“A Pheasant suicide!”
“No, that’s a new breed. Jet Pheasant!”
“It’s their king. Emperor Pheasant.”
“This can’t be a Pheasant. It’s a changeling.”
“And a sick one too, otherwise why would he want to change into a Pheasant?”
While the customers were cracking jokes at my expense, Rabbit solemnly stepped out from behind the counter, went around to my side, and stared at my feet. He studied them intently for what seemed like an eternity and finally said, “No good.”
“Why not?” I whispered. “The notice said nonstandard.”
“Don’t know anything about any notices,” Rabbit said sternly and went back to his nook. “Come on, get out of here.”
I stared at the sneakers.
They no longer looked like flames. There were too few windows in the Coffeepot, and no Pheasants at all. It was a stupid thing to have done. I shouldn’t have come up here to be ridiculed. The sneakers were perfectly ordinary to everyone except Pheasants. I’d somehow managed to forget about that.
“They are not standard,” I said. Mostly to myself, I wasn’t trying to convince anyone. Then I turned toward the door.
“Hey, Pheasant!” I heard from the farthermost table.
I wheeled around.
There, over the intricately decorated coffee cups, sat the wheelers of the Fourth. Noble, he of the fair hair and gray eyes, beautiful as an elven king, and Tabaqui the Jackal—pint-sized, frizzy-haired, and big-eared, like a lemur in a wig.
“Tell you what, Rabbit,” Noble said, keeping his chilly gaze on me, “this is the first time that I’ve seen a Pheasant whose footwear does not adhere to what I would call a certain standard. I am surprised you didn’t notice that.”
“Exactly right,” Tabaqui jumped in excitedly. “That’s exactly what I noticed, too. And then I said to myself: He’s a goner. They are going to peck him to death. Rabbit, you give him the Sixty-Four. That may just be the only bright spot he has left. Drive over here, babe! We’ll have your order filled.”
I was unsure whether to accept the invitation, but Hounds pulled in their legs and chairs, making a path wide enough for an elephant to drive through, so I had no choice.
Tabaqui, the one who’d called me babe, looked no more than fourteen himself. But only from a distance. Up close he might as easily have passed for thirty. He was clad in three vests, and under them he had on three different T-shirts, in green, pink, and blue, and still you were struck by how skinny he was. All three vests were equipped with multiple pockets, and all of them bulged. He was also bedecked in beads, buttons, amulets, neck pouches, pins, and little bells, all looking either very worn or slightly grubby. Noble, in his white shirt and blue chinos, appeared almost naked by comparison. Naked and squeaky clean.
“What do you need Moon River for?” Noble asked.
“Nothing much,” I said honestly. “Just wanted to try it.”
“Do you even know what it is?”
I shook my head. “Some sort of cocktail?”
Noble’s stare filled with pity. His skin was so fair that it seemed to glow. His eyebrows and lashes were darker than the hair, and his eyes were now gray, now blue. Not even his sour scowl managed to spoil the impression. Not even the zits on his chin.
I had never met anyone else so beautiful it hurt just to look at them. Noble was the only one. About a month ago he had knocked out one of my teeth when I locked wheels with him, coming out of the canteen. I’d never seen him up close before. I hadn’t even had time to think. I’d just stared and missed what he was saying. Next thing I knew the beautiful elf swung for my jaw, and that was the end of the rapture. For a week after that I tracked close to the walls, shrank from passersby, spent untold hours at the dentist’s office, and couldn’t sleep at night.
Of all people, Noble was the least likely to be my tablemate in the Coffeepot and, if it were up to me, the least likely to have a conversation with. But that’s how it turned out. He was asking questions, I was answering them, and his damned looks started to work their magic again. It was very hard to constantly keep in mind what he really was while being so close to him. Besides, I developed a nagging feeling that this Moon River thing wasn’t exactly a harmless drink. Rather, it was something I shouldn’t have been drinking at all.
Just as I was fretting about it, there it was. Rabbit put the tiny cup on the table and pushed it toward me.
“This is going to be on your conscience,” he warned the other wheelers.
I peeked inside the cup and saw an oily smear on the bottom. There wasn’t enough there to fill a thimble.
“Wow!” I said. “So little.”
Rabbit sighed loudly. He did not go away. He was standing there waiting for something.
“Money,” he said finally. “Are you gonna pay?”
I panicked. I didn’t have any on me.
“How much does it cost?” I asked.
Rabbit turned to Tabaqui and said, “Look, it’s all your fault. I wouldn’t have given him anything. He’s a Pheasant, he’s got no sense at all.”
“Shut up,” Noble said, thrusting a hundred at him. “And get lost.”
Rabbit took the bill and left, but not before giving Noble a dirty look.
“Drink up,” Noble said. “If you really want it.”
I looked into the cup again.
“Not really. Not anymore.”
“And you’re right!” Tabaqui exclaimed. “What for? You don’t have to, and besides, why that, all of a sudden? Have some coffee instead. And a roll.”
“No. Thank you.”
I was extremely embarrassed. All I wanted to do was go away as soon as I could.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it was so expensive.”
“Nonsense. So you didn’t, so what? The less you know, the longer you live,” Tabaqui squeaked, before suddenly screaming, “Three coffees!”
And then he spun the wheels and went spinning himself. I didn’t notice how he did it, when he pushed what, but he was spinning like crazy, shedding morsels of food, beads, and other stuff, like a trash bin whirling on the end of a string. A small feather settled on my shoulder.
“No, really, thank you,” I said.
The carousel stopped.
“Why not? Have you got other plans?”
“I haven’t got money.”
Tabaqui blinked like an owl. His hair was standing on end from all that spinning. He looked really deranged now.
“What money? It’s Noble’s treat. We invited you over, after all. The price is trifling, by the way.”
Rabbit brought a tray with three cups of coffee, cream in a pot, and some mangled rolls. No one was listening to my protests.
“You don’t have to treat me,” I tried again. “I don’t want anything.”
“Oh, I get it,” Tabaqui drawled and sat back in his wheelchair. “See, Noble? Who would want to have coffee with you after you broke his face? No one, that’s who.”
I felt my face flushing. Noble was drumming his fingers on the table and did not look at us.
“Why don’t you go ahead and apologize,” Tabaqui said. “Or he’ll just go away. And you’ll get what you always get. Nothing.”
Noble went red. Very quickly and very visibly, as if someone had slapped his cheeks.
“Why don’t you stop telling me what to do!”
Now I didn’t want to just go away, I wanted to fall through the floor. That would’ve been faster. I turned the wheelchair around.
“I’m sorry,” Noble mumbled without looking up.
I froze. My wheelchair half-turned, my head between the shoulder blades. That didn’t make any sense at all. In all of my dreams of revenge, Noble never apologized. I could not imagine him doing that. I would knock out all of his teeth, fracture his jaw, make him slightly less beautiful, make him swear and spit blood, but we had never gotten as far as an apology.
“I wasn’t myself that day,” Noble went on. “Behaved like a total jerk. If you were to go to the Spiders I’d have problems. You have no idea how big. I couldn’t sleep for two days straight. Waiting for them to come knocking. And then I figured you hadn’t told anyone. I wanted to apologize but couldn’t. It just wouldn’t come out. It only came out today because of Jackal here.”