A long honk broke up the caterwauling puffin songs. In the center of the flock, half bouncing on the ground and half hoisted, shoved, carried, and jostled by the birds, came Mr. Albert’s Model A Ford.
“But that’s my car!” September corrected herself, but she was quite indignant that someone else-even if they were puffins-was driving it. “I mean it’s Mr. Albert’s car! What are they doing with it? They’re going to break it to pieces, that’s what!”
“Horse thieves!” Boomer said with disgust. She brandished her hook like an ax. Beatrice growled. It sounded like the turning of gears deep in the earth.
The woman in blue sighted September. Her grin grew wider; her black eyes glittered. They barreled toward the fence. The air wriggled around the Lineman and her Cap, so hot it turned the back of September’s legs painfully red. She stood her ground.
“Girl, Ho!” the blue bandit yelled, in the manner of sailors sighting land. She saluted smartly.
September saluted back. A smile broke open on her face like a firecracker. Who could this be but the Blue Wind, a little late, but come for her at last? September forgave her immediately for her tardiness. Her heart hammered around inside her like it meant to get free.
“Wind, Ho!” she cried. Suddenly, all that talk of bandits and holding the Line seemed wholly, entirely unimportant. September laughed and waved giddily. She couldn’t help adding: “Have you come to take me to Fairyland?”
The Blue Wind cocked her head to one side and hooted. The puffins hooted back. Now they were nearly on top of her, September could see each little bird dressed in smart, shining armor of the sort you find in books about Spanish explorers. The armor was made of ice and caked in snow. Their own black feathers stuck out of their helms as plumes.
“Hadn’t planned on it,” shrugged the Blue Wind. “Fairyland’s a dreadful place. Why would you want to go there?” She laughed; her laughter rocketed into the forest, echoing and breaking apart against the trees.
Several things happened all on top of each other.
The bandits shot up into the sky: puffins, the Blue Wind, the Model A, and not a few birch trees yanked out of the ground by the fearful, shearing air.
Beatrice vaulted up to meet them, his long silver body arcing like a current, his sharp teeth glowing hot white.
Boomer dropped her hook and undid her hair. It was such a simple gesture September did not know what she was about until the whole mass of it came down and open: a net of wires sizzling with electricity, as wide and strong as the sail of a grand ship.
September cried out and she did not know who she meant to warn: the dog, the birds, Boomer, the Blue Wind? But it did not matter.
Beatrice snapped at the underbellies of the birds. They laughed chitteringly at him. He missed once, twice, three times; they could go higher than he. He fell back to the ground, his snout twitching, yelping frustration like a puppy. As soon as her hound had got clear, Boomer threw her net in the bandits’ path. September was certain they’d be cooked to death-but the Blue Wind only giggled. With a wink for September, she spun around like an ice-skater on the back of a particularly large puffin. The stream of birds narrowed and squirmed and shrunk and passed straight through the gaps in the electric net-and so did the Model A, honking tinily as it jumped.
The storm stopped abruptly. All was silent. Boomer stood stock-still, her flashing diamond fist clenched in anger around the wires of her electric hair. Beatrice howled his mournful train-whistle howl once more.
September tried to catch her breath. She looked at the Lineman. She looked at the Cap. She looked after the Blue Wind, vanished completely. A very certain thought came on in her mind. Boomer wouldn’t let her cross over. She knew it. It was her job to say no. To bar the way. Just like it was the Sibyl’s job to say yes and open the way. Just like it was her own job to record her father’s temperature and mind the pregnant Powell horse even when she bit. You do your job and you mind your work. That’s how the grown-up world gets along-and grown-up magic, too.
Before the Lineman could stop her, before Beatrice could get up on his haunches again, September clutched her jam jar to her side, darted forward, and leapt with all her might. She dove through the same gap in the net of crackling white-blue wires that had swallowed up the puffins, just wide enough for a girl. She shut her eyes at the last moment, blinded by the showers of glowing sparks and by a sudden sureness-she hadn’t jumped hard enough! The wires would catch her in a flash and turn her into smoke. Too late, too late!
September winked out of the world like a firefly.
Boomer sighed. She kicked the fence post, which shattered in terror before her great foot had a chance to touch it. The Lineman dropped the net of her hair like a curtain and promptly blinked out again. This time, Beatrice sizzled away, too, and the only thing left of any of them was a last, lingering wisp of the hound’s howl.
CHAPTER III
VISITORS OF LOW REPUTATION
In Which September Lands in a Familiar City, Argues With the Wind, Makes a Valiant Stab at Stoicism, and Faces Certain Facts About the Dissolution of Political and Economic Regimes
Of all the somersaults ever turned, only a few could be called sloppier than the head-over-heels half-flying cartwheel in which September tumbled out of the sky.
She did not have far to go. The Lineman’s net, without ceremony or dignity, dropped her onto a dry, dusty road from just enough height to let her know it was not at all happy with her. September landed on her knees; they jangled and buzzed all the way up to the top of her head. She winced, but did not make a sound. For a moment her eyes would not open, quite convinced she’d been crisped. But even when she could feel her rough trousers and the entirely unbarbecued skin of her hands, she still could not do it. What if she peeked and the world around her was not Fairyland-if it was the woods around Mr. Albert’s house or some awful abandoned, star-strewn depot on the Line?
One eye, then the other. September had to say it twice before she could get her eyelids to obey. One eye, then the other. Then see what you see and face up to it.
The sky shone neither blue nor black, day nor night, but a fiery, swirling twilight. Light blazed in scarlet, peacock, deep plum, and molten quicksilver, light so thick it seemed to drip from the air onto every surface. September knelt on a faded green-gray line etched, perhaps even sketched, into a long avenue. On either side, soft smoke-colored pillars soared up into the bright, twisted clouds. Pillars-but not pillars! Some were very tall and very rickety; some looked like cathedral towers but had no fine bricks, only clapboards and rusty nails. Some were made of lovely stone slabs, but great holes gaped in them, all the way up. And many, many had long silky ribbons tied round them and wax seals in black or white or red or gold. Tears and stains marred each of these. She could see drawings through the holes: lines, houses, funny little dragons with huge nostrils floating in carefully inked seas. They were great scrolls of ashen parchment, each crease and fold and rip tinged in ultramarine. The road, which rustled gently under her knees as she stood up, was paper as well, the lovely old thick and glossy sort of paper that only very beautiful or very important things got written on. Up at the top of the scrolls, September could see little church towers and villas and ranches and gardens. A wooly, horned sheep peered over the edge of one and bleated down; his bleat echoed fuzzily in the paper canyon. Rusted-out cupolas crowned towers here and there.