YSABEAU S. WILCE
Now, my little waffles, you know the story of wee Jack and how his Rapture for Red led him to his heart’s desire: a pair of sparkly sangyn boots, each tipped with a slithery snake’s head. How after buying those boots with the last of his family’s flash, he found that a bargain can be hard indeed when the purchase has a Will of its own. But in his regret Jack realized that lofty leaping can be lucrative and that windows on high are rarely guarded. So Jacko, deciding it better to steal than starve, snatched his family from the jaws of Hunger and together they cozied up to a life of thievery and yummy chow.
Once our Jack started jumping up up up he went, until he reached the very pinnacle of perfidy. In the twilight world of the Prime Coves, among the footpads, flashers, mashers, buncos, sporters, swaddlers, ginglers, ganglers, foodpads, and fencers, Jack was King. His red sparkly heels towered over all the rest, the colossus of crime, the emperor of embezzlement, the…FANCIEST LAD OF THEM ALL. Jack was happy, footloose, fancy-free, and richer than the richest butter, the fattiest cream, the swirl of sugar on top of the birthday donut, the crispest edge of the smokiest bacon.
And yet…
Here is where what happens next begins.
One tawny morn, my darling dolls, Jacko wakes up with a rustling restless tum. He lies in his five-fathom featherbed and drums his sparkly red heels upon the velvet counterpane (for even in sleep Jack and his boots cannot be parted) trying to reason why. His tummy gurgles but not for grub, despite the splendid smell of sizzling swine, which hangs on the morning air. Ruminating for some time upon this gurgle, Jack finally allows it comes not from his tum, but slightly up and over, another organ entirely. The rest of Jack is toasty warm—his toes snug in sparkles, his ears wrapped in fuzzy flannel, his bod cocooned in softy wool, warm as the spring sun. But his heart—poor throbbing organ—his heart is oh, so very cold.
But why the freeze? Did he not have all there was to be had? Fancy lad and full of boodle. Respect of the other janglers, a lair chock full of fizz and sup, the bestest kind, splendiferous threads, and his name ablaze in all the papers. What more could his greedy heart desire? Don’t be silly, boyo! Casting chill away, Jack lofts from his bed, and heads for bacon, singing, “Tra la, I am the Boy with the Most Cake.”
But the tune is cracked, and so is his voice. Still, he warbles through his toilette, and as he ties his brocade cravat, slings shoulderwise a splendid red leather duster. Dances down the stairs and toward the breakfast room, stopping to snuggle the basket of corgi pups on the stairs. The sun shines through the gauzy curtains, the butterflies on the painted wallpaper flutter in the warmth. A little coffee, a little bacon, some kedgeree will do him the trick.
But looking down the long length of table at the enormous breakfast awaiting him, he realizes what he lacks. Before him is spread a splendiferous feast of delectable viands—the aforementioned bacon, cheefles, dragonfruit galantine, kale smoothie, salmon omasubis, buttered popcorn, toast, and he alone to eat it all.
He is lonely.
The family he saved from hunger had blossomed in Jack’s hothouse thievery and have all gone their own ways. Mamma married a banger from Sacto and opened a bagnio on Joyce Street where she reigns like an empress over red velvet portieres and beveled glass mirrors. The baby what coughed grew into a sharp and lively lass who wears a hat with a cockade and a vivandiere’s uniform with bright gold buttons while she prances the boards of the Palace Theater, smoking a stogie and singing “Once I Was Callow, but Now I Am Gay, Since My Little Sweetheart Stole Your Heart Away” to the roar of smitten stagedoor johnnies. The other mice children, too, have grown up up and away. Now brawny rather than scrawny, they have scattered from their brother’s patronage to make their own ways in the waking World.
So all alone, Jacko sits in his ill-begotten splendor and the morning silence, the thick-cut bacon in his mouth choking him.
If only he had a companion to share his secret sorrows and his secret joys, his hopes and desires, his huge soft bed, his long polished table, and his yummy yummy bacon. If only he had love to keep the dark at bay. But how to find a companion? He chews on this problem along with his cheefle, rolls it around in his mouth with the last swallow of coffee, and continues cogitation while he goes about his day: jumping into the boudoir of the chief justice of Califa and relieving her of such trinkets that keep her dresser top askew, riffling her sock drawer and kipping the silver collar off her snuffling pug-dog while dog and justice snore through the entire caper. A wild rousting bounce over the roofs of Califa filling his boodle sack like a sort of reverse Man in Pink Blooms, stealing gifts instead of leaving them.
