Ell returned, holding the volume gingerly in his claws. The Periwig began turning the pages furiously, chasing notations with her black velvet ribbons, marking her place with a fuzzy, powdery curl.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. It echoed in the Library. “Now just a minute! It’s no trouble at all. I should have guessed when you said a Blue Wind. Come on, Ell, get your eyeball up to the lock. You have to show it something blue and speak very sternly to it. Poor Almanack couldn’t stern a minnow.”
A-Through-L put his huge orange eye to the lock. He stared it down for several minutes, never blinking once. Finally, a great turquoise tear welled up in his eye and fell with a splash to the floor of the Library. He stood up and looked expectantly at Abecedaria-but September took a deep breath and stepped up to the lock herself. She squared her shoulders and frowned as deeply as she could. She had put on her sternness once today already, it ought to be warmed up and ready. September glared at the lock and hollered, “You open up RIGHT THIS INSTANT or I shall call your mother!”
The box popped open in a hurry.
Inside lay a stethoscope.
It gleamed blue, naturally. The stethoscope had a certain burliness to it: thick, strong rods and a tube like an elephant’s trunk-and all of sapphire. The cup would have engulfed September’s head. It seemed made for someone Ell’s size, or whatever creature could dwarf a Wyvern. Almanack itself, perhaps.
Abecedaria hissed and drew away.
“The Sapphire Stethoscope! No, no, I won’t take it! It’s yours, you brought it here, it’s none of my business!”
Sterness melted and flew away from September’s face like snowflakes after you’ve rushed inside out of the cold. “What are you talking about? The Whelk told me to bring it to you! I’m finished with it, my duty is discharged, and I mean to have a jolly time with my friend, thank you very much!”
“No! Take it! Take it back and hide it, please! I’m too little. He’ll crush me and braid me till I break. You’ve seen the Library, September. We can’t stand up to Ciderskin; we just can’t. The ceiling barely stays on as it is!”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that name!” exclaimed September. “Who is Ciderskin?”
CHAPTER X
THE YETI’S PAW
In Which September Learns of the Foibles of Fairies, Shirks Her Work (but Only Briefly), and a Very Speedy Yeti Makes Trouble for Everyone
Abecedaria the Periwig drew herself up to her full height-which was not much higher than September’s hip. Her curls glossed up and shaped themselves into a very proud new face with shapely powdered horsehair cheeks. The Periwig was about to give a recitation.
“Ciderskin is the fastest Yeti on the Moon. Now, if you knew anything about Yetis, you would be very impressed. Yetis are so fast you almost never see one, only his footprints in the snow, and even the mightiest photograph can only catch a vague blur as they whizz by. They are even born fast! A Yeti grows from a little furry snowball to a shaggy monster with black ram’s horns and burning red eyes and hands that could crush wine out of boulders quicker than you can say, does that avalanche have teeth? They love the winter and they love the snow; they love the mountains and they love to eat-and all the things that go with eating: squashing and walloping and tearing and ripping and crunching and gnawing. They were here before the Fairies came-but so were many folk less inclined toward stomping on the ground just to see it flinch. In those long ago days when the Fairies built the road and danced on the Moon in their cackling thousands, they sought to learn the secret of fastness from the Yetis. Perhaps you know that about Fairies and perhaps you don’t-they were always on the lookout for the best of everyone else to take and use for themselves.”
September remembered what Charlie Crunchcrab himself had once said to her: Fairies started out as frogs. Amphibianderous, right? Well, being frogs was no kind of fun, so we went about and stole better bits-wings from dragonflies and faces from people and hearts from birds and horns from various goats and antelope-ish things and souls from ifrits and tails from cows and we evolved, over a million million minutes, just like you.
“I thought everyone wanted the Fairies to come back!” she said. September certainly did. But the lobster and the jackals seemed to have no use for them at all.
The Periwig snorted. Two delicate clouds of powder blossomed from her curly nose. “Oh, life then was a whirlwind of magic and a kettle of fun-if you were a Fairy. It’s clear a Yeti is not a Fairy, I think you’ll agree. They hunted the wild beasts through the Silver Mallet Mountains and up the dizzying slopes of the Splendid Dress, whose frozen peak you can see from outside the shell, up the trunk of the Tallest Tree, a palm that stretches so high a comet once spent three days’ vacation on its fronds, sucking the blue coconuts dry. But you cannot catch a Yeti. You can only be where she is going to be or where she has been. Finally, a Fairy’s jungle trap clapped shut on a Yeti’s paw-by chance, mere chance and bad luck. Bellowing in rage and pain, the poor hulk chewed it off at the wrist and dashed away, dripping Yeti blood across the snow. You can still see them: a row of round black ponds leading into the lunar wilds. Well, that was the end of it, for the Fairies found that a Yeti’s fastness lay in his paw. They used it so much they couldn’t stop using it-who wants to wait for the pot to boil or Spring to come or for parted lovers to be joined or for a spell to brew or a plan you’ve hatched to come ripe? They built a city called Patience around the Yeti’s paw, because a Fairy’s humor is as subtle as a bullwhip. In Patience, they sped everything up so that they never had to wait. Tea was always on the second you were thirsty, Fairy tricks were schemed in one breath and played the next, festivals were always happening the moment after someone thought up the idea. You never had to pine or yearn, if you fell in love with a selkie down in Fairyland, why, he’d be at your side in a flutter of your wings. You could defeat boredom for all and for good-just skip to the part where a Fairy and her pack have ganged up upon an unsuspecting shepherdess and turned her sheep into suitors! Why should a young Fairy wait around to grow up while everyone lectures her and gets supper first and makes her go to bed at dawn when she is sleepy at eight o’clock and wants her bed? She can bite the paw and be a wicked Fairy adventuress with strength in her toes before she gets done wiping the taste of Yeti out of her mouth. A Fairy could touch milk and curdle it, touch beer and spoil it, touch wine and make it vinegar. And they did it, for delight and for flummoxing dairy maids and for the peculiar relish of spoiling and breaking and knocking things apart.”
September looked at Ell, his wonderful red presence beside her, listening loudly-for a Wyvern breathes noisily, having so much breath to huff. She thought the Fairies had it right. She would have given anything for a Yeti’s paw back home. To somehow fold up the year and skip the part that lay between her and Fairyland, rub it out with her pencil’s eraser so that she didn’t have to sit through it, full of longing, while it took its dawdling time going by. Show September a paw in the middle of Omaha to bite and she would be there, bright and early, with her teeth brushed.