The enormous armored combat wombat bellowed and hacked and fired a passionfruit the size of a small terrier onto the pile of steppe-grass. It bounced a little.
“Can you chew it all up for me? And just…spit it up again when it’s good and mushy?”
“Disgusting!” nodded Blunderbuss approvingly. “I’ll be Tobacconist next, you watch! I’ll call this rule: Barns are the worst and shall all be banished from the Land of Wom.” And she gobbled up the fruit and grass and gnawed it in her yarny mouth till her cheeks bulged as though she were blowing bubblegum. She retched up a great puddle of greenish-orangish-red goop and waggled her tail for praise.
“Perfect!” Tamburlaine scratched the wombat’s stop-sign-size nose. “You and me, we’ll have a show at the Met one day. Still Lives by Matchstick and Wombat.”
“Still life is boring. Never stand still! Jumping bean life!”
“Jumping bean life.” And Tam took a deep breath. She dipped her brush in the drooly muck and began to swipe long, bold strokes into the air. The vomit-paint stayed put, glistening in the breeze. “It’s not really air, see. It’s a wall or a staircase or an onion-box or something,” she explained.
“But what are you painting?” Hawthorn asked.
“Well, I know what a rum cellar looks like, you know,” Tam laughed. “It’s worth a try.”
She worked quickly. Greenish-gold rum barrels floated in the air, reddish rafters and flagstones. Finally, she put in a Redcap, or at least what she remembered a Redcap looking like in books. Hers leaned against a rum barrel, sleeping. The only safe Redcap is an unconscious Redcap, she figured. Dear Wombat Puke, please be a door, she thought hard. Please go straight into the right rum cellar. Please don’t just be a mess.
“Ready?” Tam put her hands on her hips. “I’m either going to be very proud of myself or very embarrassed in a moment.”
Everyone climbed onto Blunderbuss’s broad, grassy back, Hawthorn in front, Tamburlaine behind, and Scratch, delicate as he was, sandwiched between them. His crank spun excitedly:
Ain’t we got
Ain’t we got
Ain’t we got fun?
With a valiant snarl the likes of which no basement has ever heard, Blunderbuss leapt toward the passionfruit painting. They collided wetly and with much gurgling. On the other side, the smell of molasses and yeast and good greenwood greeted them like a fine hello.
The Cellar Steppes had got bored of grasslands and become a long salt flat, red crystals crunching underfoot. The sky flushed a proper daytime blue again, but now there were a hundred moons in it, all shaped like stony white rum barrels with starry spigots hanging off them. Barrels great and small dotted the salt flat, too, red rock banded with red gold and sloshing with red rum inside. Thick liquor dripped now and again from the stone slats onto the desert. Nestled in a circle of particularly robust barrels were several rich red velvet armchairs and red lanterns and red tables, with red glasses set for tastings.
An incredible din filled the air. Hollering, ululating, bleating, laughing, whooping—and a gnash of metal and stone bashing one against the other.
The Redcaps were coming.
They poured in a scarlet screech through the Steppes, some running pell-mell on foot, others mounted on pigs and toads, their spurs and saddles as red as their long, billowing caps, tassels flapping in the air. Hawthorn squeezed his own knit cap, still stuffed into his coat pocket. Their little gnomic faces were transported in joy, their feet sending up clouds of blue and orange dust.
Behind them rolled a bicycle bigger than any Hawthorn and Tamburlaine had ever seen, a bicycle like an elephant, one of the old-fashioned sorts with the front wheel like a giant’s dinner plate. On top of it a woman in blue hollered along with the Redcaps. She raised her fist in the air and barreled down mercilessly upon them.
The Spinster came riding down the Steppes with an army before her.
“Out!” she cried. “Get out! Leave me alone!”
White-and-black-streaked hair flew out from her brownberry head. The wheels of her velocipede spun savage and fierce.
“How did you get in here?” she yelled down, pedaling backward and forward powerfully to keep her steed in place. “Can’t you leave an old woman in peace?”
“King Charlie sent us!” Hawthorn yelled as loud as he might, through two cupped hands.
The Spinster put her head to one side.
