The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (5 page)

“I knew that,” I said hastily, and laughed. “Funny.”

“Did you make that up?” Fortran asked.

Espresso shook her head. “That would be a mortal named Ogden Nash. I told you, I’m not a Poet.”

 

Bergdorf didn’t show up after lunch, so Fortran’s guide, Abercrombie, took both of us to Basic Manners. He was one of Tiffany’s gang—tall, blond, heavily starred, and as snooty as an elf lord. He led us upstairs to a door that looked like every other door. “Welcome to the nursery,” he said, and went away.

Fortran opened the door. “Oh, nuts,” he said. “He’s brought us to the wrong room.”

Looking at the fifteen round, rosy-cheeked little faces turned to stare at us, I had to agree. Except for the gray sweaters and no wings, they looked like a nest of Victorian fairies.

“Eyes front!” We all snapped to attention. It was the tutor I’d met in the hall earlier, the Diplomat. “Clearly,” she went on, “we all need more practice on focus and cultivating a pleasant expression. Neef, Fortran, welcome to Basic Manners. Fortran, you may be seated.” Fortran slipped hastily into an empty desk. “Neef, if you could step to the front of the class?”

I stepped, doing my best to look cool, and bobbed the Diplomat a curtsy.

“Please face the class, Neef. I wish to present you to the other students.”

I turned and watched everyone work on their pleasant expressions. They weren’t very good at it.

The Diplomat folded her hands at her waist. “Neef is a new student,” she announced. “She comes from Central Park.”

Everyone’s eyes bulged with the effort of not reacting. I curved my lips in what I hoped was a friendly smile.

“You’ve all heard about Central Park Folk,” the Diplomat went on. “They’re primitive, backwards, stubborn, uneducated, and violent. Their music is old-fashioned, and they all hate City Folk.”

My smile became a frown. “That’s not fair,” I exclaimed. “How would you like it if I said that City Folk are stuck-up, snotty, stupid, and prejudiced?”

The Diplomat didn’t even blink. “I’d say that snotty and stuck-up are essentially the same thing, and that you’ve left out impractical, self-centered, and unreliable, but you’ve hit most of the high points. I’d also say you need to work on keeping your temper. Thank you, Neef. You may sit down now.”

Seething, I started for the back of the room. “Stop.” I stopped. The Diplomat turned to the class. “Peony, would you like to tell Neef the proper response to a formal dismissal?”

Peony looked like a doll, with golden ringlets tumbling over the shoulders of her Inside Sweater. “You say, ‘Diplomat.’ Or ‘my lady,’ or ‘my lord Genius,’ or whatever. And you nod a little.” She inclined her head a few respectful degrees.

“Gracefully done, Peony,” the Diplomat said graciously. “That is worth a gold star point.”

“Diplomat.” Peony nodded briskly and sat down, grinning.

If I’d screamed or stomped out, I’d just have convinced everybody that everything they’d heard about the Park was true. So I nodded curtly, and retreated to the back of the room.

“What’s a gold star point?” Fortran muttered as I sat down beside him.

“Something we’ll never get,” I muttered back. “Now shut up, okay?”

Basic Manners lasted forever. We practiced making formal introductions and polite conversation. Fortran made a blatting noise on Tosca’s hand instead of kissing it. The Diplomat sent him to the corner to sort a jar of mixed dry rice and beans into separate bowls as punishment. While he was still sorting, the horn blew, and the Diplomat excused us.

My first day of school was over.

Out in the courtyard, I stopped to take off my Inside Sweater, which I stuffed into Satchel with the
Big Book of Rules
. All around me, changelings were chasing each other, huddling in groups, and playing mortal games with twirling ropes and bouncing balls. Over near East River Park, a magic swing hung from the sky by ropes of ivy. I thought I saw the horrible Tiffany in a crowd of blonde heads and skinny, jean-clad bodies, but the East Siders all looked so much alike it was hard to tell.

