“Go on,” said the Wyverary, nudging the girl in the orange dress with his great red nose. “Ask.”
September squinted dubiously. The brass face before her did not move.
In fact, it was a brass face hoisted up on a tower of tangled brass hands that seemed to be frozen in the acts of pleading, praying, beseeching, orating, pointing, prodding. They wound around each other until five of them fanned out in a kind of finger-fringed flower that held the face aloft. The burnished face had swollen, puffy cheeks, a pursed mouth, and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Its ears flared enormous, larger than its head. Behind the post rose a huge, bustling, and walled city. The sounds from within rumbled indistinctly, as bustle will do. The wall did not look terribly sturdy—it was patchwork, motley-colored, a dozen kinds of brocade and stiff silk and satin and broadcloth, all sewn together with gnarled, ropy yarn the color of squash, thicker than tree trunks.
They stood at a goat-hide gate. The Switchpoint, for that’s what Ell called it, made a kissing face at them. All around them well-kept lawns wound down to the lapping Barleybroom, full of gentle little paths and sedate violets nodding pleasantly. A sundial spun its shadow slowly around clusters of yellow peonies. Not at all what you might expect from a place called Pandemonium, really, especially the birdbaths and commemorative benches. It looked much more like Hanscom Park in Omaha than the outskirts of a Fairy City.
The Switchpoint still pursed its lips at them. A sparrow landed on one of its oversize ears and flew away again, as though the brass burned its feet. Ell insisted that this was the way in.
“What shall I ask?” said September, shuffling her feet.
“Well, where do you want to go?” Ell stretched his long neck, uncoiling it and yawning, then coiling it up again.
“I expect to wherever the Marquess lives.”
“That’s the Briary.”
“But then … thieves work at night, mostly, and I ought to start acting like a thief if I mean to steal something. So we ought to wait until nightfall, you know. It’s easier to be sneaky in the dark.”
“September, queen among thieves, you will never get into Pandemonium this way. You must have a Purpose. You must have Business Here. Loiterers, Lackadaisicals, and other Menaces might do well in other cities, but they are allergic to Pandemonium, and it is allergic to them. If you do not have Business Here, you must at least pretend you do with a very firm expression, or else learn to eat violets and converse with sundials.”
“We could go to the Municipal Library, see your … grandfather.” September was still deeply unsure about Ell’s theory on his parentage.
A-Through-L blushed, going all orange in the face. “I … I’m not ready!” he cried suddenly. “I haven’t had a brushup on my studies! I haven’t had my horns waxed or my credentials calligraphed or anything! Tomorrow, we can go tomorrow or maybe next week!”
“Oh, Ell, don’t worry,” September sighed. “I think you look fine as you are! And you’re quite the smartest beast I’ve ever known.”
“But how many beasts have you known?”
“Well, there’s you … and the Leopard and the wairwulf. I’m only twelve! I think three is a very respectable number.”
“Not what you’d call a statistical sampling, though. But it’s no matter. Today we ride on the rails of your quest, not mine. I’m not ready. I’m just not.” A-Through-L’s eyes turned pleading. Tears welled up, bright turquoise, glittering.
“Oh! It’s all right, Ell! Don’t cry!” September stroked his leathery knee. She turned to the Switchpoint and took a deep breath, speaking as loudly and sternly as she could.
“Listen, Mr. Brass-Ears! I should like to find a place that is cool and shady, somewhat near the Briary, but not too near, where we can rest and laugh and see something wonderful of Pandemonium while we wait for the sun to set.”
“And lemon ices,” whispered Ell.
“And where they serve lemon ices,” finished September firmly.
The Switchpoint exhaled with a long, high whistle, its cheeks deflating like spent balloons. Its eyes opened and its ears fluttered. All the hands of the post flexed, made fists, and relaxed again.
“Papers,” the Switchpoint said in a faint, airy voice. Its eyes were hard brass balls, glinting with judgment.
September fished the little green book that Betsy Basilstalk had given her out of the inner pocket of the smoking jacket. The jacket was deeply pleased to have kept it safe for her. She held it up so the cherubic little face could examine it. It clucked imperiously.
