The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home (6 page)

September did not need to look through the racks of beautiful clothes. She had been thinking hard all the while the Mantelet spoke and knew already what she wanted.

“Jacquard, I do not want anything in this wardrobe. It's all more wonderful than anyone could ask for—Cinderella would take one look in here and lose her entire mind, I think. And perhaps I ought to think practically and let you sew me a Racing Suit that would let me cross the world in two steps. But what I want, what I really want, isn't here. I want everything back, Miss Jack. Everything I've had and lost—my wrench and the Witch's Spoon and my Watchful Dress and my emerald-green smoking jacket. The Red Wind took her coat back and I suppose that's her right, so I can do without as I only borrowed it. For my steed, I want Aroostook with its ratty old potato bag over the spare tire and its sunflower steering wheel, and for my shoes I want my old mary janes, both of them, on both my feet. I want all my things back again and in one piece, for when I have them,
I
shall be all one piece!”

The Archbishop of the Closet blinked her wrought-iron eyelids over her silver eyes. “Queens never listen,” she said. “I've told you: Everything that's any good is here. You must understand, September. Today is not your coronation day. It is more like your wedding day. A Queen weds Fairyland, and though Fairyland is a tempestuous spouse, she keeps a very fine house.” Jacquard wrapped the length of green ribbon round September's finger like a ring—and in a moment it had become one, a cuff of plain, rough, green stone clutching her finger. The stone felt warm and alive. “And if it is your wedding day, you ought to have your own dress.”

Jacquard opened up her black rib cage into a sewing machine once more. The needle whirred to life, pounding the presser foot furiously. But there was no fabric beneath it, no silk, no goldcloth, no wool, no linen. Just air. For a moment the needle pattered against nothing. And then—a scrap of orange appeared against the Mantelet's black heart like the first crocus of Spring.

It all came roaring out of her in a rush: the orange explosion of her own Watchful Dress, stitched with droplets of gold, garnets hanging from its familiar neckline, its skirts dimpled with black rosettes, its green silk rope circling the waist, even the twin pocket watches dangling from the bustle. The warm wooden handle of the Witch's Spoon, the gleaming patent leather of her dear old mary janes, somewhat larger now, for she no longer had twelve-year-old feet. Hello, shoe! September has missed you so! And finally, a green velvet cuff shot free of Jacquard's chest. The emerald smoking jacket flew off the needle joyfully, flinging itself toward September and wrapping her up safe in its plush arms, tying its sash round her waist with a great sense of personal satisfaction.

Somewhere far away from the Royal Closet and far below the towers of the Briary, September could hear a horn honking.

“Thank you! Oh, thank you, Jack!” cried September, hugging herself tight so as to hug the smoking jacket. For the first time since she fell off the Moon, she felt quite herself again. Such feelings rarely last long, for the meaning of
oneself
changes as quick as clouds skipping. We ought to let our girl roll around in it while she can, don't you think?

*   *   *

When she had quite recovered, September went to Jacquard and held out her hand. “I am a human girl. I am not allergic to you.”

The Mantelet took her hand, hesitantly, as though she expected the Queen to yank it away at any moment. Though September could not know it, no one had touched Jacquard in two thousand years. So you understand why, without either of them understanding how it happened, the handshake turned, as if by magic, into a long embrace.

“Are you quite certain you don't want to be Queen?” Jacquard whispered into the jeweled crown of the one girl in all the world who could hug her and live.

Just then, September was not certain at all.

*   *   *

September closed the birch-trunk door of the Royal Closet. She looked round for the Stoat of Arms, but the crotchety old menagerie seemed to have abandoned her.

In its place stood a man with a neat green beard, wearing a green carriage-driver's cloak and green jodhpurs, and smart green winklepicker boots. Beside him, a large and handsome Leopard sat on her haunches, licking one paw with casual interest and purring loudly.

The Green Wind had found his moment. A Wind always looks for his moment, knowing it will come and the whole of the world will be better for his having waited. Hamlet arrives on his cue, and not a moment before. The Green Wind leaned casually against the wall of the Briary, green out of green, shining from his shoes to his cap, as though he'd been there for a hundred years.

“You seem an ill-tempered and irascible enough child,” he said with a grin. “How would you like to be stuck in the middle of a hopping grand mess?”

“Green!” September cried, and dashed across the copper and jade floor to throw herself into his arms. “I thought you'd got lost forever!”

“A Wind never gets lost. Only distracted,” he answered, and squeezed her tight. “You mad little thing. I leave you alone for one minute and you go and make friends with a wombat!”

 

CHAPTER III

A
N
A
UDIENCE
WITH
THE
Q
UEEN

In Which September Has Her Supper, Learns a Number of Rules (One Involving a Kraken), Beds Down in a Wyvern's Nest, and Receives an Unusual Invitation

“Now,” said the Green Wind, when he and September and the Leopard of Little Breezes had turned thirteen corners, run down six blind hallways that led nowhere, and opened three doors onto scenes they certainly ought not to have witnessed, and come at last to a curtained archway in the viny walls, “there are important rules in governing Fairyland, rules which cannot be broken, jostled, or teased. Oh, I suppose you
will
break them, being yourself and not another. And in fact, if you want to win the Derby, you should probably get to breaking them sooner rather than later. But I gave the Stoat of Arms the night off on the condition that I would look at you
very
sternly and shake my finger most emphatically whilst laying it all out.
We have always been aces at rules, that girl and I
, I told him.
While you are mainly aces grumbling.
So let us pretend for a moment that you, September, cannot break these rules, even though you have never met anything so small as a leg nor so large as a moon that you could not break in two.”