The Pooka came bounding up to me, black tail whipping the air, yellow eyes aflame with welcome, barking out questions about how I was liking education and what had I been after learning and were there any mortal boys as handsome as my fairy godfather at all.

I wanted to throw my arms around his furry neck and tell him just how horrible it all had been and how much I hated Tiffany and Bergdorf and how Fortran and Espresso were okay, for City mortals. Then I remembered Rule 3.

I shook my head.

The Pooka stopped bouncing and sat at my feet. “Are you telling me there are none? Or there are, and you’re sparing my vanity?”

I shrugged. His ears drooped. “Well, if you won’t tell me, you will not. It’s beneath my dignity to ask twice, as I’d think it was beneath yours to deny your fairy godfather an answer to a civil question.”

“I can’t, Pooka. There’s a rule against talking about school stuff to Folk.”

“They can’t be meaning your fairy godfather, surely?”

“It mentioned godparents particularly. Don’t be mad, Pooka. I’ve had kind of a complicated day.”

His ears returned to normal. “No harm in asking.”

“I want to go home,” I said, trying not to sound as pathetic as I felt.

“Right,” he said. “Step into the Park with me, then, and I’ll be shifting into something more practical for traveling.”

 

 

T
he second morning, the Pooka didn’t show up.

Astris fixed a silver clip in my hair. “He’s a trickster, pet. He comes and goes. You’ll be fine on the Betweenways.” She surveyed my slightly ragged Green Man T-shirt disapprovingly. “Are you sure that shirt’s appropriate?”

“It’s what everyone else is wearing,” I protested. I didn’t say that the green man’s faded, leafy face painted across the back was like a little bit of the Park I could carry with me. I also had my jade frog amulet around my neck, for luck.

The frog was from last summer, when Fleet and I had spent an afternoon shopping in Chinatown. It reminded me of strange smells and bright colors, of meeting my first genuine mortal changeling (apart from myself), of making my first mortal friend. She’d given it to me because it winked at me. I was still waiting for it to wink again.

“Well, pet. If you’re sure.” Astris twitched the T-shirt straight. “You be good, now.”

My second day of school wasn’t any better than the first. I totally forgot to put on my Inside Sweater until some snotty East Sider reminded me. I didn’t know the words to the school song. I couldn’t find Bergdorf to take me to my morning lesson and had to ask the door lady where it was. I got to Mortal History and Customs just as the second horn blew, very out of breath.

“Knowing about time,” the Historian said as I sat down, “is important. Think of it as a kind of mortal magic—something we have that the Folk don’t understand. It helps us tell the difference between yesterday and today, which is how we know that things change.”

Then he explained that mortals Outside divide days into hours and minutes and seconds. He showed us a small clock and told us what the arrows and numbers meant. He told us what an hour was. He told us that morning and afternoon lessons lasted between two and three hours. Lunch was one hour, more or less, depending on what kind of mood the Horn Blower was in.

Two or three hours is a long time, even when the lesson is interesting.

Lunch, on the other hand, didn’t seem very long at all.

I joined Fortran and Espresso at what already felt like our table. They were arguing about whether there were boy flower fairies. Fortran said a real boy wouldn’t be caught dead dancing on roses, and Espresso said it was different for fairies, and what was wrong with dancing on roses anyway?

“Espresso, sister-girl!” a new voice broke in. “A thousand apologies for not catching you yesterday, but you know how it is on opening day.”

Espresso lit up happily. “Stonewall! What’s happening, man?”

Great. Another new mortal to deal with.

The newcomer was as colorful as a garuda, with rosy brown skin and bright blue hair gelled straight up like grass. His Inside Sweater shone with gold stars sewed on with colored thread. He grinned at Espresso and gestured to another changeling standing next to him.

“Danskin’s happening. He’s going to be a Costume Designer at Lincoln Center when he’s earned his galaxy and left Miss Van Loon’s behind. Danskin, this is Espresso. Earth Mother’s her fairy godmother, too.”

