The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home (25 page)

“Am not,” she called to Cutty Soames, and laughed in his face. “Not silly, not little, not playing. Look at me, you old tyrant!” September held out her cuttlefished arm. “I've got a tattoo! I'm a
freak
. I'm a weirdo. I'm the crazy, nitwit Queen of Fairyland! So go soak your head.”

And in that moment, she did want to be Queen. She wanted to be Queen so that no one like Cutty Soames could ever steal a potato or call a girl names ever again. The lace dress never got near her. The waters of Mumkeep Reef spun into a whirlpool, and out of the eye of the whirlpool flew a straitjacket. The kind of awful coat you only wear if you are Harry Houdini or a patient in the sort of dreadful places they sometimes put girls who cannot behave primly or properly. This one wasn't hospital white, though. It had tattoos inked all over it: hearts with arrows through them, mermaids, anchors, hula dancers, five-pointed stars, roses, dragons, and, in big block letters, the words
Mom
and
Dad
and
Victory
.

The straitjacket unbuckled its clasps, unlocked its locks, and swept up the lace dress into its long arms. It squeezed tight, tighter, tighter still, until the dress-up gown disappeared in a puff of old perfume.

*   *   *

Brother Tinpan brought September what was left of Cutty Soames, Captain of the Coblynows: a weathered, ancient coin with a star on one side and a ship at full sail on the other. A sevenpence coin from Cutty's own reign. September took it, but she didn't like it. Just because he was a tyrant didn't mean she felt happy about sending him back to Fiddler's Green or Davy Jones' Locker or wherever Fairyland pirates stashed their last treasure. Saturday leaned his head on her shoulder. September finished the dregs of her regicider, for it was surely nearing dinnertime on land. She nodded to the Monkfish, who regarded her with soft black eyes.

“I feel foolish, just asking after all this ruckus like I'm wanting directions to the general store. But I've got to, so I'm asking. Brother Tinpan, is there a piece of Fairyland's Heart in Mumkeep Reef? It was broken a long time ago, and I've got to gather it all up again, but I haven't even found one measly shard of the thing, and it's getting rather late in the day.”

Brother Tinpan touched September's hand with his candy-cane-striped fin.

“A rainbow,” he said, and swam back to Sepia Siphuncle and the hidden wonders of Mumkeep Reef, still hidden.

“I'm rubbish at riddles,” September said, sighing, flipping the coin over her fingers a few times, a trick she'd learned from her father.

Saturday looked up through the miles of water, toward the sun and the shore and the rest of everything. “I like them. The one he meant goes
It's red and purple, orange and green, and no one can touch it, not even the Queen.”
He said nothing for a long time. “I was wrong. And now we're so far behind.”

 

CHAPTER XIII

I
NSPECTOR
E
LL
AND
THE
C
ASE
OF
THE
H
IJACKED
H
EART

In Which September and Saturday Are Reunited with Their Friends, A-Through-L and Blunderbuss Become Detectives, and Everyone Gets Eaten by a Vole

Fizzwilliam let them off just where he'd found them and bid a fond farewell. He bent his front clawfeet forward in the surf, bowing at the knee like a dapper parade horse. His farewell sounded like a hot bath filling up to the brim, though, of course, only September heard it. She left her diving mask—now an unassuming shaving cup once more, on the captain's seat. The Bathysphere disappeared beneath a cresting wave. The girl and the Marid looked up the beach strand, searching for a big red shape and a big orange shape somewhere in the shade of the green palms.

They didn't have to look long. It's not so hard to find a Wyverary and a giant wombat. Even if they were no bigger than a boy and a girl, you need only make a beeline for whoever is making the most wholehearted hullabaloo about some thing or other they have just set their love on.

“Halloo!” A-Through-L called down the sand. He lay on his back under a canopy of palm and papaya and breadfruit trees, his wings stretched out lazily, one powerful leg crossed over the other, surrounded by a small mountain range of coconut shells and papaya skins and breadfruit crusts with jam still freshly oozing out of them.

