The Blue Shoe

by Roderick Townley

  Ulf’s eyes narrowed. “Do ye insult my wife?”

  “I question your taste.”

  “Still haven’t changed, I see.” Ulf’s voice was steady, but muscles in his jaw were working.

  “At least,” said Shadow, “I know what side I belong on.”

  “What side is that?”

  “There are only two: Auki and human.”

  “No, Shadow, that’s where ye make your mistake. For you, everything is race.”

  “Everything is race. Aukis serve the goddess. Humans serve their greed.”

  “Wait. Listen to yourselves,” Hap broke in. “We’ve got to work together.”

  “Work with him?” said Shadow.

  Ulf spat. “He calls himself a brother!”

  “Yes.” Hap ducked in. “We’re all brothers here, brothers and sisters working together.”

  “No,” said Ulf. “I mean he’s my brother.”

  Hap looked from one to the other. Was it possible? The noses were indeed similar—long and upward-curling. Most Auki noses bent down. “Well,” he said weakly, “all the more reason to get along.”

  “We never got along,” said Ulf. “Even as an Aukling, he had to be the leader. Now he reads shadows and tells everybody how to live.”

  “Ye should listen!” Shadow snapped. “Look at yourself! Ye look ridiculous in those clothes.”

  “Please tell my brother,” said Ulf, “that this meeting is over.”

  “No, wait!” Hap cried.

  “Remember why we’re here!”

  “It was a poor idea.” He turned and started away, with Mag beside him.

  “Let him go,” said Shadow Reader. “We will fight without him.”

  “You’ll lose!”

  “Then we will die honorably, as Auki warriors.” Shadow signaled to his followers, and they started up the path.

  Hap could hardly believe what was happening.

  Markie put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You tried.”

  “What good is trying? Slag wins.”

  Shadow was now climbing past the stalactites, which looked more than ever like hanged men. At the other side of the cavern, Ulf’s group was filing out through a back tunnel.

  Suddenly, as if from everywhere at once, a voice rang out: “Everyone! Stop!”

  Shadow paused a moment but then continued on. Ulf’s men went on their way as well. Clearly, the voice wasn’t coming from either group. It certainly wasn’t coming from Hap.

  “Stop!”

  Again, nobody stopped.

  “Before it’s too late!”

  Apparently, it was too late.

  That’s when the voice, giving up on words, rose to a high, sustained, and, it must be said, quite beautiful tenor note echoing through the cavern.

  Everyone turned.

  “Dad,” Hap whispered. He looked around wildly, but the cavern was an echo chamber, the sound bouncing from wall to ceiling to floor and back again.

  Then it was replaced by a different sound:

  Whappity-whappity-whappity.

  Whappity-whap!

  It was his father’s little drum, the one he’d played when he sang for the children of Aplanap long ago.

  Shadow and his followers started back down, their eyes darting everywhere. Ulf and the miners paused. Some were turning around.

  Whappity-whappity!

  Whap-whap!

  After long seconds, a figure rose from behind an outcropping of limestone, on the side opposite from where everyone had been looking. He was a slightly built man, with a crooked little nose and button-bright eyes—eyes that were fixed, just now, on Hap Barlo.

  “Dad!” Hap cried out. Tears sprang to his eyes as he ran madly across the cavern and into his father’s arms.

  “Son,” murmured Silas, clasping him tightly. “Son.”

  For seconds, neither could speak. Hap felt several warm droplets land on his head. Then he heard his father strenuously clearing his throat.

  “Listen, everyone!” Silas shouted. “Slag knows about your meeting! He’s on his way here with his men! You’ve got to get out!”

  “Then we fight him here!” Shadow answered sturdily.

  “Not here. Not yet,” Ulf said. “We’re not ready.”

  His brother hesitated. He knew the need for strategy. He hadn’t lasted this long in the mountain without it. “How,” he said, “do we stop him?”

  “One way,” said Hap, who had been listening, “is to stop fighting each other.”

  The Aukis looked at him. A flicker of anger crossed Ulf’s face, but it passed. “The human is right,” he said.