“You want we should make kebabs out of ’em, ma’am?” A large Redcap with a mushroom-shaped cap like a chef’s hat, so red it was nearly black, twirled a long scarlet spear in her fist. She smiled broadly and cheerfully, without the smallest flutter of malice in her round face.
“You know very well today is Vegetables Only Thursday, Sir Sanguine. Now, put your armor away, I don’t think we’ll be needing it. Hold on, you lot, I’ll be down presently.”
Sir Sanguine scowled miserably. A little of her fight seemed to leak out. And very suddenly, Sir Sanguine was the only Redcap in the Cellar. The wild throng simply popped out of the world when the Redcap put down her shield.
“Jolly good armor!” the combat wombat squealed. She was suddenly very interested in armor.
The Spinster unhooked a grappling claw and line from her belt and rappelled neatly down the side of her velocipede, which snorted and shook its handlebars as it jutted its kickstand into the salt with a spray of crystals.
“She seems quite spry for an old granny,” Tam whispered up to Hawthorn.
“You’re not such a dry old bird after all,” Blunderbuss bellowed, much more loudly, having no particular manners about much of anything. She peered down at the figure in blue striding toward them.
The Spinster was not wearing a dress, but billowing azure trousers like a djinn, long midnight-colored sleeves like a kimono, and a bodice that seemed to be having trouble deciding whether to be a corset or a blue steel breastplate. Her face was wide and kind and sun-browned, full of the lines of living at her eyes, her mouth, between her stubborn brows. She was not ancient at all, but the sort of age people often call hale or hearty.
“What are you doing here?” the Spinster demanded. “I’m busy—you have no idea how busy I am! I’ve nearly got it figured out. You can’t go interrupting me like this. I don’t have the time for this nonsense.”
“We came to rescue you,” Hawthorn said, not at all sure that they were, now.
“As you can see, I’m quite all right. I’ve never needed a rescuing I couldn’t whip up myself faster than the cavalry could get out of bed.”
“But the Redcaps…they’re horrible monsters holding you prisoner…”
“Oh, Sir Sanguine? She’s such a sweetheart! We get on famously. I’ve always had a way with red things, you know.”
Tamburlaine spoke up. “We came to rescue you so that you can come and rescue the King.”
“Now what,” the Spinster sighed, “does Charlie need rescuing from today?”
“He doesn’t want to be King anymore.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me. He’s never wanted to be King.”
“Well, he feels pretty confident that you can help him abdicate without having to be assassinated by Simon,” Hawthorn ventured.
“I see.”
“Can you?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then why’s he so bloody sure you’re the gran for the job?” cried Blunderbuss.
The Spinster smiled up at the wombat and her riders. The sun glinted on a mole on her left cheek.
“Because I’ve done it before,” she said. “Twice.”
A peal of indigo fire exploded through the air above them all, boiling and popping a trail through the sky. Something hurtled toward them at breakneck speed, something huge and bright and winged. A colossal red Wyvern beat his wings against a hundred rum-barrel moons. A man all of blue and black clung to his long crimson neck.
“Are we late?” the Wyvern called. “We came as soon as we heard footsteps but we are, aren’t we? Oh, I’m just hop
eless! Late begins with L!”
CHAPTER XVIII
SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN
In Which Much Is Revealed
“Want to know a secret?” the Spinster said, leaning forward in one of the plush red chairs. Red rum filled the red crystal glasses on a little carved table by her side, but she had not touched hers. None of them had. Her eyes twinkled in her sun-bright face, the tiniest of lines at her eyes crinkling as though she was about to play an extraordinary trick.
“Yes,” Hawthorn said. “I always want to know. If there is a choice between knowing and not knowing.”
“Well said.” She laid her finger against her lips like a librarian. Shhhh. The Spinster looked one way, then the other. “I’m fifteen years old,” she whispered, and giggled just like a schoolgirl.
“You’re not,” scoffed Blunderbuss.
“If I’m a day.”
The scarlet Wyverary nuzzled her with his scaly, bearded chin, which meant nuzzling most all of her armchair, too. If we are all very quiet, perhaps we can sneak in and nuzzle him a bit, too. How he has kept us waiting!
