Bootlicker

by Roy Candido

At the store's front counter, Cashmere folded article after article and placed them down to display. Cardigans, scarves and sweaters lay like pastel scales under the icy light of the unexpected blizzard outside, and no candles were lit, just the way she liked when no customers were around.

"Finding everything alright, cousin?" She asked Velvet.

"I'm not. Your more expensive merchandise would be..."

"Upstairs. Save some for the common does, yes?"

Velvet knew she would find Shanty there, for whatever it was she seeked to take, Velvet knew it would not be cheap.

She looked up and there she was, the little brown goat with both hooves upon the banister of the second floor railing. Not but ten steps out of her reach, the crystal chandelier glittered and hung above the counter. It shone in her eyes with pupils wide like gourds. Tearing away from it, her short legs carry far off into the dim back floor of the boutique, and Velvet followed up the steps.

All the racks on the upper level were silent and still as if no one had come by, and only the strain of the windows against the storm sounded behind her. Birch mannequins were frozen on pedestals and lavishly dressed in gowns most reindeer would never touch. The rings of carousels lay at their feet like festival flowers flushed gray in the dark. Velvet's hooves fell softly on the polish of the timber beneath and the length of her shadow was massive over the whole floor. Shanty was so much shorter than it all, and she could have been anywhere.

Anchored to the docks of Reine, Shanty's ship, the Capricorn, that brought Velvet back home was freezing into the ice brought by the storm. It could be days or weeks before they could sail again. The company of a pirate whittled away all the comforts of home for Velvet, and she wished to be away from this place in a way she never felt before. Under supervision, perhaps Shanty would pillage little enough from her cousin's store to spare her some humiliation. Velvet wondered what a kid needed with a gown.

A snuffle of sorts hissed from a nearby rack of scarves pouring down from their hangers. Velvet reared up above the wooden ring they hung from and looked down into its center. Shanty was hunkered there within the round curtain of cloth, her bone spur horns peeked from beneath a frayed bandana, and she had not seen Velvet yet.

"Shanty!" Velvet whispered. The goat looked up and back at her with a spritely eye. Her expression was as it always ways, a look of a pirate with a plan always coming together, "what are you doing?"

"Vel! I was lookin' all over for ya!" Shanty said. She stood, but seemed to rise very little. her broad ears flopped like jungle leaves as she turned.

"Did you expect to find me hanging from a rack, or something?"

"Nah, just surveyin' the goods. I can see all these sashes at once just turning in place right here."

"Get out of there, that's NOT what it's for."

"Aye matey, suite yerself."

Velvet let herself down from the top of the carousel. She waited for Shanty to part the curtain of fabric, but in an instant she was perched atop the wooden ring instead. How she managed to jump such a height while standing in place was a mystery to Velvet, and she was forced to hold the rack steady while Shanty launched herself from it and clattered her hooves to the floor.

"C'mon, come see this," She said as all the hangers rattled to rest, and just like that, Shanty was gone again.

It was as if Velvet never left the deck of the Capricorn. Shanty would jump and vault from everything mast to mast, nailed down or not, bidding Velvet to follow and watch her knot some contrivance of rope and pulleys. Her head still swam with terms made by goats who couldn't likely write their own name, or perhaps Shanty made them up on the spot for all she knew. Even in this storm-lit fantasy of gowns she just kept going and going.

The familiar resting smirk of Shanty's lantern jaw appeared behind a wooden doe posed in a sweater, and was gone again like the peak of a wave when her eye met Velvet's. They found each other finally at a wall mounted by racks in a checkerboard pattern, and on every rack there was a single shoe.

Velvet halted her from climbing the display like a mast ladder to reach something, and after brief direction Velvet plucked a boot from where it stood. Shanty took it from her and held it to the light. A little "aah" of satisfaction escaped her lips as she championed it.

"Those? For you?"

Shanty nodded.

"Those are cloven only," Velvet said, and flicked at a dangling tag with a split heart printed on it. While hugging the boot to her hazelnut chest, Shanty displayed a sharp and ship torn hoof to her. It now occurred to Velvet that her hooves often moved too fast to examine, and though they were too short to reach her, she recoiled anyway.

"Augh! Put that down! Nevertheless, it doesn't come in kid's sizes. What are you going to do with it, eat it?"
She lowered her hoof, releasing Velvet from its captivating horror. It was then that Velvet saw her smirk was gone. The goat's eyes were a little wider now, her mouth slightly agape so the little brown tuft of a beard was crowned by her bottom teeth. Whatever that expression meant, Velvet had not seen it before, and did not wish to see it since. The wind outside made another push to blow down all civilization.

Shanty was first to break the silence, and she took another look at the boot. She turned it aside and peered at the insole. Her hoof tapped the back like a hollow barrel. As she faced it to inspect the toe, the pink tip of her tongue appeared at her lips, and Velvet felt her face contort as it met the wood of it. When she began to gently squeeze the cuff between her teeth, she released it as Velvet reached to stop her.

There is a sincerity among pirates, Velvet had come to know, that surfaces only when they speak of storms off fateful coasts and the things they dredge from the deep. With no less feeling, Shanty met her eyes again.

"Aye."

Another whistle from outside reminded Velvet that there was no storm brewed but the one yet passing. Loudly, she began to laugh, but halted not two breaths later when Shanty did not join.

"Vel," the goat began, "Do y'know the Man O' War?"

Velvet tried to ignore her. She bluffed "You think you can sneak out with all four, don't you? You're welcome to try."