“Ravished, eh? Haven’t seen one of you in a while.” The Switchpoint looked dubiously at A-Through-L, who scratched at the grass with one enormous claw.
“He’s my … companion. My Wyvern,” said September hurriedly. She hoped he would not be too offended at being called hers.
“Do you have a Deed for him?”
The Wyverary drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable. “True servitude,” he said gently, “can only be voluntary. Surely, you know that. Surely, you once chose to stand here and frown at those who wish only to enter the city. Surely, you once did something else—sold gloves or frightened children at festivals—and chose this instead.”
The Switchpoint squinted up at him. “Were a soldier, we were,” it grumbled.
The great goat-hair gate drew back like a theatre curtain. Four of the hands at the base of the Switchpoint post began to work furiously, so fast the fingers blurred so that September could not even see them moving. Slowly, a deep scarlet scrap began to spread out from the post, weaving itself as it went, a little brass thumb sliding back and forth like a shuttle. It flowed on, raw, shimmering silk, under September’s shadowless feet and through the gate, stopping there, as if to beckon them onward.
September took a step forward. The hands blurred into industry again, and the scarlet path wove swiftly on into Pandemonium.
“It’s all right,” said Ell confidentially as they passed through the gate. “I know you didn’t mean it, about my being yours.” The great beast flicked his red tail. “But I can be. And you can be mine! And what lovely games we shall have!”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” sighed A-Through-L happily as September gaped. “Queen Mallow built it this way, years and years ago.”
Pandemonium spread out around her, a city of cloth. Bright storefronts ran on ahead of them, built with violet crinoline and crimson organdy. Towers wound up in wobbly twists of stiff, shining brocade. Memorial statues wore felt helmets over bombazine faces. High, thin, fuzzy houses puffed out angora doors; fancy taffeta offices glimmered under the gaze of black-lace gargoyles. Even the broad avenue they stood on was a mass of ropy, pumpkin-colored grosgrain. And there! That crooked, creased, ancient leather obelisk must be Groangyre Tower! The warm wind filled a coppery satin balloon at the tip-top of the tower and blew it up into a fine cupola.
The woven scarlet path at their feet waited patiently, indulging their country gawking.
“She couldn’t have done it all by herself!” gasped September.
A-Through-L shrugged. “Fierce was her needle, and she wore it like a sword. Wielded it, too! Brandished, even! Woven things are so warm, she said, so kind and home-like. But all that was so terribly long ago. The Marquess would like to change it, of course, turn it all to stone tied up in brambles, but all the brick-wights long ago learned to spin thread and knit alleyways and forgot their old trades, and even Marquesses cannot have their way in all things.”
A little sound rustled up from the patient path, something like a cough, if fabric that wove itself could cough. In fact, September noticed, a great number of linen paths wound out in front of folk as they hurried past, all of different colors, cobalt and ochre and silver and rose, busily weaving through side streets and thoroughfares, dodging carriage traffic, buskers squeezing accordions with four arms, barkers advertising roasted melons and fresh fennel bouquets for the discerning lover. Pedestrians—hoofed and web-footed and eight-legged and more—confidentl
y ran after their paths. And on each burlap street corner, a smaller version of their own Switchpoint worked busily away.
Their little red path grew even redder as September and Ell embarrassed it by standing still.
September laughed and ran ahead, grinning into the Pandemonium sun. The path leapt up and wove swiftly on, barely missing a lavender crepe streetlight and barreling right through a pair of imps haggling over a bar of green algae. A-through-L thundered after her, squashing the linen as he bounded down the street (which possessed the name Onionbore) while all and sundry hurried to get out of his way.
The scarlet path led them more or less north-ish, and though September loved the chase and the smell of broiling maple blossoms and brewing lime liquor, she could not help but notice that every alley and avenue they sped through seemed to point directly at a small unassuming building covered in wide, fluttering golden flowers—not silk flowers but real ones that covered walls and fences of green briars and black thorns. The only house in Pandemonium that grew and lived and was not sewn. Something about it glowed strange and baleful. September did not like to look at it. Ell could not help looking. But mercifully, the scarlet path stopped short and began unraveling itself backward, the way they had come, neatly balling up its excess thread as it went.
