Nayfe looked at Marion, who was looking out the window at the growth of heather. A broad expanse of mustard yellow and beige with punctuations in purple blurred past the train. The shimmering surface of the Pacific Ocean had receded with distance traveled until only the sky above them shone. The sky was a bright azure, with only occasional fluffy clouds pasted in place like an idle thought.
“I think we got packed in record time,” Nayfe said. He brushed at his jacket lapel, picked at something on his knee, and regarded her profile. The light made a brown ringlet glow russet and orange.
When she didn’t respond, after a suitable number of seconds, he leaned slightly into her space and said, “Good job on the toilette. I might have lost my pills if you hadn’t suggested a second sweep.”
Still nothing.
He studied her. The shadow of her pulse seemed calm, a faded line that hinted at itself and disappeared. There was no sign of a clenched jaw, words she was swallowing. Perhaps she was engrossed in the landscape, but the blooms were nothing exceptional. Just heather, miles of the stuff. If she hadn’t seen it by now, she never would.
The train car grumbled, with the rare report of misaligned rails against steel wheels. Their velvet seats were in good repair, the springs still springy. He’d hefted their leather luggage into an overhead bin to maximize their leg room. It turned out they were the only ones in this car, on this ride, so they had all the room they could have wanted.
“Marion,” he said.
“I’m not speaking to you.” Her voice cut crisply over the dull roar.
“Marion.” He reached for her hand on her lap. She jerked it away with a little violence, so he moved to the seat across from her. “Marion, we talked about this. You can’t still be mad, you assured me you weren’t.”
Then her cheek did clench, and her eyes flashed as she turned to him like a coiled spring. “I know what I said. I was appeasing you, like I always do.”
“You don’t need to do that. I’m not a monster.” He smiled. “It actually upsets me when you defer to me so much—”
“This is your vacation, Nayfe. Don’t pretend it’s anything else. You wanted to go to Oslo, we went to Oslo. You wanted to go to Koh Samet, which Lord knows how you ever heard of, and we found a way to go to Koh Samet.”
“Didn’t you enjoy Thailand? You said the food was—”
She brought up her fist, tightly wrapped in black lace, and pointed a stiff finger between his eyes. “I wanted to see one place before I die: Montevideo. That’s all, one place. And all we’ve done is what you wanted: Brisbane, Birmingham, even God-Knows-Where Afghanistan! And now we’re on this bloody train for Brobdingnag, which sounds perfectly horrific to me.”
Nayfe’s head tilted, his towhead flopping over one eye, a pose he trusted made him adorable. “Marion, I’m surprised to hear this. I thought you were enjoying these trips.”
Oh, did that set off a row, tousled hair regardless.
The wooden parquet floor rumbled with the scuffle of a dozen heavy feet, cleaning the area, rearranging the floor. Men enjoined in hoisting furniture aside, satin knee-breeches catching the early sunset as the west wall was swung away. Women tittered and hissed like their frilly, multilayered hoop skirts and the satin blouses that shifted over them with every twist.
“Estimated time of arrival, twelve minutes,” rang out a honey-sweet voice down the corridor. With the last pieces in place, Majordomo Thraldromlich summoned a butler to sweep off the tracks with a microfiber broom; another followed with blasts of canned air. This was the eastbound route that ran from Tokyo to the peninsula of Brobdingnag and through the central corridor of the Visitor’s Palace to the Foyer Depot, and it was kept as flawless as large fingers could manage.
Thraldromlich lifted his nose and peered at no one. “Places.” The staff hustled into three rows of four people on either side of the tracks, facing south. There was nothing to do but stand and wait for the next dozen minutes, staring sharply into the setting sun, until the miniature train huffed and chuffed into view.
One woman took her place beside the tracks, in the front row, but another woman shoved her back with a deft sweep of her skirts. The displaced woman scowled darkly but only displaced the man behind her in turn. She fidgeted with her skirt: the apron wouldn’t sit quite right in front, or else the skirts had rotated five degrees clockwise. “I do detest these things,” she muttered, confiding in the butler she’d ousted. “I don’t get why we can’t wear our regular clothes. Would I look any less approachable in a pair of jeans? I ask you.” The butler sighed and checked the ceiling for birds, and Brondralgath stuck her tongue out at him.
This earned her a sharp glance from the majordomo. The staff in the front row parted like similar poles of a magnet as he glided through. “I see you have positioned yourself by the tracks once more, Brondralgath. Very well, but no more of your tricks this time.”
Brondralgath tucked a ringlet behind her ear and raised her eyebrows as high as they could go. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Majordomo.”
“No stepping on the tracks,” he said, much louder. His breath smelled of whiskey and milk. “No arching your shoe over the tracks, even if you’ve no intention of touching them. No threatening to step on the train for whatever motive.”
