Page 16 of The Elves and the Shoemaker (The GriMM Tales #4)

Twelve

Johan

H

enrik and Elias had been behaving very strangely ever since they’d all returned from their visit to the sorcerer to remove the elves’ magic-suppressing bangles. So much so that Johan was mildly concerned that he’d missed something much more significant taking place during the exchange.

Yesterday evening, after they’d closed up the shop, Elias had insisted upon giving Johan a haircut and beard trim, claiming that he must “Stop hiding his handsome face from the world.” Johan had been grateful then for his beard because it hid the bright red flush that had warmed his cheeks.

Afterwards, when he’d stared at his reflection in the mirror that was now clear thanks to some tinkering magic from Henrik, Johan had admitted that he did look far smarter and more like the true business owner he aspired to be.

Today, however, the elves were taking it in turns to assist Johan in the shop while the other would disappear off into the workshop.

When they’d swap, they had a disconcerting habit of sneaking glances at him and whispering to one another.

Not in a mean way. Johan wasn’t concerned that they were conspiring against him, but still in a way that left him a little on edge.

At lunchtime, he closed the shop and made his way into the workshop to pour himself a drink, only, when he tried to open the door, it appeared to be locked, which was especially suspicious because Johan didn’t have a lock on his workshop door.

Without many options, he knocked and waited. There was the sound of some shuffling and wood scraping before Elias called out, “Just a minute.”

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 asked them 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.

“These?” she asked. “They will be much too small.”

Johan shook his head and pushed them towards her. She looked sceptical but then sat down and began to unlace her fine leather boots.

Elias and Henrik had been working on this particular pair of shoes for half the night, getting reacquainted with magic to create things Johan didn’t even know were possible.

As the woman began to slip her foot into the shoe, which at first did appear to be much too small, they all watched in awe as the shoe expanded until it fit her perfectly.

“This is surely not possible… How?” she asked Johan.

Johan found he had no more remaining words left and could only smile apologetically.

“You have free elves?” The man sounded incredulous at the idea, but Johan nodded his head with a big grin, thinking of his free elves.

Well, not his elves. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d just thought of them that way.

“That’s certainly a first. I didn’t think anyone had found a way to get the elves to work when their magic was not suppressed. This is incredible,” the man said. “We are the Queen’s ambassadors over in Hallin, she will be extremely… curious, I’m sure, to hear about these.”

Johan feared that if the Queen ordered shoes from his little shop, he might faint from the shock of it, but he was starting to believe that with Elias and Henrik as his business partners, he wouldn’t have to worry about how to pay for another piece of leather or his next meal again.

The couple parted with what Johan thought was an obscene amount of money for a pair of shoes and a down payment to commission three more pairs that, in total, would earn Johan and the elves more than he usually made in an entire year.

It was so unbelievable that by the time Elias and Henrik returned from the bakery with lunch, Johan was counting the coins for the third time just to be sure.

They were both rosy-cheeked from the gusts of wind when they entered, and the sight of them made Johan’s stomach flip in a way he was unfamiliar with. It wasn’t a terrible feeling per se, but it was unsettling.

“Now, don’t be cross,” Elias began. “But to celebrate the fact we’re now actually free and we didn’t end up giving all of our money to the sorcerer, we may have been a little… indulgent at the bakery.”

Johan wasn’t cross at all. In fact, with the money he had stacked in front of him, he thought it would be a while until he had to be concerned with Elias’ and Henrik’s spending habits anywhere, let alone the bakery, which rarely had much food stocked these days anyway.

“What’s all this?” Henrik asked, pointing to the coins.

Johan coughed a few times before finding his words.

“Sale. Plus,” he held up two fingers and pointed to the parchment with the rough sketches for the design.

The elves grinned widely and nearly bashed their heads together trying to both look at the drawings at the same time. “Queen’s… ambassador,” he squeezed out.

But then the look on the elves' faces suddenly changed like the wind outside had blown through the shop and taken their joy with it. Elias and Henrik both stared at each other, going white as a sheet, and Henrik audibly gulped.

Johan scrunched his brows together in question at them.