He’s still considering the conundrum as he counts the day’s take in his hidden snuggery, and while he distributes his largesse to his constituents that night at the Baile de Zarandeo, held every five days in a place I dare not disclose to you little poodles upon pain of death. (The City jail—what better place to collect felons, and the last place the law would ever consider to look?) No answers come to him at the Baile, but on the bounce home, a sudden solution is jolted loose by the warbling cries of a newspaper boy, shouting out an advertisement for Madam Twanky’s Sel-R-Salt, in between the call of the headlines.
How does one find anything—a plumber, a lost dog, a new dog?
An advertisement, of course.
So Jack constructs a compelling advertisement and places it in the SEEKING section of the Califa Police Gazette and Fancy Pantaloon Quarterly. “A gent of passion seeks real tomato for long walks on the beach, moonlight dining, Scrabble, and happily ever after. No cranks, bubblers, mechanics, or flash coves.”
Overnight, his numbered mailbox overflows with eager answers, scented papers, envelopes thick with promises and paste-board portraits, a plethora of choices, all of which prove most unsatisfying. Viz: the Hurdy Gurdy Girl Long Past Girlhood, the Piano Player with the Mossy Teeth, the Rubbler Who Won’t Shut Up about His Mother, the Hostler That Chews Too Loud, and The Lawyer Obsessed with Cats, to name just a few.
The most promising letter of the bunch turns out to have been penned by an infernal daemon. (He should have known by the scorched stationery.) Jack doesn’t gainsay against infernal daemons per se, but finds the avid praterhuman’s embraces to be ardent in a manner a bit too third-degree for comfort.
So, having gotten no closer to his heart’s desire, Jack gives in, scotches the advertisement, and drowns his sorrows in bouncing and Bounce, letting loose a full-throated warble of despair to the barkeep of the Hubba Time Roadhouse while he drinks. This barkeep, who herself has a jade-eye view of love, advises him, bitterly:
“Love comes to those who take it; those who wait, wait forever. You must take what you want.”
Jack draws up from his lean and bangs his fist upon the bar, bouncing all the bottles. Of course, the barkeep is right, of course! He had leapt to fortune and leapt to fame. He had leapt to leisure and leapt to…and so he would leap to love.
If love will not come willingly, then he will steal it!
This resolution proves easier in resolve than it does in practice. Unlike jewels and coin, or paintings and statues, Love does not lie about on dressers, on tables, hang on walls, sit snug in safes, awaiting for the taking. Love does not fit in bags, or at least not willingly, and without scratching. And while it’s easy to recognize value in coins, pearls, jewels, silver, Love is harder to spot. Still, Jack gives it his best.
Now instead of waiting for all’s quiet and all to bed to do his leaping, Jack waits until the householders are at home to bounce on in. This way, he meets surprised lads and lassies, whom he woos with syrupy words, and strings of pearls, and gracious manners. But none are favorably inclined toward a gent who vaulted through their window in the middle of the night, no matter how sweet this gent’s words, or how flourishing the bouquet he proffers. His ardor is met with shrieks, screams, flailing pokers, flinging shoes, and the foamy teeth of a particularly ferocious corgi.
Now, let us leave Jack, exiting left pursued by a corgi, and switch scenes for a minute, little poodles. While Jack is determined to get love, someone else is determined to get Jack. A hero to the hoi polloi, Jack’s name raises huzzahs to the lips of those below him, the forlorn and the poor, whose cheer and good luck came from the spoils that Jack steals in their names. But not everyone finds Jack so cheerful; those who wake to discover their dresser scarves torn and tossed; their safes gaping and empty; their silver plate decamped and their jam jars licked clean—they do not admire Jack at all. These luminaries, the best citizens of Califa, they call for Jack’s boots, they call for Jack’s person, they call for Jack to be caught, and tried, and displayed on a hurdle, preferably in pieces. Handsome bloodstained pieces, but pieces nonetheless.
In those olden days, my sweeties, Califa had a sheriff, and this sheriff had deputies, but these coppers were inoffensive dudes, well suited to break up bar-fights or help a gaffer across the street, to recover lost cats, lost lollies, lost hats, and unsnarl horse-traffic jams. But in the snatching of a world-class criminal they are useless. Not only did Jack have those springy boots that could soar him out of the deputies’ grasp, but he’d stolen other useful apparel as well, and now he was cap-a-pie with roguish garments, including a holocaust cloak, a compass feather, and a jackdaw that could smell the bouncers coming and give the alert. Jack in his leaping never even notices the sheriffs snatching at his heels, always too low and too late.
So, the Duque de Grandsellos wakes up one morning to find his favorite dressing gown, gold-embroidered dragons on a celestial spun silk, gone. Princess Nadege Naproxine, the famed soubrette and tamale maker, loses a rare red polar bear mantle to Jack’s boodle sack. Cheddar La Roque, the famous harpist, discovers the strings on her bow—made of twisted unicorn mane and a thread of hair from the Goddess Califa herself—missing. Jack kips a rare Norge Azul parrot from the Holy Whore of Heaven and the Pontifexina’s favorite coffee cup, made from the gold-and-pearl-crusted skull cap of Albany Bilskinir himself.