“But I wasn’t going to step on the train. That’s the point: I was just giving the tourists the full experience of, you know, entering the realm of giants. If the first thing they see is the underside of a shoe—”
“Then our tourism revenue takes a dip!” His face commanded most of her view, and flecks of his spittle cooled on her cheek. “All it takes are two frantic reviews online to reengage foreign policy and—” Glancing aside, Thraldromlich sensed his own face reddening and stepped back, took a breath. “This isn’t a discussion, Brondralgath. No stepping on the tracks, no almost stepping on the tracks, no shoes impeding or otherwise assaulting the locomotive and its passengers. One more infraction, and getting relegated to the third row will be the least of your concerns.”
He began to turn, then snapped back to catch the last moment of her tongue glistening in his direction; she masked this by discovering another lock of hair that needed securing behind her other ear.
“What do you mean, you’re not going?” Nayfe gaped at her. “These tickets were too expensive to cancel! And anyway, we’re already aboard, so I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Slowly he retook his seat, having sprung from it and banged his head on the overhead compartment.
“That’s not what I said, dear Nayfe. You must have misunderstood.”
He stared at her a moment, rubbing his head, then allowed a grin to stretch across his countenance. “Yes, I must have. My gosh, I’m worked up in such a state, I hardly know what we’re even talking about.”
Marion’s eyes glowed with pleasure, like the setting sun behind the train. “I said that we are not going to Brobdingnag.” Now the car grew darker as the heather outside grew taller and taller, blocking out the sun and the sky and everything.
He blinked at her repeatedly. “Sorry, I’m still not getting it. We’ve been crossing the ocean for two days, we’re about to pull in.” Thick fibrous reeds rushed past the train windows, larger and denser with each moment.
“Well, of course we’re going to arrive there,” she said, reaching over to pat his knee, “but then we will continue through to San Francisco. I spoke with the conductor, the upgrade was very easily arranged and quite affordable.”
“We’re not!” His body jumped, partially, missing the brass rails of the overhead storage. “Marion, be reasonable! This is the culmination of my research! Yes, I admit I’ve been rather selfish in selecting these destinations, and I fully intend to bring you to Mountebank.”
“Montevideo!”
“As you say. But this stop is crucially important for me, as I connect the link between myths about the giants and actual—”
“It’s done, Nayfe! It’s done and done, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” Mario’s lacey hands gripped the edges of her armrests. “And if you don’t like it, why, I’m off to Montevideo by myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Marion. Do you intend to fly off on your own, unaccompanied? We haven’t gotten married yet.”
She straightened in her seat. “That’s another thing.”
Nayfe did not hear what this “other thing” might be, as he ejected himself from his seat and charged off in search of a bathroom or other appropriate facility in which to vomit.
Majordomo Thraldromlich adjusted his monocle, casting a dancing arc of reflection against the corridor wall. “They approach. Places, everyone, and not a hair out of place.” He stalked slowly among them, before the first row and then the next. The butlers lifted their chins toward the horizon, as though service of teeny-tiny people were the noblest profession. The maids nodded their heads demurely and clasped their own hands before their waistline, as though about to perform poetry.
Thraldromlich spared a lingering glance at Brondralgath before glancing at his pocket watch and turning likewise to the sunset. The train track was a thin, dark line that ran from the end of the parquet floor, over the flagstones, and into the valley of heather. He could just make out the small, dark shape of the locomotive and the wisp of steam that threaded behind it. He clicked his heels officiously and sucked in his gut. “The 7:20 from Tokyo. Welcome to Brobdingnag.” The tiny train crossed from the flagstones onto the wooden floor, as slowly as one might please, though the passengers doubtlessly thought it a brisk flight.
“No shoes, eh?” murmured Brondralgath. “I wouldn’t dream of introducing such an unwanted article as a shoe, then.” With hardly a move at all, her left foot toed her right heel free, and her stockinged foot slipped free of the little white pump. This earned her wide eyes from the butler beside her; she mouthed out a two-word advisory and planted her right heel on the floor, ever-so-slowly turning the sole of her foot toward the train, now passing the shoes of the front row staff.
“Feels good to get that wretched thing off, anyway,” she said to herself. “Now, let’s give the little blighters a proper welcome.” Cool air kissed her ankle where a hole had started to form. She flexed her toes, stretching the white hose to translucence.
“San Francisco,” Nayfe gasped, splashing cold water on his face. “What’s in San Francisco? For that matter, what’s in Montenegro?” He jerked on the toilet chain again, yet it still refused to build enough pressure to flush his florid stew down the drain. “Ugh, disgusting … air, I need some air …”
Even he could see where this tawdry tragicomedy was headed—one skip of the tracks, and his foot would plunge into the vomit—he carefully fitted the heel of his boot against the polished wood toilet seat, grabbed the cold-water pipe to brace himself, and lifted himself up to unlatch the window.
