The Blue Shoe Read online

  When he was alone, though, and especially at night, Hap turned quiet.

  Father, he thought, are you very cold? How are they treating you over there?

  Hap sent his father letters, enclosing a few coins that he’d managed to save—and once a pair of sheepskin boots that Grel had made specially, with velvet lining. But no letter ever came back. Grel would sometimes find the boy sitting on the three-legged stool outside the shop gazing across the valley at the cloud-covered peak. Even in summer, when geraniums were blooming in the window boxes, the snow on the far mountain didn’t melt, and the clouds seldom lifted.

  He burned to rescue his father! But how?

  Was he a coward? He didn’t think so. And he didn’t really believe those silly stories about a mountain goddess. Well, in the daytime, he didn’t believe them. At night, when the distant peak glowed dirty orange, he had less success controlling his imagination. That’s when the terrible Xexnax struck fear in his soul.

  While Hap was feeling guilty about his father, Grel was feeling guilty about the shoe. There was no reason he should; he’d done his job well, and the shoe was safely hidden in the back. But when a year had passed and no one had come for it, Grel decided to put a notice in the Daily Aplanapian announcing, in the most vague terms, that a certain item was ready for a certain exceedingly tall client and that if the esteemed customer would present himself at a certain shop to collect said item, the proprietor would be greatly obliged.

  No one understood a word of this. Probably the person it was intended for would not have understood it either.

  But Grel’s announcement did not go unseen. The town’s mayor, a sharp-eyed fellow, became curious. Who, he wondered, would pay to have such an incompetent message printed? Unless it were a code of some kind. His political enemies, of which he had many, were always plotting against him.

  A certain item. A dagger, perhaps? A dagger with a poisoned tip?

  Surely not, he thought.

  Still …

  The mayor was the sort who considered his day incomplete if something was going on that he didn’t know about; so he sent his nephew around to the newspaper office to learn who had placed the item. When he heard it was Grel, a person of extreme insignificance, he was at first relieved. Clearly, this was not a coded message. But what on earth was the shoemaker up to? And why so mysterious? A certain item? A certain exceedingly tall client? What client?

  Since it was a slow day for intrigue at the Town Hall, the mayor decided to investigate further. He instructed his nephew, a smirking seventeen-year-old with know-it-all eyes, to snoop around the shoemaker’s shop and find out if a particularly large or important order had recently been filled.

  The boy found Grel tapping away at a clog and engaged him in conversation. He soon got around to mentioning the newspaper notice, but Grel, although polite, would not say what it was about or who the mysterious client was.

  “Couldn’t be from around here,” said the boy, narrowing his eyes in thought.

  Grel said nothing.

  “You wouldn’t use the newspaper to reach him. You could just knock on his door.”

  Grel picked up the clog he’d been working on. “I’d better deliver this,” he said, and went out, leaving the mayor’s nephew standing in the empty room.

  The boy stalked out and ran into Hap. “Your master’s a very rude fellow,” he declared.

  “Really? He’s always been kind to me.”

  “He’s a fool.”

  “He’s an artist,” Hap retorted.

  “Artist! He was pounding on a clog.”

  “You don’t know him,” said Hap, who couldn’t stand having people talk disrespectfully about his master. “If you only knew what he’s done!”

  “What? Boots for the bricklayer? Sandals for the scullery maid?”

  Hap was easygoing enough, quick to see the good, but this fellow was getting on his nerves. “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me. Maybe he made sandals for that peasant girl you’re always sniffing around. What’s her name?”

  Hap just stared. Should he hit him now?

  “Pretty enough,” the boy went on airily, “if you go for that sort. Anyway, I can see there’s no need for me to wait around. It’s obvious what your master does.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Poor, commonplace work for poor, commonplace people.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think I do.”

  “My master,” said Hap through his teeth, “has created the most amazing shoe in the world!”

  “I’m sure he has.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  This was too much. “Come on,” Hap said, and led the older boy to the back of the store. As he undid the package, a soft blue light leaked from the folds in the paper. The mayor’s nephew seemed to fall into a trance. His mouth rounded, and his eyes, which were a suspicious green, turned a more honest blue in the strange light.

  Shaking himself awake, the boy asked many questions, which Hap answered proudly.

  “How much?”

  “How much what?”

  “How much will the old man sell it for?”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “Well,” said the other, his eyes a glittering green again, “we’ll see about that.”

  Hap stood in the doorway watching him hurry away. Something about the encounter gave Hap an uneasy feeling, as if he’d eaten a bad quince—or said too much.

  Three

  FROM THEN ON, the shoemaker had no peace. The mayor, he of the unwieldy name, insisted on seeing the shoe, and Grel had to bring it out. One did not say no to the mayor of Aplanap.

  The great man never traveled without three assistants, but there was no room in the little shop, so he left them to guard the carriage and went in alone. Adjusting to the dim light, he stood scratching his cheek with a manicured finger and gazed down at the cobbler. The cobbler gazed up at him. Their faces were bathed in the glow of the shoe.

