In Which September Woos an Alphabet, Answers a Riddle, and Judges a Duel, While Charles Darwin Rides to the Rescue
They landed hard in a chilly meadow, nothing like the wild, thick tangle of the Land of Wom. Soft green hillocks flowed all around them, full of wild violets and clear rivers and sturdy stone bridges. Rather a lot of rivers. Rather a lot of bridges. In fact, the meadowy hills seemed completely crosshatched with brooks and streams, and each one had a strong stone bridge over it that looked as though it had stood since the invention of both stones and streams. Everywhere that did not have a river running through it or a bridge arching over it was peppered with odd clay cones sticking up out of the ground like toadstools. One pair of cones had a sign leaning against it:
WELCOME TO SKALDTOWN
“Come here, Blunderbuss,” September said. She had found a curved twig among the violets. She bent it against her finger to bend the end into a tighter curl.
“What? No! I don’t want to.” But the scrap-yarn wombat lay on her side in the grass, horribly wounded, panting with pain. Her stuffing puffed out in a dozen places, her foot half burnt off, yet still she whined and protested. “What’s that you wanna stick me with? Don’t let this whole Queen idea get lodged in your head, girlie. You’re not the Queen of me. I don’t like sticks. They snag on me and unravel bits.”
“You’re already unraveled to bits. I want to help. I can help. Please let me?” September said sweetly. “You helped me, after all.”
The scrap-yarn wombat lumbered over to her and plonked down on the grass.
“I did good, didn’t I? Praise me, please. I want to be praised. Did you hear them say my name? Yours, too. Oh, I feel bad. Is it bad? I’ll never not feel bad again! I think I might throw up.”
September went round to her hind foot and gathered up the loose yarn. She pushed the half-scorched stuffing back into Blunderbuss’s paw and began to crochet up the wound with her new wooden hook. She’d never crocheted a thing before—her mother knitted. But suddenly it made perfect sense. She looked at Blunderbuss’s leg and knew loads of stitches and tricks, like she’d always known them. When she finished with the foot, she began on the long slash through poor Buss’s flank. That was harder going, as she had no spare yarn to work into the split stitches. The emerald-colored smoking jacket gave it a serious think and slowly spooled out some of its sash into a long green thread. September took it up gratefully and knotted it into place. The smoking jacket winced, but felt proud.
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Saturday asked plaintively. “You were talking about somebody called the Marquess before that vole nabbed us. Who is that? And why is there a wombat here? Why don’t we ever get any time just the three of us?”
September and A-Through-L exchanged glances. She began working on the gouges Blunderbuss had taken on her other side. She packed in
the stuffing without a word, and only gasped a little when she saw the muscle of the scrap-yarn wombat’s heart peeking through: a rolled-up piece of notebook paper that read Dear Blunderbuss: Please be wild and wonderful … She covered it with an extra half-treble stitch, and then a bobble on top so no one would ever again see her secret core.
“How can you forget the Marquess, Saturday?” September said, hoping her voice did not shake. “She caught you and locked you in a lobster cage so you could grant her wishes. She put you in the Lonely Gaol and I had to get you out. You know who the Marquess is. You’ve always known. Better than me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Marid said stubbornly. He kicked something away with his foot. It skittered through the grass.
“Come on, Mr. Blue,” Blunderbuss coaxed. “You know me! We stayed up all night playing wrackjack our first night in the Briary, when Miss Important over there went to her little club meeting. I won best of a hundred and one. You had to give me your earring. You asked me what a wombat wants with a single earring and I said same thing anybody wants: to look gorgeous and dangerous at the same time!”
Saturday looked at her blankly. September knotted off the wombat’s new foot and chewed off the yarn-end with her teeth. Blunderbuss waggled her ear, shaking off a most annoying buzzing thing.
“Saturday,” whispered A-Through-L. His orange eyes swam with tears. “Oh, Saturday. We went to the Moon together. Just you and me. When she left us and there was no one else. Blue and red forever, you said. Forever.”
“I’m sorry,” Saturday whispered. “I don’t … did I go to the Moon?”
“But you remember me, don’t you?” September said without much hope.
The Marid squinted at her through the dazzling sunlight. He tugged at his shorn topknot. “Yes,” he said finally. “September. We rode a bicycle.”
“A velocipede,” September corrected, her eyes filling with tears. Something nuzzled against her calf.
“It’s the book bear,” Ell whispered. “He got bitten. At the Great Grand Library, remember? He touched The History of Fairyland and Greenwich Mean Time sicced a book bear on him. The bite has been chewing through him, through his memory and his history. It’s mixing up his continuity. Mangling his words. Eating up his narrative. His story. What’s a boy without his story? No one. In another day he won’t know his own name. We’ve got to get him to a copy editor before it’s too late.”
“Well, you won’t find one here!” a voice hissed from under the nearest bridge. “Go fall apart somewhere else! I don’t want my sequence of events unsequenced or my vowels disemvoweled or my consonants disconsolate!”
A-Through-L got down on his belly and peered through the grass under the bridge, quite terrifying the troll who worked there. A large red lizard face appearing suddenly at your office window would put anyone off their day. The troll wore a long, mulled-wine-colored magician’s cloak and a sleeping cap with gleaming symbols stitched all over it. His face was nearly all nose and moss, and his strong shoulders could have out-lifted Atlas. The troll yelped and waved his huge hands in front of his face.
“Who’s that trip-trapping on my bridge?” he tried to bellow, but his heart wasn’t in it. He hadn’t started right, and now the whole rhythm of the thing was ruined.
“Me!” cried the Wyverary. “A-Through-L, if you please. But I don’t trip-trap. I sort of boom-crush and pound-smash.”
“Very well, but please no crushing, this is a family bridge and I don’t want it pounded. My name is Hemlock and you must answer my riddle if you wish to cross my bridge!” The troll cleared his throat and spoke with elaborately trilled r’s. “Until I am measured, I cannot be known, yet how you will miss me, when I have flown!”
“But I don’t want to cross your bridge,” began Ell.
“Time!” September didn’t look back as she called Brother Tinpan’s answer over her shoulder. She touched Saturday’s face gently.
“You can’t forget,” she whispered to him. “It’s all too much to forget.”