9
The path to the road and the cottage was about half a mile long. I stopped twice, once to look back at the hole in the hillside—it looked like the mouth of a small cave, with those vines dangling over the entrance—and once to look at my cell phone. I was expecting a NO SERVICE message, but I didn’t even get that. My iPhone wouldn’t come on at all. It was just a rectangle of black glass that over here would be useful as a paperweight but not for anything else.
I don’t remember feeling dazed or amazed, not even by the sight of those glassy spires. I didn’t doubt the evidence of my senses. I could see the gray sky above, a low ceiling that suggested rain not far off. I could hear the whicker of growing things against my pants as I walked the narrow path. As I descended the hill, most of the buildings of the city sank from sight; I could only see the highest three spires. I tried to guess how far away it was and couldn’t. Thirty miles? Forty?
Best of all was the smell of the poppies, like cocoa and vanilla and cherries. Except for putting my face into my mom’s hair to inhale her scent when I was small, it was the most delicious aroma that had ever graced my olfactories. Hands down. I hoped the rain would hold off, but not because I didn’t want to get wet. I knew rain would increase that smell, and the beauty of it might kill me. （I’m exaggerating, but not as much as you might think.） I saw no rabbits, great or small, but I could hear them hopping around in the grass and flowers and once, for a few seconds, I saw tall ears. There was also the chirring sound of crickets, and I wondered if they were big, like the roaches and bats.
As I neared the back of the cottage—wooden sides, thatched roof—I stopped, bemused by what I could now make out. Hanging from the crisscrossing lines behind the cottage and on either side of it were shoes. Wooden ones, canvas ones, sandals, slippers. One line bowed under the weight of a suede boot with silver buckles. Was it a seven-league boot, like in the old fairy tales? It certainly looked like one to me. I came closer and reached out to touch it. It was as soft as butter and as smooth as satin. Built for the road, I thought. Built for Puss in Boots. Where is the other?
As if summoned by the thought, the cottage’s back door opened and a woman came out with the other boot in her hand, the buckles gleaming in the mellow light of that white-sky day. I knew she was a woman because she was wearing a pink dress and red shoes, also because generous breasts plumped out the bodice of the dress, but her skin was slate gray and her face was cruelly deformed. It was as if her features had been drawn in charcoal and some bad-tempered deity had rubbed its hand across them, smearing and blurring them almost out of existence. Her eyes were slits, as were her nostrils. Her mouth was a lipless crescent. She spoke to me, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. I think her vocal cords were as blurred-out as her face. But the lipless crescent was unmistakably a smile, and there was a feeling—a vibe, if you like—that said I had absolutely nothing to fear from her.
“Hizz, huzz! Azzie? Ern?” She touched the boot hanging on the line.
“Yes, very nice,” I said. “Do you understand me?”
She nodded and then made a gesture I knew well: a thumb-and-forefinger circle which means okey-dokey pretty much the world over. （Except, I guess, in certain rare cases where imbeciles flash it to mean whites rule.） She did some more hizz and huzz, then pointed at my tennis shoes.
“What?”
She snatched the boot from the line, where it had been held by two wooden clothespins, the old-fashioned kind that don’t have springs. Holding the boots in one hand, she pointed at my tennies with the other. Then back to the boots.
Asking if I wanted to trade, maybe.
“I’m tempted, but they don’t look my size.”
She shrugged and hung both boots up. Other shoes—and a single green satin slipper with a curled toe, like a caliph would wear—bobbed and turned in a hesitant breeze. Looking at that mostly erased face made me feel a little woozy. I kept trying to see her features as they had been. I almost could.
She walked closer to me and sniffed at my shirt with her slit of a nose. Then she raised her hands to her shoulders and pawed at the air.
“I don’t get it.”
She bounced on her feet and made a sound that, when added to the way she had sniffed me, clarified things.
“Do you mean Radar?”
She nodded vigorously enough to make her thinning brown hair fly. She made a wuzz-wuzz-wuzz sound, which I guess was the closest she could come to woof-woof-woof.
“She’s at my house.”