Hootenanny - Appetizer
Treats of Mr. Grey's Friends, a New Acquaintance Named Honeydew, and a Highly respectable Tavern
You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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Mr. Grey checked the progress of his hand as it reached for the lemonware bowl of striped beans sitting in the center of a round, frosted-glass coffee table. A man with a waxed mustache, slick hair, and a silky robe already had his own fingers plunging the depths of the sweets bowl. Mr. Grey leaned back on his floor cushion. He'd wait for a less busy moment. He wasn't famished, and there were enough beans for his whole group.
Mr. Grey sat in a ring of friends who'd adopted him into their group at a younger epoch of grey existence. They gathered around the coffee table and the warm glow of a gaslight embedded beneath. Some of the circle squatted with hands on their knees. Others, like the mustachioed man, sat cross-legged. The dozen of them had agreed, after deliberation, on striped beans as the snack of choice. Now they took turns grabbing handfuls. The gaslight rising through the frosted glass painted their arms in shadows on the tavern rafters above. The other draw on the communal beans was the roaches’ tax. The roaches, however, ran a reasonable rate tonight, so that the friend ring and the bugs got along splendidly.
Mr. Grey himself had taken a kneeling position on his hard cushion of leather. His back ran straight, his face settled like stone. His friends considered these features Mr. Grey’s hallmarks and took them as signs of his agreeable state.
From the fonts of other patrons, good humor sprung not so freely. For one thing, this was a full-blooded tavern. The warm spirits of the establishment made for warm tempers in its clientele. For another, an undercurrent of protest drifted in the air. Not seen in secret partisan signs; not heard in revolutionary cries; but felt like electricity in the atmosphere.
Mr. Grey ignored these unpleasant elements. Mr. Grey had taken his fill of Dreary and Downcast back in the workers’ prison. Mr. Grey looked for Happy, Rousing elements in the tavern. Mr. Grey was not disappointed. People-watching was Starharbor’s unofficial pastime. And people-watching within the peeling, stained, animal-head-patterned wallparchment of a lively tavern? That was the big leagues.
Dozens of other underlit glass tables lay like paving stones across the heated brick floor. People of every shape and size imaginable (and some shapes and sizes unimaginable) made a circus of group-rings like the one formed by Mr. Grey’s team. All cuts and cloths ever invented appeared in the patrons’ robes. Some robes were the flashy kind, depicting sprawling landscape scenes or aerial views of some embellished quarter of Starharbor. Others wore modest robes with abstract patterns of geometric lines and shapes. The fabrics were everything from fine silk, to heavily-darned and patched moleskin, to thick flannel, to heavy and luxurious velvet, to plastic. The styling of these robes often mismatched the personality of the persons who wore them, and every embedded glass table boasted robes and members of varied dispositions.
These tables, groups, and robes huddled apart from each other, separated by the tributaries of the great roach river. It roiled in chitinous waves across the floor. Servers and patrons crossed the rivers by way of beer- stained arch bridges built for the purpose. Nor were bridge crossers inconvenienced at the crossing by revenue-collecting trolls. The tavern had a flat-rate contract with the trolls’ union. The warty monsters lurking beneath each bridge were ornamental. They only raised their voices in pleasant conversation with their roach neighbors.
One server crossed the river by the nearest bridge. He approached Mr. Grey’s group. He wore his traditional server’s suit robe, with a heavily starched collar and rolled-up sleeves. The server himself rolled up to the group’s table. He asked if any members wanted a complementary bucket of hand acid for washing before departing. The group said no; they planned on a long night.
For a moment the server looked anxious. He glanced around the noisy room, and the static in the air made the hairs on the man’s arms stand. He said nothing, however, and Mr. Grey’s group had their eyes and ears occupied with cheerful discourse. After a moment the server asked Mr. Grey what he wished to drink.
Mr. Grey (who had withdrawn some shiny pebbles and calcified bugs from the treasure bank on the way to the tavern) asked the group what beverage they thought was best. The group, after deliberating, asked the server what he thought was best. The server listed the popular drinks: Cold Beer, The Maypole, Shoulderer’s Swill. The tavern special was Tar Mead: a one-of-a-kind beverage a quarter as appealing to the tastes as it was to the ear. One friend, a new addition to their group wearing a robe of golden eyes and eyelashes opening in a field of dandelion faces, said she thought Tar Mead sounded lovely. She ordered one. The server left to take her order to the bar. Mr. Grey decided he would make up his mind on the server’s return.
