“I think I shall have to go and see the Yeti,” she said with as much loudness as she could muster. It was also important to announce your intentions at top volume, she thought, or your intentions will think you are ashamed of them. “I am a Professional Revolutionary, after all.”
“I rather think you’re a shirker of high degree, September,” the Periwig said archly. “If I read your silks right, and I always do, for I have read every volume on heraldry and royal codes in my catalogue, you are a Criminal.”
“I like Professional Revolutionary better. After all, if a Revolution comes off, it’s not a crime.”
The Periwig leaned close in. She smelled like lavender and talcum powder. “I see! Your cap has the anarchical charcoal-on-pitch chevron pattern. As clear as yelling.”
Ell fretted, rocking from claw to claw. “It won’t be like before, September! The Marquess was at least roughly your size…”
But Abecedaria would not let him finish. “Ciderskin wants to be King of a Lonely Moon and he oughtn’t! You’re quite right! It is your job to go and…well, I expect you know your work better than I do. Array the instruments of your craft and, well, craft it. He lives on the inner edge of the Moon. I can tell you the quickest path over the mountains, though it will make me an accessory. I suppose I’ll risk it. A Librarian must be stalwart and bold; she must give information when it is asked for!”
“Well then,” said September with what she hoped was devil-may-care cheer, “can’t you tell me how a girl roughly my size would go about meddling with a Yeti?”
The Periwig wriggled all over, her bluish-white curls fattening and shrinking, unplaiting and plaiting up again. After a moment, September understood this to be how a Periwig performs the sort of frowning humans do when they are thinking very hard.
“I suppose you’ll have to find that old Yeti’s paw,” she sighed, spooling up her locks tight and firm. “You could never hope to catch him otherwise. It’d be like a duckling racing a champion dodo.”
“You said it was lost! And big enough to get pulled down with ropes, which means far too big to carry. And I’m not sure I feel quite right about using a nasty mummified paw against the very sort of beast the Fairies stole it from. If you defeat an opponent, that’s one thing, but if you beat him about the head with his grandfather’s cut-off hand, that’s just cruel!”
“It is lost, it is-if it weren’t I expect we’d know it by how old we got before teatime.” The Periwig’s ribbons twisted and untwisted. “As for the bigness of it, I’m sure you’d only need a thumbnail or some such-too much and you’ll go speeding through time right with him. But none of my books have an opinion as to where it wound up, which is unusual, since books have opinions on everything.”
September noticed that the Librarian ignored the question of cruelty against Yetis.
A-Through-L smiled a toothy smile, his orange eyes glittering. “Orrery, Abby! She has to go to Orrery! And I shall take her!”
The Periwig shook her puffy poms. “What a brilliant beast I hired! I am terribly impressed with my past self. She was naive about the relationship between Wyverns and fire, but what a lovely present she has made our present!”
The Wyverary practically danced with the joy of explaining a thing to September, for explaining things was what he liked best after alphabetizing, and September knew so little she always needed explaining.
“Orrery is the city on the slopes of the Splendid Dress, which is a frightful big and lovely mountain. The Glasshobs built it to keep an eye on the stars, who have a tendency to run off on adventures and forget about how much we down-below folks need to navigate and cast horoscopes and meet lovers on balconies. A Glasshob is a kind of lantern fish with goat-legs, and they carry their breathing parts in silver censers that swing from their fins. And they weep glass! It just comes pouring hot and orange and molten out of their eyes. How sad they must have been to make Orrery! It’s a city all of lenses, September! Telescopes and oikeoscopes and microscopes and kinetoscopes and chromoscopes and cameras and spectacles and detectives’ glasses and binoculars and mirrors! You can turn the shingle of a roof and see Pandemonium through it. And it’s near the Tipping Edge, where the outside of the Moon turns into the inside. Of course, the Splendid Dress blocks the way, but I can fly us over it. We’ll spy out the paw in Orrery. I just know it.”
September thought of Almanack and its enormous love for the city inside it. She thought of Ballast Downbound sailing up and down the road patching up wrecks because she heard their ruin in her heart. She thought of the strange Blue Wind with his coat of planets grinning darkly at her. Everything you have. You do your job and you mind your work.
September stood up and wiped her hands on her black trousers. “Well, what is the good of being a Criminal and a Revolutionary if you don’t set off to do ridiculous things nobody in their right mind would dream of? Come on, self, what did we long for all those rainy days if not to jump over the Moon like the cow in the song and cross paths with a Yeti? I’m sure I couldn’t fight him any more than a ladybug could fight me, but you can’t say it’s not an adventure, not for a moment! We’ll find that paw and maybe I won’t have to crack skulls together with him like a couple of gentlemen deer in the springtime.”
“Bully for us, every one,” said the Periwig dryly.
It was her Moon. It was her Moon because Ell lived there and because it was Fairyland’s Moon. Because if she had a shell to comfort and protect things she loved, they would be inside it, tucked in tight. I suppose, she thought, running back down to Fairyland for pie would be as selfish as the Blue Wind said I am. Well, I shan’t let her be right about anything if I can help it.
September took up the Sapphire Stethoscope, folded its tubes and earpieces together, and tucked it back into the ivory casket. She shut the lid; it locked loudly in the great round Library.
“I do think this falls under Guarding the Library from Night-Marauders, which is in my contract,” A-Through-L said, by way of asking Abecedaria’s leave. The Periwig shook her fuzzy head. Finally she whispered:
“Child, we are dying because of him. The Moon is dying. What can we do? A paw is only a Tool in the end. Whoever it belonged to is long gone. I shall make you a bargain. I shall feel guilty on your behalf. I shall feel wretched in the extreme. After all, it was I who told you about it. That way you can ply your trade with an easy heart. Leave it to the professionals, that’s best. I certainly prefer to be left alone at my work.”
September nodded, but it did not soothe the prickling of wrongness in her breast. She looked up at Ell, her heart stretching to hold the whole sight of him.
“We’ll have to go and collect my car before we leave,” she said finally, because it seemed the sensible and grown-up thing to say. But after a moment, she added, “It’s us again, Ell, you and I off to do something very unlikely.”