The steel wheels did hit an irregularity in the rails, but he didn’t splashdown in a bowl of his own sick. Instead, the window swung harder than intended, broke free of its hinge, and shattered against the floor. Nayfe was left holding a pane of spongy, rotted wood, which he gawked at before tossing them out the window.
“Oh, gods, there they are!” The sight of the massive majordomo’s polished and buckled shoes, off in the distance, more than took his mind off his troubles. Grasping the window frame, he pulled himself up to see the parquet floor zipping by below, slowing down slightly as they entered the Visitor’s Mansion. A tan pair of suede butler’s shoes floated by like an elephant at top velocity and his heart lurched. They were even bigger than he’d imagined. He’d read the measurements, of course, but numbers on paper can’t impress you with the magnitude of an actual giant until … well, until you’re right there.
The wind changed. No, the air changed. The breeze he’d created by dislocating the window freshened up the odor of his interior stomach, but the wind outside now carried a certain familiar tang to it. Frowning, he leaned out even farther to see what they were coming up to, if something in the area were causing—
He saw a set of five large toes in straining white hose rushing at him, directly at his head and shoulders.
“Blimey!” he cried, as his basal nervous system betrayed him. It would have made sense for him to pull back and duck into the bathroom. Instead, his legs jolted and hove him out to his waist; his spread arms and splayed fingers caught the weave of the hosiery, and with a little roughness he was whisked out of the small room altogether.
“I hain’t done nothin’,” said Brondralgath, struggling between two men in the majordomo’s office. Graldrum, the chief usher, managed this interview while Majordomo Thraldromlich was kept far away, owing to the delicacy of the situation.
“Please stop fighting,” said Graldrum. “Please, I need you to hold as still as you can for the time being.”
“Can’t hardly budge an inch as it is!” Brondralgath jerked and wrung her arms despite the iron grasp of the butlers flanking her.
“Brondey, please! Stop it this instant! You don’t understand what kind of trouble you’re in!”
There was something in Graldrum’s expression that made the maid calm somewhat. “I’m tellin’ you, I din’ do nuffin’.” Her tone had code-switched to that of her somewhat poorer neighborhood, as it did when she felt cornered like a rat. “Don’ even know what’s goin’ on, don’ nobody tell me nuffin’!”
The chief usher nodded to the two butlers, who carefully guided her to a chair, which she accepted after a tussle. Graldrum carefully stepped around the majordomo’s desk, eyeing the floor, then carefully swept off the edge of it before sitting down. “Then let me clue you in, if only to keep you from stomping around like a … great stompy thing. We got a report from the Foyer Depot about the passenger list, as they were disembarking. There’s a mismatch in the numbers.” She sighed, rubbing her temples. “There’s one missing, a Britisher. By our report he and his partner had a car to themselves, they got into a spat, and he disappeared.”
Brondralgath scowled. “So? Couldn’t be less innerested.”
“He was on the train when they left Tokyo, he didn’t arrive at Foyer Depot. He didn’t chuck himself out into the Pacific, unless his partner is deliberately misleading us. Nor did he hurl himself into the fields. If his partner is to be believed, he went to the water closet as the 7:20 breached the flagstones.” Seeing her audience still didn’t grasp the point, Graldrum leaned in closer. “He’s missing somewhere in the Mansion, Brondralgath. Our staff is doing a thorough inspection of the entire area. Slowly, obviously, because we have to watch our step, but we can’t rule anything out,” she added pointedly.
“Okay, well, hope you find him.” Brondralgath snorted. “Still don’t know why I’m being held here. Thraldromlich got a bee in his bonnet about my shoe? I’m telling you, I obeyed the letter of the law as he spelled it out. Ask this guy.” She nodded at one of the butlers, who had not been the butler standing beside her in greeting formation, but all the butlers looked alike to her.
“We can’t rule anything out, Brondey. We have to search your costume.”
That made Brondralgath stiffen. “Well, go ahead, then. I guess you’ll want to take it off carefully. There’s only, like, a hundred layers of tulle and tatters going on in our hoop skirts. That’ll keep your boys busy all night.”
Graldrum sucked on her bottom lip. “But we also have to search you, Brondey. He could be … anywhere.”
Her pulse accelerated. Nayfe could feel the increase in the volume and velocity in the blood rushing over his legs, under the thick layer of her skin. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was, after the mad scramble through the hole in the giantess’s hose, and he didn’t know how much time he had to come up with a plan. He only knew he wasn’t about to leave Brobdingnag.
Aborigen 
Leave a comment