GREATER FAIRYLAND POSTAL SERVICE
STATION NO. 1
NEITHER ROUGH STORMS NOR GLAMOURS NOR FIREDRAKES NOR GLOOMY NAIADS WITH THEIR DRESSES OFF
STAYS THESE COURIERS FROM THE SWIFT-ISH COMPLETION OF THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS
A great rush of folk hurried in and out of its grand doors. Some carried bundles under their arms, some letters, some nothing at all. A Fairy boy with blinding orange wings clutched a sheaf of papers to his chest and wept. A manticore tore joyfully into a bushel of toffees wrapped in brown paper right there on the steps. The Red Wind and her Panther gazed up at the post office with a certain sort of familial fondness.
“Are we going to post a letter?” asked Hawthorn wonderingly. He plucked at the sleeve of his nightdress, feeling suddenly very shabby. He would have dressed up if he’d known he was going to meet the post office.
“In a manner of speaking,” chuckled the Red Wind, and prodded him up the long, shining path through the grass. It was cobbled in brass plaques, most worn and faded by foot traffic. Hawthorn peered down—they were postmark plates, for a few familiar places and hundred thousand cities the troll had never heard of. Cockaigne, Brocéliande, Seattle, Buyan, Pandemonium, Lilliput, Chicago, El Dorado, Paris, Norumbega, Tain, Odessa, Melbourne, Almanack, London, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Omaha, Walghvogel—and there! Skaldtown! Hawthorn squeaked with glee. He longed to stay and read them, every one, the wonderful names and the plain ones, home and far-off. But the Panther of Rough Storms nipped at his heels until they were jogging along much too fast to get any more good looks. And as they drew close to the great palace of post, he saw that the black columns and walls were not smooth stone as he had thought, but thousands and millions of brimming inkwells packed together like bricks, their dark ink rippling safe within or trickling out or oozing from cracks in the round glass globes. By the time they reached the top of the gloriously dizzying staircase, Hawthorn’s feet had gotten quite soggy with purple-black ink. The Red Wind turned aside the door: a leaf of parchment paper as thick as a girl’s arm. For a moment the troll worried about tracking ink inside—but the damage had already been done. The floor of the post office was the color of closed eyes.
A bright, piercing bell chimed and a deep, pleasant voice announced: “Now serving number thirty-four.” Overhead, a throng of glowworms rearranged themselves to display a glittering numeral 34 in the air.
A long counter perched at the head of a vast ballroom full of customers, velvet ropes and brass bannisters, buskers playing harps and hurdy-gurdies, stamp sellers in colorful waistcoats calling out their wares like fresh fruit: Vintage Mallows, ten for a Kiss! Commemorative World’s Foul Airmails, no two alike! Black-Mail stamps straight from Fairyland-Below, Still Ripe! A bright blue-and-yellow theatre mask grinned down from the polished teak of the service counter. A long, slow ticker of numbers peeled out of its mouth like the bow-tied tail of a balloon. A little gnome with spiky hair hopped up and ripped one off, grimacing at what must assuredly be a number quite estranged from thirty-four before taking her place in the queue.
“Shall I fetch us a number?” said Hawthorn shyly.
“Certainly not,” replied the Red Wind. “Rules are for those who can’t think of a better way. Imagine! A Changeling waiting in line!”
The Red Wind shuffled in the pockets of her wild ruby gown and came up with a magician’s fan of tickets, each with a merry little number written upon it.
“Let’s see…12? 21? 122? 697? No, no, I know I’ve something in the forties here.”
“Miss Wind,” Hawthorn said as she shuffled through the underside of her breastplate and boots searching for more tickets, “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously and not call me any baby names or make fun of me.”
“Hmm? Oh, of course, my…Hawthorn. And you can call me Red. Formalities irritate the skin and cause nearsightedness, you know.”
“Why did you take me out of Skaldtown? Do you take very many children? Are they all trolls? What is a Changeling?”
Hawthorn was quite certain the Panther of Rough Storms laughed at him.
“That’s rather more than one question. Therefore I think it’s only fair I give you rather more than one set of answers.” She cleared her throat dramatically. “One: Skaldtown is a frightfully dull place with nothing at all to do on a Wednesday night. Two: Goodness, I couldn’t possibly remember. Winds have the beastliest jet lag, you simply can’t imagine. Three: See above. Four: A Changeling is a little bomb dropped by Fairyland upon the human world for fun and profit.”