A rose-colored jacquard building leaned over them, its walls embossed with fine flowers and paisleys and curlicues. A great sign arched over the doorway. In flashing green lights it read, THE SILVER SHUTTLE NICKELODEON.
One of the green bulbs guttered a little.
“Are those electric lights?” asked September.
“Of course,” said Ell softly, as if in awe of the flickering glow. “Fairyland is a Scientifick place.”
“I suppose the Marquess did that, too.”
“No; in fact, she abhors electricity. The Royal Inventors’ Society did it. A terrible racket went up for days out of Groangyre. The lightning sylphs were complicit somehow. They made a mysterious sort of bargain with the glass ghouls and voilà—electricks! Modernity is certainly a fascinating thing. The Marquess said it was wicked, but if we wanted to engage in such un-Fairy-like behavior, it was our funeral. This is still a brave place, September. In the shadow of the Briary, it defies her.” Ell peered into the cool, shadowy lobby, rich with velvet and plush and brass banisters. “And they serve lemon ices.”
September chipped off another pair of her sceptre’s rubies to gain admission to a film called The Ifrit and the Zeppelin. She passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bellhop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree’s, sticking out bushily from beneath her cap. Also because dryad begins with D and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. The dryad’s eyes shone silver. She had very plump cheeks and smiled both when September asked for tickets and when she paid her rubies.
Shyly, September said, “If you are a dryad, where is your tree? Are you terribly unhappy here, so far from the forest?”
The ticket dryad laughed, and the sound of it was a little like rain falling on leaves. “Didn’t you know, little love? Film is made with camphor, which is a tree. In the cinnamon family, to be exact, which is large and boisterous and gossipy. I run the projector, and my trees run through my fingers all day long! Just because a thing is transparent and silvery and comes in big reels, doesn’t mean it’s not a tree.”
Thankfully, the theatre was generous and the ceiling high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and daintily licked his lemon ice. The lights lowered. September leaned forward, munching popped pomegranate seeds from a little striped box. It’s dryad food, really, she thought. I shall certainly be all right.
At home, she loved the movies. She loved sitting in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to begin. Especially, the tragic and frightening movies in which ladies fainted dead away and monsters roared up out of the dark. Like in that cartoon her mother had taken her to see when she was very small, in which the dark-haired princess ran away into the terrible forest and the owls flew at her and pecked at her hands. That was wonderful—because the world was suddenly alive and excited and wanted things just the way September herself sometimes wanted things. Even if the world seemed mainly not to want a princess bothering it. September had not liked the princess so much, either, as she had a high, breathy voice she found deeply annoying. But the owls and the mines and the flashing eyes in the wood—that she had liked. And now she was in the woods, really and truly, with the flashing eyes all around her. What could Fairy movies possibly be like?
“The Associated Pressed Fairy Moveable Gazette Proudly Presents: News from Around Fairyland!” announced a pleasant female voice as the screen flickered into life. Oh, jeez, thought September. A newsreel. This is what happens when grown-ups run the movies. Can we not skip straight to a dark-haired princess being beset by things?
“The wedding of Ghiyath the Jann and Rabab the Marid was celebrated with much pomp on the magnetized Arctic shores Tuesday,” continued the smooth, sweet announcer. “Witches present brewed a bouillabaisse of a long and interesting marriage: five children (one a mermaid), a friendly sort of unfaithfulness for all involved, and an early death for Ghiyath, followed by an extended and scandalous widowhood for Rabab.”
A huge man with skin like desert sand embraced a woman passionately, one flaming hand on her foaming hair, one arm around her sea-slick waist. She wore a dress of anemones that opened and closed. A few similarly wet folk reclined on clouds, applauding, polite and bored. The scene was in black and white, and September slumped back in her chair, impatient for the Ifrit and her zeppelin.
