September burst forth. “You were supposed to come and get me! You were supposed to bring me to Fairyland in the spring! Or if not you one of the others! The Green Wind promised-he promised I’d go back every year and you didn’t come and now you’re just snapping like an old dog. You don’t seem like a Wind at all, in fact! Where is your cat? Shouldn’t you like stealing folks away? You certainly seem to like stealing everything else!”
The Blue Wind put her hands on her lilac hips. Her voice tightened into a squall.
“Listen, you spoiled, wretched gust of a girl,” she snarled, “I am not public transportation! Haven’t you become the jaded little tart! Accustomed to getting what you want and wanting what you’ve gotten accustomed to.” The Wind puffed out her cheeks like a cherub and calmed herself down. She looked out over the boardwalk as if she had much better things to do and to drink. “Expectations are so very dangerous to young humans. I wouldn’t give my worst hat for the way my siblings manage their affairs. I don’t even attend the reunions. I go my own way-and don’t they punish me for it! They took my Snow Leopard away over that nonsense in Tunisia, if you must roll out my embarrassment first thing. Hypocrites, the lot of them. As if they’ve never turned the world the wrong way round just to see it fly! But I never let it get to me. I keep my head high! My puffins are quite the equal of their snobby old tabbies. The Puffins of Sudden Blizzards, my little army. Winter needs her knights, after all.” The Blue Wind saluted the stalwart fellow on her shoulder. He saluted back with the tip of his poleax. “No, I do not think I would like to steal you away to Fairyland. I thought about it for a good long while, all through the summer. I watched you scuttle around boringly and put my brain on it and I think I just don’t like you very much. Fairyland has spoiled you rotten. I suppose you think you’re owed the trip! The cheek! It’s time for you to be a sensible, gracious girl, get good marks, and stop mucking about with Fairylands of any stripe. Learn a trade, hit the road, close the case.”
September opened her mouth to protest, panic rising up through her legs and stomach like a stormcloud. What a cruel Wind this was! She did not like her manner at all. September had never thought she was owed anything-but hadn’t she? Hadn’t she felt angry when May passed and the whole summer, too, and nothing, not even a whisper? Hadn’t she felt, well, betrayed? But who had ever promised September anything? You can only feel betrayed when you have a right to something. Chagrin seeped up through September’s toes and all the way to her cheeks.
The Blue Wind barked laughter. She reached down swiftly and gave September’s cheek the tiniest of slaps. It struck her like a cold word. September stared, dumbfounded, her mouth hanging open.
“She who blushes first loses!” the Wind crowed. “I win and that’s the match!”
September lifted her hand to her face. She had been struck only once before. One of the older girls in school, whose name was Martha May and who had the thickest, brightest, prettiest red hair anywhere, had walked up to her at lunchtime one day and slapped her. It wasn’t a hard slap; at the last moment Martha May shut her eyes and didn’t land it quite right. Her fingers brushed September’s cheek and her ear. But it stung all the same. Martha’s friends had dared her; through her tears and hammering heart September could see them laughing under their hands, which is how folk laugh when they know they oughtn’t be laughing. Martha May had stood there for a moment, looking really rather sorry and not at all sure why she’d done it, in the end. But then she laughed and ran off back to her pack, her red curls awfully bright in the sun.
September would not cry this time. She would not.
The Blue Wind hooted triumph once more, throwing her Kaiser-hat up into the air and catching it. As she worked herself up, all around them, whirlwinds and flurries worked themselves up as well, spitting and wheeling and scattering apart. September’s dark brown hair and the Wind’s purply blue hair streamed out around them as though they were underwater. The wind screeched through the holes in the high, rickety towers. September knew that sound! Suddenly she forgot all about her burning cheek.
“Wait!” she cried. “Are we in Westerly?”
The Blue Wind stopped short like an unplugged radio. All her gusts died in a moment. She crouched down, balancing on her blue leather toes, tented her fingers, and looked up curiously at September.
“Where else would a Wind call home? Well, not Westerly proper, you know. Not Westerly the Big Fat Club of Rottens That Won’t Let You in for No Reason at All. This is the suburbs, girl. The hinterlands. Where the criminals and the carnivals and the concatenating counterfeiters of no morals to speak of make a home. Mercator’s off the tourist track. It’s where you come if you can’t go through official channels. If you need to trade or buy or sell or rent or smuggle or feed something you oughtn’t. It’s the underground. That’s what suburb means, you know. Under the city. It’s Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it. This is the Blue Market, where you turn up when the world tells you no.”
September turned to look down the book-boardwalk into the murky, twilight town. Folk moved down the streets, but she could not see their faces in the gloam.
“Perhaps you ought to give me directions to Westerly, then. I… I met Latitude and Longitude once. They might remember me. I still know all the puzzle pieces to go from one world to another. I think I could get them to open up again and take me through the official way. I shouldn’t like to go sneaking through the back door when I could present myself nicely at the front.”
The Blue Wind opened her mouth and closed it again. Her great dark eyes danced with amusement. She patted September’s hair. “Oh, my wintry waif, don’t you know what happens when the government totters? Or, in this case, gets dropped soundly on its head by a certain spoiled traipsing tourist. Out goes organization and in comes skewered-if-you-do, roasted-if-you-don’t, in comes smuggling, bribery, graft, skimming, back alley deals, and might-as-well-do-it-all-while-no-one’s-looking. A whole fabulous bouquet of ways and means! It’s so sweet that you think Latitude and Longitude look anything like they did when you went ingenue-ing about years back! I think they’ve retired to Paraguay. Now it’s Line-jumping and squeezing through by the teeth of your skin and don’t forget to bribe the door on the way out.”
September felt a chill. “But there is a government! Charlie Crunchcrab is King-it even says so on the sign.”
“Oh, the Old Crab is doing his best to pinch it all back into shape. Nice and Imperial, he says, Just Like the Old Days. But”-the Blue Wind spread her hands and shrugged-“what does a bandit care for a King’s little hobbies? Now, if you’re entirely finished, I’ve got goods on the barrel and you’ve quite ceased to be interesting.”
“Goods! You mean Mr. Albert’s car! You can’t just go selling it. It isn’t yours!”
“I suppose you think it’s yours? Or this Mr. Albert, who sounds even more insufferable than you?”
“Well, yes, of course, it’s Mr. Albert’s!”
“Don’t you ‘of course’ me, my blueberry-brat! You’re wrong three times over!” The Blue Wind ticked her fingers off one by one. “It’s not yours and it’s not Mr. Albert’s and it’s not mine, either!” She held up her hand. “It’s a Tool and Tools Have Rights. I’ll split the proceeds with the-it’s a car, is it? Measly word-fair and square, and we’ll have a good sit-down between us and decide which buyer the beast likes best.”