(Audio of Chapter 7, read by the author)
“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 huge, puffy cheeks, a pursed mouth, and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Its ears were enormous, larger than its head. Behind the post rose a huge, bustling, and walled city. The sounds from within were indistinct, as bustle always is. 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, and thicker than tree trunks. They stood at a gate of goat-hide. 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 cluster of yellow peonies. Not at all what you might expect from a place called Pandemonium, really, especially the bird baths 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 over sized 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 quailed suddenly. “I haven’t had a brush-up 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 eleven! 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 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 awhile.” 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 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! But all that was so terribly long ago. Maybe there’s one brickwight so old he cannot stand who might remember the days when Pandemonium was made of stone. But only while drunk on thistlesyrup, and no one would believe him.”
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, confidently 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 of 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 lime-liquor brewing, 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 citadel in Pandemonium that grew and lived and was not sewn. 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?” said 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 Inventors’ Guild did it. A terrible racket went up for days out of Groangyre. The lightning-sylphs were complicit, somehow. They made some kind of bargain with the glass-ghouls and voila—electricks! Modernity is certainly a fascinating thing. The Marquess said it was wicked, but if we wanted to engage in such un-Fairy-like behaviors, it was our funeral. This is 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 The Ifrit and the Zeppelin and passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bell-hop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree, sticking out in bushily under her cap. Also because dryad begins with D, and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. Her eyes were also 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 was high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and licked his lemon ice daintily. 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, where 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, where 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 to not want a princess bothering it. September had not liked the princess so much, either, as she had a high, breathy voice she found terribly annoying. But the owls, and the mines, and the flashing eyes in the wood. That she liked. And now she was in the wood, 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, geez, thought September. A newsreel. This is what happens when grown-ups run the movies. Can we not skip 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 bouilliabaise 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 golden skin like desert sand embraced a woman passionately, one frozen hand on her foaming hair, one arm around her sea-slick waist. She wore a dress of anenomes, opening and closing. 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 benefit 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 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 grumellphone 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 hers. 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 sleight 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-lloking Satyrs onto the flickering silver stage and made to 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 have been a day older than September, and very possibly younger. 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 was thick and silver 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 which seemed black on 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 the body, and the brim was so crisp and perfect it seemed sharp.
The bear wrinkled her muzzle. She 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 her. “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 out 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,” hissed the Marquess, “you wicked little thief.” She beckoned horribly with her ringed finger. The screen crackled and flickered. Silver sparks flew for a moment, and then the Marquess’s face disappeared in a little burnt ring and the theatre went suddenly dark.