Blow by Daniel Nayeri Read Free Book Online Page B

before getting rushed off to restore the prince’s limelight, and then he says, “—.”
    It was nothing special, actually; he just introduced the two great grandmasters among them, the flower quilter, Pierre Vouvray, and the marble painter, Giovanni Chianti. The crowd went insane. The blacksmiths couldn’t stop clapping. Dimple Pimple basked in the glory.
    After the crowd settled, the prince casually mentioned that the crafts fair had all been a trap, they were all his prisoners, and anyone who tried to escape through the forest would be keelhauled and promptly eaten. Turns out land pirates are cannibals. Who knew?

W ELL, IT’S NOT technically cannibalism, because dwarves aren’t people. I mean,
little
people
are obviously people. But I’m talking about Old Timey Europe dwarves. Which are like elves, which aren’t human. So the fact that land pirates happened to be dwarves means that when they eat people, it’s not exactly cannibalism. It’s just super gross is all.
    But that wasn’t the point. We’re not getting started talking about all the things land pirates eat. That’s a car game that’d keep your kids preoccupied till you hit the ocean.
    The point is that after all the showboating, his royal good-lookingness was holding the entire fair hostage. It was brilliant really. Lure all the greatest artists in the land with the promise of adulation and sales potential. And they swarmed to it like flies to roadkill.
    A riptide of terror overcame the artists as they realized that, yes, in fact, this had all been a ruse, and no one would be appreciating their art after all. They began to replay, hungrily, every comment they had received from every customer. They finally understood why they had all been so carefully thought out, expressed as though in a writing workshop, and perhaps tinged with a little jealousy. “These macaroons are sentimentally interesting. I feel like I’m consuming childhood as well as marzipan.” “Are these wreaths made of wagon wheels? Heavy, aren’t they. And wrought with meaning.” “I like that it’s a sundial
and
a wind vane, but what would it be if it weren’t either one?”
    Only artists had been invited to the fair. Every customer had a booth of his or her own somewhere. Dear God, they had been selling to other artists!
    Other artists didn’t count as true fans. They bought art out of professional obligation, or competitor research, or the raccoony obsession to own shiny things. Think about it. No one is impressed with the Girl Scout who has twelve rich fat uncles.
    Suddenly a wave of nausea, worse even than knowing they were slaves of a ruthless dictator, crashed upon the crowd. They had not, in fact, helped the uncultured swine of the world better themselves with threaded candy-corn necklaces. The unwashed masses would stay unwashed, even though scented soaps and body scrubs took up an entire aisle. The churlish “left brain” types would go on with their usury, the clacking of the abacus their only music, the blood of artsy children their only wine.
    Most of the crowd curled into the fetal position, rocking themselves and humming tunes by their favorite singer-songwriter before the prince could finish his announcement.
    Giacomo, however, was already sneaking through the hedgerows of angsty creatives to find Chloe. As the prince trumpeted on about his elaborate trap, and the fact that the head of every artisans’ guild was here somewhere, and that everyone would be put to work on a project so ambitious it might stop the wind, all Giacomo could think was,
What do you suppose would make Chloe happy?
    As the prince instructed the crowd that they’d be grouped in pairs and imprisoned in different wings of his castle in order to work on his project, Giacomo thought,
I know. Flowers.
She seemed to be into flowers, what with her dad and all. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t want flowers because she always had them. But maybe she couldn’t get enough flowers. What would