You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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A woman wearing an ultrastitched velvet robe tapped her feet - clad in gleaming leather highwalkers - on a shiny obsidian table. In an ageless hand she swirled a glass chalice, half-drained of wine. The garnet fermentation twisted round the rim in a small wave. The bright lights of the room reflected in dazzling sparkles on its surface. With a languorous air, she brought the drink to her cherry lips. As she sipped, her ivory cheeks bloomed with two patches of blush.
“Sublime,” she drawled.
The word vanished into the cavernous room. It vanished, into a wilderness of mad laughter. The word itself spun in the atmosphere of the room, just as the wine spun in the chalice.
Then a thundering voice filled the room to its corners.
“Last Call! Stand your bets ladies and gentleman. Find your fractions.”
The woman swirled the wine again, a swirl per sip. The movement complemented the continued whirling of the wheelhouse.
On every wall; on every ceiling; in marching-order rows of floor machines; on smaller, compact machines inlaid on every scrolled table’s surface; carved in effigy on every tile in the floor; everywhere, house wheels waltzed in a carousel swirl. The house ceaselessly spun. Sometimes a wheel paused, here or there, as it drained a little more precious treasure from its victim. But the wheel would roll almost instantly back to life, dancing to the tune of the macabre wheelhouse terpsichore.
On the ground, at the center of the room, sunken below the wheel-tiled surface, the signature of every wheelhouse waited restlessly. The Great Wheel. A few bidders had already taken their chosen slots on the huge, moveable deck. Others rushed out with last moment bets. The growl of an enormous dragon engine somewhere below the building foretold the next spin of the great, round beast.
Mr. Grey stepped into the flashing interior of the wheelhouse from the cold, wet, gloomy night. The flashing flamelights lining every wall and wheel instantly robbed him of all obscurity. Even his shadow vanished when he entered. In the wheelhouse, shadows stopped at the door.
Mr. Grey had never entered a wheelhouse before; quite an accomplishment for someone who’d spent their entire existence in Starharbor. The establishment’s gaudy face dazed him. He stopped just inside the threshold. Every solid surface came with a garnish of dazzling flame. Every light pulled the eyes toward the nearest wheel. Every visitor’s face flushed in the glare of those lights; flushed with wine and other liquors; flushed with wild, high laughter.
A series of flaring horns boomed with the same words Mr. Grey had heard only faintly from the outside. The house seemed to trap the announcement within itself, like an echo carried by canyon walls. It traveled along the spokes of the spinning wheels, and crashed down across the floor in a blanket of sound. “Last Call! Stand your bets ladies and gentleman. Find your fractions.”
Mr. Grey presented a poorer sight than usual as he marched across the wheelhouse floor. He walked with typical posture and gait, but his robe carried a diverse collection of street gunk, and a fresh soaking of jelly rain. Dust from the exploded factory clung to his hair and shoulder. A piece of rubbery pufferfrog skin trailed from one of his shoes.
The caterers and hostesses shifted around him with disdainful glances. They thought him poor.
Mr. Grey passed down flashing rows of smaller wheel machines, clung-to by men dizzy with the spins. From this closer perspective, he noticed another trait in the patrons’ faces. The eyes didn’t carry the flush that he’d seen clearly in the cheeks. The eyes didn’t even reflect the lights flashing right against them. The eyes of the players were inky, like the stares of non-existence. The eyes followed the wheels in hypnotic swirling. Some of them were very bright - not flushed and vivid, but harshly bright - youthful eyes, not yet matured through repeated crushing of hopes. Others were of a faded character. Those eyes, thought Mr. Grey, had been cut against the grain so often that they’d lost all texture. Those eyes simply adhered to whatever surface they found, and watched it with mute tedium.
More people pushed roughly past Mr. Grey. They teetered towards the rotating wheel floor, dizzy with chance, tipsy with wine. What unbalanced them were the loads of calcified bugs, shiny rocks, and other treasures cradled in their arms and hands. The people stumbled down a marble half-stair to reach the sunken great wheel. The bidders never took a full tumble. A hostess or shoulder jockey always stepped to the rescue. The wheelhouse made sure that visitors were always able to place their bets.
The dragon engine’s growl vibrated through the building’s foundation. Mr. Grey watched the great wheel shudder in anticipation. The announcer called for standers in his hypnotic, attention-grabbing voice. The great wheel ballooned up from its recess in the floor; like the distended belly of the wheelhouse, partitioned into betting wedges by small low walls sticking from its surface like ribs. At the axial pinnacle of the dome-like wheel, the wedges stood higher than the ground floor. That spot, the top of the great wheel where all the wedges met, spun with a perfect panorama of the rest of the house.
