Ch: 115 Your Feet's Too Big

Julius looked up sharply when some fool started banging on his prized piano. “Gods, I just had that tuned!”

Someone in a murky gray robe was hammering on and tinkling away at the same time, creating a chaotic but still musical sound.

“Who is that?” The duke barked in mild outrage, reaching out of long habit to adjust the heavy golden overrobe he was not wearing.

Soft linen and cotton clothes in authentic common style, made by his new friend hugged him like a tender lover. Welcoming and accepting of every part of him, from his fanciful kitty slippers to the simple wraparound and button shirt, they were absolutely comfy.

The shirt didn't even button to a nipple clamp! Who knew you could do that? Julius was determined to find an answer to that… Some day.

From somewhere far away a soft voice answered his demand. Faint but audible all over the room, a soft question.

Man, what's the matter with that cat there?

A reply came stronger, still from nowhere near.

Must be full of reefer!

Another voice interrupted.

Full of reefer?

Yeah, man!

You mean that cat's high?

Sailing!

Julius had been chatting with Tawny, and enjoying her outrageous costume, while mingling with the guests among the banquet tables around the perimeter of the dance floor.

“He’s doing it again! Marvelous !” He enthusiastically clapped his hands and dragged the golden girl to the dance floor. Her shimmering blue and creamy gold outfit drew eyes wherever she passed. As did her escort, silent and reserved, dressed in sleeveless garb of similar cut, in dark indigo silk.

Liam kept blushing awkwardly, whenever he caught someone staring… that happened a lot. He moved through the room with Julius and Tawny, quietly leaving plates on each table they passed.

The young warrior had a mission and executed it with daring and skill. Since it involved distributing cannabis brownies around the room, he was happy to leave slow simmering chocolatey chaos in his wake.

While Julius was distracted by the beautiful girl and her handsome beau, the piano sweetened, becoming a more musical, but still strident sound. The shadow figure was still seated there… but suddenly, a far superior player.

Oddly, another dark robe stepped up to the trumpet and began to blow a simple accompaniment. Another mediocre musician, his attempts were earnest, but less than entirely competent.

After a bar or two, the figure stepped to the side. The gleaming brass horn remained, held in the grip of yet another shadowy form. The trumpet raised to the dark hood and blew out a driving, crystalline solo that shattered the night. The robed form nodded to his new trumpet playing companion, as a voice rang out from everywhere.

Way to blow, Satchmo…

It’s time to call a friend…

The shadow robe kept strolling the stage as the music gathered. It would select an instrument, play a short phrase and step away, leaving a tenebrous robe in its place, playing on.

Within two minutes, the stage was filled with musicians, clad in shadows, holding real instruments. They played wild and strange music, chaotic and fast, with exotic rhythms and complex phrases.

The most solid figure finally circled back to the piano, with reverence it took up the bronze mounted bamboo baton. They stepped to the front of the stage, bowed and stepped back.

We need a frontman, someone we know…

A man who sings with passion,

Hidee Dee Hidee Hidee Hoooo…!

Once more a shadow remained in its place, this one held the slender rod, brandishing it and beginning to hop in place rapidly, in apparent excited joy. After a moment, it began a mad whirling dance, embracing the chaotic music and spinning at the front of the stage. Fragments of shadow flew from its ragged robe as blue light began to peek out.

He slowed, throwing back his hood and doffing the robe of shadows. The shade cast it aside to evaporate, before it even hit the stage. A shimmering apparition of blue and white danced in ecstatic joy. He was tall and slim in a striped suit with long swallowtails and a sharp, wide brimmed hat.

With a wide smile under his pencil mustache, someone who was almost, but not exactly, the big musician in the robe took an elaborate bow. He waved his baton as though switching naughty bad feelings on the bottom and driving them from the room.

He bounced, hopped and spun all over the stage, greeting each musician with a short burst of nonsense rhymes. Elegant and suave, he dominated the room with sheer personality and joy, grinning and cutting the air in time with his baton.

Gary’s voice cut through the music, seeming to sound from every instrument on stage.

He’s that crazy reefer man…

Back for a limited engagement,

Cab Calloway and his all star band!

The gleaming shade opened his mouth with a sound that was the exact opposite of a death rattle.

You didn't see me climb through the window

Nobody had to open that door!

I just climb right through the wall

and I want you one and all

to stand aside and let me have the floor!

Take a look, I'm not such a stranger

Here's a face you cokies all ought to know

You can tell me I'm not wanted,

but the joint will still be haunted!

'Cause I'm the ghost of Smokey Joe!