"The sapphires o' the sea," Shanty carried on, "Aye, they're beautiful, the way they waltz on the waves like the treasures of the deep'd come up to meet ye'. They don't net like other fish. Their tentacles reach to the very floor so ye can't get beneath em, only pluck 'em from above, would you need one so badly. And when the wind'nt fair and yer a week out from bay and gone a month, no food, aye, I very well did.

"Ye' can't cook 'em, I know it now. I lit a deck fire for it but as soon as you spit em they wilt to a wisp, and puttin' it to a flame left me even less. The next one I could find, I ate raw," she sucked at her teeth, "that skin, if ye'd call it that, falls to bits on yer tongue and leaves a trail down yer throat you can follow for meals and meals. And the tentacles, the ones I told ye' 'bout, they scratch like cats at a cabin door. Velvet, what I wouldn't have gave for a boot that night. Do you know what makes a boot? Ask yer cousin."

"I know. I have."

"Then ye' know it's nothin' we don't eat. Pressed leaf soles, hemp laces, hard bark heels. When all them meet an open flame, even a well fed sea goat would come running. It burns like hickory smoke, and the soles- aye, I see yer face, the soles separate leaf from leaf so the treaded ones be tossed and between them the layers are fresh and chewy like they were put there just for ye'. I could have cried, Vel. I could have cried when I found that out, knowing I had myself four o' them and could still feel the sting deep down of the Man O' War I ate instead,"

Velvet felt herself swallow. It was louder than she expected. Only months ago, she herself had been to the Prairie. Thirsty as she'd ever been, even the canals of the river in Reine would have satisfied her. The thought that she'd been so low had never left her, but she never craved something so destitute. What kind of life did Shanty lead, she wondered, to adopt such an obsession. She could not picture Shanty crying. The Man O' War could not have been poisonous, but it seemed to have poisoned her. Shanty gently offered her the boot.

"Oh shut up," said Velvet, refusing and composing herself, "none of that happened!"

Shanty pursed her lips and shrugged without skipping a beat, saying "If ya say so," and left Velvet where she stood before the shoe display. That smug stone expression returned to the goat's face, and as she turned the bend of a carousel, Velvet could have sworn she saw a grin on it.

As Velvet had expected, she had disappeared, but her uncourteous hooffalls down the stairs allowed her to follow. While Shanty and Cashmere met at the counter below, she stopped at the banister and looked out at the chandelier. What did it mean to someone who feasts on shoes? Perhaps she just liked the color.

"Do you know the Man O' War?" Velvet heard again as she found the steps to the ground floor.

It was unlikely, she thought, that Shanty would be further in her story than the texture of the creature. Yet her cousin was behind the till, folding clothes, no kid in sight, and the boot, now three more, was sitting on the counter.

"Where is she?" Velvet looked around.

Cashmere peered from her upper bifocals, "Upstairs again, looking for you. She's quite a card, I must admit."

Only a sharp, deep breath restrained Velvet from thrashing her antlers against the counter in frustration.

"My dear cousin," she began on the exhale, "send Cap to retrieve her, please. If our ship is frozen at bay, we could be stuck here for a week."

"You're welcome to stay as long as you need to wait out the storm, you know," Cashmere smiled.

"Not with her, I refuse! I've spent all day keeping her from nicking things from your shelves, I can't take it anymore!"

"Oh Velvet, why not just board an incoming ship when the storm ends, one that won't be stuck in the ice?"

"Because the Capricorn is the only ship that sails past the Goatani islands. Do you know WHY that is?"

Cashmere glanced at the clothes she was folding, then back at Velvet to show she was still listening.

"Because of HER, that's why! Her and her crew crash every single ship that passes by those islands and takes their money, their jewels, their clothes, everything precious!" Velvet whipped her neck with gritted teeth to illustrate, "Even the nails, if they're mistaken for gems!"

"That's awfully exciting, cousin, but honestly? Look at her, she's barely half our age, and just scraping by from what she tells me."

"Oh?" Velvet said barely audible to contain her rage, "I suppose she gave you the boot-eating story?"

Cashmere's eyes widened, flicked to the boots on the counter, "the what?!"

With a dark flash between them and a gust of air, the boots were gone.

The two reindeer only caught the end of Shanty's acrobatics. From the halo of the chandelier, one of its dripping crystals bore a pink scarf tied in an unbreakable knot, and on its hanging end below Shanty swung on it, gripped in her teeth. She had swung no closer to the cashier's counter than she intended, and no further. All four boots were on her hooves already as she sailed silently through the air. The chandelier's ornaments jingled as she let go, singing 'so long' to the goat flying into the tall, cold glass of the window, and shattering it like a thunder strike.

Ice and snow rushed through the broken glass windowpane more eager than any customer. Cashmere ducked below the counter, and a thin shade of ice shielded Velvet in an instant. When it fell to slush and the cold wind hit her eyes, she saw the dark stump of Shanty outside before the broken window, looking in.

"Call me a liar, Velvet!" Shanty's voice was barely audible in the storm, standing in hail and broken glass, "But I'm no sneak! When I steal from ya, everyone'll know it from East port to West gate! From sea to sea! And if they say it wasn't Shanty, then for damn sure I'll be back! Now meet me at the Capricorn, I triple parked 'er!"

In only a few steps and a leap, she was gone into the blizzard, the massive boots tripping her barely gripping to her hooves for dear life. Cashmere peeked from above the counter, her long lashes batting in the wind. Velvet tried, but had no words. Giving her cousin one last look she felt to be sorry enough, she bounded over the jagged teeth of the broken window and chased Shanty into the whiteness.

THE END