Page 24 of The Elves and the Shoemaker
Johan huffed with impatience. While he generally found the elves’ antics to be rather endearing, he didn’t much appreciate being locked out of his own workshop.
A few minutes later, the door swung open, and a beaming Elias stood before him. It was hard to remain annoyed when Elias smiled like that, so Johan just gave him a quizzical look before scanning his eyes around the room, trying to spot what they might be up to.
Everything looked normal, which somehow only made Johan even more suspicious. He pointed at the two of them and raised his eyebrow.
“What? We’ve just been… coming up with some new shoe designs,” Elias replied, batting his eyelashes at Johan in a way that, while distracting, continued to alert Johan to the fact the elves were hiding something.
Johan approached the bench where the parchment for drawing on was and found no sign of any designs at all. “Where?” he managed.
“Oh, erm. We were discussing the designs out loud. We haven’t got to the drawing portion of the design process yet. We’ll… do that after lunch,” Elias rambled, and it was then that Johan noticed the two of them were standing strangely in front of a wooden chest like they were guarding it.
Johan stalked towards it and nudged them both out of the way. Only when he tried to open the chest, he heard the snick of a lock and then stood back to glare at them.
The elves had previously informed him that elvish magic was good in nature, light in a way that meant it didn’t really work for nefarious purposes, but locking Johan out of his own belongings didn’t feel very “good.”
He stood with his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at Elias, instinctively knowing it was him who used magic to lock things away. Johan pointed at Elias and then at the chest. “Open,” he rasped.
Elias began attempting a conversation using only his eyes with Henrik. After a moment, Henrik glanced up at Johan before telling Elias to open it.
When Johan heard the snick of the lock again, he stepped forward and opened the chest gingerly, as if a wild animal might pop out of it.
What was actually inside the chest was no less confusing. It appeared to be a nearly endless supply of clothing and shoes. But most of the items were so fancy that they were practically fit for royalty, and Johan couldn’t figure out why they were here.
He inspected the items carefully since they were so finely made, and he came across a pair of nightclothes that matched Henrik’s and Elias’. Only, over the chest pocket was the letter J embroidered using a thick green thread. With the nightshirt clutched in his hand, he looked between the two elves. Elias was wide-eyed like a startled deer while Henrik bit at his fingernails.
“Mmm?” Johan hummed in question.
“It’s not all quite finished yet,” Henrik said.
“But… it’s for you. We… both of us,” Elias emphasised, “made these for you. As a…gift.”
Johan was grateful then that he was unable to blurt out the first thing that came into his head because he would have askedthem where on earth they thought he would be wearing such fine clothes, and that would have been incredibly rude.
Instead, he looked through the clothes again with a different eye now that he knew they were for him. He could appreciate that, while beautiful, they were not impractical clothes.
Elias and Henrik closed in on him, peering over his shoulder with curious looks, like they were waiting on his reaction.
“Thank you. Very kind.” Johan had been finding that it was slowly getting easier to speak in front of the two of them when they were all alone. He hoped that maybe one day he’d be able to speak around them as freely as he had his parents when he was a child.
Both of their shoulders dropped in clear relief before Elias declared, “Excellent. Then you must try them all on and show us!”
Henrik also appeared cautiously hopeful at the suggestion, and Johan knew he would probably do nearly anything they asked of him, although he still groaned when Elias added, “Can I dress you like a doll?”
D
espite the blue skies and sunshine, the way the wind rattled the glass panes told Johan that a storm was coming. He kept glancing out the window, waiting for Henrik and Elias to return from the bakery where they were picking up some food for lunch.
Johan found himself agitated when the elves were out of his sight, and he was aware that he worried about them far more than was normal.
As he waited, the door to the shop opened, and a finely dressed man and woman entered.
“Good morning,” the man said. Johan offered his friendliest smile but hoped Elias would return soon to be able to speak to the potential customers. “You sell elf-made shoes?” he asked.
Johan nodded and picked up a pair from the shelf to show them. He pointed to the fine stitching, which no one but an elf could achieve. The woman clutched the shoe, and her eyes glinted with a covetous glee.
“They really are… my goodness. I must have a pair,” the woman declared, to presumably her husband.
“To try,” Johan managed in a whisper, pointing at the ruby-red slipper she was holding.