Two Zinnias guarded the archway, their flowered helmets shading steely, determined eyes.

“Tell me the rules,” said September, laughing as she leaned her head against the Leopard of Little Breezes's spotted fur. She felt she would never stop laughing now the Green Wind had come back. Nothing could go too terribly awry when he was about.

“Firstly, dinner is served promptly at six o'clock in the evening in the Moonwort Pavilion,” answered the Green Wind, and drew aside the rich curtain onto a vast and lovely room that looked as though it had been waiting all its life for a motley gang of Changelings alongside a Marid, a gramophone, an outsized red reptile, a Queen, and a woven wombat the size of an overambitious elephant. A great cheer went up from all of them when they saw September, who gasped as Saturday and Ell barreled toward her across the bright floor.

Saturday called: “September! I thought we'd never find you in this place!”

“The Scuttler said you'd come,” trumpeted A-Through-L. “Do you know, he's a Taxicrab! Our Taxicrab! Do you remember Taxicrabs? I don't suppose there was much work on the Moon after we finished with it. Oh! You've got your jacket back!”

The place felt like the common room of a particularly unhinged college or a particularly well-behaved madhouse. September supposed it had once been a billiards room. Someone had stacked six colorful feather mattresses on a stately old pool table to make a kind of nest—a nest considerately furnished with river rushes, silk batting, and old bones. Just the thing for a Wyvern's nap. Beneath a bank of green glass windows stood a marvelous brass soaking tub big enough for ten or twelve dolphins and a few of their friends, filled invitingly to the brim with salty ocean water, cold enough for a Marid who had not seen the sea in ever so long. A round, dark table stood in the center of the room, set for one. One plate, one goblet for water and one for wine, one knife, one fork.

“Dinner is served promptly at six o'clock in the Moonwort Pavilion,” said the Green Wind again. “Though we'll make an exception, just for tonight.”

Saturday held her tight.

Chessboards and checkerboards and brownie backgammon and pooka poker lay on twisted, tangled tables fashioned out of ivy and willow whips and marigolds and fig flowers. And there lay Blunderbuss, the combat wombat, rolling and snorting in a huge tangled burrow along the east wall. Raspberry vines and old eucalyptus leaves and banksia flowers like orange ice cream cones thatched together over a patch of rich, dark dirt as thick as a Persian carpet.

“Oh! Oh!” cried the scrap-yarn wombat, scrabbling in the dirt with both front paws. “I never thought I'd get to
dig
again! I thought I'd got so big I'd never again know the joy of hiding underneath the brush and waiting for someone startleable to come wandering by! Don't bother me, darling dimwits! I washed up to go exploring, but now that's done, I'm gonna get good and
dirty
again
.
How's Queening? Is it marvelous? Do you like it? Have you spat out any good laws yet?”

Hawthorn the troll grinned at his friend. He was sitting on a pistachio flower stool beside a handsome cinnamon-wood desk, which he knew was meant for him, as it said
HUMPHREY
! in a fancy cursive hand on the left-hand corner. He touched the edges of a stack of fresh notebooks and the points of nine pencils sticking out of an old-fashioned inkwell. He kept pulling them out and smelling them when he thought no one was looking, the wonderful scent of anything freshly sharpened.

“The Zinnias wouldn't let us leave once they stowed us here,” explained Tamburlaine, who lay dreamily on her back before a sweetstone fireplace of every color, plus two the Briary had invented just for its own use. It took up the whole west wall of the room. “They're being very strict with everyone—I suppose they don't want anybody getting strangled in the hallways with all these old devils creeping about.”

Fire roared cheerfully in the hearth and the silver wood-rack groaned with glittering fresh logs brought all the way from the Glass Forest. Beside the fireplace rested a glorious golden cabinet filled to bursting with records of every size and sort. Scratch hopped and clattered like a newborn horse, using his needle to flip through albums with a thrill only a gramophone can know. Tamburlaine laughed, but not cruelly. Her hair was blooming brighter and thicker than it ever had in the human world, not only plum blossoms now but pomegranate and wild lobelia, too. The Leopard of Little Breezes stretched out beside her to soak up the fire.

“Hey! What's yours, Tam?” Hawthorn asked suddenly. “The old house put out presents for everyone like it's making up for a hundred Christmases. But I don't see any paints or books for you. I didn't even think.”

“It's the fireplace,” Tamburlaine said softly, sinking to her walnut-wood knees beside the hearth. “Of course, I would
like
paints and brushes, but the Briary knows what I am. I'm a Fetch. My heart is a little burning coal. I tried to tell you that once, but I don't think it came out right. Fire calls to me and I call to fire. It was all I could do not to burn the house down when I was little. Not because I didn't love my house, but because I'm built to burn, and to love things that burn.” She tore her eyes from the blazing glass logs and laughed a little, wiping her eyes. “You all got the sort of things an auntie would give you, if she were specially rich—but me? The Briary's telling my secrets. Naughty thing!”

Several pots of paint and long pearl-handled brushes appeared guiltily out of the top of a blackberry-bramble sideboard.

Down below the wide windows, September could see the lights of Pandemonium swirling. She could see Groangyre Tower and the Janglynow Flats and even the movie theatre where she and A-Through-L had eaten lemon ices together. Suddenly, glasses and plates rose up out of the table-for-one in the center of the room like apples bobbing up out of a pail of water: a glass of golden-colored milk, a snifter of bright green liquor with emeralds floating in it, and a stack of magenta cakes with coppery butter melting on top.

The Green Wind quirked one green eyebrow. “I'm afraid you're going to have to eat breakfast
and
dinner, as Mr. Crunchcrab had a very busy day being deposed and forgot his flapjacks.”