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

CHAPTER IX
THE CURSE

In Which September Meets an Old Friend Unexpectedly, Discharges Her Postal Duties, and Is Nearly Burnt to a Crisp

September rang a bell.

She brought her hand down on top of it again-a big glass buzzer-bell like the one in the principal’s office at school. This one did not buzz; it rang clear and high, shattering the silence of the Lopsided Library.

No one answered. A loud shush sounded from the depths of the stacks, but September could not see the shusher, even if she stood on tiptoes.

Whoever named this place got it in one, September thought to herself. It was a very lovely library, a great circular room with a high glass chair on a dais in the middle of it all, from which, when such a one was on duty, a Librarian might glare down most effectively at noisy nellies and book-swipers. Pale blue and green pillars studded with round moonstones separated the sections. Neat rows of green-black stone desks and black-green study lamps stood at the ready. Bright stained-glass stacks sparkled as they bore up books of every possible size and type, rising all the way up through several floors to a domed ceiling strung with round lanterns. But all the books seemed to have lurched to one side of the building, as though they had all gotten a good fright from whatever sort of beast haunts the night terrors of books. They piled up on top of each other, wedged in tight to bursting, and if there was an order or a logic to their arrangement it, too, had had a good scare and run off. The stacks on the other side stood nearly empty, stained glass dustless and forlorn, a few lonely tomes leaning over, falling down, huddled in twos and threes for warmth.

“Hello?” September called. Her voice bounced around the rotunda.

This time, an answer came.

It was a roar that was also a shout that was also a laugh that was also a screech that was also a deep, resounding haroom.

A huge ball of red scales, claws, and wings shot up out of the rear stacks and landed on the Librarian’s chair. The ball had bright turquoise eyes that danced and shone and long orange whiskers.

A-Through-L, the Wyverary, crouched on the great glass chair and grinned as wide as any Wyvern ever has.

“September!” he trumpeted-and before September could answer him by vaulting over the circulation counter into his welcoming wings, a strange and awful thing happened.

A plume of indigo fire erupted from the Wyverary’s throat. He threw back his head toward the domed ceiling. The flame flowed thick and oily through the air, coiling and sizzling as it rose. Several lanterns burst into purple sparks and charred chunks, raining back down onto the books. The roof blackened-but it could not get much blacker than the black blast-stars which already scarred it. Finally, the flame sputtered out, leaving A-Through-L looking mortified. He hid his head in one scarlet claw.

And then, without warning, he shrank.

September was sure she saw it: One moment he was as gargantuan as always, towering, a great red beast who could eat two barns for lunch and still have room for tea. The next, he had dropped a foot or two, and cinched in a foot or two, and even lost a foot or two of tail.

But September could not make the time to worry about that. She cried out in joy, finally, a mighty whoop swelling up in her and bursting out at last, a popped bubble, a cut rope. Fairyland at last, even if it was the Moon, and her friend, impossibly, brassy and bright as ever, nothing lost, and not one fig given whether or not she had grown up a little. She laughed and reached up her arms to the Librarian’s chair. Ell looped his tail around her and hauled her up, nuzzling her face and blushing furiously. She who blushes first loses, September thought. But her own face flushed anyhow and she was not sorry.

“I’m very well, thank you,” snapped a little piping voice. A final glop of indigo flame hissed from Ell’s mouth, landing on the glass chair and sizzling away into lavender steam. A puffball festooned with ribbons yelped and stamped at a smoking book some falling nugget of lantern had stove in. “Oh, why shouldn’t you take on a Wyvern, Abby? Everyone deserves a claw in the door. He’ll be aces at shelving, with those wings!”

“September,” said A-Through-L with deep embarrassment, “may I present Abecedaria, the Catalogue Imp. Who is really very nice when there are patrons underfoot…”

The puffball hopped over the cairns of books and perched on a stack of periodicals. Abecedaria was a large powdered wig. Her curls and tiers were as splendid as any of the Founding Fathers or French Kings September had read about in her history books, fastened with black velvet ribbons and little black rosettes. She had no head beneath the wig; several of those sausage curls and corkscrews and puffs formed themselves into waggling eyebrows and a noble nose and a mouth. Two fat poodle-puffs made for legs, which ended in tiny black slippers.

“But what do you see?” the wig wailed in despair. “Do you see patrons?”

“She’s a Periwig,” Ell whispered. “Aldermanic Order, from the Foxtail Haberdashery. Very crispable, but a wonder with figures and sorting and classification and fiddly things that take patience that people’s heads just don’t have. Periwig begins with P, but she begins with A and we know each other quite well anyhow by now. Oh, I am so happy to see you!”

“An empty Library!” cried Abecedaria. “A silent Library! Can you imagine anything more miserable?”

