A-Through-L groaned in sorrow. “Oh, A is for apology and F is for forgiveness and I hope that you’ll take the one and give the other, for I am as sorry a beast as ever flew! You know me, September, as well as anyone who ever walked on toes instead of claws. I never use my fire unless I mean to! At least I never did! Why, before a year ago I could count on one foot the things I’d scorched. See, I’ll fess up to all of them: a certain real estate office, a flock of gillybirds when I was very hungry, a bonfire at Midautumn, and On the Criminology of Fairies by Quentin Q. Quince, Volumes II-IX. I only meant to burn up three of those and they did ask me to do the bonfire and I’m very sorry about Mr. Quince. I am not a vicious beast! It is only that I cannot help it! Lately, when I am excited or frightened or feeling things very strongly it just comes bellowing out. I try to keep it in, I swallow snow by the drift and gargle salt water and eat plenty of greens, but it’s always there, just waiting to come out, and I am so awfully, terribly sorry that I hurt our poor lanterns and damaged property and gave September a nasty shock, I’m sure! If you both hate me for it, I shall understand, but you mustn’t hate beasts for things they can’t help. I do wish books weren’t so burn-up-able! But we must all live with our weaknesses.” A single orange tear dropped from Ell’s eye.
“The Quince was practically his first act as Assistant Librarian,” sighed Abecedaria. “All my patrons run away and gone, in a spectacular display of Wyvern!”
“I shall wear a muzzle if I have to,” Ell said miserably. “And turn my face to one side.”
“Oh, you big stove, don’t take it so hard. What would I do without you? I’m getting on in years, I can’t even reach the romances anymore.” The Periwig patted Ell’s ruddy flank. “There, there,” she crooned. “That’s what curses are for. You’ll get the better of it, I just know it. And then you’ll be ready for a circulation of your own.”
September gasped herself. “You’ve cursed Ell?” She was ready to stand for her friend right there and call the imp a dozen kinds of rotten, nasty, no-good tyrant.
“Yes, I did, young lady, and I’ll thank you not to judge until he turns your house into a purple fireworks display and explodes every book you could call your own!”
September turned to look at Ell, who clearly wished he could pull up the whole Lopsided Library over his head and disappear.
“It’s a Pedagogickal Curse,” Abecedaria said defensively. “Simple Severe Magic. All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory. A Library at its ripping, roaring best is a raucous beast to ride. When he learns his lesson it’ll snap like fingers. Every time he fires off like that, he shrinks. It doesn’t hurt him and I daresay he’s got a ways to go before it makes a difference in his lunch portions. No use whining; it can’t be undone till you undo it.”
“Oh, poor Ell!” September threw up her arms and the Wyverary lowered his long red snout so that she could hold him as best she might. He was so much bigger than her that it always felt like hugging a building; she did it all the same. His warm skin smelled just as it always had, was just as leathery and dry as she remembered. But it was not the same-not quite. Her arms had never been able to reach quite so far around his neck before. But she would not shame the Wyverary by blurting out how much smaller he had gotten.
“Fire begins with F,” he wept, “and so does Flame. Perhaps it’s hopeless, in the end.”
“Nothing’s hopeless! After all, I’ve found you on the Moon-I can’t think of anything more unlikely in the world and yet here we are!” September gave him her warmest smile.
“Oh, but it’s not so unlikely!” cried Ell excitedly, his curse forgotten in his eagerness. “September, you only left a few months ago! You left us dancing with the shadows, and that went on for a good while. I had quite a lot to say to my shadow, it turned out! And so did everyone else! It took so long King Crunchcrab called a national holiday so the whole business could get a proper hash out. I had breakfast with the other Ell every morning. Radish tart and goblin quiche! But then Belinda Cabbage sent for me-or rather her Automated Elecktro-Whiskered Apprentice did. That’s a sort of mechanickal meerkat fueled by worry. The more you fret about a thing, the harder they work to fix up the trouble! Miss Cabbage built a whole mob of them and they all came running when she popped up in Fairyland-Above again. So many anxious folk milling about! Well, that little bronze meerkat flashed and squeaked and trilled and rolled back and forth on her tiny wheels and then spat out a little curl of paper that said Miss Cabbage and some creature called Avogadra had done some Questing Mathematickals and that when you came home-I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say home; I mean to say when you came back-you’d land on the Moon or thereabouts. And here you are! Mathematicks are wonderful things, even if they begin with M.”
“I don’t think I shall ever understand how time manages its affairs in Fairyland,” said September, shaking her head. “For me a whole year has gone by, and a little more besides. But…you keep saying I,” September said softly. “Where is Saturday? Did he come with you to meet me? I left you together.”
Ell put his scarlet head on one side. “Haven’t you seen him yet?”
“No!”
The Periwig interrupted them. “I’m sure it’s all deeply mysterious but I’ve got soot to scrub and you’ve got a box under your arm so let’s have at one or the other of them, shall we?”
September wanted to talk about Saturday. She wanted to ignore everything but Ell. She wanted to snap at Abecedaria and tell her to leave them alone already. September took a deep breath, pushing her temper down like purple fire. Give over the box and no more demands on her but to sit with her friend and talk about everything, everything that had passed since they’d seen each other.
“A Blue Wind asked me to bring this to the Whelk of the Moon, but the Whelk couldn’t get it open, so I’m to bring it to you for lock-picking or smashing or however you can manage it.” With a sigh of relief, September put the long ivory casket into two long, sturdy locks of the Periwig’s hair that had shaped themselves into puffy, tightly curled hands.
“Ell, my love, fetch us The Manual of Safe-Cracking and Assorted Mechanickal Naughtiness. Spring Edition.”
A-Through-L rose up, flapping his long, bright wings. He glided toward the nearly empty side of the Library.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said September, “you’ve got so much room on the one side, why have you packed everything in so close on the other?”
The Periwig turned the black rosettes of her eyes to heaven and the Wyverary. “That’s why it’s the Lopsided Library. The books, you know, they have opinions. Factions. Pitched battles. Right now, the Fictionals have the advantage-they’re the flashy ones, after all, and whatever they say in their pages goes, even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense and rhymes besides. Non-Fiction has to abide by the rules of what really is, and that is just exhausting. In retaliation, the Nons are gussying up with fanciful notions and fabricated histories written by the conquerors and grandstanding about with metaphors and parables and other unsavories. So they’ve got to be stacked with the Fiction, nothing to be done. They dash over to attend parties and be seen with the right popular novels. Give it a week and Non-Fiction will be on the up again. The Fictionals will fall all over one another to expunge their pretty prose and their tall tales and their impossible Physicks and elegant motifs. It’ll be a race to the realistic, mark my words. A dance to the dreary if you ask me, but you haven’t. Then it’ll lurch to the other side and at least we’ll have a chance to dust the shelves before they go hurtling back because a social history of changelings tried on a sonnet for size. You’d have to be a champion racer to outrun literary fashion.”