Aroostook the Model A said yes.
Or at least she erupted into sound and life and the blast of exhaust blew several lingering Winds fluttering into the sky like autumn leaves. The engine quieted into a grudging idle.
The Blue Wind, her Kaiser-hat glinting in the magenta starlight, looked down at her with a fuming frown pulling at her face.
“Tools Have Rights,” said September brightly, though her body vibrated with relief. She could hide it. She was learning to hide it. To show a different girl on the outside than the girl she was on the inside. “You can’t have him back now, she’s made her preference quite plain.”
But had she? September had known how to drive a Model A, that was all. It was nothing special. It wasn’t magic, and it wasn’t alive. She pressed on. “Now, I’m a licensed Criminal, but do you have a charter that says you can thump me one and break dear old Charlie’s new law across your knee? I don’t think you do. You seemed very attached to it a moment ago.”
The Blue Wind colored with fury. A white flush like frost forked over her face. September looked the Wind in the eye and pointed at her blazing cheeks.
“She who blushes first loses,” she said evenly. “I win and that’s the match.” September made her gaze hard and put her hands on the steering wheel. “Now get in.”
CHAPTER VI
EERYTHING YOU HAVE
In Which September Loses Her Savings but Acquires Unusual Cargo, and, at Long Last, Hits the Gas and Lights Out for Fairyland, Whereupon She Is Alarmed by a Flower, Abandoned by a Wind, and Awed by the View from the Top of the World
The Blue Wind’s mouth twisted into a sneer-but then it untwisted, and unwound, and unfolded into a secret little smile. She walked around Aroostook’s rumbling front end and climbed into the passenger seat just as a person might who expected a nice Sunday drive. September’s heart banged and guttered all around her insides. Being stern was like being underwater-she could do it, but never for long, and how her whole body burned to come up for breath!
The Blue Wind put her hand out the window and crooked a finger. In half a sigh, the Wind who’d tried to sell them the planets in his coat appeared at September’s side.
“Now, miss. Now you’ll be wanting your Way,” he said firmly, soft and clear.
He opened his coat again and the mingled light of the planets poured out its rainbows. On the other side of the coat hung little books with silvery purple papers in them-magic ration books! But surely there was no need for them any longer.
“Collectibles, miss. Vintage. But that’s not your speed at all. You came to the Way Station. You need a Way.”
“But I haven’t lost my Way-I’m only beginning! I lost it once, but that was on purpose.”
“You haven’t met your Way yet. It hasn’t so much as kissed your hand. You haven’t even knocked at the door of the hall where your Way dances. But look here, look see, I’ve got them, I’ve caught them up just for you, a big bouquet of anywhere you want to go. Just pick a bloom, my girl, hold it to your pretty nose.”
“I want to go to Fairyland.”
The Blue Wind tapped the dashboard impatiently. “She’s very stubborn on that point, brother. Dense as a foot, this one. Personally, I detest Fairyland. Something is always brewing there, some frantic task that simply must be done, some despot who cannot be borne another moment, some bauble that demands fetching. It’s exhausting! Wouldn’t you rather have a nice race across Antarctica instead? Or a Grand Tour of the Gulf Stream? We could skip stones across the North Pole. Besides, no one ever asks me to go running off on a grand adventure. No one ever says: Blue, darling, wouldn’t you like to go away to Fairyland and skate on the clouds there? One does like to be asked.”
But the squat Wind had already plucked a silvery, iridescent moon from his coat, a crescent hanging from a fine chain. Ruby starlight caught in its horns.
“Fairyland’s on special tonight, as it happens,” he purred. “So cheap my little baby typhoons in Tokyo will have to go hungry. A bargain fit for a beggar.”
“How much?” ventured September.
The Wind smiled. His woolly, frozen eyebrows waggled. “Tonight only, my Midnight, Blue-Light, You-Heard-It-Right, Close-Out deaclass="underline" All it costs is Everything You Have.”
September looked down at her jar of coins, nestled in her lap. “That’s not a proper price at all. How do you know how much I have? What if all I had was a shoelace and a spare button?”
The Wind’s smile got deeper and wider and bluer. “The point’s not what it costs; it’s what it costs you. Everything You Have. That’s my price, that’s my prize, that’s my ransom, and that’s my rune. The only price in the world that matters is the one that hurts to pay.” He let the Moon spin on its chain. “You want it; I have it. There’s no duel here. If you had a shoelace and a spare button, that’d be on the tag.”
September sighed. She had saved it all for this, she supposed, to be able to pay her way respectably. She held her jar, heavy as all the days she’d spent earning it. She was paying with Hours again, she realized, just as she had with the Goblin Glasswort Groof. The coins didn’t mean five or ten or twenty-five cents, they meant time. They meant half a day on the Powell farm or four letters for Mr. Killory or every morning getting rooster scratches on her arm just for trying to feed the Whitestone chickens.
All money is imaginary.
September lifted the jar up and handed it over.
The whispering Wind scoffed. “The rest, too, little holdout. I’m not your fool.”
September grimaced as she handed over the book of Valkyries and mistletoe and hairy god-legs and her last butterscotch. Being more or less an honest girl, she would have given him the hammer and nails as well, but when she offered them, the Wind hissed and recoiled, smelling their iron. He rose up into the air in a hurry and, turning slowly upside down, hung the Moon around her rearview mirror. It whirled and glimmered, cool and pale. But the Wind was not finished. He pulled something out of his coat-a huge, long, ornate box, perfectly white, with strange scrimshaw tangled up all over it: horns and crab claws and hearts and ears and stars and flowers and open, grasping hands. It was emphatically locked.
“What’s this?”
“I said it would cost you Everything You Have.” The Blue Wind in the passenger seat chuckled gleefully. “Take this to the Whelk of the Moon in Almanack-that’s a city. Ask anyone, they’ll point you. And no peeking.” The Wind waved his fingers at her. “You didn’t really think a jar of small change was all you had, did you? How sad.”
He closed up his coat and stepped lightly up and away, as if climbing invisible stairs. September looked at her own Blue Wind uncertainly.