The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Page 4

  The Blue Wind arched one aquamarine eyebrow. “Have you never known a cruel wind? What an easy, balmy, tropical life you must have! I never tease, madam! I coax, I beguile, I stomp, I throw tantrums, and for certain I freeze—I am the Coldest and Harshest of all the Harsh Airs! I am the shiver of the world! But I do not tease. You can cause ever so much more trouble by taking folk seriously, asking just what they’re doing and doing just what they ask.” Her blue eyes glittered. A puffin circled down and landed on her shoulder. He marched back and forth (a very cramped sort of marching) with an icy poleax in his wing.

  September burst forth. “You were supposed to come and get me! You were supposed to bring me to Fairyland in the spring! Or if not you one of the others! The Green Wind promised—he promised I’d go back every year and you didn’t come and now you’re just snapping like an old dog. You don’t seem like a Wind at all, in fact! Where is your cat? Shouldn’t you like stealing folks away? You certainly seem to like stealing everything else!”

  The Blue Wind put her hands on her lilac hips. Her voice tightened into a squall.

  “Listen, you spoiled, wretched gust of a girl,” she snarled, “I am not public transportation! Haven’t you become the jaded little tart! Accustomed to getting what you want and wanting what you’ve gotten accustomed to.” The Wind puffed out her cheeks like a cherub and calmed herself down. She looked out over the boardwalk as if she had much better things to do and to drink. “Expectations are so very dangerous to young humans. I wouldn’t give my worst hat for the way my siblings manage their affairs. I don’t even attend the reunions. I go my own way—and don’t they punish me for it! They took my Snow Leopard away over that nonsense in Tunisia, if you must roll out my embarrassment first thing. Hypocrites, the lot of them. As if they’ve never turned the world the wrong way round just to see it fly! But I never let it get to me. I keep my head high! My puffins are quite the equal of their snobby old tabbies. The Puffins of Sudden Blizzards, my little army. Winter needs her knights, after all.” The Blue Wind saluted the stalwart fellow on her shoulder. He saluted back with the tip of his poleax. “No, I do not think I would like to steal you away to Fairyland. I thought about it for a good long while, all through the summer. I watched you scuttle around boringly and put my brain on it and I think I just don’t like you very much. Fairyland has spoiled you rotten. I suppose you think you’re owed the trip! The cheek! It’s time for you to be a sensible, gracious girl, get good marks, and stop mucking about with Fairylands of any stripe. Learn a trade, hit the road, close the case.”

  September opened her mouth to protest, panic rising up through her legs and stomach like a stormcloud. What a cruel Wind this was! She did not like her manner at all. September had never thought she was owed anything—but hadn’t she? Hadn’t she felt angry when May passed and the whole summer, too, and nothing, not even a whisper? Hadn’t she felt, well, betrayed? But who had ever promised September anything? You can only feel betrayed when you have a right to something. Chagrin seeped up through September’s toes and all the way to her cheeks.

  The Blue Wind barked laughter. She reached down swiftly and gave September’s cheek the tiniest of slaps. It struck her like a cold word. September stared, dumbfounded, her mouth hanging open.

  “She who blushes first loses!” the Wind crowed. “I win and that’s the match!”

  September lifted her hand to her face. She had been struck only once before. One of the older girls in school, whose name was Martha May and who had the thickest, brightest, prettiest red hair anywhere, had walked up to her at lunchtime one day and slapped her. It wasn’t a hard slap; at the last moment Martha May shut her eyes and didn’t land it quite right. Her fingers brushed September’s cheek and her ear. But it stung all the same. Martha’s friends had dared her; through her tears and hammering heart September could see them laughing under their hands, which is how folk laugh when they know they oughtn’t be laughing. Martha May had stood there for a moment, looking really rather sorry and not at all sure why she’d done it, in the end. But then she laughed and ran off back to her pack, her red curls awfully bright in the sun.

  September would not cry this time. She would not.

  The Blue Wind hooted triumph once more, throwing her Kaiser-hat up into the air and catching it. As she worked herself up, all around them, whirlwinds and flurries worked themselves up as well, spitting and wheeling and scattering apart. September’s dark brown hair and the Wind’s purply blue hair streamed out around them as though they were underwater. The wind screeched through the holes in the high, rickety towers. September knew that sound! Suddenly she forgot all about her burning cheek.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Are we in Westerly?”