“What time do you call this?” Blunderbuss growled. She meant it to sound endearingly mum-like, but wombat mums are very growly, so it came out rather ferociously. She didn't notice anything the matter. To a wombat, a growl sounds like love. “We've got to keep moving, you two!”

September and Saturday clambered up the black sand beachhead. Neither Ell nor Blunderbuss got up to greet them, being very full of fruit and very caged in by the remains of their lunch. The scrap-yarn wombat stretched out, hoisting up one of Ell's scarlet wings with her left forepaw to make a beach umbrella for herself. September kicked her way past the mounds of coconuts and fruit peels. She followed that long Wyvern tail until it became a Wyvern—a Wyvern wearing the most astonishing contraption on his familiar, friendly face.

“What … what are you wearing, Ell?” asked September, not wanting to offend if her friend had decided to try a new look.

The Wyverary had found two large pieces of sea glass and wrapped them all round with floatberry briars so that they would sit more or less straight on his muzzle. Leftover lengths of vine drooped down among his whiskers while the berries bobbed in the air at the ends of their curly stems like butterscotch-colored balloons. He'd also tied a length of brandybean vine round his waist like a bathrobe belt and hung a plump purple turnip from the thing. Ell peered over the rims of his new spectacles, looking entirely pleased with himself.

“It's my pince-nez! All great detectives wear them, you know.” Ell grinned toothily. “Essential for Seeing Through Subterfuge and the Art of Observation!”

“It's my turn, Ell,” yipped Blunderbuss. “Hand over the nosepincher and let me have a go! I've got a theory about that Oddson fellow. Top to bottom suspicious, wouldn't you say, monsieur?”

“Indubitably, madame,” Ell replied gravely. He waggled his whiskers, curling them up like a waxed mustache. “But I think you'll find I've got another ten minutes!”

“We can't spare ten minutes,” Saturday said miserably. “We didn't find anything at Mumkeep Reef. We're no better off than when we started. I bet Charlie Crunchcrab's got farther along than us by now.”

“You found a tattoo,” Blunderbuss chirped approvingly. She shook off the peels and shells and started stomping up the beach. “Nice!”

September squeezed a last bit of water out of her hair, running after the wombat. Ell thundered behind.

“Where are you going? We haven't decided our next move!”

“Our next move is to move. Can't stay in one place! Ell and I hashed it out while I had the pince-nez and we agree: next stop, the Worsted Wood. Where you got your wrench! That casket makes the Queen's sword, stands to reason it's necessary for becoming Queen. Maybe it's a piece of the Heart of Fairyland! And if not, the spriggans might know. Ell says they have a university, and that's where people keep their smarts.”

A-Through-L picked September up in one claw and twisted round to put her on his back. Then, he snatched up Saturday in the same fashion. “It's far, but we can make up time if we don't stop to sleep, or for anything else. From this minute, no stopping till spriggans! We saw Goldmouth run by with a bundle under his arm—we hid, because he is dreadful, and I think you would be upset if you came back and found us bleeding. Though we would win, of course, in a fight! But we would probably get very bruised.” His turnip banged against his knees as Ell ran.

September wrinkled her brow doubtfully. “Detectives? The Worsted Wood? What on earth are you two talking about?”

“We only left you for a few hours,” marveled Saturday.

“If that's what you call ‘all day and all night and half the next day,'” Blunderbuss grumbled. “We had to slap up some sort of fun. And lucky for you we did!”

“We've been reading!” Ell whooped. He pointed his nose toward their luggage. A small blue book peeked out from beneath the lid. A mightily abused dust jacket clung on to the cover for dear life. It showed two men in blue uniforms looking very concerned about a lovely young lady lying on a blue sofa. Above their heads, September read:

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN,

BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

Ell rattled on as they ran. “Well, I have, mainly. Buss wanted to eat it, which I have tried to tell her is a completely wrongheaded way to go about literature-ing. She said I was being culturally insensitive and a complete dunce. But one of her favorite dunces, so that's nice.”