September blinked. “I thought Librarians liked silence! I’m sure someone shushed me on the way in!”

“I can’t help that I make shushing noises when I walk! It’s a far sight better than squeaking loafers! You poor girl, what sort of aged, unfriendly Libraries have you met in your short life? A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can’t-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar! And that is why I did think a Wyvern would be a perfectly boisterous and bombastic Librarian. I have only myself to blame.”

A-Through-L groaned in sorrow. “Oh, A is for apology and F is for forgiveness and I hope that you’ll take the one and give the other, for I am as sorry a beast as ever flew! You know me, September, as well as anyone who ever walked on toes instead of claws. I never use my fire unless I mean to! At least I never did! Why, before a year ago I could count on one foot the things I’d scorched. See, I’ll fess up to all of them: a certain real estate office, a flock of gillybirds when I was very hungry, a bonfire at Midautumn, and On the Criminology of Fairies by Quentin Q. Quince, Volumes II-IX. I only meant to burn up three of those and they did ask me to do the bonfire and I’m very sorry about Mr. Quince. I am not a vicious beast! It is only that I cannot help it! Lately, when I am excited or frightened or feeling things very strongly it just comes bellowing out. I try to keep it in, I swallow snow by the drift and gargle salt water and eat plenty of greens, but it’s always there, just waiting to come out, and I am so awfully, terribly sorry that I hurt our poor lanterns and damaged property and gave September a nasty shock, I’m sure! If you both hate me for it, I shall understand, but you mustn’t hate beasts for things they can’t help. I do wish books weren’t so burn-up-able! But we must all live with our weaknesses.” A single orange tear dropped from Ell’s eye.

“The Quince was practically his first act as Assistant Librarian,” sighed Abecedaria. “All my patrons run away and gone, in a spectacular display of Wyvern!”

“I shall wear a muzzle if I have to,” Ell said miserably. “And turn my face to one side.”

“Oh, you big stove, don’t take it so hard. What would I do without you? I’m getting on in years, I can’t even reach the romances anymore.” The Periwig patted Ell’s ruddy flank. “There, there,” she crooned. “That’s what curses are for. You’ll get the better of it, I just know it. And then you’ll be ready for a circulation of your own.”

September gasped herself. “You’ve cursed Ell?” She was ready to stand for her friend right there and call the imp a dozen kinds of rotten, nasty, no-good tyrant.

“Yes, I did, young lady, and I’ll thank you not to judge until he turns your house into a purple fireworks display and explodes every book you could call your own!”

September turned to look at Ell, who clearly wished he could pull up the whole Lopsided Library over his head and disappear.

“It’s a Pedagogickal Curse,” Abecedaria said defensively. “Simple Severe Magic. All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory. A Library at its ripping, roaring best is a raucous beast to ride. When he learns his lesson it’ll snap like fingers. Every time he fires off like that, he shrinks. It doesn’t hurt him and I daresay he’s got a ways to go before it makes a difference in his lunch portions. No use whining; it can’t be undone till you undo it.”

“Oh, poor Ell!” September threw up her arms and the Wyverary lowered his long red snout so that she could hold him as best she might. He was so much bigger than her that it always felt like hugging a building; she did it all the same. His warm skin smelled just as it always had, was just as leathery and dry as she remembered. But it was not the same-not quite. Her arms had never been able to reach quite so far around his neck before. But she would not shame the Wyverary by blurting out how much smaller he had gotten.

“Fire begins with F,” he wept, “and so does Flame. Perhaps it’s hopeless, in the end.”

“Nothing’s hopeless! After all, I’ve found you on the Moon-I can’t think of anything more unlikely in the world and yet here we are!” September gave him her warmest smile.

“Oh, but it’s not so unlikely!” cried Ell excitedly, his curse forgotten in his eagerness. “September, you only left a few months ago! You left us dancing with the shadows, and that went on for a good while. I had quite a lot to say to my shadow, it turned out! And so did everyone else! It took so long King Crunchcrab called a national holiday so the whole business could get a proper hash out. I had breakfast with the other Ell every morning. Radish tart and goblin quiche! But then Belinda Cabbage sent for me-or rather her Automated Elecktro-Whiskered Apprentice did. That’s a sort of mechanickal meerkat fueled by worry. The more you fret about a thing, the harder they work to fix up the trouble! Miss Cabbage built a whole mob of them and they all came running when she popped up in Fairyland-Above again. So many anxious folk milling about! Well, that little bronze meerkat flashed and squeaked and trilled and rolled back and forth on her tiny wheels and then spat out a little curl of paper that said Miss Cabbage and some creature called Avogadra had done some Questing Mathematickals and that when you came home-I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say home; I mean to say when you came back-you’d land on the Moon or thereabouts. And here you are! Mathematicks are wonderful things, even if they begin with M.”

