How we would like to argue with September, and tell her that in the waiting lies the pleasure! That we here in the world of sensible folk know how to wait without twisted-up bellies and tapping feet and wishing for the sun to hurry up and rise and set. That a clever person is never bored, and a bored person is never clever. But though I am sly, I am a trickster, I am even cruel-I cannot lie.
Abecedaria furrowed her crimped eyebrow-curls. “Oh, fine and fat for a Fairy! Fairies live forever! There’s no such thing as a withered old Fairy coughing up regret in her sickbed! They could speed up time all they liked and lose nothing! But the Moon was in her springtime then and teeming with folk neither Fairy nor Yeti! Harpies and Banshees and Kappa and Kitsunes and Chimeras and Hreinn and Qilin and Satyrs! Yet once Patience became a city in full swing, the Fairies down in Fairyland raced up the road to join their brothers and sisters in the sky. They say it was like a rainbow emptying out onto the Moon, so many came and so fast-and another pouring away from it, as folk fled, outrunning the terror of time run mad. Even I cannot deny the lure of having everything you want the minute you want it. And so it went. The Fairies knuckled away even the boring old minutes between falling asleep and waking up. The rest? You could only call it burglary. They didn’t toss the time off like a dress-they lost it. It bled right out of them. They grew older, faster. Oh, a night here and there wouldn’t have hurt-unless it’s your day or night and you only have so many saved up against death’s accounts! But you have no idea how easily a Fairy gets bored. They Yetied away weeks and months if that’s how long it took for the shepherdess’s suitors to grow a thick pelt ready to be sheared for the wedding day. They were so hungry never to waste time ever again that they wasted the rest of us away. Half the Moon died of old age before anyone could fix it.”
“And how was it fixed?” September asked. “Who fixed it?”
The Periwig shrugged her delicate puffball shoulders. “It was long ago and my books don’t know. There were battles, of course-savage and ferocious battles-but the Fairies only bit their paws and skipped to the end of the battle, to the end of the war. They stood over the field still fresh and laughing while the Moonfolk lay gasping and exhausted and bent over with arthritis. The loyalists had nothing to slow down time-the Queer Physickists say no one can do that. But Periwigs came to the Moon afterward, when the Fairies had disappeared and accounts had to be balanced, a mess cleaned up, judgments made, cases argued. Only the very youngest of the Harpies and Satyrs and Hreinn and their kin remained. No one would speak of it, and they pulled down the Yeti’s paw in Patience with ropes and cheering.”
“But what has Ciderskin to do with it, if all is well now?”
A-Through-L spoke this time, his dear, round nostrils flaring. “Ciderskin wants to be King of the Moon, September. He wants us all to clear off on the double and leave him to be alone in the cold and the snow. After all, the Yetis shrunk up and grew old, too. I have seen a painting in the Inconstant Museum of a city filled with ancient Yetis all bending down to die before their own paw. And all because one of them, just once, was caught! The paw disappeared and the Moonfolk agreed between themselves not to look for it which I think shows nobleness, don’t you? But I suppose someone could find it and use it. But really, Ciderskin just hates us and he shakes the Moon to shake us off. All he wants is to crouch up on top of the Splendid Dress and munch on the stones and lord over nothing. And he can do it, too! He is letting himself be seen! In the city of Mochi over the sea, the Harpies say he drove a pair of bone shears as tall as a tower into a meadow that hadn’t done a thing to him, all the way up to the handles. The Moon quaked and cracked for a week! He is so much faster than we are, September. And he has his paws! At any time he, and not us, could spool up time like thread again and leave us all with our whole lives leaking away. People have already started to leave. You don’t know, you haven’t seen the Moon when it’s full! Almanack is half empty; only grasshoppers live in Tithonus, all but a few prospectors and ballerinas have fled Sepharial now. But what if he shakes the Moon all to pieces? The shards will come raining down on Fairyland and a fat lot of good leaving will have done.”
“We are safe in the shell,” whispered Abecedaria. “But with the Sapphire Stethoscope, he could hear anyone, anywhere on the Moon. Even our dreams. We couldn’t hide or plan; he’d know in a moment what might scare us the most. I don’t know what sort of vicious, biting wind would have sent it here-here, where he could just snatch it away at any time! But you cannot keep it here; it’s out of the question.”
A-Through-L rocked from one ruby foot to the other. “You’ve no idea how many strange objects the Moon keeps tucked away. It’s like a bank vault up here, only folk stick their spare magic up here for safekeeping and interest-earning. Such a mess. I do wish they’d cleaned up after themselves when they went.”
“Who?” wondered September.
“September, who else? The Fairies. Who else would even want a glittery blue thing that let you hear every whisper? A Wyvern prefers his privacy! Ciderskin went scaring up whatever he could find a little ways ago. He’s got a great shaggy dog that goes about with him, a dog who can find anything. He dug up those bone shears out of a cave under the Sea of One Fish-and when One Fish tried to tell him to mind his own, the dog bit her tail and lassoed her round his head three times. He tossed One Fish like a ball halfway down to Fairyland. It took poor One a month to swim back upstream, bleeding moonstones all the way.”
“He means to do something dreadful, mark me,” said the Periwig. “Once he’s got all the bits of Fairy junk he wants.”
“Then all anyone has to do is keep him from finding any more, surely…” said September.
“You be our guest and try, little lady,” sighed Abecedaria. “A Yeti’s mind is made of water-runs so fast and so deep no one can follow it, let alone splash around and have a look at the bottom. But that’s all appendices and introductions-the body of the work is I won’t take your filthy spying Stethoscope when the Yeti wants it. I won’t let him wear me on his nasty ice-liced head, no ma’am!”
“I daresay your Library would last longer than I would against a Yeti.”
September’s heart lay down and rolled over and growled at itself. It found her bones and worried them. She wanted only to run off with A-Through-L and swim in the scarlet sea and gaze up at the stars. This wasn’t her Moon. She wanted to get into Aroostook and drive right back down to Fairyland where at least she felt as though she knew something about anything at all. She wanted to eat pumpkin pie in the Autumn Provinces again. She wanted to skip to the easy part, the part that sparkled and sang. She didn’t want to be a Fairy Knight or a Fairy Bishop. She just wanted to be a Fairy and live only in the moments she liked best. But the other part of her wanted to go tromping after a Moon-Yeti and give him what for. To save the strange and beautiful Moon from shaking apart and crashing down to Fairyland. To stand up to Ciderskin and stare him in the eyes the way she had the Marquess and her shadow. That is the trouble with standing up to people, of course. Once you start doing it, you can hardly stop.
If a wig can narrow its eyes, the Periwig did. Her black rosettes squinted shut; the white mustaches of her mouth pursed. September looked down at her black silks. Everyone saw her as a Criminal. They did it because of how she looked. But that was the whole purpose of clothes, she supposed. Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day. Even folk who wore plain overalls every day and didn’t comb their hair and knew more about cattle breeds than fashion were telling a story: I am a person who doesn’t know or care about fashion because those aren’t things worth knowing or caring about. September had not chosen this story. She had not even chosen her clothes-but hadn’t she? She could have kicked and screamed and refused to put them on. She could have spit in the face of the Blue Wind-and probably the Blue Wind would have liked it! But even if she hadn’t chosen it then, she could choose it now, if the choosing was the important thing. September felt very much that it was.