Mr. Grey thought the great wheel’s axis would be a good vantage point to search for Honeydew. He also thought that the wheel; with its spectrum of flamelight-embedded wedges; with its promises of grand fortune; with its menagerie of bidders, all carrying different loads of treasure, all wearing different cuts and patterns of robe; Mr. Grey thought all this looked ‘fun’. At least, ‘fun’ in the way most people told Mr. Grey he should define it.
Mr. Grey, without changing anything in the motion of his stride, doubled its frequency. He followed the other players rushing for the awakening wheel.
People avoided touching Mr. Grey, or his dirt-smeared robes and skin. The house held a few enchanters, who offered him a swift clean for a small fee. These enchanters were employed by the wheelhouse. They helped people spend any excess treasure won through some unaccountably lucky spin. Mr. Grey’s focus was on the wheel, however, so he brushed past the cleaning services.
Two shapes skulked in suddenly from either side. They moved before Mr. Grey and forced him to a stone-grinding stop. He craned his neck over the two. He would have checked his pocket ticker, but Mr. Grey’s hands were full at that moment.
“Fortune in midges?” barked one shape. He was a hairy man, wearing a suit-robe, with huge sideburns.
“Do you find yourself, my dear sir, in desperate want of spending treasure?” whined the other man; also hairy and suited, but with a full head of oiled, onyx locks.
Both individuals wore huge, round sunglasses, which cast huge, round shadows around their tiny, shiny eyes. They circled around Mr. Grey, one on either side. Around all three, the wheel machines cavorted with wild abandon.
“Sorry gentlemen, no time. That big wheel looks like it’s about to go…”
“Win more treasure,” said the one with the coarse sideburns, again in a short, barking tone.
“My friend - or, put precisely, my other friend - suggests one of existence’s indisputable platitudes,” said the only haired one in his whining speech. “‘Pebbles only get you pebbles’, my new friend! If it is pleasing to you, we humble servants-”
“-Blackjaw-” said the sideburned one, giving his name.
“-and Slake: Finders for Hire, would be immensely delighted to supply your wheel-staking ventures with the most ample funds imaginable.” The oily one, Slake, concluded the finders’ pitch.
The dragon engine buried underneath the building growled louder than ever. The center wheel - the whole wheelhouse - shook to its foundation. The shiny pebbles in the smaller wheel machines rattled like detached, golden teeth in a bleached skull. The announcer blared over the horns. “Last Call Lovelies! Stand your bets. Find your fractions.”
“Terribly sorry, gentlemen,” said Mr. Grey. “That does sound like the ‘last’ last call,” He tried slipping out between the circling finders. The fuzzy faced one with the sharp sideburns, Blackjaw, circled in front of him.
“Quick and easy terms,” said Blackjaw. From a pocket in his suit robe he pulled a readymade finder’s contract. From another he drew a quill, pre-dipped in pocket-ink.
“Sorry,” said Mr. Grey. He shrugged his arms to show his hands were full, and swerved around the persistent finder.
Slake slid from behind. He reached a hairy hand to take the bundle from Mr. Grey’s arms. Blackjaw, however, had seen the stoic measure of Mr. Grey. He’d seen beneath the layer of street grime and wear. The finder had realized Mr. Grey wasn’t going to sign any contract without reading. He checked his partner, and the two let Mr. Grey go… for the moment.
Mr. Grey passed down the row of whirling machines. A young man shoved away from one lesser machines, grumbling, “You would give me a run of buffaloes…” Mr. Grey swerved to avoid the disappointed bidder. His quick and even steps brought him to the top of the great wheel’s marble steps. At the same moment, with a dragon roar, the ballooning wheel floor rolled into a tockwise rotation. The differently-sized wedges lit up with different odds. With a last ditch sprint and a jump, Mr. Grey might just make it on the board.
His foot hadn’t touched the first polished step when he felt the smash of shoulder at his side. Mr. Grey tumbled across the floor, away from the steps. He caught his footing, and turned to see one of the wheelhouse shoulder jockeys. The man stood before the steps to the great wheel, staring at Mr. Grey with arms folded, brow furrowed in a scowl.
“I’m sorry-” said Mr. Grey, catching his breath.
“Not like that,” said the jockey.
“Pardon?”
“Not filth-like. Wheel’s got eyes on it. You’d soil the view.”
Mr. Grey looked down at himself. He noticed, for the first time, his disheveled state. The dust from the factory explosion encased his body. It had mixed with the jelly drenching he’d gathered on his journey to the wheelhouse, and dried under the wheelhouse ultralight to lacquer his body in concrete grime.
“Oh,” said Mr. Grey.
The brusque jockey, seeing Mr. Grey’s confusion, softened. “Change n’ you can get on. With a bet, of course.”
“Change?”
The Jockey motioned impatiently to the bundle in Mr. Grey’s arms. Mr. Grey looked down.
In his arms lay the wool anchor shawl he’d woven with the two old ladies, forgotten until this moment; perfectly clean.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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