“An exhibit of artifacts from the moon opens Sunday at the Municipal Museum. Scientists have discovered the moon is, in fact, made of pearl and are even now investigating the method by which it is attached to the firmament and what benefits lunar research might reveal for Fairies like you.”
A proud-looking spriggan with a thin, curved nose demonstrated how a piece of moon rock could be dissolved in a mysterious solution. He dropped the stone into a crystal beaker with a three-fingered claw and drank down the draught completely. The scene cut away before any effect might be seen.
“The Changeling Recital at Dandydown Hall went off splendidly last week, featuring an orchestra of violins, oboes, one piano, a nickelstave, two tubas, a lorelei, and a full grummellphone section. The children played Agnes Buttercream’s famous Elegy for Reindeer and Roc’s Egg in D Minor. The conductor unwisely chose a rousing encore of Ode to Queen Mallow’s Third Fingernail, however, and riot police were called to the scene.”
A host of children in prim black clothing played their instruments furiously on a stage shaped like a huge oak leaf. They all wore identical shoes, which seemed painfully small and tight on their little feet: mary janes very much like September’s. A little piece of sad, gentle music played, sashaying into something brighter and livelier, before two unhappy-looking kobolds lifted the conductor unceremoniously off of the stage. The goblins seemed far too strong for their slight height.
“The performance culminated in the righteous punishment of several greenlisted musicians, who certainly deserved whatever they got.”
The same kobolds—or near cousins—hauled several terrified-looking Satyrs onto the flickering gray stage and made them stomp their pan-pipes underfoot. A man in a top hat and mustache brandished a whip menacingly before the scene went dark.
“And finally, our beloved Marquess has concluded a treaty with the Island-Country of Buyan, bringing prosperity and order to both. We here at the AP extend our praise and adulation to the Lovely Monarch.”
Onscreen, a young girl vigorously shook hands with a large bear. She was tall, but she could not have been a day older than September herself. She wore an ornate suit made for her small frame, an embroidered jacket over a fringed bustle. At her neck was a thin dark tie, like September’s father once wore. The girl’s hair shone thick and s
ilver in the flickering film, falling to her shoulders in great sausage curls. Most of all, however, September noticed her hat. It was black—or some color that appeared black in the old-fashioned film. It looked a bit like a cake that had fallen over to one side under the weight of peacock and pheasant feathers and chains of jewels that cascaded down from a silk rosette on its flat top. Ribbons, bows, and satin ropes made delicate tiers like icing on its body, and the brim was so crisp and perfect it seemed deathly sharp.
The bear wrinkled his muzzle. He did not look pleased.
September trembled a little. The Marquess seemed so awfully real. She smiled broadly at the bear and laughed silently as the announcer nattered on about the treaty.
And suddenly, without warning, the Marquess onscreen turned toward the camera, her hand still clutched in the bear’s paw. She cocked her head to one side like a curious bird. She blinked and leaned forward, looking directly out into the theatre—at September.
“You,” said the Marquess in the announcer’s voice. The other patrons twisted to look at September, who froze in terror. “It’s you.”
Ell moved his claw around September’s seat protectively.
“September,” said the movie Marquess slowly, as if pulling each letter from a stubborn cabinet. “You shouldn’t be sitting in a theatre on such a lovely day. Why don’t you go out and play?”
“I…”
“Hush. Listening is tiresome for me. September, if you do not come to the Briary right this very instant, I shall become cross with you. I am a very pleasant Marquess if you are tractable and sweet.”
September could not move. Her hand clutched the bag of pomegranate seeds so tightly they began to spill out of the top. She felt as though she had been caught doing something awful and black. But she hadn’t done anything! Not yet! How could the Marquess know her? Where could she hide?
“Right now,” snarled the Marquess, “you wicked little thief.” She beckoned horribly with her ringed finger. The screen crackled and flicked. Silver sparks flew for a moment, and then the Marquess’s face disappeared in a little burnt ring, and the theatre went suddenly dark.