  A distant rumbling and a mutter of voices made everyone turn.

  “They’re here!” cried Silas. “Quick! Out the back tunnel!”

  “I suppose,” said Shadow, starting to run, “we can hate each other later, when this is over.”

  “And will,” said Ulf. “But now hurry!”

  Twenty-six

  WITH ULF AND Shadow in the lead, the band of resistance fighters raced through the low tunnels. Where the tunnels split off into two and then four directions, the Auki leaders signaled to each other to divide up and head different ways, confusing their pursuers.

  Sophia and Hap stayed with Silas, who was doing the best he could at the back of the pack.

  “Come on, Dad, faster!”

  Silas looked at his son and nodded, too out of breath to speak. Somewhere back in the tunnels, dogs were barking.

  Ulf’s group was almost out of sight by now, and the torch Markie carried was a distant flicker. If it hadn’t been for a bluish glow in the tunnel walls, Hap would have had trouble seeing anything. As it was, the going was dim, and his father stumbled more than once.

  “Come on, Mr. Barlo,” said Sophia, helping Silas to his feet. “You can do it.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  The barking was louder now.

  They ran on. But Silas was slowing.

  “Dad,” said Hap, “climb on my back. It’ll be faster.”

  Still gasping for breath, Silas shook his head. “Won’t work. Leave me here. Hurry!”

  “I’m not leaving you, Dad. I’ve just found you!”

  “You have to, or we’re all lost.”

  Hap didn’t want to believe his father was right.

  “Think of Sophia,” said Silas, who was simply walking now, and not walking fast. “Take her and run. I’ll be all right.”

  “No, Dad—”

  “If you’re worried about the dogs, don’t. They know me.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “You’ve got to! Tell me, though, quick. The revolt begins when?”

  “The revolt?”

  “In case I can’t be in touch.”

  “Sunday morning, six-fifteen. But, Dad—”

  The barking was dangerously close. There was no time.

  “Six-fifteen. Good. Now go on!”

  “No, Dad.”

  Silas looked at his son. “The dogs know me,” he said. “But they don’t know your friend. They’ll rip her apart.”

  Hap stared. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Go, son.”

  “I’ll come back for you, Dad. I promise!” Hap looked at his father through tear-bleared eyes, then hugged him hard, grabbed Sophia’s hand, and ran.

  The night passed miserably, as did most of the next day. Hap felt sick with guilt. Staying wouldn’t have helped; he knew that—Slag would have had three prisoners instead of one. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those dogs. Was his dad telling the truth when he said they wouldn’t harm him?

  Probably it was good that Hap and Sophia were kept busy. They worked with Ulf, Shadow, and the others, chipping holes at strategic points in the walls—walls that ran parallel to the tunnels being worked by the miners. The idea was to establish spy posts and monitor the excavations.

  Working as quietly as they could, Sophia and Hap managed to create an opening a foot wide overlooking one of the deepest workstations in the
mountain. Situated high in the tunnel wall, it gave them a downward view of the shackled miners. Since this was an Auki station, it was Shadow who squeezed through and dropped down among them.

  When the foreman looked his way, Shadow bent to the work, chipping away at a slab of bluish rock. When the foreman strolled to the far end, Shadow whispered to the Aukis around him, instructing them to be ready and telling them what to expect.

  With metal clippers, he cut through their shackles. Cut through but didn’t cut off. To the foreman, it would seem that the workers were still hobbled by chains.

  While Shadow was busy in this station, Ulf was doing the same in another. He’d changed out of his captain’s outfit, thrown on some rags, and become to all appearances just another Auki slave.

  Markie, meanwhile, had slipped into a human workplace. The men there weren’t in chains, because there was no danger of their escaping into the mountain. To Aukis, the mountain was home. To men, it was prison.

  The problem was timing. The revolt, to be successful, would have to start everywhere at once. The plan they worked out was a long shot, but the only chance they had.

  The next morning, quite early, Hap and Sophia stationed themselves beside a spy hole and watched. No one noticed them. The workers were all concentrating on a pulsing blue glow emanating from the wall.