“I don’t think I shall ever understand how time manages its affairs in Fairyland,” said September, shaking her head. “For me a whole year has gone by, and a little more besides. But…you keep saying I,” September said softly. “Where is Saturday? Did he come with you to meet me? I left you together.”

Ell put his scarlet head on one side. “Haven’t you seen him yet?”

“No!”

The Periwig interrupted them. “I’m sure it’s all deeply mysterious but I’ve got soot to scrub and you’ve got a box under your arm so let’s have at one or the other of them, shall we?”

September wanted to talk about Saturday. She wanted to ignore everything but Ell. She wanted to snap at Abecedaria and tell her to leave them alone already. September took a deep breath, pushing her temper down like purple fire. Give over the box and no more demands on her but to sit with her friend and talk about everything, everything that had passed since they’d seen each other.

“A Blue Wind asked me to bring this to the Whelk of the Moon, but the Whelk couldn’t get it open, so I’m to bring it to you for lock-picking or smashing or however you can manage it.” With a sigh of relief, September put the long ivory casket into two long, sturdy locks of the Periwig’s hair that had shaped themselves into puffy, tightly curled hands.

“Ell, my love, fetch us The Manual of Safe-Cracking and Assorted Mechanickal Naughtiness. Spring Edition.”

A-Through-L rose up, flapping his long, bright wings. He glided toward the nearly empty side of the Library.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” said September, “you’ve got so much room on the one side, why have you packed everything in so close on the other?”

The Periwig turned the black rosettes of her eyes to heaven and the Wyverary. “That’s why it’s the Lopsided Library. The books, you know, they have opinions. Factions. Pitched battles. Right now, the Fictionals have the advantage-they’re the flashy ones, after all, and whatever they say in their pages goes, even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense and rhymes besides. Non-Fiction has to abide by the rules of what really is, and that is just exhausting. In retaliation, the Nons are gussying up with fanciful notions and fabricated histories written by the conquerors and grandstanding about with metaphors and parables and other unsavories. So they’ve got to be stacked with the Fiction, nothing to be done. They dash over to attend parties and be seen with the right popular novels. Give it a week and Non-Fiction will be on the up again. The Fictionals will fall all over one another to expunge their pretty prose and their tall tales and their impossible Physicks and elegant motifs. It’ll be a race to the realistic, mark my words. A dance to the dreary if you ask me, but you haven’t. Then it’ll lurch to the other side and at least we’ll have a chance to dust the shelves before they go hurtling back because a social history of changelings tried on a sonnet for size. You’d have to be a champion racer to outrun literary fashion.”

Ell returned, holding the volume gingerly in his claws. The Periwig began turning the pages furiously, chasing notations with her black velvet ribbons, marking her place with a fuzzy, powdery curl.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. It echoed in the Library. “Now just a minute! It’s no trouble at all. I should have guessed when you said a Blue Wind. Come on, Ell, get your eyeball up to the lock. You have to show it something blue and speak very sternly to it. Poor Almanack couldn’t stern a minnow.”

A-Through-L put his huge orange eye to the lock. He stared it down for several minutes, never blinking once. Finally, a great turquoise tear welled up in his eye and fell with a splash to the floor of the Library. He stood up and looked expectantly at Abecedaria-but September took a deep breath and stepped up to the lock herself. She squared her shoulders and frowned as deeply as she could. She had put on her sternness once today already, it ought to be warmed up and ready. September glared at the lock and hollered, “You open up RIGHT THIS INSTANT or I shall call your mother!”

The box popped open in a hurry.

Inside lay a stethoscope.

It gleamed blue, naturally. The stethoscope had a certain burliness to it: thick, strong rods and a tube like an elephant’s trunk-and all of sapphire. The cup would have engulfed September’s head. It seemed made for someone Ell’s size, or whatever creature could dwarf a Wyvern. Almanack itself, perhaps.

Abecedaria hissed and drew away.

“The Sapphire Stethoscope! No, no, I won’t take it! It’s yours, you brought it here, it’s none of my business!”

Sterness melted and flew away from September’s face like snowflakes after you’ve rushed inside out of the cold. “What are you talking about? The Whelk told me to bring it to you! I’m finished with it, my duty is discharged, and I mean to have a jolly time with my friend, thank you very much!”

“No! Take it! Take it back and hide it, please! I’m too little. He’ll crush me and braid me till I break. You’ve seen the Library, September. We can’t stand up to Ciderskin; we just can’t. The ceiling barely stays on as it is!”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard that name!” exclaimed September. “Who is Ciderskin?”