“September,” pleaded Saturday, his blue eyes growing even wider and darker. “I have to eat. If I don’t eat, I will fall, soon, and not ever get up.”
“Oh, how rude of me!” September had forgotten her own hunger with all the excitement, but now it was back, and all the more insistent. And so, quite without thinking about it, September spent the last of her chipped rubies at a public house called the Toad and the Tabernacle, where the tables and chairs and walls were a deep-black widow’s weeds, and the milky yellow light from the silken candelabra made Saturday’s skin appear just as black as the ceiling.
“Salt,” whispered the boy regretfully. “I need salt and stone.”
“Is that what you eat?” September wrinkled her nose.
Saturday drooped in shame. “It’s what the sea eats. When I have been starved, no other food will sustain me. When I am well, I shall have goosefoot tarts and hawthorn custard with you, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings! Please, you mustn’t slump so! Besides, I’m not certain I can eat anything here. It’s all sure to be Fairy food, and I think I’ve been reasonable enough about that so far-and safe-but surely eating in a Fairy public house is right out.”
A-Through-L’s lips quirked, as if he knew a bit about both Fairies and Food, beginning as they both did with F. But he said nothing. September sat politely and drank a glass of clear water, which was not food in the least and so obviously innocent. She tried to bargain with her stomach not to growl as A-Through-L demolished three plates of radishes and a flagon of genuine Morrowmoss well-water. Saturday gnawed a slab of blue sea-stone and daintily licked a joint of salt. He offered some to her uncertainly, and she demurred politely.
“I have a delicate digestion,” she said. “I don’t think it would bear much stone.”
A platter of painted duck eggs, sweet dense bread, and marshmallow fondue passed by, hoisted on the shoulders of a waiter who might well have been a dwarf. September drank her water vigorously, trying not to look at it. And when all was done and swallowed and September was still hungry but pleased with herself for avoiding temptation, the last of the sceptre went into the toll chest of a much smaller, less splendid ferry. Without incident, its paddle wheel splashed through the other side of the Barleybroom. It took the three of them away from the soft, gleaming spires of Pandemonium and deposited them on a grassy, empty shore.
“It seems so sad to leave,” September remarked mournfully, as she stepped onto the muddy shore, “when we have only just arrived. How I wish I could get to know Pandemonium a little better!”
September tucked the green smoking jacket under the Wyverary’s bronze chain, knotting the sleeves together. The jacket mourned, crying out in silent, emerald-colored consternation. Alas, the ears of folk with legs and noses and eyebrows are not made to hearken to the weeping of those with inseams and buttonholes and lapels. Already, September could hear a kind of thunder in the distance. The Meadowflats stretched long and far around them as they walked: even, well-tempered grass, without tree or welcoming shade or the smallest white flower. If the grass were not so rich and green, she would have called it desolate.
“Remember, they are fast and tall and vicious! Many have perished or, at least, been roundly dumped off and bruised in the attempt to travel by wild bicycle.” A-Through-L fretted and stamped his great feet in the grass. The thunder grew closer.
September retied the green sash of the smoking jacket around the hilt of the Spoon. No money had remained for proper adventuring equipment, but she was her mother’s daughter, always and forever, and felt sure whatever she set her hands to would work. Once, they had spent a whole afternoon fixing Mr. Albert’s broken-up Model A so that September would not have to walk every day to school, which was several miles away. September would have been happy to watch her mother shoulder-deep in engine grease, but her mother wasn’t like that. She made September learn very well how a clutch worked, what to tighten, what to bend, and in the end, September had been so tired, but the car hummed and coughed just like a car ought to. That was what September liked best, now that her mother was not about and she had the freedom to think about her from time to time-to learn things, and her mother knew a great number of them. She never said anything was too hard or too dirty and had never once told September that she would understand when she was older. On account of all of this, September could make a very respectable knot in the sash, and the sash, being part of the jacket, dutifully tightened itself even further and prepared for what was sure to be great discomfort to come. Saturday watched it all with vivid interest but said nothing.
A long, loud horn sounded, and several answering hoots honked into the blazing day.
“They’re coming!” shouted Ell excitedly, his wings wobbling under the chains as he leapt up, his tongue lolling like a puppy’s. Really, he needn’t have said anything. The velocipede volery sent up a choking cloud of dust, and Saturday and September could see quite clearly that as soon as they heard the horns, the bicycles were nearly upon them, a great throng of old-fashioned highwheels, the wheel in front enormous, the wheel behind tiny-though tiny in this case meant somewhat larger than Saturday’s whole body. Their seats, borne loftily into the sky, were battered velvet of various motley, dappled shades, their tires spotted like hyenas, their spokes glittering in the naked meadow-flat sun.
“Hold onto me, Saturday!” yelled September. He tucked his arms around her waist, and again she was struck by how heavy he was, when he seemed so small. The horns sqwonked again, and as a great, soaring highwheel came roaring by, September threw the Spoon as hard as she could. It flew, far and true, and she clutched the end of the sash, which extended much farther than you might think, so eager was the sash to please its mistress. The Spoon tangled in the spokes of the large wheel, and up they shot into the air, the turning of the wheel pulling them forward. Saturday shut his eyes-but September did not. She laughed as she flew nearer and nearer to the broad speckled orange-and-black seat. She reached out to catch it and just caught her fingers in the copper springs beneath. Her knees banged against the tire and burned against the spinning, bloody and painful-but still, September scrambled up as best she could.
“September! I can’t!” Saturday called after her, his blue face contorted with fear and strain as he tried to hold onto her but slipped, more by each minute, until he was only barely clutching her ankle. “I’ll fall!”
September tried to raise her leg and pull him up, but she could not fight the jostling and honking of the velocipede as it angrily tried to dislodge its would-be rider. She hooked her elbow around the musky-smelling seat and reached down as far as she could, her fingers stretched to their limit, to catch him. It was not enough. He could not get hold, and he was so terribly, awfully heavy. September cried out wordlessly as the highwheel reared up, determined to dash her bones against the meadow.
Saturday fell.
He did not shriek. He just looked at September as she rushed upward, away from him, his dark eyes terribly sad and sorry.
September screamed for him, and the honking horns seemed to laugh in wild victory-at least, one child they could trample underfoot! But Ell came thumping up behind them, his powerful legs knocking weaker, younger velocipedes aside. He caught Saturday by the hair in mid-fall and tossed the Marid up as though he weighed not a thing, bumping him at the last with the tip of his nose so that September could catch his elbow and haul him onto the speckled seat beside her.