  The Blue Wind stopped short like an unplugged radio. All her gusts died in a moment. She crouched down, balancing on her blue leather toes, tented her fingers, and looked up curiously at September.

  “Where else would a Wind call home? Well, not Westerly proper, you know. Not Westerly the Big Fat Club of Rottens That Won’t Let You in for No Reason at All. This is the suburbs, girl. The hinterlands. Where the criminals and the carnivals and the concatenating counterfeiters of no morals to speak of make a home. Mercator’s off the tourist track. It’s where you come if you can’t go through official channels. If you need to trade or buy or sell or rent or smuggle or feed something you oughtn’t. It’s the underground. That’s what suburb means, you know. Under the city. It’s Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it. This is the Blue Market, where you turn up when the world tells you no.”

  September turned to look down the book-boardwalk into the murky, twilight town. Folk moved down the streets, but she could not see their faces in the gloam.

  “Perhaps you ought to give me directions to Westerly, then. I…I met Latitude and Longitude once. They might remember me. I still know all the puzzle pieces to go from one world to another. I think I could get them to open up again and take me through the official way. I shouldn’t like to go sneaking through the back door when I could present myself nicely at the front.”

  The Blue Wind opened her mouth and closed it again. Her great dark eyes danced with amusement. She patted September’s hair. “Oh, my wintry waif, don’t you know what happens when the government totters? Or, in this case, gets dropped soundly on its head by a certain spoiled traipsing tourist. Out goes organization and in comes skewered-if-you-do, roasted-if-you-don’t, in comes smuggling, bribery, graft, skimming, back alley deals, and might-as-well-do-it-all-while-no-one’s-looking. A whole fabulous bouquet of ways and means! It’s so sweet that you think Latitude and Longitude look anything like they did when you went ingenue-ing about years back! I think they’ve retired to Paraguay. Now it’s Line-jumping and squeezing through by the teeth of your skin and don’t forget to bribe the door on the way out.”

  September felt a chill. “But there is a government! Charlie Crunchcrab is King—it even says so on the sign.”

  “Oh, the Old Crab is doing his best to pinch it all back into shape. Nice and Imperial, he says, Just Like the Old Days. But”—the Blue Wind spread her hands and shrugged—“what does a bandit care for a King’s little hobbies? Now, if you’re entirely finished, I’ve got goods on the barrel and you’ve quite ceased to be interesting.”

  “Goods! You mean Mr. Albert’s car! You can’t just go selling it. It isn’t yours!”

  “I suppose you think it’s yours? Or this Mr. Albert, who sounds even more insufferable than you?”

  “Well, yes, of course, it’s Mr. Albert’s!”

  “Don’t you ‘of course’ me, my blueberry-brat! You’re wrong three times over!” The Blue Wind ticked her fingers off one by one. “It’s not yours and it’s not Mr. Albert’s and it’s not mine, either!” She held up her hand. “It’s a Tool and Tools Have Rights. I’ll split the proceeds with the—it’s a car, is it? Measly word—fair and square, and we’ll have a good sit-down between us and decide which buye
r the beast likes best.”

  September sputtered. “You can’t have a sit-down with a car! It’s not a Fairyland car with a story and sorrows and sugar on top—it’s just a car. From my world. It doesn’t even work very well. It can’t talk and it can’t spend money and it certainly doesn’t have rights!”

  The Blue Wind whistled. She stood up, spreading her satin-gloved hands, washing them of all things September. “Well, I’m sure you’re right and I’m wrong and there’s absolutely nothing you don’t know about anything.”

  The puffin on her shoulder shook his head disdainfully at September. The Blue Wind turned sharply and marched off down the boardwalk of book spines and into the crowd of Mercator. The scarlet light of the sky caught the silver thread in her jacket and sparkled.