The furious cries of these luminaries grow deafening. While waggish editorials crying Attaboy appear in the pages of The Rogue’s Gazette & Gazetter, the letters published in The Alta Califa have a grimmer tone. An editorial in The Alta Califa calls for a curfew, roadblocks, road-checks, and door-to-door searches. Bounties are posted on posters about town, and Luscious Fyrdraaca, whose loss of a very valuable ice elemental means he is now drinking his cocktails warm, quite pointedly has a large meat hook placed on the front gate of Crackpot Hall, ready to receive, if not all of Jack, at least the tenderest parts of him.
When real order is called for in Califa, it is bestowed upon grateful citizens by the largesse of the Pontifexa’s personal bodyguards, the awful Alacráns, sangyn-coated scorpions, whose sting is so dreaded that threat alone keeps discipline. Rarely is action on the Alacráns’ part required, but when it is, the Alacráns are steady, deadly, and quick. As long as Jack remained aloof from her, the Pontifexa remained aloof from Jack. But the coffee cup was a step too far. The Pontifexa, faced with the stormy tantrum of her daughter, is forced to act.
The Captain of the Alacráns is summoned to the Pontifexa’s Closet and told in no uncertain terms to Catch Jack. This, with a grim smile of at last she sets out to do.
Back to our hero, little snuggies, who, of course, is aware of none of this commotion and clamor. After the aforementioned biting corgi, he gives up on stealing Love, and tries to salve his heart (and corrugated flesh) by throwing a smash to which every prime cove in town is invited. At this smash, Jack wears Luscious Fyrdraaca’s dragon dressing gown. He swills iced coffee from Georgiana Sidonia Haðraaða’s pearl-studded coffee skullcap cup. He combs the Norge Azul with Luscious Fyrdraaca’s platinum diamond-encrusted mustachio comb, his feet propped up on Luscious’s writing desk. All around him, the other coves carouse, stamping out a furious tarantella to the rollicking tune of the hurdy-gurdy band. He sees couples canoodling, colluding, mashing, dancing, laughing, and he, the greatest of them all, alone and hollow. His jackdaw sits at his shoulder and caws derisively; she doesn’t believe in love.
Jack raises his jorum in a toast. He won’t believe in love either. Who needs love when you have stuff? He bounces off his throne and joins the frantic dance, dancing frantically. But the next morn, head splitting and heels aching, he sits drinking iced coffee, and reads the editorials calling for his head and other parts. Bored, he pages through the sheaves of broadsides celebrating and castigating (depending on who paid for the publishing) his deeds. He chews his cheefle and chuckles. Maybe it’s not so much he’s single as singular. Is this a bad thing to be?
Then he flips over The Alta Califa and sees these boldface words: ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN BY THE HOLY WHORE OF HEAVEN…
Why had he not considered this remedy before? An idiot he is, and thoughtless, and caught up in his own head, too silly to see the obvious way out. The Holy Whore of Heaven will help him find love; is that not her calling? Advice to the lovelorn indeed! He is definitely lovelorn and in need of advice. But he can’t wait for a letter to be composed, posted, vetted, perused, considered, replied, printed, purchased, and read. He is too frantic for that.
So Jack jumps from his chair, replaces the dressing gown with Bibi de Quintero-Roja’s quetzal tailcoat; swirls his pearly locks with Madam Twanky’s bear grease pomade; dangles the Voivode of Shingletown’s pearls around his neck, plants the jackdaw’s perch upon his oil-slick pate, encases himself in the holocaust cape which repels notice as well as fire, and, exiting his lair, leaps up into the still star-kissed dawn, his heart singing with action.
Houses of the Holy is a delectable confection of architecture, a cream puff of a house, oozing with curlicues and furbelows, as fancy as a swirl of ribbon candy. Jack lands on the sugary-marble steps leading up to a glossy candy-apple red door. Ascending, he yanks a taffy-like bell-pull. The shellac of the door cracks, and a crabby cherub face peers out skeptically, but upon noting the slant of Jack’s chapeau and the desperation in his face, entrance is granted. The Holy Whore’s waiting room is chockablock with the drooping, pining lovelorn all hoping for a personal audience. They glare at Jack and hiss when Archangel Bob appears, folded sangyn swan wings skimming the glittering parquet floor, and beckons Jack follow.
