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

CHAPTER III
VISITORS OF LOW REPUTATION

In Which September Lands in a Familiar City, Argues With the Wind, Makes a Valiant Stab at Stoicism, and Faces Certain Facts About the Dissolution of Political and Economic Regimes

Of all the somersaults ever turned, only a few could be called sloppier than the head-over-heels half-flying cartwheel in which September tumbled out of the sky.

She did not have far to go. The Lineman’s net, without ceremony or dignity, dropped her onto a dry, dusty road from just enough height to let her know it was not at all happy with her. September landed on her knees; they jangled and buzzed all the way up to the top of her head. She winced, but did not make a sound. For a moment her eyes would not open, quite convinced she’d been crisped. But even when she could feel her rough trousers and the entirely unbarbecued skin of her hands, she still could not do it. What if she peeked and the world around her was not Fairyland-if it was the woods around Mr. Albert’s house or some awful abandoned, star-strewn depot on the Line?

One eye, then the other. September had to say it twice before she could get her eyelids to obey. One eye, then the other. Then see what you see and face up to it.

The sky shone neither blue nor black, day nor night, but a fiery, swirling twilight. Light blazed in scarlet, peacock, deep plum, and molten quicksilver, light so thick it seemed to drip from the air onto every surface. September knelt on a faded green-gray line etched, perhaps even sketched, into a long avenue. On either side, soft smoke-colored pillars soared up into the bright, twisted clouds. Pillars-but not pillars! Some were very tall and very rickety; some looked like cathedral towers but had no fine bricks, only clapboards and rusty nails. Some were made of lovely stone slabs, but great holes gaped in them, all the way up. And many, many had long silky ribbons tied round them and wax seals in black or white or red or gold. Tears and stains marred each of these. She could see drawings through the holes: lines, houses, funny little dragons with huge nostrils floating in carefully inked seas. They were great scrolls of ashen parchment, each crease and fold and rip tinged in ultramarine. The road, which rustled gently under her knees as she stood up, was paper as well, the lovely old thick and glossy sort of paper that only very beautiful or very important things got written on. Up at the top of the scrolls, September could see little church towers and villas and ranches and gardens. A wooly, horned sheep peered over the edge of one and bleated down; his bleat echoed fuzzily in the paper canyon. Rusted-out cupolas crowned towers here and there.

Just the sorts of buildings where wind howls hardest, whistles loudest, screams highest.

Up ahead, a great pearly-violet mountain range opened up like an infinite library. A stormcloud of squawking birds tumbled and danced toward those hills. Automobile exhaust puffed and sputtered out behind them.

September wanted to jump up and down on the road and shout at the molten-colored heavens. She wanted to turn a somersault, a real, proper somersault. She wanted to exult and sing nonsense at the clouds and kiss anyone who happened to be by, which was no one, but never you mind. But she did none of those things. September raised her hands to her mouth and wiggled in place like a dog wagging her tail. Her face turned red from the keeping in of all the noise and movement her body longed to make. At this moment, her head spoke louder, and what her head wanted was to be as cool and collected as a Wind. To be knowing and canny as they were. When you wear all your insides on your outside, people look at you very strangely. No one had ever told her that exulting and dancing and singing nonsense were childish things, but she felt sure that they were, somehow.

Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart of thirteen-year-old girls and boys? Oh, September! Hearts, once you have them locked up in your chest, are a fantastic heap of tender and terrible wonders-but they must be trained. Beatrice could have told her all about it. A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they’ve got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don’t have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given?

By now, my dear friends, you know me better.

And so September tried to put an expression of a very proud, noble, solemn adultish sort of wonder on her face, because it was a trick she felt she ought to learn. But that is a lot to contain in two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and she really only managed her own unhidable leaping, fizzing joy-yet this time the joy was a silent one. It jangled inside her but did not boil over. To be back in Fairyland. To be near magic and thrillingness again. To be in a place where she did not have to lie about the things she wanted most of all-because they were here, and she could touch them and talk with them and wrestle with them and ride upon them.

But there was no one to praise September for her restraint.

And where was here? It looked so terribly familiar, but September could be quite sure she had never run down a road of vellum or called up to the tip-tops of scroll-towers before. And run she did, to catch the puffins and the Blue Wind and Mr. Albert’s poor car who hadn’t asked to be bothered with any of this trouble! Her jar of coins rattled and jingled loudly in the canyon of pillars. But hadn’t she heard the wind whistling like that before? Hadn’t she smelled that dry, sweet smell on the breeze?

Fortunately, now that they’d jumped the Line, the flock of puffins didn’t seem to be in any great hurry. The glossy throng of them burst apart, save those hoisting up the stolen automobile on their ice-armored backs. A few shot ahead up toward the sun, cannonballs with orange beaks. Little birdy bullets of pearl and ink fired and spun out to land upon whatever they could find in that wild place. As September bolted up over a rise in the papery road, she found what they found: a little shantytown laid out among the pillars, every rooftop and chimney colonized by the squat, chattering birds.

The road ran smoothly, straight into the village, whose back bunched up against the mountains. The peaks beyond flowed up to impossible heights, traceries of text and compasses and old, old ink disappearing into the distance. A boardwalk ran from the main avenue into the town proper, each slat on the path the fold of a long, thick, heavy map, hanging the way they did in libraries, draped over strong bars so as not to crease or wrinkle. The slats showed the blue of strange oceans, every one. September scrambled to a stop before a ramp up onto the boardwalk: an atlas the size of a boat, open to its frontispiece, which read:

MERCATOR, TOWN OF.

FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED 1203.

EDITOR: KING CRUNCHCRAB I.

LAYOUT AND DESIGN: CADASTRAL CROSSHATCH, ESQ.

ALL PERSONS, EVENTS, CRIMES AND CRIMINALS, MAGIC, MAYHEM, AND THREATS OF BODILY HARM USED BY PERMISSION.

VISITORS OF LOW REPUTATION REPORT TO THE WAY STATION IMMEDIATELY.

ALL OTHERS KEEP OUT.

“Well, I don’t think I have a low reputation!” opined September, catching her breath.

A wild, bouncing laugh prevented her from further defending her character. September startled: Up above her, crouching on the rim of a spindly, spirally chimney, the Blue Wind pointed at her and kept on laughing.

“Oh, my little sour blueberry, you are just adorable when you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The Blue Wind sprang out from the chimney like a bat. She spread her arms for the briefest moment, then pirouetted down to the ground before September. She clapped her blue hands.

“Even if you hadn’t entirely deposed (and possibly killed) not one but two governments and destabilized all sorts of political regions you couldn’t even pronounce, let alone draft up constitutional monarchies for, even if you’d been far more careful about leaving your toys strewn about everywhere when you tire yourself out with anarchy and run on home, I’d say you really are the lowest sort.” The Blue Wind grinned wickedly. Her purple lips shone. “A hitchhiker.”

“I didn’t hitch!”

“Oh, come off yourself! You could never have got through without me! When have you ever gotten into Fairyland by your lonesome? Never, because you can’t, because you are a person and people are boring and boring means you.” The Blue Wind crossed her brocaded arms over her chest, quite satisfied with her logic.

This struck September like a slap. She remembered, suddenly, that the Blue Wind was not loved by her brothers and sisters. The Green Wind had said so, she was quite sure. “You’re teasing me. A Wind wouldn’t call such names. Winds are…well, not kind, but at least they aren’t cruel!”

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 buyer 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.