“It had to be Cab…” Gary shout-whispered to Shai and Becky over the band. He winked at the ghost, as he pranced among his spectral colleagues, waving his baton with wild abandon and driving the band into a hot jazz frenzy.

He hit ‘Minnie the Moocher’, ‘Reefer Man’, ‘Kickin’ the Gong Around’ and ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ without taking a break, dipping into boogie woogie, ragtime and swinging jazz.

Shai and Gary’s gifts wandered the room, entangling and enticing the partygoers with gentle tugs at their emotions and booties.

Soon, the dance floor was nicely full, as they tried to master the steps the joyous vaudeville shade put on display. Wild and unrestrained, he left no question as to whose party this really was.

#

Poor Gary was on his stool, sagging a bit, but playing well on his haunted banshee teleblaster. He had his feet up on a big, brown ceramic crock, painted in wild colors and insanely minute patterns.

The thick terracotta lid was also inscribed in a mind boggling whirl of notes, glyphs and sigils. Periodically he would thump it gently with his heel, as though checking its weight.

Seeing the state of the boy, Shai took pity on him and dumped more mana into her revitalizing enchantment, perking him up a bit. Becky’s enchanted harp solidified his shades, stabilizing them and reducing the strain considerably.

Julius was in front of the stage, on the dance floor performing an enthusiastic, but unskilled lindy hop under Shai’s influence. Tawny slipped out of his dance space, as Ivy slid in, taking the duke for a whirl.

Her brown wool trench coat and bright blue sweater of angora rabbit, with matching slouch hat were incongruous, but they made her eyes gleam like cerulean jewels. The handsome, tall duke and the small blonde beauty took the dance floor by storm.

Lesser nobility and the minor peers of Port Clement were conservative and resistant to change in general. Only the duke himself could pull a farcical common dress ball together on such short notice.

More than a few local seamstresses and tailors were nursing sore, tired fingers and heavy purses this week. Decorum required the underthings of course… no noble would consider prancing about unclad, or worse yet, in common knickers.

#

Kermal Singh was the eldest of his house in town this week. At sixteen years old and so far from the line of succession that he hardly counted as a noble at all, he felt so very out of place. When the invitation came to the townhouse, a rider was sent to the ancestral manse immediately.

Excitement over a surprise fancy dress ball evaporated like dew on a summer morning, when the details were read to the suddenly less enthusiastic members of the main family.

Six hours in a carriage found Kermal seated by the garden door. Outside the ducal palace garden beckoned him, whispering leafy secrets and promising so many places to hide from his social superiors. Feeling wretched in his raiment, he sulked and waited for the night to end.

The torture shoes and nightmare crotch constrictor were not helping, emphatically so. He shifted side to side and tried to sneak one of those brownies that were circulating… no luck. The same with the booze, he was bored, sore, uncomfortable and about to sneak off and hide in the garden. The music was boring, but better than the usual noble party fare.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

When the music changed, he felt it… that driving beat, like the servant’s music he was not supposed to sneak out and dance to… Screw that.

With a laugh, he kicked first one, then the other slipper into the air. He caught them on a spin, and tucked them in his sash, like a common workman. He dipped a hip, gave an indelicate tug and twist in an inappropriate location and slipped his pain panties into his sash as well. His quick and well practiced dance did not go unnoticed.

The music shifted again, becoming sensual and slowing for a while. When he looked up at the stage, his secret dance routine was being demonstrated by the glowing man, in detail, while he scatted happily

Don't you be that ickeroo!

Get hep, come on and follow through

Then you get your steady foo,

You make the joint jump like the gators do!

Dark visions of what aunt Harpreet and the main family was going to put him through when they invariably heard of his lapse in decorum ran through his head. Winding up back in the orphanage was the most likely outcome his terrified mind conjured.

Just when Kermal was about to dive into the bushes and claim to have been abducted by slavers, a beautiful redhead half again his height, swept in and danced him away into the crowd.

A few timeless moments later, the huge woman winked and handed him off to a beautiful girl more his own size, with her hair in a plait of marigolds. After that the evening went swimmingly.

#

As the music intensified and sped up, it became a struggle to maintain proper posture for some of the party people. Certain articles of clothes began to lose their grip and cohesion on certain portions of their wearer’s anatomy as the dance took hold.

Phillipa Pomeranze had dreamed of a life in Joy’s priesthood. Her elder brother’s untimely death had forced her to surrender that dream of dancing on temple nights. Even as tradition and duty forced her into the terrible twisting tush tweakers.