The Holy Whore of Heaven herself is a bonbon of a girl swathed in a wide ribband of silk that floats around her creamy contours, barely concealing her charms. She receives young Jack—for let us not forget that success has come early to our boy, and he is just a heedless, headstrong boy—in her boudoir, a fantasy of white fur walls, white lacquer furniture flung with white fur, decadent and cozy.
Jack sits gingerly upon a white tussock, nervous about smudging. The snake-heads on his boots hiss happily as Angel Mox-Mox offers them saucers of beer, while Archangel Bob offers Jack himself a jorum of Hearts Ease. Jack’s tongue is not inclined to be tight, but the sweet golden liquor loosens it, and a passionate litany of dreams and desires pour out of him like wine from a stove-in barrel.
“Well, now,” the Holy Whore says, languidly, when he finally runs dry. Angel Mox-Mox is fanning her, and the silk swathe is billowing enticingly. “Who would put a curb on a burning boy? Come on, sweetie pie, and we shall fix you.”
Jack follows her drift into her office where he is measured for height, weight, eyesight, character, bile, dreams. He answers questions, questions answers, provides samples of all possible bodily fluids, of handwriting. The Holy Whore of Heaven peers at his palms, at the soles of his feet, palpitates his scalp, his stomach, his heart, peers into his ears. Listens to his hopes, his dreams, his fears. By the time she is done he has been measured as thoroughly as any person might be measured; there’s no stone in his soul, in his body, left unturned.
The Holy Whore and Archangel Bob confer softly, and then Jack follows Archangel Bob’s rustling red wings to the library, where Bob gives Archangel Naberius Jack’s fat file. For ten impatient minutes, Naberius squints through his bulbous fish eyes at the file, then swims upward through the lofty dim space, toward some distant part of the rotunda, dwindling in the depths. When he returns, he bears a book as big as he is, a hefty tome with embossed leather boards and gilt-edge pages.
Looking for love, the book whispers. Looking for love.
The book thumps down upon a vast library table; glasses are pinched upon Naberius’s bulbous nose, and Jack waits in exquisite agony as the Holy Whore bends her beautiful head over the pages. She whispers; Naberius scribbles. Naberius whispers; she scribbles. Archangel Bob remains impassive.
Jack chews his finger, and jiggles his knee, he paces, and wrings his hands, he tugs his ear, his hair, he pinches the jackdaw until it flaps up into the dusty motes of drifty air high above, cawing complaints. Jack rocks his heels, the snake-heads spit and hiss, and every sinew of his body, every nerve, every fiber of his being is stretched to the breaking point. He might soon scream. The Holy Whore and her angels take no note of his nervous distress; they continue their calm calculations until at last all three heads, one epicene, one piscine, and one just plain delicious, nod in agreement.
Three smiles bestow upon Jack, who grins nervously back. His heart will surely soon tear a hole in his weskit.
“Jack,” says the Holy Whore in her sugary voice. “I have the perfect love for you.”
“Ayah!” Jack and the snakes wait breathlessly.
“But…there is a wee bit of a matter. My heart is sore too, snuggie, and do you know for what?”
What could the Holy Whore of Heaven desire here in her candy castle? Jack furrows his brow in confusion and even the corbie looks perplexed.
“Dear Crackers, my sweet little blue parrot, so cruelly torn from me—” Fluttering eyelashes do not take the edge off the steel in her sweet voice. Archangel Bob seems to have grown two or three feet taller, and Naberius’s teeth are revealed to be carp-y sharp. Belatedly, Jack remembers the Norge Azul parrot, kipped from the Holy Whore of Heaven’s carriage while she was at the opening night of the Califa National Opera.
“Oh, dear,” says Jack weakly. The snake-heads try to look small and wormlike. Jack’s unprotected back begins to itch. He dare not turn but he can feel Angel Mox-Mox’s violet-tinged breath ruffling his side curls.
“Dear, sweet Crackers, what I brought up by hand,” the Holy Whore says sadly. “Light of my life, fire of my heart, my only true love—”
The jackdaw coughs derisively.
The Holy Whore of Heaven has terrible taste in parrots. The Norge Azul had kept Jack up all night long with its squawking and squabbled with the jackdaw over a mouse chew-toy. At dawn, he’d opened the window and kicked the parrot out; the last he’d seen of the miserable bird was a flash of blue vanishing into the fog.
“I cry your pardon,” Jack says, and screws his face into the cute expression that always worked so well upon his mam. The Holy Whore will have none of it. She will have her parrot back or Jack will never find his love. He protests that he knows not of the parrot’s adventures once the bird struck out on its own—the booting being re-characterized as an escape. But the Holy Whore of Heaven does know where the parrot is, and the parrot’s return is the price of Jack’s true love.
So where did the parrot end up?
Jack’s heart sinks when he hears the answer: Bilskinir House, seat of the Pontifexa of Califa.