  “Careful!” cried a nasal voice that Hap recognized at once. It was Pec, and he had out his little whip, which he was wielding on the hairy backs of his fellow Aukis. “Clumsy vermin! I told you not to use picks! We don’t want to break through yet.”

  A commotion behind him made Pec turn. He was greeted by a strange sight: a couch carried on poles by four young Aukis. Sitting upon it, with a glass of iced tea in his hand, was Maurice the overseer, the same personage who had welcomed Hap on his first day in the mine.

  “Morning, all,” he said cheerily as the workers set him down. “I understand we are getting close. Is this the place?”

  Pec ducked his head quickly several times in imitation of a bow. “It is. Yes, sir.”

  “Awfully hot in here. The ice in my tea is all melted away. You know how I hate warm tea.”

  “I do, Maurice. We’ll remedy that when we get back.”

  “We’ll just have to endure. As you may know, Mr. Pec, we’re having a visitor. He’s on his way as we speak.”

  From their hiding place, Hap and Sophia glanced at each other. “Get the others,” whispered Hap. “Ulf, if you can find him.”

  Sophia set off at a run.

  Hap checked the time. It was ten past six, Sunday morning. If something was going to happen, it would happen soon. He went back to watching, his heart thumping. As if in sympathy, the strange light continued its slow pulsing, dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

  Just out of his line of sight, he heard a muffle of voices, and then a man strode in, accompanied by armed soldiers. Hap, from his odd angle, couldn’t see his face, only the familiar bent-brim hat.

  Slag’s hat.

  The Aukis backed off, their shackles jingling, as the big man made his way to the wall.

  For some seconds, he said nothing, just taking it in. Then he turned, and Hap saw that it was indeed Slag. “Remarkable,” he said. “You can almost see through the wall.”

  “True,” said Maurice with satisfaction. “It is thin here. We wanted to wait for you before we broke through.”

  “Well done. Are we ready, then?”

  Hap had to hold himself back from shouting, “Stop!” The time he’d spent inside the mountain had given him a strange feeling for the place. It seemed alive, and Slag’s relentless pursuit of the Great Blue felt like a deadly assault.

  Still no Ulf or Sophia, or help of any kind. Hap could do nothing but watch as Slag pushed an Auki roughly aside, took up a pick, and swung it full force against the translucent wall.

  It shattered like heavy glass.

  Hap’s breath caught in his throat. It was as if he’d been struck himself.

  With the wall gone, a sudden blinding geyser of blue light flooded the work site, along with a wave of heat. Everyone fell silent. Several Aukis knelt. Slag himself stood wide-eyed, one hand over his heart, as if instinctively protecting his vital organs.

  Before them, cradled in surrounding rock, glimmered an immense blue diamond.

  Slag spoke a single word: “Mine.”

  “Well, of course,” said Maurice, blinking nervously, “we’re in a mine. We’re mining. And we know that we’re mining for our mayor back in Aplanap.” He gave Slag a significant look.

  Slag didn’t reply. He took off his hat. Was it in homage, Hap wondered, or because it was so hot down there? Slag’s bald head looked blue in the strange light. Sweat glistened on its dome.

  “Five years. Five wretched years on this mountain.” He shook his head. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, quite,” said Maurice, “but how shall we transport it? Back to Aplanap.” Again, a significant look.

  Slag ignored him. “Is it true,” he murmured, “what they say?”

  “What? Immortality? Omniscience? Omnipotence?” Maurice chuckled. “I hardly think—”

  “Let’s find out,” said Slag, wincing into the radiating light. “Maurice, why don’t you step over and fetch it for me?”

  The overseer’s eyes bulged. “Oh, I couldn’t. You should have the honor.”

  “I give the honor to you.”

  “Really, Mr. Slag, I—”

  “Pick it up, Maurice. Now!”

  Pec was hopping about excitedly. “Yes, yes, pick it up, pick it up, Maurice!”

  “Mr. Pec,” Maurice muttered, “I would thank you to keep your thoughts to yourself.”

  Just then, Sophia returned, out of breath. Ulf and Shadow were with her, with others close behind. “What’s going on?”

