She reached down to flick something off her ankle—an ant or a moth or a bit of dandelion fluff. Spring was coming in Fairyland. It had gotten almost too hot for a jacket, smoking or otherwise. But the little creature crawling up her leg was not an ant or a moth or a bit of dandelion fluff. It was a tintype letter S, and it was snuggling up against her and purring contentedly.
Hemlock sighed, wholly unaware that a little block of tin with a raised letter S carved on it in a rather Gothic style was trying desperately to make friends with September. “Tourists are getting too clever,” the troll groaned. “I remember the days when a top-shelf conundrum like that would get you written up in the folktales. Now everyone’s heard your best before you get out of bed in the morning. My brother Monkshood got so fed up with losing the game he’s started asking for state capitals. My wife says we oughta switch over to differential equations. But I’m a classicist, me. I’ll still be singing the golden oldies when the worms are trip-trapping over my head. I like it when the answer is Time. It always is, anyway.” The troll rubbed his boulderlike nose with one mossy wrist. “That was the riddle I asked the day I lost my son. I ask it once a day so he knows I still love him, even though everyone knows the answer. I’m a weepy old billy goat when you come down to it. That’s the trouble with being a troll. You can’t forget any ruddy thing, any more than a rock can forget its own hardness.”
The tintype letter S hopped up onto September’s hand like a parakeet. It danced a happy tinny dance. Its fellows, seeing S had got an in with the long-haired lady, came bouncing through the grass on the corners of their blocks: a wooden letter T, a bronze B, a silver F, a stone Z, and a gleaming golden E.
“You’ve got an infestation,” Blunderbuss said.
“What’s wrong with them? What are they?” September chewed on her lip. You oughtn’t show your fear when strange beasts come round. The letters Y, K, and V rolled up her arms under her hair. I shan’t be afraid of a bunch of letters! A Queen wouldn’t be afraid of anything—oh, but if that’s the size of it I shan’t ever be Queen. But a great lot of letters are just words, and I like words. The bigger and longer the better. H, C, and M clattered into her lap.
Hemlock chuckled. “They’re an alphabet! They run wild round these parts, always have. Some grow enormous, up in the higher elevations. Ideograms and hieroglyphics as tall as a horse’s shoulder. But here in Skaldtown we mostly get the wee ones. Italics and umlauts and the like. Aren’t they precious? I found a little nest of Cyrillics in my rafters last week. Tufa, that’s one of the three Primeval Trolls, hunted one down in the beginning of the world and taught it to turn into language. Nowadays they don’t need to be taught—though you get more slang than proper sentence structure. Huh. It likes you. That’s funny. I’ve only ever seen alphabets cuddle up to trolls before. Little traitors,” he added fondly. He narrowed his eyes. “What did you do? Did you use a big word or a lot of subclauses in your sentences?”
“Velocipede.” September shrugged. “I don’t think that’s such a big word.”
Suddenly, all the sound in Skaldtown snuffed out. September couldn’t hear A-Through-L listing off his best words or Hemlock applauding, nor Blunderbuss snuffling at her crocheted foot, nor Saturday asking if someone couldn’t please tell him what a velocipede was. It was on the tip of his tongue, only he felt so tired.
No, all September could see now was Ajax Oddson, the Dandy made of racing silks, floating in front of her.
“The Cantankerous Derby cordially requests the presence of September at a duel currently in progress! Get your judging wig on, my gallant girl, my shrew of shrewdness! It’s time for…”
And September saw a glittering purple ocean spread out before her, lying over the grassy hills and stone bridges of Skaldtown like a movie projection. A glorious galleon at full sail sliced through the surf toward a sun-colored Roc named Wenceslas. Above them all, green fireworks shot into the air, exploding into the words:
&nbs
p; A Duel Delights Forever!
Beneath the flickering image, September could see her friends leap up and call her name frantically—but their lips moved without a sound.
“I’m all right!” she yelled back, hoping that they could hear her. “I’ve got to judge a duel! Maybe it’ll be quick…”
Ajax’s voice rang all round her head like broken church bell. He sounded so excited, September had to laugh. He really loves all this, she thought. This is the best day of his life.
“Today our swashbuckling scrappers are hashing it out on the Perverse and Perilous Sea! On the giant red bird we have Charles Crunchcrab the First! Looking resplendent on the Coblynow flagship, the H.M.S. Chimbley’s Revenge, meet the Changeling Squad of Hawthorn and Tamburlaine! Oh, but I do think you’ve already met!”
September waved joyfully at Hawthorn and Tam. She could see them quite clearly if she turned toward their ship, as though she’d stood on the rail herself. They leapt about on the deck of the Chimbley’s Revenge, wearing Cutty Soames’s fabulously feathered tricorns and his best rapiers. Scratch danced out behind them, wearing his pirate’s hat jauntily askew on his gramophone bell.
“I thought you left him behind!” called September.
Tamburlaine laughed and wound his crank. Scratch sang out in the voice of the siren who sang the greens back at the Briary:
Can’t keep a good devil down, sweetheart
Can’t keep a good devil down!
The more you try to make him frown
Clip his wings and take his crown
He’ll roar right back and paint the town
No, you can’t keep a good devil down, my love
You can’t keep a good devil down!
“He stowed away, the rascal!” Hawthorn cried. He looked happier than September had ever seen him, his cheeks whipped red by the wind, his hair tangled and mussed, his eyes glistening and giddy. “We’ve been doing fantastically, how about you? We beat Piebald and the Knight Quotidian—he was dreadful, you’d never believe it. The soul of a scrub-brush and the mind of a to-do list!”
“Well, you won’t beat me, you little turncoats,” groused Charlie Crunchcrab.
The old ferryman wore his old thick goggles and his wild thick hair billowed over his barnacled ram’s horns. He still wore his name tag. Hawthorn’s own handwriting, reading Charles Q. Crunchcrab. The former King of Fairyland glowered at her from the back of his Roc, clearly airsick and homesick and competition-sick, which Ajax would call a terminal illness. “You were meant to work for me! My personal spies—and now you dare aim those cannons at your King?”