Of all the places that Jack has burgled, Bilskinir House is not one. He’s reckless, is our boy, but not careless. Other denizens are easily rooked by his rapid in-and-out routine; they may move fast to block intrusions, but Jack and his boots are faster. By the time they are espied they are gone. And not all houses in Califa have denizens anyway. Some rely on armed retainers, or mercenaries; some on charms and ensorcells, all of which are easy enough for the boots to evade. But Bilskinir House is another flavor of cake completely, far too rich for our boy’s taste. Firstly, there’s the Pontifexa; Jack knows how much cheek he can get away with with her: answer, zero. Georgiana Haðraaða has little sense of humor when it comes to overstepping of boundaries; just ask the poor bounder who trod on her train at the opening of the Califa Opera last week. Or rather, ask his head, currently adorning a post high above the Opera’s proscenium arch. Best seat in the house, if only he could enjoy it.
(He is, of course, unaware that she’s already put her scorpions on his tail.)
Then there is Paimon, Bilskinir House’s denizen. Jack has a healthy respect for egregores of the second order and their shiny, sharp lapis-blue tusks. And then there is, well, there is patriotism. Jack’s a Califian through and through. He’s her grace’s loyal subject, he would never dream of stealing from her.
(But, the dumplings wonder: what about the Pontifexina’s cup? That, little ring-a-dings, was kipped from her favorite coffee house, where it was kept in a locked cabinet only accessible to her favorite barista, who is now out of a job. Jack remains oblivious to its owner.)
The heights of Bilskinir House have been left hitherto unscaled.
But in love, all bets are off.
Now Jack hardly needs the boots to soar; his heart alone is so light that it fair lifts him up into the air, each beat sending him higher and higher. In the shadowy dusk he bounds through the city streets, dodging horsecars, and broughams, mule-carts, and flies, over fountains and hedges. He passes over the city boundary into the Outside lands, his boot-heels hollow on the corduroy roadway. Up and over sand dunes he flies, past scrubby graze, arching over a surprised goatherd; on the horizon the sun is a golden coin sinking into a jade-green sea, the dimming sky shredding with fog.
Jack sees none of these glories; his head is full of heartfelt visions of romance, of intimate cheese suppers, cozy chess games, of long walks on the beach, and silvery sleigh-rides, of blissful waltzes, and blissful (Jack’s ideas of romance, quite obviously, have been completely informed by the overconsumption of too many romantic broadsides). All he has to do is get in, get the bird, get out, and Live Happily Ever After.
Another thing Jack does not see is that he is being followed. When he bounced out of Houses of the Holy, another crept behind him, slinking through the door just before it closed, down the sugary steps, close behind. The jackdaw sees this dark shadow, has flown from Jack’s hat to circle around behind their tail, but before it can sail back to Jack and caw a warning, the bird’s wings go limp as newsprint, and it plummets to the sandy ground, where a canvas bag awaits it. Beak sealed with some sigil, the jackdaw is stuffed into the sack, where it lies limp and angry, helpless.
Our hero doesn’t notice his sidekick’s lack either; now he’s springing along the Pacifica Playa, dodging surfer-shebangs and hobo jungles. The sun dunks below the sea’s edge; a cold wind feathers off the sword-colored water. Bilskinir’s bulk hulks on the watery horizon.
Meanwhile, not too far behind, a shape slinks behind Jack, four legs, scraggly amber fur, jade-green eyes: a mangy looking coyote, inexplicably carrying a sack in its mouth.
Jack laughs out loud as he approaches Bilskinir’s swale, realizing that the trickery required to enter the House will be of a trivial nature. A scrum of coaches congregates around the end of the causeway; a symphony of whip-hand shouting and curses, jingling bridles and whickering horses fill the air as the carriages of the à la mode jockey for position. Judging from the lavish personages alighting from these carriages, the Pontifexa is giving a very lavish party.
Jack watches the tangled embarkation from the heights of a sand dune, giggles to himself: is that Luscious Fyrdraaca in the beaverskin hat? The Duque de Grandsellos in Corinthian velvet petti-pants and lemur fur cape? Cheddar La Roque arm in arm with the Princess Naproxine, both blazing in matching black leather jackets trimmed in crimson feathers? A jingle tingle of excited alarm runs up and down Jack’s spine; if they should realize who he is…such fun!
The tide is in, causeway flooded; the luminous personages are loading onto swan-shaped barges, which float along the sunken road, limned with flickering water elementals caged in fish-shaped weirs, toward the welcoming gape of Bilskinir’s lower gate. The sheriffs milling around the grand personages, grimly festooned with warpaint and rifles, are just for pure show. Paimon’s influence is extensive and can handle any intruder even at this distance.