Mother had claimed she would ‘get used to it’... only tonight did that seem possible. Tonight the binding, winding cloth with its unpleasant ‘fixture’ were biting her nethers weakly, very weakly.

As she slipped into a twirl, following the wild dance of the violinist and the blue man, something slipped loose. With a gentle thump, her underthings slipped to her left ankle… looking terribly ragged and worn. Shamefully, embarrassingly so. As though they had been dipped in acid and lit on fire briefly. A moment later all that was left was scattering of silver and gold threads and the wretched steel clamp.

Before the shock, horror and scandal could take root, a discreet maid bustled over and swept up the lot. As though she had been prepared for exactly that. A grateful nod as she danced away was more than a maid could expect in noble company, but Phillipa had a wild streak.

Bethany Hurel saw the whole thing and danced up to Josephine Saephongh to gossip about it… just as her own things got untidy down below. Josie’s eyes lit up with wicked glee when she saw, watching her friend, rival and colleague drop her naughties in the middle of the dance floor was delicious. Right up until her own fell to the boards, with a quiet sigh of exhaustion.

Busy maids and footmen swept in and discreetly collected the remnants, carefully not noting whose things were where, or what was going into their dust pails.

#

Tawny gratefully slipped away, flushed and breathing heavily. She slipped onto the piano bench beside Gary and jumped in her seat, when a stranger greeted her with a smile. He was a chubby, darker skinned NotGary with a mustache and expressive eyes. He moved and scrunched his face in comical lechery at the beautiful priestess, winking and smiling in overtly exaggerated ways.

He leaned over and gave her a ghostly kiss on the cheek as he evaporated. With a smile and a shrug, Tawny picked up his fallen piano line and carried on with the music.

“Thanks…” Gary whispered when they took a break. “The guys are easier to manifest if they are playing instruments I made. Keeping Fats on the piano was draining me dry. I’ll make it up to him… and you.”

“Make it up to me by teaching me that ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ song. Bring that charming man back to teach me and I think we will all be happy. He seemed fun.” She sang, swaying to Dannyls spanish guitar improvisations.

The young artist kept them dancing, while Gary caught his breath. Slowly the shades vanished, but not before reverently replacing their instruments on their stands. Finally only a few were left, Jimmi and Starman were still hanging around, backing up Dannyl. The shimmering blue ghost still danced and spun, scatting in time and having a blast.

Most of the noble party people were sagging in their seats and quite thoroughly high on Liam’s efforts. More than a few had danced themselves into exhaustion under the intoxicating influence of music and brownies

In the ballroom, the party wound down, as guests returned home exhausted, or sought lodgings in the palace grounds. The band slipped away, in the darkness and fog, returning to Seahorse. From the spectral orchestra only Cab remained, walking along with them to the boat. His glowing form lit the way as he twirled his baton happily and scatted nonsense into the dark.

“Sorry Cab, I’m tapped out, come on home bro.” Gary gasped to his shining counterpart when he settled onto Seahorse’s pilot’s bench beside Shai. The shade skipped onto the boat and made a grand show of sitting in Gary’s lap as he disappeared into the musician’s aura.

Gary gave the pale, sparkling baton a slow twirl, before tucking it away. “I feel guilty… it’s not really a musical instrument, but it makes me happy just knowing I can call him to come play.”

He sagged against Shai and pulled a blanket over them and across Becky. “Blankets under the benches gang, get comfy. I bribed some locals to work the locks for us tonight, Xyll is piloting, we just float home. Becky, you power the boat I’ll steer.”

It took an hour to navigate the dark, foggy waterways, small teams of locals waved at them as they locked back down to the estuary. Fumbling through the fog, even with the bat ghost’s guidance and friends working the water gates, it was slow going.

Gary kept playing with the baton from time to time, slipping it up his sleeve with a guilty and sheepish smile when caught with it.

#

It was almost midnight when they piled into the house. Gary made a beeline for the baths, dodging everyone and everything in his path with supernatural ease. He was, where no one else was. Whenever they looked, he was already gone, or headed ‘thataway’.

All the folks who had stayed home were eager to get the details, including the ones who should have been in bed, visiting auntie Thirp and uncle Ducky.

The wily musician splashed down and vanished under the waterfall before answering question one. Once he was in his favorite spot, under the flowering ginger and wrapped around Shai, he was ready to answer any and all… For a limited time only, some restrictions apply.

“So what was all that?” Ivy demanded happily, nestled in Tallum’s arms. “Even for you, that was crazy.”