  “May I?” said the mayor. He pulled a magnifying glass from his vest pocket and bent over the shoe. “A lovely tourmaline,” he remarked, scanning the buckle.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And look at that sapphire!” He frowned. “What’s this?”

  “Where?”

  “The large one on the heel. That couldn’t be a diamond.”

  “Are diamonds blue?”

  “No. Well, almost never.” His eyes gleamed. “Almost,” he murmured to himself, “never.”

  The great man stood up and patted his vest. “It seems to me that this shoe of yours will make a fine addition to my wife’s shoe collection. Not to mention her jewelry collection.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—” the shoemaker began.

  “Have it wrapped and sent over this afternoon.”

  Grel was aware of the fierce-looking wart above the mayor’s eyebrow, but he couldn’t see it very well. He was still wearing the thick glasses he used for close work. They made everything perfectly sharp nine inches away but a blur beyond that.

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  The wart trembled. Its three black hairs waved like tiny antennae. “And I’m afraid you can’t refuse,” said the mayor. “It was our agreement that you would make my wife any shoe she liked.”

  “Oh, and I will. But this shoe was made for someone else. In fact, I’ve already been paid for it.”

  “But the owner isn’t coming back!”

  “He may.”

  “The goddess of the mountain may come back, too,” the mayor snorted, “but she hasn’t been heard from in nine hundred years!”

  “Still,” said Grel, quietly standing his ground, “the shoe is not mine to give you.”

  “Then I’ll buy it,” the man stormed.

  “It is not mine to sell.”

  “Blast it! I want that shoe!”

  “So I see.”

  The mayor’s heavy brows lower
ed till his eyes were shadows in a cave. “I can just take it, you know.”

  Grel looked down and smiled. “I know you are making a joke, sir. You yourself established the penalty for stealing.”

  The mayor wasn’t prepared for this resistance. A little worm of a man defying the Lord Mayor of Aplanap! “I could make life very hard for you,” he said darkly, “or very easy. The choice is yours.”

  Grel knew this was true. He’d seen it happen to others. But how could he sell what was not his? “Any other shoe,” he said.

  “I don’t want any other shoe!”

  Grel shrugged.

  “You shrug at me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I saw you shrug!”

  “It was an itch.”

  The mayor’s wart was twitching wildly. Without a word, the man turned and stalked out of the shop, grumbling like thunder.

  The next day, Grel received a notice that his taxes had been doubled, and he had been fined for allowing his dog to sleep out in front of the shop, where people could trip over him. Also, it had been noticed that his cuckoo clock was running six minutes slow. There was a fine for that as well.

  Hap found his master outside the shop on the three-legged stool, staring out over the valley. “I don’t have money to pay these fines,” he said, pushing the papers across the table. “They’ll shut down my business.”

  “Shut it down! No!”

  “What choice is there?”

  “But you’ll end up having to beg, and they’ll arrest you, and they’ll send you …” The boy glanced at the cloud-shrouded mountain to the north.

  Grel didn’t reply.

  The two of them were so quiet that Rauf looked up to see if they were still there.

  “You’re definite about not selling the shoe?” said Hap.

  “It doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Yes. But what if the owner never comes back? It’s been a year.”

  Grel was silent.

  The boy knew better than to argue. Besides, it secretly pleased him that his master had stood up to the mayor. No one had done that before. “Suppose,” he said slowly, “you don’t sell the shoe but just put it in your window.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “What good? Have you ever heard of advertising?”

  Grel looked puzzled. Evidently, he had not heard about advertising.

  “It’s a way,” said Hap, “to let people know the kind of work you do.”

  “It doesn’t sound very modest.”

  “Leave it to me, master. Be as modest as you wish. Keep doing your work as always. What do you say?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Probably you shouldn’t.”

  “You really think it would help?”

  “Things can’t be worse than they are.”

  “True.”

  “So, you give me permission?”

  Grel looked at the boy a long time.

  The difference could be seen right away. No sooner had Hap set the wonderful shoe on a pedestal in the window than passersby stopped to stare at it. There was something hypnotic about the way it glittered in the sunlight and at night glimmered in the moonlight. And if clouds happened to cover both sun and moon, the shoe glowed all on its own, spilling blue light over the sidewalk. Crowds stared as if it were a living thing and might suddenly jump up and walk away by itself.

  Soon all the Aplanap matrons wanted their shoes made in Grel’s little shop. No one would do but Grel, the man who had created the blue miracle. A shoe without Grel’s mark on it, his discreet little backward G, was not worth wearing.

  Hap was kept almost as busy as his master, taking orders, raising prices, running errands. After a few weeks, he and Grel had earned enough to pay most of the taxes and fines. Hap even carved a sign and hung it above the door. “The Magic Shoe,” it said in bold letters.

  “What’s that?” Grel demanded. He took off his glasses to see better.

  “It’s the name of your store.”

  “Why should I name my store?”

  “So everyone will remember it and talk about it.”

  “Well, take the sign down. It is not modest, and it is not true. I know nothing of magic.”

  “The fire knows nothing of heat,” said Hap. “The rainbow knows nothing of color.”

