The Gray House

It looked like an explosion in a paint shop. Several explosions. Our side had the drawings and scribbles too, but this side did not simply have them, it was them. Enormous, human-sized and bigger, leaping off the walls—they flowed and intertwined, scrambled on top of each other, fizzed and jumped, extended to the ceiling and shrank back. The walls on both sides swelled with murals until the corridor started to seem narrower. It was like driving through a maniac’s nightmare.

The doors of the Second bristled with blue skulls, purple thunderbolts, and warning signs. It was obvious whose territory this was, so I cautiously veered toward the opposite wall. These doors could suddenly disgorge anything, from razors and bottles to whole Rats. The area was already thick with broken glass and general detritus, and this mess crunched underwheel like brittle old bones.

The door I was looking for was slightly ajar, and a good thing too or I would have missed it. Coffee and tea only, proclaimed the plain white sign. The rest of the door was painted in bamboo patterns, indistinguishable from the surrounding walls. I peeked in to make sure this really was the Coffeepot. A dimly lit space, lots of round tables. Chinese lanterns and Japanese origami hanging from the ceiling, horrifying masks and framed black-and-white photos on the walls. And a bar by the door, assembled from parts of lecterns and painted blue.

I pulled the door a bit wider. A bell clanked and I saw faces turn toward me. The nearest were two Hounds in collars. Farther in I could see Rats’ colorful mullets. I decided not to look any more closely and wheeled to the bar.

“Sixty-four, please!” I blurted out, as the notice had said, and only then looked up.

Rabbit, plump and bucktoothed, also in a collar, was gawking at me from behind the counter.

“Say what?” he asked, astounded.

“Number sixty-four,” I repeated, feeling very stupid. “Moon River.”

There were sniggers at the tables.

“The Pheasant’s going places!” someone shouted. “Did you hear that?”

“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?”