“It’s that palace, once all the nasty old crap was cleared away and a fresh breeze blew through, my friends could just stroll in. It was vacant and unloved in every way, ghosts love that stuff, they thrive in and on those liminal spaces and halfway homes.”

“Fascinating, but I was talking about the panty dropping guitar and trumpet solo on “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House’... we gotta add that one to the house show.”

Gary grinned bashfully. “My aura, several of the band’s instruments and a few of my gifts are corrosive and destructive, when they encounter hostile enchantments and mental effects.”

He sank lower in the water and bubbled softly for a moment. “Jazz is freedom, it’s rock and roll, it’s hip hop and funk… Cab made it fun and sassy, while working hard. Nobody can resist that for long.” He grinned happily. “Certainly not once Liam’s brownies hit like a bomb.”

“So your aura affected the garments over the whole ballroom?” Luna scoffed, while wrestling with Rio and Amy underwater with her feet. “I doubt that.”

“Nope, but the music carried my gifts, that let the enchantments on our instruments wiggle gently into their booties.” Gary took a float around the pool, his pipe jutting up and smoking, like a reefer fired steamship.

“That fired up the people’s own auras, I just loosened the strictures and curses binding them. The rest was just natural, bodies want to move when their souls percolate.”

“My harp and Shai’s violin do it too, that’s why things got so… What do you call that? When the blue man showed up and took over?” Becky asked happily, still a bit dazed by the fast moving showbiz dynamo in a zoot suit.

“We call that ‘hot music’. Where I came from, slavery was a thing for a long time…It took a war to end it. When they finally won liberty, they had to win their freedom.” He looked sadly joyous, for a long moment.

“Music and dance were some of the most important weapons in that war, Satchmo, Cab and Fats are just a few of those legendary warriors…”

“Music and dance…” Khan muttered, disbelief in his voice. “No one ever accomplished anything important by dancing or blowing a horn.”

“Really?” Gary asked. “That kid at the ball, with the slick dance move was epic and super subversive. He ducked out of the devil’s drawers like an eel through seaweed! I think that was pretty important.”

“When yer ghost friend started doing the move an instructing the crowd, t’was was too much for the lad… He needs to visit the house, poor bairn…” Shai said quietly.

“Already taken care of, Jules asked me to put him up tonight, he came along in the boat.” Becky chimed happily. A quick head count showed that she was right.

Kermal bobbed shyly in the corner, swept along and quietly not making waves. He was nearly invisible when he wanted to be, a talent that served him well in the sprawling, ancient Singh manor. He waved and smiled when it dawned on him that his ruse had finally failed.

Gary slid closer, looming over the smaller young man eying him in a very strange way and sniffing. “Ooo, I like you… the death’s head hawkmoth… so sly and tricksy…” He cooed, in an alien, softly buzzing voice. “Smells like us, it’s friend shaped, fits right in that space…”

“Gary!” Shai snapped, almost gently. “Be ye well?” Her hand clamped down on his shoulder, drawing him away from the small dusky lad.

“Mm!” He buzzed briefly. “Sorry, I’m pretty ragged right now, some of the seams are showing through… Off to bed in the grotto, before I come unstitched.” He turned to Kermal and grinned a strange, crookedly mad smile. “Be welcome in my hive, moth boy… I mean welcome… I’ll be a better host tomorrow.”

The two red haired giants helped the soggy musician out of the bath and behind a curtain of morning glories and moss. Presumably, into a hidden cave mouth; incongruous as that might be for a waterside inn.

“It’s fine Kermal, you can bunk in my room, I’ll be with the little ones, upstairs.” Becky dragged him out of the bath and fitted him with a wildly colored robe that seemed to sparkle into existence in her hands.

The light, fluffy garment was a riot of moons, stars and other celestial bodies, rendered in vibrant rainbow hues. Becky’s was a wildfire blaze of orange, red, yellow and smoky black.

“I try not to think about life before these robes…” She muttered softly, while snuggling her imaginary garment.

She tucked the young lord into her bed and dipped out the door with a departing whisper. “The word ‘Welcome’ is a magical spell in our house. You’re family as long as you stay with us.”

“I’m never going home!” He muttered into a pillow so soft, even the upper table crowd back home would have marveled at the fluffiness. Having his secret underwear shucking dance move displayed on stage like that was embarrassing… and he loved every minute of it. Watching the nobs and upper crusters shimmy his sneaky ‘Two Step, Dickroll Slide’ was a treat he could still savor.

The duke and that ghost performing it in tandem across the stage for a good solid three rounds was probably enough social notoriety to secure that dance in the local scene for his lifetime.