But Jack’s hat is not just for show, though showy indeed it is. The capacious crown holds excellent storage, and within Jack has stowed all sorts of dainty tricks, charms, philters, and other useful objects. Most of his capers require only speed for success; but sometimes more subtlety is called for. Where’s that dratted jackdaw? Flown off after some espied shiny, no doubt; well, Jack is fine on his own. He removes the hat and from the hat removes a thick bar of chocolate. “Madam Twanky’s Glamorous Confection,” proclaims the flowery label. A nibble of this and no one will be the wiser of Jack’s true identity; he’ll be swathed in a glamour impossible for even Paimon’s sharp eyes to penetrate. Too easy? Perhaps, but there is one possibly lethal catch: the glamour wears off quickly, an hour at the most. He will have no time to waste.
The black bittersweet taste lingering on his tongue, Jack skids down the sand dune, careens through the carriages, splashes through the surf, jumps into a swan just as it pushes off from shore. “Lovely night,” he trills to the startled occupant. “And glorious party, eh what? I adore your pelerine and your chapeau too, dearheart, isn’t this barge just too divine? Our lady has such good taste!”
Luscious Fyrdraaca, for it is he already swan-seated, is bemused by the chatterer, who is so glorious that he makes Luscious’s eyes water. But exquisite good manners are bred into the Fyrdraaca bone, so he politely agrees, while fishing in his pocket for a spider-silk hankie to blot before his eye maquillage goes raccoon-y.
Back on the beach, the coyote serpentines through the thickets of carriage wheels, horse legs, dashes behind the Countess of Castoria’s landau. There, unobserved, the animal braces legs, and shakes itself. When the fur stops flying, a woman springs from four legs to two, spins a serape out of thin air. Thus covered, she tucks the sack under her arm, and strides out of her concealment to push to the front of the swan-line, ignoring the bleating protests of the other guests—who, when they see the scars on her face—quickly shut their gobs and let her pass.
Of course, the guests of the Pontifexa cannot hike all the way up Bilskinir House’s height—their ribbands might go limp, their wigs frizz, their high heels rub, their lace droop! So when the swan scrapes the shore, our new duo is immediately ushered by one of Paimon’s adjuncts into a luxurious miner’s cart, and elevated up the hill by the sweetest, softest blue donkey Jack has ever seen. (He determines to snitch it on the way out.) At the top, they are deposited in front of a wall of towering redwood trees with trunks as big as houses and crowns so tall they create an arboreal sky. Jack and Luscious patter down a soft-mossy pathway, two shadows in a stream of many, chatter hushed by the dreamlike darkness.
Oh, my duckies, Jack is enchanted. A child of the city, he’s never seen trees so tall, or felt air so moist with green growing. They exit the grove into a lush grassy meadow, high grass speckled with fireflies, and there’s the House itself, a cozy wooden bungalow, shingled sides, eaves capped with fanciful carvings of sea-creates and oceanic motifs. How delightfully cozy Bilskinir House looks in the gloom; windows brilliant with a welcoming glow. A sort of dizzying relief washes over our lad; the sudden wobbly sensation that he has come home. He wishes suddenly that he was there under other circumstances. Not a thief, but a welcome guest.
A long receiving line caterpillars across the front porch and down the wide friendly front steps. Jack does not wish to be received; he bows to Luscious, presses hand to lips, gums the pearl out of Luscious’s signet ring (reckless but oh, so irresistible) and bounds off. Spotting a duffer in a very wide farthingale, Jack ducks down, slithers under, and thus is able to make it through Bilskinir’s front door, undetected.
If Jack had ever read respectable newspapers instead of sticking to the lurid yellowpress (more likely to award him favorable coverage) he might have known the occasion of the party. It is the Pontifexina’s coming-of-age birthday party.
And such a party! The fancy is so thick that Jack is almost overcome by the vapors. Never before has he seen so much richness so thick and ripe for the taking. For a moment, Jack’s romantic resolve blurs. Flooded by the shiny people, and shiny sackcoats, shiny wigs, and shiny lip rouge, shiny shoes, and shiny stockings, shiny eyes, and shiny shiny jewels, he falters; his knees wobble, his elbows waggle. Moments like these the jackdaw usually brings him back into focus, but the crow is still missing, so he bites his own finger, hard and to the bone. This bright spurt of blood mingles with the echo of the bittersweet chocolate in his mouth, and he recalls what he has come to do and how little time he has to do it.