Up ahead, the glowworms called number thirty-eight, and a throng of young ladies in short black capes bustled forward, smoothing their hair so as to impress the mail.
“I said no making fun,” said Hawthorn.
“One: I was bored. Two: I have been known to spirit a child or two away, I shan’t lie. It is in my nature to Swoop In and Make a Mess of the Garden. Three: Trolls make excellent Changelings as they weigh quite a lot and enjoy violence. Four: A Changeling is the sort of child who climbs out of his crib at night just because he sees something shiny that he wants. If you were not already a Changeling, you would have told me politely that you like bridges and porridge and your father’s snoring and to please be on my way.”
They took their place in line. Everyone towered above Hawthorn—but do not worry, little love! When you are a grown troll no one will tower over so much as your left elbow.
“You said I was sweet and pliable! Was that why you chose me?”
“One: There is a department in the human world entirely devoted to receiving young boys and girls of Fairy extraction so that their supply of a certain kind of tale will never run dry, even when modernity comes and no one can remember what a spindle is. Two: See above. Three: Trolls, being mostly dirt and stone and moss with a bit of blood mixed in, are prime candidates. It’s like sending a piece of Fairyland itself on vacation. It’s much harder to talk a Wyvern into flying about on a Panther. After all, they have their own wings, and besides, they don’t fit very well into a Changeling suit. Might as well try to cram a forest fire into a handbag.” The Red Wind crouched down and touched Hawthorn’s face ever so gently. Her eyes grew large and soft. Tickets fell out of her coat onto the floor all round her. “Four: The mass of Fairyland must remain constant. A Changeling is a deal struck with the second law of thermodynamics. Spit on the palm and shake.”
Hawthorn curled his fists. He tried very hard not to cry.
“Red! Stop it! I just want to know—”
“One! Because you were born in—”
“What’s going to happen to me,” finished Hawthorn, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a cloud of red veils and asks the son of two magicians to go away on an adventure, it’s because he’s the best man for the job, because he’s secretly a prince or has a birthmark in the shape of a train engine, and can invent unsolvable riddles and call the lava from the deeps and defeat the Unicorn Queen of the Electric Mountain, but I don’t think they have any of those things in this human world you keep talking about. I don’t even know that I’m as sweet as all that, if sweet is what you need to survive there. I’m not mean or anything; I know about runes and shapeshifting and I can fix the chimney by talking to it in a winsome way when Mother is busy with her leprechauns, but what I mean to say is: Maybe I won’t make a good Changeling. Maybe you don’t want to tell me what one is because it’s something awful, and anyway I only weigh half a ton, but my father says I’ll grow.”
The Panther turned his heavy jet-black head and looked at Hawthorn with large, solemn, yellow eyes.
“A Changeling,” he growled, “is a Fairy child brought across the border and exchanged for a human child so quickly and secretly that no one knows it’s happened at all. Like sweeping away a tablecloth and leaving all the glasses standing. You go there, the human comes here, and between the both of you the world has such a lot of fun it nearly passes out.”
�
��But what am I meant to do?”
The Panther wrinkled his muzzle. “You don’t have to tell a Changeling to do anything. They do it the way the sun does daytime.”
“Here we are!” the Red Wind crowed. “Yes! Forty-six! We oughtn’t make it too obvious, you know. The best cheat is the one that looks like fair play.”
And in hardly a moment, the glowworms scattered into tiny fireworks and settled back down into a broad, proud number 46.
“NEXT!” boomed a deep, severe voice, which echoed all over the post office. That great bellow blew them straight back into the folk who had silently joined the line behind them. The party in front of them, all severe cheekbones and graceful deer-legs, protested as the Red Wind, along with her cat and her troll, sailed past them toward that tall counter half buried in flurries of paper and clanking machinery.