  “No, you don’t!” snapped September, stomping after her. “I am coming with you and if someone is going to buy that automobile it’s going to be me. And then you’re going to tell me how to get into Fairyland like a Wind should—” September caught herself. That was not an argument this Wind would like one bit. She wouldn’t care at all for what a Wind should do—if she were in the habit of acting as she should she wouldn’t have lost her Leopard. And without a Wind, how would she get to Fairyland? There were no others about; it was the Blue Wind or nobody. September took a breath. If the most trouble came from taking folk seriously, she would do just that. “You’re going to tell me how to get into Fairyland,” she revised, “because even though I am spoiled and you don’t like me, it’s a good bet I’ll stir some manner of consternation up there and kick things over and make a mess, because I’m a person and that means trouble and trouble means me.” September drew herself up and grinned, even though she did not feel in the least like grinning. The Winds were mischievous, that was certain—so she had to be as well.

  The Blue Wind said nothing. She did not stop. Her blue leather boots made soft noises on the boardwalk. But after a moment, she held out a long turquoise hand.

  September took it.

  CHAPTER IV

  A PROFESSIONAL REVOLUTIONARY

  In Which September Is Wayed and Treasured, Meets a Well-Connected Crocodile, Learns a Spot of Fiscal Magic, and Becomes an Official Criminal of the Realm

  The sun set in Mercator.

  But that didn’t seem to mean much. The sky turned a sort of lemony lavender, and strange, unfamiliar magenta stars came on between the braided clouds. The stars seemed awfully close. September could see wispy bits of their flames curling out all around them. She supposed it should have been hot, with all those stars just as close as the sun, but instead the shantytown seemed to hunch up under a chill, turning up its coat collar against the constant wind. Sweet little houses lined the streets, compasses stamped on their paper doors—but all the lights in the windows were dark. The boardwalk led straight to the center of town, a great square as full of people and sound and doing as the houses were empty.

  The square was a great map, inked in vermillion and viridian and cerulean and citron and bold, glossy black, fairly glowing in the twilight. A thousand countries crowded in upon it—and most of these were being stepped on and jumped on and jigged on and fallen on and stamped on by some fellow or other. September would have liked to have spent hours crawling over every line and legend—was Fairyland there, the dear island she had sailed all the way around? Was her own home? But she would not get the chance. Folk hustled everywhere, dressed in long, thick coats with brilliant buttons and deep pockets. Some wore hats and some wore helmets, some wore scarves and some wore smart little caps, but no one went bareheaded. September touched her own dark hair, feeling suddenly unprotected. She could not help but notice how many of the shadowed and shadowy faces were as blue as the Blue Wind’s. Music ballooned up here and there, though September could see no instruments. It made a disorganized sort of tune, as though it grew wild as a mushroom in the forest, where songs and ballads and symphonies got themselves planted nicely in sweet little rows and watered from a clean spout every morning. Drums whump-thumped, horns squwonked, piccolos trilled, concertinas went squeezing in and out, but there was no order to any of it, only the occasional and wholly accidental harmony.

  “That’s a pleasant sort of noise, even if you couldn’t sing along,” September ventured.

  The Wind nodded her blue head, her own furry hat gleaming wet with melt. “Music has more rules than math or magic and it’s twice as dangerous as both or either. There’s plenty here to buy and barter, to have and to haggle, but don’t you go bothering instruments—I haven’t got time to clean you off the Till.”

  For in the middle of everyone and everything, where the map’s colors pooled densest and darkest, squatted a hulking old-fashioned cash register as big as a Roman fountain. It was the old-fashioned sort, with a hand crank, which September had only seen in books. It gleamed all over, its wooden cylinders and brass keys polished till it all shone like a candelabra. The glass of its display bore not a streak or a smudge. Within, on black squares blazing with curly white letters, the words NO SALE could be clearly read for miles.

  On top of the Till sprawled a long, coppery crocodile.

  As they drew closer, September saw that his scales were not scales at all but pennies, some green with age, some clean and new. His tail wrapped around himself and cascaded over the Till—not a crocodile’s tail but a fan of deep emerald-colored feathers like a beautiful rooster. Deep, emerald-colored bills, folded so expertly they flowed and ruffled like feathers, showing their denominations when a breeze blew by. The crocodile watched the commotion below with glinting silver eyes: clusters of dimes, pale fires behind them, golden glass spectacles before them.