The friend with the fine robe and mustache resumed what he had been saying after the footman was out of earshot. “Which dullard among us picked this board?”
The new friend with the dandelion robe - her name was Honeydew - said, “What are the stakes on the answer? What’s the matter - click - with this particular table?” The click which came in the middle of her words was the sound of her tongue detaching itself from the roof of the mouth. She used it for sarcastic punctuation on her question.
“Nothing’s the matter. I raise my glass at our intrepid leader for choosing it.” And the man did just that. “I love the smell of food, and oysters especially. MY single scruple is that oysters come at a lot of treasure and aren’t quite as delightful when one gets only the smell, unaccompanied by the food itself.”
Another member of the party wearing a gravel-patterned robe (the group child), said, “At least we’re cozied up with the kitchens. Dragon-fast service.” And indeed, Mr. Grey’s group knew it first whenever another table ordered onion beans, or fish beans, or beans of limburger.
Mr. Grey watched Honeydew. She leaned closer to the circle and pushed a golden hair-vein from her face. “Speaking of things costing a pretty pebble, anybody here booked a highwheel lately? – click.” This time her click added emphasis as she went on, “I booked one from Smitherfield to Servants Quarter yesterday; nine calcified bugs. Outrageously expensive.”
“Whadya expect?” replied the gravel-robed boy.
“Reasonable rates.”
“People prefer the tram these days. Anyway, the highwheels are slower when the jelly’s cold.”
“Sometimes it’s just nice to go in style. You don’t ride highwheel if you haven’t got class.”
“I guess that’s what makes it cost…”
“No, that isn’t it,” said Honeydew. She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s the stoop-dwellers. And the wheelhouse full-timers. And the wolf gangs.”
“How so?”
“Tram tickets are all they can barter. It’s put private highwheels out of business.”
“I’d like to drive a highwheel. Or a tram for that matter,” said the boy. He wore a dreamy look inside of wide irises and a wider mouth. He was much better at dreaming than accomplishing.
“Why don’t we relocate to the stove?” The mustachioed man inserted himself in their talk, which was one of several smaller interactions within the large circle. “The coal fire would scare off the smell. And I’d be cozier with an ember on my face. And the shoveler at the stove seems a lively little chap.”
Whether the person mentioned was ‘lively’ is questionable; perhaps so, perhaps not. He absolutely was ‘little’. When the mustachioed man gestured at the coal shoveler, he gestured at a pipkin-stoat: dark-haired weasels which often worked in coal or shoveling industries. The stoats held all sorts of different jobs. The one rattling coal pellets into the stove at the corner of the tavern might be the same one who’d run the dragon engine of Mr. Grey’s tram earlier. One tavern philosophizer had proposed the theory (many sunrises ago, during a particularly inebriated rest in a particularly cozy corner, of a particularly stoat-less tavern) that, “...you never see two pipkin-stoats together at once! All the individual ones are, I tell you reallytruly, one very busy weasel doing every job.”
Mr. Grey said, “We can’t sit by the stove. The chairs are taken.”
“Damme! How can you tell?” asked the man with the mustache. The velvet chairs; the only real ‘chairs’ in the tavern, were high backed. They tossed long shadows across the first floor, over the roach streams and glass tables.
“There were gentlemen sitting when we came through the door. I don’t think anyone’s risen since,” Mr. Grey said in a flat way. A stranger would have thought him callous, but Mr. Grey’s friends recognized it as simply his way.
“Damme.”
“Probably aristocrats,” said the group boy. “It’s unfair. They somehow get the best seats in the place. Every night! Even though it’s first-come, first-served.”
The mouth beneath the sculpted mustache opened to speak, but Honeydew interrupted it. “What do you say, Mr. Grey?”
Mr. Grey said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”
“Honeydew. What’s your take on his opinion?”
“About the aristocrats at the fire?”
“Do they deserve it? You seem like their breed. The sort who doesn’t worry over the occasional bad spin.”
The mustache friend clapped Mr. Grey’s shoulder. “You’re wasting your time on Mr. Grey,” he said. “I’ll answer for him. He’s no pompous presenter.”