At the top of the towering teak desk, more like a judge’s bench than a shop counter, loomed an enormous and terrifying creature. It took all of Hawthorn’s strength not to hide behind the Red Wind’s skirts. The thing had one head, and that was well enough, and two arms and two legs, which is a more or less average number in Hawthorn’s experience. But such a plain face! Such a tiny mouth! And no wings or antlers or bits of jewel peeking through the skin. No mad, curving nose, just a snub, button affair stuck onto the middle of the creature’s face. It was a lady-creature. She had long brown hair tied up in a braid around her head, anyway. And spots of rouge on her cheeks. Her hands looked scrubbed and clean, but the troll would eat his own heart if they had ever held a wand or a sword or even a crystal ball. Such things leave marks. Hawthorn himself already had a splendid callus between his thumb and his first finger where his wand (a bone rattle with red ribbon and a silver bell in) had begun already to settle snugly into place.
“PARCEL?” the creature barked thunderously.
“What is that?” whispered Hawthorn.
The Red Wind smiled slowly, her whole face filling up with wicked delight. “Why that, my excitable little emerald, is a human. I should get acquainted, if I were you. I daresay you’ll be seeing more of them.”
“Can I touch it?”
The human scowled. “I’ve never heard the like!” she snapped. “How would you like it if I asked to touch you?”
Hawthorn shrugged. “You can touch me if you want,” he said softly. And reached up his hand.
The human narrowed her eyes. She puffed out her cheeks like a great fish. Then she gave a short, hard laugh like a stamp marking a form and touched his fingers with hers. Her skin was soft and warm. His was hard and cold as stone—but for a troll, as hard and cold as stone is just the warmest and most wonderful thing to be.
“Pleased to meet you,” said the human. “I am the Postmaster General for the Commonwealth of Australia. You may call me Mr. Benjamin Franklin. Everyone does.”
“You don’t look like a Mr. Benjamin,” Hawthorn ventured.
The Postmaster General shuffled several envelopes together and tied them with twine before chucking them behind her into a large canvas bin.
“Long ago,” the Red Wind explained, “a wizard called Benjamin Franklin became so powerful, by means of a magical lightning-wand and an excellent wig and a fell familiar in the shape of a kite, that he was made Postmaster of a vast kingdom. Using his monstrous magics, he, the kite, and the wig founded the Grand Society of the Golden Postilion, of which all Postmasters are members. That is why they are called Masters, you know. Each and every one of them is a great Master of Questing Physicks. How else could a magical sword find its way to the bottom of a lake just in time for a little baby kinglet to wander by? Or a coat of many colors to a shepherd’s shoulders, or spinning wheel to a locked and hidden room, or a girl in the shell of a hazelnut to an elderly couple longing for children? The Post is how the end of a story gets shipped safely to the beginning.”
“Couldn’t you do it?” Hawthorn asked bashfully. The Red Wind scowled.
“Sure, if you want your pretty English sword to end up stuck in a stump in a Louisiana swamp and the poor croc who signed for it wondering what to do with the enclosed glittering samite gown and Welsh dictionary,” chuckled the Postmaster. “Nobody knows a neighborhood like a Postman. If you let Fairies handle their own shipping and handling you’ll end up with the whole world marked Return to Sender, Cash on Delivery, Fragile, Sorry About That Broken Pyramid, There Was a Dog, See? and dropped on the doorstep of some poor blighter in Perth who thought he’d ordered clothespins. Fairyland loves human rubbish as well; don’t let them tell you it’s all a lot of dull junk. They’ll murder you flat for a pair of boots or a good mirror. S’how I got my limp, you know. And God help you if you’re a clever nipper! They’ll tear the sky down for a strand of your hair. Believe me, it’s better for us to sort it ourselves. Someone has to make sure the mail flows freely. And despite Miss Wind here’s breathtaking grasp of history, she’s got it half right. Possibly one-third. You see, young parcel post, very few humans know about Fairyland—the heart is a Tidiness Engine when it comes to the task of Knowing and Unknowing, and it tends to clear out anything that doesn’t fit with what they’ve read in respectable newspapers and heard from people wearing glasses come springtime. Now, getting boffed in the face with a bolt of lightning tends to bludgeon a man’s ability to dust his brain-shelves properly. But it does polish up the windows! So Mr. Franklin the First acquired both a speech impediment and the ability to see through space and time, which is a fairly good bargain when you think about it. He saw a mess of swords and spinning wheels and children flying back and forth with no rhyme or reason, post haste, post hoc, post modern, post-post! The old man set up a system to handle the volume and here we are. All the Postmasters of all the nations take a shift. You’re lucky enough to get me today, not to big-note myself. Canada’s in on Thursday and he’s a bear before his coffee. We keep the secrets—the Postal Code is sacred. But Fairies live as long as planets, and we all look alike to them. They call us all Benjamin Franklin so they don’t have to remember that my name is Agnes Robinson and I have never worn a powdered wig nor electrified a kite nor earned myself even one goiter. I do believe that’s plenty of natter for you, young man. Step up here into the Postal Ruler, please?”