  “Take it down.”

  “What would you call your shop, master?”

  “Do I have to call it anything?”

  “It’s advertising.”

  Grel grumbled. He didn’t like the word. “Call it,” he said, “ ‘The Shop with the Queer-Looking Shoe That Fits Nobody.’”

  Hap laughed. “Master,” he said gently, “I think maybe you should leave the advertising to me.”

  “As long as it’s true,” he said, returning to his workbench. “And as long as it’s modest.”

  “True and modest,” Hap grumbled as he unhooked the sign from above the door.

  Four

  EVENTUALLY, THINGS SETTLED down a bit, and Grel told his assistant to take the morning off.

  “Let me take the fishing pole, master,” said the boy. “Maybe I can catch something for dinner.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re tired of Finster cheese sandwiches!”

  “They’re all right if you put enough quince jelly on them.”

  Grel reached over and mussed the boy’s hair. “Even so,” he said, smiling, “a nice fish now and then …”

  “I’ll get a big one.”

  Hap was glad to have a fine, bright morning to himself. He dug some worms for bait, dropping them in a jar with a bit of sphagnum moss, then headed out of town with the pole over his shoulder.

  Following the stream, he came to a plateau where the water widened into a pool. He’d had luck here before and wasn’t surprised to see several of his friends, also with lines in the water.

  Jon Hartpence was there; and Rag, the quince-pickers’ son; and Jon’s sister, Sophia, who claimed to know magic, although if she did, it wasn’t helping her catch any fish. She had shiny ringlets and dirty knees.

  “Hello, Miss Sophia,” Hap said.

  She looked up from the book she was reading. “Oh! Look who’s coming, Jon,” she called to her brother. “Better hide your wallet!” She never let Hap forget his pickpocketing past.

  Jon squinted in Hap’s direction. He was subject to headaches, and the bright sunlight wasn’t helping. But he never complained, which was one reason Hap prized him as a friend. Jon was also protective of his sister, though you wouldn’t know it from the way he talked. Right now, he and Rag were skipping stones across the water.

  “I’m sure your money is quite safe, Miss Sophia,” said Hap.

  “Yes,” she said, “since I don’t have any. And the fish are quite safe as well, with them throwing rocks in the water.”

  Rag gave her a disgusted look. “We’re having a contest.”

  “Tell them to stop, Hap,” she said, as if he would have influence.

  “Why don’t you put a spell on us,” said her brother, Jon, “and make us stop?”

  “Maybe I will!”

  “If that doesn’t work, you could tell Father.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  It was a joke between them. The truth was, their parents were constantly fighting and barely noticed their children at all. Sometimes the fights involved flying objects. They’d long ago gone through their china plates and replaced them with wooden ones that weren’t so breakable. How their curio shop, with its delicate trinkets, survived was a mystery.

  Hap baited his hook. “Who’s winning?”

  “Me,” said Jon.

  “Not for long,” said Rag. He flung another stone, using his special sideways throw. It skipped nine times and might have skipped ten except, just then, to everyone’s astonishment, a large rainbow trout burst out of the water, caught the stone in its mouth, and splashed out of sight.

  “That’s quite a spell, Miss Sophia,” said Hap, smiling. He cast his line out to the place wh
ere the fish had been.

  “That wasn’t a spell,” she said seriously. “That was the goddess.”

  Hap cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard right.

  “Some animals are magic. Don’t you know that?”

  Jon signaled to Hap not to pay attention.

  “It’s true!” Sophia protested.

  “It’s right here in the book.”

  Hap checked his bait and cast in a different spot.

  Nothing.

  “Everybody knows,” she said, “if you see a raven, you’re going on a long journey.”

  “I have to listen to this all day,” Jon said. His hand was on his forehead to shield his eyes.

  “And if a turtle crosses your path, you’ll have a strong house.”

  Hap cast his line into a weedy cove where he’d sometimes had luck.

  Nothing.

  “But it’s not every turtle.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Different turtles mean different things.”

  Hap smiled at her happily. Her voice was like a bubbling brook. It didn’t much matter what she said.

  Sophia watched him. “The fish don’t like you,” she said with satisfaction. She gave her head a toss, her hair jingling with sunlight.

  “And why is that?”

  “You have to talk to them.”

  “Talk to them how?”

  She waved away a fly. “You have to say a spell.”

  “Oh no!” said Jon.

  “I’ll try anything,” said Hap.

  “I’m so sick of Finster cheese sandwiches …”

  “Okay.” She opened the well-thumbed little book to the middle. “After me, then. By the power of Xexnax!” she declaimed, flinging her arms out.

  “By the power of Xexnax,” Hap repeated.

  “I, Hap the unworthy…”

  He threw her a look. “I, Hap the unworthy…”

  “Thief of Aplanap—”

  “Okay, that’s enough!”

  She giggled. “All right, that’s not really in the book.”

  “No kidding.”

  “We’ll do the short version,” she said. “Ready?”

  He nodded warily.

  She flung her arms wide. “By the power of Xexnax! I hereby command the fishies in the brook to come and bite my little hook!”