The scrap-yarn wombat hid her face in a heap of papaya. “Aw, don't be sore, Ell. I'm only rude to my nearest and nearest. Anyway, I should've remembered.
Wombats
start with
W
. You gotta learn our p's and q's the slow way.”

“We agreed the fairest fix was for me to read aloud. After all, if Buss did it her way, there wouldn't be any story leftover for me. So I did and we loved it so much I read it all through again and then we had a long discussion over our fourth dinner about the themes and imagery and metaphors—”

“Don't trust metaphors,” the wombat snorted. “If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean! Madness! I am a stonking big knitted wombat, Ell is part Wyvern and part Library, and that's
that
. We don't mean anything but us and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise!”

“
I
mean lots of things, thank you kindly,” the Wyverary said, without the littlest spot of anger in his voice. They had clearly got their teeth into that argument many times in the night. “Anyhow, the point is, we've talked it over, and we've decided to become detectives.”

Blunderbuss nodded her woolly head enthusiastically. “We're on the case! The Case of the Hijacked Heart!”

“So you don't have to worry anymore! We've learned so much I feel dizzy! We are
much
more interesting beasts than when you left us. Now we know all about Mysteries, Deduction, Motives, Mistaken Identities, Jewel Thieves, Belgian People, Steam Trains, Red Herrings, Heiresses, Chloroform, Ballerinas, Cigarettes, Rubies, England, Femme Fatales, and Boy Femme Fatales Though There Doesn't Seem to Be a Word for That but There Should Be. Honestly, September, you never told me half of what your world gets up to! I told you all about mine, but you kept all this fantastic stuff in your back pocket. It's not fair. But it's amazing! I want to know more! Do all human men have splendid mustaches, or is it only Monsieur Poirot?” And he gave her a jaunty smile, curling his whiskers once more into a perfect, bright orange petit handlebar mustache.

September bit her lip. “Ell … did you steal that book from the Great Grand Library?”

The Wyverary let his whisker-mustache drop instantly. His eyes filled up with hurt. “How can you ask me that? September! I would
never
steal a book! I wouldn't even take a book from a cabinet marked Free Books unless I could track down the owner and make sure I was really allowed to. I would especially never steal a book from my Gigi!” Ell blushed. It went all the way up his cheeks and over the top of his head, turning him cantaloupe-colored as it went. “She said I could call her that,” he whispered. “It stands for Great Grandmother. I know I ought to have come as soon as I heard Greenwich Mean Time sounding off at you, but I couldn't stop looking at the Human section. So many books I'd never heard of! So many titles I couldn't understand? What's a
Wuthering
? Why is it Important to Be Earnest? I am
always
earnest. Why would anyone not be? I tried to skim a few of them even though I know they're Special Collections and I oughtn't go grubbing them up without a librarian present, but I was
so
excited, and I was
very
careful, and claws aren't nearly so grubby as fingers and I just wanted to find out about the House of Mirth so
badly,
because it sounds like a
wonderful
place. And just as I was about to find out what was so great about Mr. Gatsby, a great huge candlestick with no candles in it leaned over and rested itself against my shoulder in just the gentlest way. Like when you lean your head against my shin sometimes. And the Great Grand Library whispered to me, because that's any library's favorite way of talking. She said…” A-Through-L had to stop for a moment. Turquoise tears swam up in his eyes. “She said I was a good librarian. She said my father would be so proud of me if he could have seen my alphabetizing and my powerful
shhh
and the size of my tail. She said I could visit her anytime I wanted and call her Gigi and next time she would make me cookies and let me use the Old Stamp. That's the first one Gigi ever had. Christopher Wren made it for her out of mushroom. It's her way of saying she trusts me, you see. The Old Stamp is very delicate. And I am very big.” Blunderbuss sopped up his tears with her paw. She understood all about this sort of thing. She wanted the boy who made her to be proud of her, too. Ell made a sound between a laugh and a hiccup. “And then she said that as she'd missed all my birthdays, I could take one book to be my very own. My book. I've never owned a book before. A library's books belong to the library, not the librarian. She said I could have any one I wanted except
The Canterbury Tales,
as that one's her favorite.”