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From the fires she saw flickering through the mist, it seemed certain that many people, or many somethings, in any case, made their homes among the folds of Pants and Shirts. As the Stone Girl took them along the seam of a small canyon between a row of cookfires on the heights, a few voices called down greetings. Her guide lifted her stubby arm in reply, and Renie felt reassured enough to wish that !Xabbu and Sam could share this with her. There was something deeply, primitively satisfying about coming into a lighted settlement at night, especially after being in the wilderness, and she had been in something much more bleak than any ordinary wilderness for days.
As they moved out of the Pants into another dark crease between hills, the Stone Girl said, "We're almost there. Maybe the stepmother will be able to tell you where your friends are. And I have to tell her about the Witching Tree, and how the Ending's getting so much closer."
They came around an outcropping of stone into another vale of cheery light. The buildings were ramshackle but the shapes were unmistakable, some of them so much a part of the landscape that they were indistinguishable from natural features, but others actually sticking most of the way out of the ground so that cookfires gleamed in the eyelets or through gaps in the soles. There were dozens of them, perhaps hundreds—an entire town.
"They're shoes! Big shoes!"
"I told you, didn't I?"
As she got used to the light, Renie saw that the spaces between the shoes were occupied too, dozens and dozens of figures huddled beside fires, shadowy shapes that watched almost silently as Renie and the Stone Girl passed. Despite their silence, she felt little menace. The eyes that stared at them, the voices that whispered, seemed dulled with weariness and despair.
It's like a shantytown, she thought.
"There aren't usually people living out here," the Stone Girl explained. "It's because they lost their homes when the Ending came. There are so many of them now, and they're hungry and scared. . . ."
She was interrupted by a dozen shrieking shapes ru
"Where you been?" one of the nearest shouted. "The stepmother is in a state."
"I found someone." The Stone Girl gestured toward Renie. "Took a while to get back."
The children surrounded them, chattering and jostling, Renie had assumed they were the Stone Girl's siblings, but in the growing light that spilled from the mouth of the nearest shoe she saw that none of them looked anything like her guide. Most of them appeared more ordinarily human, although their clothing (for those who wore any) was of a style she could not identify. But some of the swarm of laughing children were even stranger than the Stone Girl, their shapes distorted and fantastical—one plumply furred in yellow and black like a bumblebee, another with feet like a duck's, and even one child, Renie was startled to see, who had a huge hole right through her middle, so that she had almost no torso at all.
"Are these . . . your brothers and sisters?" she asked.
The Stone Girl shrugged. "Sort of. There are a lot of us. So many that sometimes I think the stepmother just doesn't know what to do."
The shape of a vast shoe loomed before them, and Renie suddenly drew up and stopped. "Jesus Mercy," she said. "I get it."
"Come on," said the Stone Girl, and for the first time took Renie's hand. Her fingers were rough, with the cool dampness of forest loam. A little boy with the head of a deer looked up at Renie with shy, liquid brown eyes, as though he wished he could take the other hand, but Renie was busy wrestling with this new realization. "Of course—it's that damn nursery rhyme, 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.' " Something else was tugging at her, too, some distant memory, but it was hard enough to deal with finding herself in a Mother Goose book.
"We all live in shoes," her guide said, drawing her through a door at the back of the ancient, moss-covered boot. "Well, everybody around here. . . ."
It was a very, very old shoe. To Renie's relief, no olfactory traces of its previous giant owner remained. Two or three times as many children waited in the smoky firelight as had come out to meet them, but the stay-at-homes seemed just as weirdly diverse. Those who had eyes watched Renie with fascination as the Stone Girl led her through the great boot toward the toe. Although there were far too many for introductions, the Stone Girl called a few by name, mostly while instructing them to get out of the way—"Polly," "Little Seed," "Hans," and "Big Ears" were a few Renie heard. She had to step over many of them, and a few times she trod on someone by accident, but no one objected. She guessed that the crowded way they lived had accustomed them to it.
Could these be the children in comas? she wondered. Is that what this place is—a kind of concentration camp for all the children the Other has stolen? If so, the prospects for finding Stephen were daunting—there might well be thousands just here in the Shoes, and God alone knew how many in the other pieces of clothing throughout the hills.
"Is that you, Stone Girl?" a voice called, echoing slightly in the dome of the toe. "You're late back and you've set me worrying. These are bad times. It can't be allowed."
A dark shape sat in a rocking chair beside the fireplace. A brick chimney poked up through the shoe leather overhead, but to little effect. In fact, Renie first thought it was the pervasive smoke that made it hard to see the figure in the chair, but then she realized that the humanoid form was itself vague as mist—a suggestion of shoulders and a head atop a body shapeless as a gray cloud. Twi
"I . . . I tried to find the Witching Tree, Stepmother," the Stone Girl said. "Because everything is going wrong. I wanted to ask it. . . ."
"No! You are back late. It's not allowed. And you have brought one who does not belong here. Already the streets outside are full of those who have lost their homes—why do we need another? We have nothing to share."
"But she was lost. One of the Ji
The smoky matter of the stepmother became for a moment more solid. The eyes flashed. "You misbehaved. That calls for punishment."
The Stone Girl abruptly fell to the floor, writhing and crying. The other children were all silent, their eyes wide.
"Leave her alone!" Renie took a step toward the fallen Stone Girl, but something jumped through her like electricity, a great convulsive snap of pain that threw her onto her hands and knees beside the child.
"This one does not belong," the stepmother said complacently. "Too big, too strange. This one must go."
Renie raised her head; her jaw flexed but nothing would come out. Fighting to control her jerking limbs, she crawled a short way forward. The stepmother stared at her, then another whiplash of agony ran up Renie's spine and exploded blackly in her skull.
She dimly felt herself lifted by many small hands. When they set her down again, she was so grateful to stop moving she tried to say so, but only managed a wheeze. The dirt against her face was cool and damp, rather like the Stone Girl's hand, and she lay against it appreciatively as the last painful twitches worked their way out of her arms and legs.
When she could sit up, she found herself in the middle of a dark street surrounded by huge Shoes, as though she had been tossed into the back of some gargantuan closet. Light leaked from some of the dwellings, but their doors were all shut tight. Even the campfires of the shantytowns seemed to have been hurriedly extinguished, but she sensed the silent homeless watching her with fear and mistrust.