“It’s true,” the Wyverary haroomed. “You can’t lie once you’ve been to the Moon. That’s just a fact.”
The blue-and-black man, whose skin glowed like the ocean, all covered in swooping dark smoke-like tattoos, squeezed the Spinster’s hand. “It’s a funny thing,” he said. “I’m both older and younger than she is, and she’s both younger and older than I am. Time cannot bear boredom.”
“But how can you be fifteen?” Hawthorn said. “I don’t mean to offend you, ma’am, and I know we are only twelve, but we have both seen a number of Big Kids in our time, and few of them look like you.”
“I’d wager few of them have ever spent quality time with a Yeti,” the Spinster said quite proudly. The blue-and-black man whispered something to Sir Sanguine, who tipped her hat off her head and drew a large red box out of it, much, much larger than her hat.
“If we’re going to talk about Grown-Up things like monarchies and Yetis and Big Kids, we ought to make friends properly. And there’s nothing like a game for making friends out of nothing at all,” he said. His long black topknot slipped over his shoulder. “Do you know how to play brownie backgammon? We’ve…well. We’ve been down here for a little longer than we planned, and you never play a game so hard as when you’re in jail. We should know, Ell and I.” He knocked his head cheerfully against the red beast’s great flank. Ell and Blunderbuss were sniffing at one another curiously, being nearly the same size. They took turns raising eyebrows and stomping feet in the wordless greetings of very gigantic creatures.
“I do,” Hawthorn said, and once he had said it, he was sure of it. He did know. He had played it! He remembered his mother’s troll-hands on his, showing him how to move the pieces. He remembered how she smelled—like limestone and snow. It wasn’t much. But he seized hold of the memory for dear life. The Spinster opened the red box into a board and set out the pieces along the points.
“The trouble with Yetis is how abominably quick they are,” she mused, tossing a round glass die and pushing one of her copper pips across the board, where it promptly turned into a djinn’s lamp. “They can move time around like checkers on a board, just by waving a paw. I suppose you could say I was queened before my time. But I get ahead of myself.” She nodded her head gracefully. A lock of white hair tumbled down her cheek and for a moment she did look every inch a teenage girl with a wonderful, rich, gossipy tale to tell out of class. “My name is September. I’m a human girl. This is Saturday, who is a Marid, and A-Through-L, who is a Wyverary—that means half Wyvern and half Library. You’ve met Sir Sanguine, and this beautiful Dodo is Aubergine.”
Hawthorn rolled two dice in his turn—it wasn’t a good roll, but not embarrassing. He slid one of his bone pips toward September. It shimmied, flipped over, turned into a tiny brontosaurus, and stood on its head.
“I’m Tamburlaine. This is Scratch, he’s a gramophone, though I guess that’s not really a species name.”
“I’m Blunderbuss!” roared the combat wombat who had not quite yet learned to keep her new voice down.
“You begin with B!” crowed A-Through-L, who decided at that moment she was quite all right in his book.
“I do! With gusto!”
September smiled at her friends. She rolled her dice and before he could hiccup, Hawthorn was a raccoon. He rubbed his nose and thumped his striped tail. What was it you were meant to do to get out of raccoon? He couldn’t remember.
September sipped her rum. “I am a professional troublemaker. Actually, my official title is Professional Revolutionary, Criminal, and Royal Scofflaw, but that’s rather a lot to hold in the mouth all at once. I don’t mean to, really, I don’t, but I just go face-first into mischief the minute I wake up for breakfast in the morning. A year or two ago I was Up to No Good (as the Fairies would have it) on the Moon. The Moon was having a baby, you see, only nobody knew that, they just knew there was a Yeti prowling around and terrific moonquakes and one thing lead to another and we ended up spending a bit too much time with that Yeti while he was midwifing the new Moon.” Hawthorn rolled high this time. He pushed his pip with his tiny bandit hands. The pip spun on its side, faster and faster until it looked like a moon itself. The tiny brontosaurus jumped up and squashed the djinn’s lamp underfoot. It burst—and Hawthorn the raccoon went up in a bristle of fur, leaving him all troll once more. Tamburlaine clapped her hands. But September didn’t pick up the dice. She was looking down at her weathered hands. Her voice was very quiet. “Far, far too much time, really. I didn’t think about it then. There was only the Moon and the other Moon and a big black dog and a monster and blood and soda pop everywhere and I tripped and fell—that’s all I did, tripped and fell, and I brought the Fairies back. One of them had me in her hand like a little fly she meant to pull the wings off of. She kept me anchored, pinned in place when I was meant to go home, back to Omaha and my mother and father and a lot of washing up to do. I think she really meant to kill me—but then she saw. The Yeti ran off and she saw what had happened to me.”