Hawthorn frowned at the enormous rusty slab of half-painted metal that appeared suddenly before him in a puff of stamps, dwarfing the counter. It had several slots cut into it of different sizes with all manner of things written over them. The letters had obviously worn away, gotten drawn back on, and then worn off again. He could see Benjamin Franklin’s face through one of the slots. Over the slimmest gap, Hawthorn read:
DOCUMENTS ONLY! GRIMOIRES/PROPHECIES/JOKES/CONTRACTS (DEVILS AND OTHER DAIMONIA USE CORRECT CUSTOMS FORM OR YOUR PAPERS WILL NOT BE PROCESSED!)/CURSES
On the next slot, a little longer and wider:
ENCHANTED SWORDS/PENS/CLOTHING (NO SHOES!)/ NOVELS/UNGUENTS/PERISHABLE FOOD ITEMS
The next said:
PORTENTS/WOLVES (MEDIUM)/CHILDREN (SMALL/MEDIUM)/ FOOTWEAR/GOBLINS/TRAGEDIES
The grooves went on, growing bigger and bigger, until they said things like DRAGONS and HENGES (STONE AND OTHER) and REVOLUTIONS. The Postmaster’s eyes glinted through CHILDREN (LARGE)/HORSES/EXISTENTIAL CRISES/PLASTICS/FLYING CARPETS/AQUATIC BEASTS/FETCHES.
“Come on then, squeeze in,” the Postmaster beckoned. “The Post waits for no man. Postage rates are determined by size.”
Hawthorn bit his lip and climbed up, turning sideways, to wedge himself into the slot that concerned itself with children and horses. But it was too large for him, as he was not yet a very big troll. He stepped instead into PORTENTS/WOLVES and found it quite snug, but if he held his breath, the ruler held him.
“Standard Priority Air Mail rate?” Benjamin Franklin asked, noting down something on her pad of paper. She used a beautiful yellow pencil with a pink nub on the end, so bright and cheerful Hawthorn immediately longed to steal it.
The Red Wind shook her head. “Special Handling. Fragile:
Excessive Narrative Weight. Changeling Type: Live Troll, Active Exchange.”
“Would you like to pay his return postage in advance?”
“Certainly not,” snorted the Red Wind.
“Would you like him Wrapped Specially?”
The Red Wind waved her hand in the air. “He can choose—I always find it’s funnier when they pick it all out themselves.”
The Postal Ruler vanished from the air like butter melting away. Mr. Benjamin Franklin emerged from behind the counter and took him by the hand. Her fingers felt moist and soft; Hawthorn suddenly worried that he might crush her, or any human, if they were all made of this velvety, squishable stuff. The Postmaster led him to a charming little desk on which rested several rolls of wrapping paper, spools of ribbon, and a handsome book of colorful stamps. The Panther padded along behind with his Wind, whiskers twitching curiously.
“It’s always nice to put on your glad rags when you’re traveling,” said Mr. Franklin kindly. Her pale-blue uniform shone with crisp cleanliness. “Where I come from, some people wear fine suits just to ride on an Aeroplane—I suspect they think if they impress it enough it will be sure to carry them safely. Let’s get you bundled up!”
Hawthorn looked at the wrapping paper. There was a roll of plain brown, of gleaming gold, a merry green print with foil Ferris wheels and snowflakes and sailboats upon it, and a rosy one with leaping fish and palm trees and umbrellas. Hawthorn wanted the gold, if he wanted anything in this strange place. But when he looked at the snowflakes he remembered Skaldtown and how the snow sounded falling into his old chimney-house. He had no idea on earth what those funny wheels were, but they looked marvelous and shiny and magical and before he knew it he had reached out a tentative finger toward the green paper. The ribbons came in every color he could think of and three that only existed in that singular Post Office and had never been seen by anyone except packages and Postmen. He could only choose his favorite, the long, shimmering, silken red cord that looked so much like the yarn of a Redcap’s very cap.
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland Page 3