“You don’t answer for yourself?” asked Honeydew, with a click of joking mockery.
“If you want a treasuresome dandy…” Mr. Grey waved a hand back at the friend with the slick upper lip. He tried for a smile and a chuckle, neither of which actually developed. The friend group understood Mr. Grey. They knew this to be the closest he could get to joking, and laughed no less for the comeback’s awkwardness.
“Come on,” Honeydew went on undeterred. “Everyone’s got thoughts to toss on the stoop dwellers, or the king and court.”
“Prose has its place. But a held tongue’s at home everywhere.”
At that moment, an end came to the enchantment played by a tavern band. They’d been performing on a second floor stage, unseen but still appreciated by first floor patrons. The room’s ambient hum dropped in deference. Mr. Grey’s party heard the lead enchanter’s voice frolic through the rafters. “Our group is The Stokers. We are humble enchanters. We beg your tolerance. We take requests for enchantments. These include…” The speaker went on to list all the musical effects the performers could produce, along with their treasure fees. The band handled most typical enchantment requests; everything from a close shave, to food seasoning and flavoring, to tying one’s shoes.
Every patron at the inn heard and understood when a man paid for the band to enchant his stew with extra salt. The performers began a shanty song. Other first floor friend rings abandoned their low glass tables. Their disparate robes mingled as they danced over roach rivers and little bridges. Sawdust and cobwebs dropped onto Mr. Grey’s shoulders from the second story rafters as feet thundered the floorboards. The thunder, however, sounded less jovial than the first floor dancing to Mr. Grey’s ears. He heard it accompanied by raised voices.
“Why don’t we move upstairs?” suggested the mustache. He had accidentally picked up a roach instead of a striped bean and discovered the difference in the least agreeable way. “They sound like a lively large group.”
This time, neither of his adjective choices was in question. The upstairs group was ‘lively’, and was ‘large’. Mr. Grey said, “Honeydew, you’re waiting on Tar Mead. Unless I’m mistaken.”
She nodded and said, “We’d be waving off bats on the second story. I’d rather have the kitchen smell.”
Mustache persisted with a shrug. “So what? They’ve got a beater.”
“One. One bat beater. Not enough to keep the bats from bothering.” Most of the group agreed with Honeydew. The second story railing and rafters were lousy with bats in the way the lower story floorboards were lousy with roaches. The roaches, however, had the decency to stick to regular routes, while the bats flew wherever they pleased. A patron bothered by a bat had to wait for the bat beater. That special employee ran to-and-fro across the second floor, wielding his same-named metal swatter to remove the winged pests.
“Besides that,” added the group boy eagerly, “I think they’re a rough crowd upstairs,” Everyone in the friend ring heard now that the heavy footsteps were more than echoes of dance on the floorboards.
“Always somebody getting the mob riled,” put in another friend, wearing a beaver skin robe with an attached hat. “What’s the fuss?”
“Take your pick,” said Honeydew. She pulled a palm mirror from a pocket hidden in the sunflower eyes on her robe. “It’s more than just ballooning highwheel prices. More than the cost of every day. You’d know if you saw the faces of the rank and file; the kind who stagger through the wheelhouse doors after sunset. They’re blind to all but the flamelights. Click, click, click,” These last noises were mock disappointment. It struck Mr. Grey that, in Honeydew’s hands, the click was a marvelously expressive tool; capable of everything from real pity to supreme contempt. She went on, “Maybe tonight’s group is upset over the Fortune Auction scandal. Or reduced Wine Medo imports. This inn’s overflowing with moaning and complaining over any trifle of existence. If these whiners actually struggled out some vague contour of a spine, and put some real effort in, they’d have fewer toils in the long run.”
The mustached man gave one sarcastic clap. “Well done. Very empathetic of you.”
Honeydew snapped her palm mirror shut. She looked at the group. “That’s the way in Starharbor. Change clings to the girl with the moxie to pluck it.”
Mr. Grey said, “Not to interrupt… I think I hear a real shouldering’s breaking out upstairs.”
Mr. Grey heard right. The shape of a very round gentleman crashed suddenly against a second story banister. The rail broke with a wooden crack. The gentleman plummeted with a cry. The round, heavy man hit the round, glass table of Mr. Grey’s party. He hurt none of them, but shattered the table, scattering glass rubble across the floor and into the nearest roach stream.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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