“Darling,” Saturday said softly, and put his hand against her face. “It’s not so bad. It’s not.” September went on. “I’d been standing right next to the Yeti while he moved time along so the little Moon could get big enough to live on its own. And time moved along for me, too, and all of the sudden I was forty and not fifteen. The Fairy laughed—it is a good joke by their standards—and dropped me onto Fairyland’s belly again. Ever so much funnier.” She covered her face in her hands for a moment. “But I don’t feel any different! I’m still September, I’ve still only barely learned to drive. It’s only that one day I was somebody else in the mirror and there was no getting it back!”
Oh, September. My best girl. I shall tell you an awful, wonderful, unhappy, joyful secret: It is like that for everyone. One day you wake up and you are grown. And on the inside, you are no older than the last time you thought Wouldn’t it be lovely to be all Grown-Up right this second?
September sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and tossed her dice. She pushed three pieces forward all at once. They flapped copper wings and became three angry condors. “But the Fairies knew about me. All about me. And they figured it was safer to lock me up with a Redcap in full armor than to let me wander around tripping and falling into trouble. I’ve faced down two monarchs—they don’t like their chances with me around.”
A-Through-L leaned his great scarlet head down to their level. His eyes danced orange and winsome before them—but worried, too. “That’s why they have their little parties,” he confessed mournfully. “With the Changeling children. See, there’s a Law. And though Laws begin with L, they’re not really anyone’s friends. It’s not a Law like Don’t Steal, but a Law like for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Law says Every Story Begins with Someone comes to town. Sometimes it’s a Something rather than a Someone, but if Something and Someones and Septembers and Hawth
orns and Tamburlaines and Blunderbusses and Scratches and Ells and Saturdays and Gleams and Aubergines didn’t keep turning up in new places, everything would go along as it’s always done. But the Changelings have to keep coming; that’s a Law too.” Saturday nodded. Scratch had settled in at the Marid’s side. It liked him very much. To the gramophone, Saturday looked like music, if music were blue. “The mass of Fairyland must remain the same. So when a human comes here, somebody from here must go there. Changelings keep Fairyland level. But they bring so much trouble. They bring stories. Fairies only like the stories they get to tell. So they…bleed all the Changing out of them. Make them turn into a thousand things until there’s not much left in them to go changing Fairyland. It’s dreadful. They love it.”
“We saw it,” Hawthorn whispered. He clutched the dice in his hand but he’d forgotten the game. “Penny and Thomas. We saw them.”
September winced. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you did. The Fairies put me here, along with a good number of my friends, and trapped my car in a junkyard, so we wouldn’t fix them and make them go back to being pots and pans—because just whacking me a good one on the head would most certainly start a new story that they couldn’t control.” The Spinster smiled. A long, slow, glorious smile. A smile she’d been making since a day long ago, the day she saw a leopard for the first time. Tamburlaine loved that smile. She wanted to learn to make one of her own. “Only all they did was give me a lot of time to figure out Laws and Theorems and try to understand just exactly how Fairyland works, the way my mother understands an engine. Oh, Sir Sanguine wanted to eat me at first. But I drive a hard bargain. It was ages ago now that I made my promise: Just as soon as I finish my equations you can eat me all up. Yes, Sir Sanguine?”
“I have the braising pot ready, Miss September.”
September’s eyes sparkled. “Science first, supper second! See? We’re quite good friends. We’ve got a poker game going and we’re working on a war-quilt together.”
Tamburlaine took a long while to work her thought from her heart to her mouth, so long that it had fallen behind September’s story by quite a way. “You’re a Changeling,” she said. “Just like us. Only you got swapped with yourself.”
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland Page 20