  “Well, on you go,” said the Blue Wind testily, pushing September a little closer to the register. “You saw the sign. I’ve brought you to the Way Station safe and sound. You should thank me and buy me supper and tell me how fetching I look in these shoes. Just look at that croc! Scary as a stormfront, isn’t he? You should say: What wonder! What majesty! That nasty old Green Wind just dumped me in the ocean, but you, you have outdone him flat-out!”

  “What wonder. What majesty,” September said with a little sneer. She had never tried on a sneer before. It felt rather nice.

  “Oh, aren’t you just the rottenest wet blanket who ever spoiled a sport,” snapped the Blue Wind. “You ought to try to make it nice for me. This is my first experience with smuggling humans across the border. If you rain on my fun I shan’t bother again. Why, I didn’t even make you solve a puzzle or stand in line!” The Blue Wind crossed her arms and spat, a coil of icy snow splattering onto the map of the square.

  But September was not listening. She had sighted the Model A, surrounded by long-coats who were pressing their ears to the hood and trying the horn and sucking bits of air from the tires. “They’ll spring a flat if they keep that up! I’ll see about the crocodile in a moment—”

  “No, you will not!” hollered the crocodile in a barreling, jingling voice. His feathers flicked over the NO SALE tiles. “Present yourself or I’ll have you audited faster than you can blink those big, wide, my-goodness-gracious human eyes!”

  The Blue Wind gave her a much firmer shove and September tripped forward toward the brass plates below the Till.

  “Now then,” began the copper crocodile. When he spoke, bits of green feather popped out of his mouth like punctuation. “I am the Calcatrix, Agent of the Crown, Excellent Exchequer, and Chief Beast of Imp-erial Ways and Treasures, which is a very new department and thus very fashionable. I get into all the best dancing halls just by flashing my scales. I will be conducting your Inspection this evening. And you are?”

  “September.” She clutched her jar of coins a little tighter.

  “That’s not very many titles,” frowned the Calcatrix. “I’ll bet you don’t get invited to parties at all.”

  September bit the inside of her lip. “That’s true,” she admitted, rather more bashfully than she meant to. “I was a Knight for a while. And then a Bishop.
”

  The Calcatrix leaned forward eagerly, his pennies clinking against the Till. “Now, now! We must not dwell on what we were in our salad days when soup days steam now upon the table! I see deep vaults of tragedy in you, young lady! No parties, and no banquets or saturnalias, either, I’d wager! Whereas I have feted the fetid and fabulous alike at every ballroom with two flutes to rub together. Even before I rose to my current position, my family were in low supply and high demand. We are all of us Numismatists of great potency—Finding Magicians, Collectors of Coins and Currency, Sorcerers of the Imaginary. I keep my collection on my person, where it is safe and sound and specially displayed. A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic and one never likes to be the rabbit in a beginner’s first disappearing lesson. We ourselves, each of us, wore the Vestments of Investment and Brandished the Bursary! We practically invented the whole field of Fiduciary Glamours. I see you are an enthusiast, if obviously an amateur.” The Calcatrix nodded at September’s jar of coins. “Therefore I feel kindly toward you, though we hardly know each other. I am generous by nature and miserly by nurture. You are lucky that today I am feeling naturally.”

  “My savings certainly aren’t imaginary,” said September, curling her arm protectively around her net worth.

  “All money is imaginary,” answered the Calcatrix simply. “Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic. Observe! You treat it like magic, wield it like magic, fear it like magic! Why should a body with more small circles of copper or silver or gold than anyone else have an easy life full of treats every day and sleeping in and other people bowing down? The little circles can’t get up and fight a battle or make a supper so splendid you get full just by looking at it or build a house of a thousand gables. They can do those things because everyone agrees to give them power. If everyone agreed to stop giving power to pretty metals and started giving it to thumbnails or mushroom caps or roof shingles or first kisses or tears or hours or puffin feathers, those little circles would just lay there tarnishing in the rain and not making anyone bow their noses down to the ground or stick them up in the air. Right now, for example, as much as I admire your collection, your coins aren’t coins. They’re junk.”