Bilskinir’s Aviary is famous; has been featured in The Alta Califa more than once, and is open to visitors three times a month for the modest fee of two lisbys. Jack’s never been there, of course; as a child they’d no money for such touristing, and as a man, he’d no desire. But Archangel Bob had given him a feather to use as a dousing to find the Aviary, for the layout of Bilskinir is no easy thing. Fletching calls to fletching, Bob had said, this feather shall fly true. Jack whips the arrow from his weskit, wincing as it rewards his incautious handling with a prick. The vane of the arrow is razor sharp. As he points it, the tip of the arrow blushes brightly. Two steps forward increase this luster; two steps backward dim it.
So forward he follows the enticing glow, dancing into the crush of fancy dancing folk, his red tippy-tapping boots springing & leaping, but smally now, in the steps of a jig, a tarantella, a fox-trot. The feather dances with him, dipping, whirling, twirling him about through the spiral of people, and now the tip of the feather is a molten-glow, heat radiating down the rachis, the calamus burning the tips of his fingers black. But the scorch is a small price to pay, and the spiraling gay music is camouflage to his pain—
He realizes, he’s the only one still dancing; the music has dwindled to a sawing squeak and the dancers dropped out of step, turning back and forth, bewildered at the sudden silence.
Which is then broken by a trumpty triumphant voice shouting:
“Arrest that man!”
Jack doesn’t wait to see if that order pertains to him; he knows it does. Still clutching the arrow, Jack taps his heels upon the redwood boards, and springs aloft, soaring high over the crowd. His heels clip the elephant figure perched atop the chief justice’s wig, and bend the angel feather topknot of the Voivode of Shingletown. Screams of alarm and excitement create their own orchestration to Jack’s flight. Below him a swarm of sangyn coats tries to mirror his progress across the ballroom. But he has empty air through which to soar, and they are trapped in a confusion of outraged guests, and have little hope of laying hands upon our bouncing boy. Jack heels off the chimneypiece, powdering a stone or two in the process, and hurtles toward the chandelier. The antlers make an excellent trapeze, and so Jack dangles there for a moment, heels swinging above the heads of his pursuers, who vainly try to whack at his feet with their bayonets, while poisonous snakes’ head spittle splatters upon their upturned faces.
Screaming, the Alacráns fall back, and into their void appears a tawny streak whose jump is almost as high as Jack’s own. The coyote leaps into the air, foam flying from open muzzle, sandy ruff puffed in anger. Teeth scrape on one sole; Jack kicks and coyote falls back, but only to gather up energy and spring again. Lucky for Jack, he’s already increased the arch of his swing, the coyote’s bite latches onto the bottom of his frockcoat, but the momentum of his swing pulls him away, and the coyote falls back again, torn fabric flapping in its jaws.
“Oi, that’s my quetzal-tail coat,” someone shouts, and by this Jack knows for sure that his glamour has worn off. He’s aiming for the musicians’ balcony; he achieves his goal, landing upon the second cellist. The cellist heaves for breath, Jack doffs his hat in apology, and then tosses the Hand of Glory he’s excavated out of that aforementioned capacious crown into the coyote’s face just as she clears the balcony railing. Without waiting to enjoy the results of this feint, Jack scarpers, only to run headlong into a massive blue chest, as stout as a stone wall, and just as immovable. This chest is as tall as the sky, as wide as the deep blue sea; squinting upward, Jack can just barely make out the gleaming tusks, the glittering eyes, the drooping mustachio of the most fearsome denizen in Califa.
Paimon.
Jack pivots, and vaults over the writhing, snarling coyote, who is busy trying to toss off the Hand of Glory attached to its muzzle. He balances briefly upon the gleaming bar of the railing, and then launches out into the largest longest leap of his life. The failure of which will cost him exactly that. He’s not about to die unsatisfied.
Hawklike he soars through the vault of the ballroom, tattered quetzal tail trailing behind him like the tail of a shooting star. The upturned faces below are a blur of astonishment, the wind roars in his ears, the enormous brim of his hat catches the air currents like a sail, propelling him farther onward than he has ever managed to go before. Breath sucks from his lungs, tears well in his eyes, the room fades, he feels as though he flies through the star-studded night sky, leaping, hurtling toward the glimmering glow of an enchanted moon—as he flies this glowing blur brightens, resolves into the glistening form of a girl, the most beautiful fantastic gorgeous delicious delightful spectacular girl in the world. This girl is a dish; she’s a cream puff; she’s the perfect cup of coffee; she’s a hot towel after a cold shower. She’s the tune in a fiddle; the cream in a coffee; the glitter in the bomb.
Like an arrow, Jack flies toward her, his heart singing: “Girl of my dreams, it’s you, girl of my dreams, it’s me!” He will fall at her feet, his quest over at last happily ever after, here he comes—
And then Cake intervenes.
