I know their feet.

  But until this summer, I’d never have imagined that they’d be wearing my shoes, or that I’d be involved in an adventur
e with a witch, six swans who used to be people and are again, and a beautiful princess who offered to marry me, or that I’d find my father. I certainly never thought I’d turn that princess down to be with the girl who works across the hall.

  I wink at Meg. Into the phone, I say, “Let me check my schedule. I think I can definitely fit you in.”

  Also by Alex Flinn

  BREATHING UNDERWATER

  BREAKING POINT

  NOTHING TO LOSE

  FADE TO BLACK

  DIVA

  BEASTLY

  A KISS IN TIME

  Author’s Note

  My book Beastly, published in 2007, contained references to several traditional fairy tales. Since its publication, I have received quite a bit of mail from readers, indicating that they were unfamiliar with these tales (such as “Snow White and Rose Red”), if they hadn’t been made into a movie. As I always loved Grimms’ fairy tales, I decided to write a book based upon several traditional tales that have not been made into movies, the better to bring them to modern audiences. Some, such as “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” were favorites of mine as a child, while other lesser-known stories, I discovered in my research.

  These are the tales I chose:

  • “The Elves and the Shoemaker”: A shoemaker leaves leather out and finds finished shoes in the morning. When he finds out that elves have made the shoes, his wife tries to repay them with fine clothing. The elves leave and never return.

  • “The Frog Prince”: A princess loses an item and begs a frog to retrieve it, promising to allow him to come into her house and be her friend if he does. Her father, the king, forces her to keep her promise. She is disgusted and throws the frog at the wall, at which point, he turns into a handsome prince.

  Readers may note that there is now a movie version of this tale. It did not exist when I began or, indeed, finished writing this book. At this writing, I have not yet seen Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. However, from what I have seen of the previews, it is as different from the traditional tale as is my version.