That meant Aunt Harpreet would certainly find out. “I’ll run away and join this circus…” He muttered as the bedding enfolded him like a warm hug.

#

Esperanza sailed out in the morning, headed across the Shallow Sea for Port Sunderland and back around. Gary barely dragged himself, still red eyed and sleepy, to the dock to wave them off.

Kermal was there in the group, waving along and fitting in. Gary draped an arm over the kid and led him back inside the inn. “That’s a passive gift isn’t it… making you just sorta blend in, wherever you are. Right?”

He nodded and looked nervous. “I would rather not talk about it…” He murmured, shifting in his slippers. The poor kid was still wearing his costume from last night, looking rumpled and uncomfortable, among the folks in actual common clothes.

“You’re Becky’s guest, that makes you my guest, whatever the duke says. Let’s get you some clothes that don’t stand out.” In a few short minutes he was dressed in muted earth tones, ‘borrowed’ from Dannyl and tailored just a bit.

When the big man led him back upstairs, the crowd was gathered around the pianoforte in the corner. Rich, driving and complex music was streaming from the little stage, as Tawny played along with the rotund ghost from the night before.

They shared a bench, keyboard and a matched pair of wide smiles as they played stride piano while Amy sang.

Who's that walkin' round here? Mercy

Sounds like baby patter, baby elephant patter, that's what I call it!

Say up in Harlem at a table for two,

There were four of us, me, your big feet and you!

From your ankles up, I'd say you sure look sweet

From there down there's just too much feet!

The tiny girl sassed and vamped her way through a song from a time and place so different from hers… and owned it.

She spotted Gary and the shy young lordling, immediately. With a happy grin she hopped up onto the musician’s big feet and made him her dance partner while she kept belting out the silly lyrics.

Oh your peddelic extremities are colossal!

To me you look just like a fossil

You got me walkin', talkin' and squarkin'

'Cause your feet's too big, yeah

Come on and walk that thing!

Oh I've never heard of such walkin', Mercy

Your, your peddelic extremities really are obnoxious

One never knows, do one?

The tiny songbird took her well deserved bows and retired to Ivy’s lap to cool down. “Uh-huh…” Gary coughed indiscreetly as the scene sank in. “Gang, I’m glad you’re having fun, but how did mister Waller get here?”

“Rio called him! Me an Wilf helped! We’re negromancers! Fats said so!” Amy supplied helpfully.

“It’s necromancer sweetie… and you aren’t. Maybe when you’re older, but I would rather you didn’t. Uncle Axio can help you with that, if it’s what you really want.” Gary chuckled at her childish mispronunciation, while also being happy no one with the context was around to get it.

“Nuh, uh! Fats was real pspific! He said it’s cause he’s…”

“...And mister Waller needs to watch what he says to my kids…” Gary interrupted her, shooting Fats a dirty look. He slowly vanished with a spectral giggle and a wiggle of his thin mustache.

“We are going to talk about that, buddy.” Gary called after the vanished shade.

#

Harpreet Kaur had a vile disposition. But Julius knew exactly from whence that stemmed now, so he smiled through her near slights and brushes with the edges of propriety.

“...My beloved nephew shunted off to stay in some dockside brothel.” She remarked sourly. “If the child has been despoiled or ruined by scandal, I will seek restitution from the council. I am shocked, it seems that the house of Rummel has forgotten the duty of hospitality.”

“I assure you, any rumors about a ‘cathouse’ are simply a misunderstanding… one of their party is a cat woman. A lovely lady named Nara… beastfolk are uncommon so… Are you well?”

While Julius was speaking, the matronly woman began to turn red, then an unhealthy gray.

“Beastfolk? You sent my nephew to den with animals?” She gasped in horror. “Better it were common whores!” In violation of custom, she stood and wheeled, turning her back on her liege and stomped out, fuming.

“I may have to send that boy back off to the orphanage after all… serves me right for taking in impoverished wastrels…” Her strident voice carried all through the audience chamber as she stormed out in a towering rage.

Julius executed a quick costume change, the moment she sailed off to do battle with his new friends. An inconspicuous war cultist followed after the furious noblewoman, trailing her to the main sitting room. She gathered her entourage of mortified hangers on and flunkies, basking in their outrage and scandal.

Lingering in a servant’s corridor, he listened in on their complaints and grinned to himself as he slipped out the servant’s entrance and made for the dock ward. Two figures in the brown armor of ducal guards trailed their disguised lord discreetly…

#