  Hap nodded toward Maurice.

  Ulf looked horrified.

  “They mustn’t!” Shadow hissed.

  Hap shook his head. The hole he and Sophia had made in the wall was narrow. And what if they did manage to squeeze through? Slag’s guns waited below.

  “If you please,” said Slag, nodding to the overseer.

  Maurice’s blinking was out of control, and he seemed to have trouble breathing. He extended a trembling hand, then drew it back.

  “That’s the idea,” said Slag.

  The overseer bit his lip. With sudden resolve, he reached out with both hands for the jewel.

  There was a loud snap! followed by a burning smell, and Maurice was flung backward and lay in the dirt.

  Pec ran around him in frantic circles. “Mr. Maurice, Mr. Maurice!”

  “Then it’s true,” Slag murmured. “The gem is protected.” He called one of the soldiers, who brought over a leather bag. From it, Slag took a pair of oversized gloves. They seemed oddly heavy, and he had trouble getting them on.

  “Let’s see if lead-lined gloves will help.”

  He reached out slowly, then hesitated.

  Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his shoulders and was about to reach out again when a strange sound caught his ear.

  It was a voice, a man’s voice—singing.

  Happy we are a-wandering,

  it’s what we care for most….

  Maurice, coming back to consciousness, began to groan. Clearly, he wasn’t the singer. No, the voice, echoey and eerily beautiful, was coming—was it possible?— through the heat pipes.

  For just because we’re wandering,

  it does not mean…

  The end of the verse was lost, because all of a sudden, the air was rent with shouts and a loud clashing of chains as the Aukis flung off their shackles. One of them, growling fiercely, leaped on Slag’s back, punching and biting. Others, shouting Auki oaths, pounced on the soldiers. A gun went off, but the man who fired it was immediately covered in Aukis. He fell, still struggling to shake free of them, and was lost in a snarl of fur.

  Another soldier began backing away, firing shots as he went. An Auki fell to the
dirt, clutching his shoulder.

  “Nan!” cried Shadow. “No!” And he pushed Hap roughly aside. Wedging himself through the narrow hole, he dropped to the ground. Ulf quickly followed.

  “It’s happening!” yelled Sophia, giving Hap a triumphant hug.

  “Yes,” he said. “Now, run to the next spy hole and see if they heard the same thing. Markie, you go the other way. Quick!”

  Without a word, the two of them sprinted off, checking every spy hole down the line. Each workplace had a pipe that drew heated air to the buildings above. And through each of these pipes, Silas’s resonant voice had triggered violence. Shouts and shots, crashes and cries, reverberated through the tunnels.

  The revolt was under way.

  Twenty-seven

  SLAG’S EYES WERE a flash of steel surprise as he ripped the Auki from his shoulder and flung him against the wall. Quickly, he reached out and closed his gloved hands over the great diamond, rocking it back and forth till it broke free. He slid it into the leather bag.

  Shadow growled deep in his throat and started toward him.

  “Be careful!” Ulf shouted, but his brother wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on the bag.

  Hap slithered through the opening in the tunnel wall. “He’s got a gun!” he shouted, dropping to the ground.

  So he had, and in a moment, it was out—a short, broad-snouted shotgun—pointed at Shadow Reader’s heart.

  “Well, well,” sneered Slag, “the Blueskin wants to protect his precious jewel.”

  “Shadow! Get down!” yelled Hap, but the Auki kept going.

  “Steop, Sheadu!” called Ulf.

  “It’s mine!” Slag shouted. “And I’ll show you what I do to anyone who tries to stop me!”

  Ulf and Hap were running and hardly noticed that Maurice was lying in their way. As Hap raced by, the overseer grabbed his ankle, sending the boy sprawling just as a gun blast rent the air.

  Hap squirmed free and gave Maurice a kick in the gut, hard as he could, and heard a satisfying “Oof!” in response. Then Hap was running again, but in that brief time, the scene had changed. Slag had disappeared, along with Pec and two soldiers who’d managed to get away. Many of the Aukis were gone as well, giving chase. Those who remained were either wounded or tending the wounded.