Cloaked (24 page)
Authors: Alex Flinn
That night, I go to the beach with Meg because I need to relax, to get my mind off what happened, to be with Meg. When we get there, we take off our shoes. I notice she has a pedicure, a silly one with flowers on her toes, and I wonder if that was for Philippe. “I’ll have to get the brownies to make you some special shoes,” I say. “Victoriana shouldn’t be the only one with Gianni Marco originals.”
She squints at her toes but doesn’t smile. “Are you going to regret it?”
“Regret what?” I grasp her wrist as we start toward the water.
She follows but slowly. “You know what. Giving it up—the chance to marry the princess, the most beautiful woman in the world, and one of the richest.”
“Are you kidding? I’d hate that.”
“Hate being rich?”
“Hate being stuck in a glass tower. If I were with Victoriana, there’d be a hundred paparazzi on this beach. And I’d hate . . .” I stop, listening to the waves as they hit the sand.
“Hate what?”
“Hate not being with you.” I pull her toward me and try to kiss her. “You are literally magical.”
She smiles but says, “Won’t it be boring, being with the same old girl you’ve known your whole life?”
I pretend to think about it, then I do. All my life, women, my mom and Meg, then girls I wanted to make out with, have been dragging me to these chick flick movies. You know the ones, where you know from the first minute that the couple’s going to end up together. But first, they have to overcome some obstacle, like a hurricane, or one of them being engaged to someone else, or having a horrible secret, or needing to meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day, or—my personal favorite—the one where the woman’s in a coma, but her
ghost
is walking around the guy’s apartment anyway. I always thought those movies were a little predictable and a
lot
unrealistic. But after what’s happened, I’m less sure. Maybe you actually do need to face obstacles with someone to know that they’re the one you’d sacrifice for.
I shake my head and say, “I’ve got a quote for you.”
She groans. “When did you have time to look one up?”
“I just remembered it. It’s by Victor Hugo. He said, ‘I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes—and the stars through his soul.’”
As long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all his undertakings prospered.
—“The Elves and the Shoemaker”
When I open my exclusive shoe shop in the lobby of the Coral Reef Grand, Princess Victoriana returns to South Beach for a visit, which means the press comes too. Paparazzi swarm the lobby, and I pretend it’s because of me.
“So you’ve been okay?” I ask her as she models a yellow-and-white T-strap sandal with a Louis heel, yet another pair of shoes she’s buying.
“Better zan okay,” she says. “I am starting college in ze fall—wiz proper bodyguards, of course, so my parents will no longer worry about me being kidnapped
or
disgracing zem.” She turns her foot to display the heel, and there are at least a dozen flashes.
Behind the counter, I hear Meg saying, “Gianni. That’s G-I-A-N-N-I.”
“Who’s that?” a reporter asks her.
“That’s the designer, the reason you’re all here. Have you looked at the shoes?”
“Excuse me,” Victoriana says, and she walks over to the reporter and lifts her foot onto the counter, just like she did the day she asked me to meet her. “Zese shoes, you can say zey are ze favorite of ze princess of Aloria.”
More flashes, and the reporter says, “How did you say that was spelled again?”
“G-I-A-N-N-I,” Meg repeats. “When he’s a household word, you’ll be able to say you broke the story.”
“
Exactement,
” Victoriana says. “My future sister-in-law, she will wear his shoes on her wedding day.”
This is news. Philippe’s fiancée is an American actress. Philippe had met her before his transformation, but they kept their romance secret. Victoriana told us that her parents would never have approved of the match, but after what happened, they thought it best to get Philippe married off as quickly as possible so he wouldn’t be caught in any more witches’ snares.
“
Oui,
” Victoriana says. “Ze shoes, zey are in Hollywood too now!”
Mom and Dad come in. My father surveys the reporters and the customers and laughs. “To think, a few weeks ago, I was living in a Dumpster!”
My parents closed the shoe repair to do shoe sales instead. Parents. It’s weird to think of them that way. They’re taking care of the money part of the shop now. When I finish high school, I’ll be able to go to college and learn to run the business myself. It will be hard work, but I’m used to that.
Our first order of business has been finding a factory to make the shoes. It was too much work for the brownies, and we don’t have them anymore anyway.
That’s Mom’s fault. When I told her about the brownies, she was really grateful. But when I described the one I’d seen, I mentioned his ragged clothing, and she felt bad. “We should make them some clothes, sort of a thank-you gift.”
So, all week, while my father ran the shoe repair, Mom sewed little outfits out of scraps of fabric. Saturday night, she left them in Meg’s coffee shop.
Sunday morning, the clothes were gone, and the place was a mess.
“I don’t understand what happened,” Meg said.
Mom shook her head. “I thought they’d be so grateful for the new clothes.”
“Clothes?” Meg said. “You gave them new clothes?”
Then, she explained that it’s okay to leave food out for the brownies, but never any kind of payment, and that when brownies are given clothes, they always leave. “No one knows if they get offended, or if they think they’re too grand to work. No brownie has ever stuck around to explain.”
My mother was very apologetic, but Meg brushed it off. “Oh, it’s okay. My brothers can do some work for once. I never felt right about having the brownies.”
The press has been covering the princess’s visit, and the reason for it, like crazy, so it’s no surprise that the phone’s been ringing with calls from socialites, wanting to own a pair of Marco originals, and boutiques wanting to carry them. We even got a call from Wendell, the park ranger, congratulating us on our success and telling us about his own: He just booked the giants as a featured act with the circus. As their manager, he gets ten percent of the take, which is way more than he could have gotten for the frog on eBay.