Danskin looked a lot like my friend Fleet—dark coppery skin, tiny black braids, big soft brown eyes. He smiled at Espresso. “Any god-sister of Stoney’s is a friend of mine.” His voice was coppery, too.

Espresso treated him to a measuring stare, then smiled. “Groovy, man. Grab a pen.”

As soon as they sat down and opened their magic bags, Stonewall started to ask questions. He was the nosiest person I’d ever met, Folk or mortal, and strangely hard to lie to. He even got Fortran to admit that he wasn’t really twelve, like he’d told us, but ten last full moon, and he did it so nicely that Fortran didn’t even sulk very much afterward.

“And you, Neef. How old are you?” Stonewall asked brightly.

After watching him deal with Fortran, I didn’t want to make any mistakes. “I don’t really know.”

Stonewall narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Twelve,” he said at last. “Coming up on thirteen, maybe. Could even be older. You know that changelings age slower than Outside mortals, right?”

I didn’t, but nodded anyway. There are only so many explanations a girl can stand in one day.

“So you’re the famous Neef,” Danskin said. “I hear you’ve been giving Tiffany a taste of her own medicine.”

“I didn’t even do anything,” I protested. “It’s like she hated me before she even saw me.”

Stonewall rolled his eyes. “Wild Child. I heard. East Siders are like that.”

“Folk wannabes,” Danskin said.

“Total idiots,” they said together, and smiled at each other.

“And
you
don’t want to be gorgeous and immortal and magic?” I asked. “You’re worse liars than Fortran.”

Stonewall laughed. He had a nice, bubbly laugh. “I like you,” he said. “Gimme five.” He held up a hand, like he was saying hello. There was a slightly embarrassing moment where Espresso realized I didn’t know what he meant and explained.

“Of course we wanna be Folk,” he said, after I’d slapped his hand. “But we know it’s not going to happen. The East Siders, now, they won’t accept that. They’re like Folk without the magic. They love power and beauty and gold. They don’t like change. They pitch fairy fits when they’re irritated. They never give anything away. They like playing nasty tricks.”

Espresso stared over my shoulder. “I hear you, god-brother. Dig that evil cat over there.”

I turned around. Abercrombie was creeping up on a boy hunched over a plate of raw fish at the end of a table. The boy was skinny and small and so pale that the dark fuzz on his head looked like ink spilled on white paper.

Abercrombie brushed his hand across the top of the boy’s head. The boy jerked and gasped in a huge gulp of air. Then he sat still, cheeks slightly bulged, lips pinched tight, narrow chest puffed and unmoving.

Abercrombie laughed nastily.

Without even deciding to, I was on my feet and in Abercrombie’s face. “What did you do that for?” I asked furiously.

Abercrombie squinted down his nose at me. “I’m just admiring my friend Fish Boy’s breath control. He doesn’t mind, do you, Fish Boy?” The boy stared straight ahead, breathless and pop-eyed. “Why don’t you mind your own business, Wild Child?”

“Why don’t you?” I said.

“You going to make me?” Abercrombie sneered.

“Sure. I’m from Central Park, remember? I know Folk who would eat your head if I told them to.”

“Of course you do,” Abercrombie sneered.

Espresso appeared beside me. “You wanna bet on that, Jack?”

Abercrombie hesitated, then shrugged. “Betting’s against the rules. But you wouldn’t care about that, would you, Wild Child?”

He sauntered off. I turned to the kid he’d called Fish Boy. “It’s okay. He’s gone now.”

Heavy-lidded dark eyes glanced at me and away.

The lunchroom had gotten very quiet. I didn’t have to look around to know that everyone was staring at us. Whatever had made me take on Abercrombie drained away, leaving only embarrassment.

Stonewall came up. “He holds his breath when he’s startled,” he said. “Better hit him on the back, or he’ll pass out.”

I whacked Fish Boy sharply between the shoulder blades. He whooshed out the breath he’d been holding, then dragged in a new one.