Birthday cake, that is, a towering confection of marzipan-encrusted sponge cake studded with amaro-soaked cherries, draped with fondant furbelows. A cake twenty feet tall and six feet around, and it’s an iceberg of an obstacle that Jack’s heels, finally flagging, can just not surmount. He sees the collision coming; is incapable of braking to avoid it, wheels arms, flings back his brim to create a drag, to no avail. He’s going faster and faster, and the cake is getting closer and closer…at the very last minute Jack closes his eyes.
The impact is stunning; marzipan and sponge shrapnel splodge through the air, a shower of gooey sugar that drenches the lavish guests, the routed redcoats, the still battle-locked coyote and Hand of Glory, the aghast orchestra. The walls are smeared, the guests are smeared, the floors are smeared, and Jack is not just smeared, he’s buried so far deep in what remains of the majestic pastry that only his red shoes are visible, heels dangling limply.
In the middle of awesome awestruck silence, everyone struck dumb by the calamity that they can’t believe they just witnessed, a sparkly blue blur spins into existence, coalesces into a sparkly blue butler, not quite as big an obstruction as before, but definitely hugely oversized. With exaggerated care and a moue of distaste hovering around his mustachios, Paimon unsnaps one immaculate cuff and rolls up his silken sleeve to reveal a ham-sized forearm. With a hand the size of a full side of bacon, he takes a hold of one of Jack’s limp ankles.
Jack slides out of the wreckage of the cake covered in sugary vernix like a newborn babe. Bruised and battered, with blood bubbling from his nose (the marzipan exterior was as hard as concrete), he sprawls in a manger of crushed sponge cake. All the bounce has left him; the heels are spent, he can’t get up.
Paimon shakes out a hankie the size of a horse blanket and wipes the goo from his arm, resleeves his arm, and shakes his cuffs out. Jack bubbles, and licks his lips. The smell of sugar is sickening. He feels a hard pressure on his chest, pinning him into place. He rolls up crusty eyelids and manages to elevate his head just enough to see a small purple patent leather bootee is planted right on top of his heart. The bootee belongs, of course, to the most splendiferous girl in the world, who is, of course, the Pontifexina Georgiana Sidonia Haðraaða, the Birthday Girl.
What do you say to the Girl of your Dreams, when you have just crashed her party with the intent to steal from her, and crushed her cake, and covered her guests in marzipan and sponge cake, and are now going to be hauled away by her angry denizen and handed over to her mother’s guard to be broken upon a wheel and have your bloody pieces displayed all over town? Well, my little winkles, what would you say?
Poor Jack can’t really say anything; the pressure of the bootee is making it hard for him to breathe, or maybe it’s just the proximity of the girl of his dreams that is making him feel faint. But anyway, anything he might try to say would have been drowned out by the sudden peals of laughter cracking the ominous silence. Explosive, delighted, full-throated laughter that is contagious in its merriment and immediately joined by supporting laughter, as those around the Pontifexa take up her cue. With a sideways slant of his aching head, Jack sees the slant-wise visage of a woman in a black-and-gold caftan laughing so hard she is almost choking. Of course, Jack recognizes her; does not her portrait adorn every office in the city, does not her statue stand regally in the center of the center city horse fountain, does not her profile appear on every diva coin? Though the Pontifexa is not known for her sense of humor, apparently she finds this situation hysterical.
The rest of the lavish guests are now laughing too, and so is the Pontifexina, a pearling, girlish laugh that shows off the green glints of the emeralds inset into her dainty teeth. Only the tawny-haired woman in the red serape standing now next to the Pontifexa doesn’t laugh. The Hand of Glory is crushed in her grip and her green eyes are cinders. She lets drop the pulped flesh, flexes a finger, the thud of boots vibrate the floor beneath his back as her guards surround him.
Jack squinches shut his eyes; salt tears mar the sugar crust on his face. So close and yet so far! Too late, too late! But when the grasp comes, it’s not the brutish hands of angry guards, but the delicate brush of a finger across his frosting-encased face. He cracks his eyes again, and then cracks a grin, white teeth flashing through the mask of cake goo.
“He’s adorable, mamma,” the Pontifexina says, licking her icing-capped finger. “My favorite flavor. Can I keep him?”
The Pontifexa scrubs her face with a silken hankie handed to her by the woman hovering to her right side, a cupcake of a girl, who has a gorgeous cerulean blue parrot perched upon her shoulder, and a creamy smug smile on her face.
“Please, mamma? Please?” the Pontifexina pleads.
Her mamma says fondly, “Of course, sweetie pie, you may keep him.”
The Alacrán captain swirls her serape and vanishes in a puff of rage. The Norge Azul pecks the Holy Whore of Heaven’s cheek. The Pontifexina shrieks her delight and claps her hands.
And that, my little dumplings, is how Jack was caught.