Mom’s been kind of enjoying taking all the calls, so I’m surprised when she hands me the phone. “I think you should take this one yourself.”
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Mr. Marco?”
“Yeah, this is Johnny. I mean, Gianni.”
“This is Carol Ellert. I’m a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue.”
My mouth goes dry. Still I manage to choke out, “I’m sorry. I’m having trouble hearing you.” I motion to Meg, to anyone, to please get me some water. “Where’d you say you’re from?”
“Saks Fifth Avenue. We’d like to set up a meeting with you about stocking your shoes in our store.”
Meg’s back with the water. She mouths, “Who is it?”
I mouth back, “Saks,” and we do a little happy dance right there.
“Hello?” the voice on the other end says. “Hello? Did I lose you?”
“Oh no. I’m sorry. I just . . . there was a customer.”
“I understand. Soon, you’ll have a lot of customers. Now, as I was saying, we’d like to meet. Is next Thursday good for you?”
I come from a long line of shoe people. My grandpa called us cobblers, but that sounds more like a dessert than a person. My family has run the shoe repair at the Coral Reef Grand, the fanciest hotel on South Beach, since before I was born, first my grandparents, then my parents, now my mother and I. And my father too. So I’ve seen the famous and the infamous, the rich and the poor, wearers of Gucci, Bruno Magli, Manolo Blahnik, and Converse. I know the beautiful people. Or, at least, I know their feet.
But until this summer, I’d never have imagined that they’d be wearing my shoes, or that I’d be involved in an adventure with a witch, six swans who used to be people and are again, and a beautiful princess who offered to marry me, or that I’d find my father. I certainly never thought I’d turn that princess down to be with the girl who works across the hall.
I wink at Meg. Into the phone, I say, “Let me check my schedule. I think I can definitely fit you in.”
BREATHING UNDERWATER
BREAKING POINT
NOTHING TO LOSE
FADE TO BLACK
DIVA
BEASTLY
A KISS IN TIME
My book
Beastly
,
published in 2007, contained references to several traditional fairy tales. Since its publication, I have received quite a bit of mail from readers, indicating that they were unfamiliar with these tales (such as “Snow White and Rose Red”), if they hadn’t been made into a movie. As I always loved Grimms’ fairy tales, I decided to write a book based upon several traditional tales that have not been made into movies, the better to bring them to modern audiences. Some, such as “The Elves and the Shoemaker,”
were favorites of mine as a child, while other lesser-known stories, I discovered in my research.
These are the tales I chose:
• “The Elves and the Shoemaker”: A shoemaker leaves leather out and finds finished shoes in the morning. When he finds out that elves have made the shoes, his wife tries to repay them with fine clothing. The elves leave and never return.
• “The Frog Prince”:
A princess loses an item and begs a frog to retrieve it, promising to allow him to come into her house and be her friend if he does. Her father, the king, forces her to keep her promise. She is disgusted and throws the frog at the wall, at which point, he turns into a handsome prince.
Readers may note that there is now a movie version of this tale. It did not exist when I began or, indeed, finished writing this book. At this writing, I have not yet seen Disney’s
The Princess and the Frog.
However, from what I have seen of the previews, it is as different from the traditional tale as is my version.
• “The Six Swans”:
A man’s children are enchanted to become swans. Their sister eventually finds them and turns them into humans by remaining silent for a year and making shirts out of flowers.
• “The Golden Bird”:
Three sons try to find a bird that has been eating their father’s apples. The first two fail. The third listens to the directions of a fox (or wolf) who tells him to stay at a poor inn, steal the bird but not its golden cage, and to perform several other tasks. The son eventually gets the bird, a horse, and the hand of a princess, but the fox asks a final favor: that the son kill him. When the son does, the fox transforms into a man.
This story is originally from Russia, where it is called “The Firebird and the Gray Wolf.”
It was adapted by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky for a ballet,
The Firebird.
• “The Valiant Tailor”:
A tailor kills seven flies and makes a jacket bragging about this achievement. People believe he has killed seven men and ask him to kill two giants. He tricks them into killing each other.
This was actually made into a short film,
The Brave Little Tailor,
starring Mickey Mouse as the tailor. However, I loved the story and believed the movie to be obscure enough that most teens would still be unfamiliar with it.
• “The Salad”:
In exchange for a kindness, an old woman gives a huntsman a magical cloak that takes him where he wishes and a bird’s heart that produces gold. A lady and her daughter trick him out of them, so he changes them to donkeys with the help of a magical salad. He eventually relents and marries the daughter.
• “The Fisherman and His Wife”:
A man catches a magic fish and does not kill it but asks it to grant his wishes. His wife asks for more and more extravagant items until the fish takes everything away.
May you enjoy discovering these and other tales. A good first place to look is on the web at www.surlalunefairytales.com, which includes most of the fairy tales I’ve mentioned here, and many others.
Cloaked
Copyright © 2011 by Alex Flinn
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flinn, Alex.
Cloaked / Alex Flinn. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Johnny is approached at his family’s struggling shoe repair shop in a Miami, Florida, hotel by Alorian Princess Victoriana, who asks him to find her brother, who was turned into a frog.
ISBN 978-0-06-087422-3
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062069610
[1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Animals—Fiction. 4. Characters in literature—Fiction. 5. Shoes—Fiction. 6. Princesses—Fiction. 7. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. 8. Key Largo (Fla.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.F6395Clo 2011
2009053387
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition