“I love you,” she said. “I love you and I’m not sorry for anything and nothing could ever be as good as us again in all the worlds that ever were. I’ll find a way back. I will. We saw our daughter, after all, didn’t we? On the Gears of the World. That means it’s not over.”
For a terrible moment, September looked into Saturday’s deep black eyes and knew
he had no idea what she was talking about. All she saw there was a keen and interested boy about to watch a duel. But he kissed her back, and it was a kiss full of their history. The sun must have slanted strangely, that’s all. Oh, but, September, it wasn’t the sun, and a kiss may hide a thousand troubles.
Blunderbuss nosed up behind her, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and tossing her up onto her own broad, woolly back.
“Buss, you don’t have to. You’ll get hurt. Let me down.” September stroked her ear, though. She felt very warmly toward everyone, now she was certain to lose.
“Don’t be stupid, Lady Stuff-Up! Without me, you can’t even reach his kneecap. You will be an actual, no-fooling ankle-biter. This is my moment to shine like yarn never shone before! And it doesn’t break any rules because I’m just your bloody steed, aren’t I? In the Land of Wom, we bite to show we like a thing. And that we don’t like a thing. And that we think a thing is delicious. And that we think it is ours. Because anything you bite is yours, everyone knows that. We bite when we are angry and hungry and joyful and excited to go home and frightened of wild dinosaurs and because it is Tuesday but also because Saturday and Ell are watching and especially when we are DELIGHTED but NERVOUS. Nothing says I am having feelings like a bite.” The scrap-yarn wombat leaned round and, ever so softly, bit September’s toes. She hoped Hawthorn would not be too jealous.
September blinked and blinked, but she gave up and admitted she was crying. “This doesn’t make you a steed,” she said, and steadied her whisker-sword in her fist.
“I know that, goofball. I will NEVER be a steed. But I am a COMBAT WOMBAT and I bite for Wom!”
Blunderbuss charged the Rex Tyrannosaur at full speed, hollering ancient Wom battle songs that brought tears to the eyes of Tugboat, Conker, Bluestocking, Meatpie, and even Gregory. Thrum bent his huge head and thundered at them, kicking potholes into the road and roaring fit to wake the hills themselves. September hoisted her whisker like a jousting lance. Maybe it’s not teeth exactly, but it’ll bite when I stick him with it, she thought desperately.
Perhaps if she had jousted a dinosaur five years ago, September would have closed her eyes at the last moment. But she kept them open now. Some things are so big and frightening you’ve got to get big to face them. Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, she thought to the rhythm of the wombat’s gallop. Home to Mother and Papa and home to the teacups and the dog and school and you’ll find a way back someday. Someday, someday, someday.
September kept her eyes open and her sword straight and she rammed that whisker right into Thrum’s thick, scaly hide, a perfect hit, in the middle of his narrow breast. It bent against his ribs and vibrated out of her hand. The tyrannosaurus howled and snapped at her with all the strength of his primordial jaws—and missed. Blunderbuss dodged and careened and jogged off past the great lizard with a whisker sticking out of his chest.
“Brilliant job, Rexy! You fight like a fossil!” said the wombat madly, laughing, the battle riding so high in her heart that she did not notice the long wound in her flank where Thrum had caught her. Stuffing puffed out. Yarn began to unravel. She didn’t even slow down, swinging round for another pass.
September drew her wrench from the depths of the Watchful Dress. It gleamed in the sun as it had the day she pulled it from the casket in the Worsted Wood. Blunderbuss sang out the ancient Wom songs of defiance, which roused the hearts of Oatmeal, Snagger, Shilling, Watchpot, Banjo, and even the beautiful Fair Dinkum to bursting. Home, September thought, to the beat of Blunderbuss’s mighty paws. Home to Aunt Margaret and my own bed and oranges for breakfast and algebra and the daisies under the kitchen window where the Green Wind came.
This time, when the Rex Tyrannosaur tried to slash at her with his jaws, September swung her wrench back like a bat and brought it crashing against his snout. Several teeth went flying into the sunshine, twinkling like broken glass. The jarring blow shook her wrench out of her hands. It went tumbling across the dirt. Thrum roared in agony. Goldmouth roared outrage from his judge’s box. Blood showered the dry earth. The wombats roared from their night-porches.
“A cracking cart-wheeler!”
“What a drive! Full points!”
“Ooh, she’s got an arm on her!”
Blunderbuss cackled. She skidded around, not feeling the new cut on her rump in the least. Stuffing puffed behind her like steam from a train engine. “Home run!” she yelled. “Get yer peanuts, get yer popcorn, get yer souvenir dinosaur teeth! Come on, girl, don’t stop now, just one more go and we’ve got him!”
“I don’t have any more weapons, Buss!” September hissed. But they all heard her. The Watchful Dress had only a pair of short bandit’s daggers to offer, no use at all against dinosaurs.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” the scrap-yarn wombat said, stalwart and bold. “You’ve got me. Only I feel a bit funny in the tum. Uff. And if I go in for the bite he’ll get me good and I probably … I probably … well! Never mind!” And she warbled out one last ancient and sorrowful song of Wom, full of longing and stubbornness and hunger.
“Right!” cried Tugboat, the Great Tobacconist of Wom. She leapt over the rail of her porch. “Are we going to let a measly T. Rex come in and bash up our family?”
“NO!” snarled the nation of Wom as one.
“We are wombats! We bite! We claw! We dig! AND NO ONE INTERRUPTS OUR FAMILY DINNER!” Tugboat got her paws under her, hurtling toward the Rex Tyrannosaur at furious speed. Behind her rode a hundred wombats snorting the glorious anthem of the Infinite Mob as they made their town shake. Tugboat screamed to the skies: “FOR WOM! FOR CHICAGO! FOR MOB AND FOR NIGHTGOWN! FOR BLUNDERBUSS THE BRAVE AND SEPTEMBER THE BONKERS AND FAIRYLAND NEVERENDING!”
The wave of wombats slammed against Thrum and swarmed over his legs, his haunches, biting into his belly, gnashing his tail, climbing up to the top of his ponderous skull and dragging him down, down to the dust and the street and the legends of Nightgown ever after. Goldmouth bellowed powerlessly, beating his red-threaded fists against the doppelgänger’s spell, cursing viciously, swearing all their deaths.
But when the Rex Tyrannosaur hit the earth, he was nothing more than the dry bones he had been before the Derby ever dreamed of beginning.
September dismounted and pulled the Greatvole’s black whisker from a long, petrified rib. As she slid it back into the Watchful Dress’s sheath, Ajax Oddson’s voice bonged out through the streets of Wom like the bells of a church no one ever asked for. September could barely hear him over the cheers of the wombats and A-Through-L and Saturday and her own relieved, giddy cries, which she wanted to stop making, for they surely sounded silly, but could not, because she was alive and an alive thing wants to make noise.
“The old Cretaceous tango plays out like always! Mammals: on top! Reptiles: boo-hoo! Now, I think you’ve all had far too easy a time of it! I’m falling down on the job if you look so pleased with yourselves! Are you ready for a taste of the old Blue Hen double-cross? It’s Halftime! ONE, TWO, THREE! Everyone switch places!”
The Land of Wom disappeared around them like a curtain falling.
CHAPTER XVI
A TROLL IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH