September sputtered. “You can’t have a sit-down with a car! It’s not a Fairyland car with a story and sorrows and sugar on top-it’s just a car. From my world. It doesn’t even work very well. It can’t talk and it can’t spend money and it certainly doesn’t have rights!”
The Blue Wind whistled. She stood up, spreading her satin-gloved hands, washing them of all things September. “Well, I’m sure you’re right and I’m wrong and there’s absolutely nothing you don’t know about anything.”
The puffin on her shoulder shook his head disdainfully at September. The Blue Wind turned sharply and marched off down the boardwalk of book spines and into the crowd of Mercator. The scarlet light of the sky caught the silver thread in her jacket and sparkled.
“No, you don’t!” snapped September, stomping after her. “I am coming with you and if someone is going to buy that automobile it’s going to be me. And then you’re going to tell me how to get into Fairyland like a Wind should-” September caught herself. That was not an argument this Wind would like one bit. She wouldn’t care at all for what a Wind should do-if she were in the habit of acting as she should she wouldn’t have lost her Leopard. And without a Wind, how would she get to Fairyland? There were no others about; it was the Blue Wind or nobody. September took a breath. If the most trouble came from taking folk seriously, she would do just that. “You’re going to tell me how to get into Fairyland,” she revised, “because even though I am spoiled and you don’t like me, it’s a good bet I’ll stir some manner of consternation up there and kick things over and make a mess, because I’m a person and that means trouble and trouble means me.” September drew herself up and grinned, even though she did not feel in the least like grinning. The Winds were mischievous, that was certain-so she had to be as well.
The Blue Wind said nothing. She did not stop. Her blue leather boots made soft noises on the boardwalk. But after a moment, she held out a long turquoise hand.
September took it.
CHAPTER IV
A PROFESSIONAL REVOLUTIONARY
In Which September Is Wayed and Treasured, Meets a Well-Connected Crocodile, Learns a Spot of Fiscal Magic, and Becomes an Official Criminal of the Realm
The sun set in Mercator.
But that didn’t seem to mean much. The sky turned a sort of lemony lavender, and strange, unfamiliar magenta stars came on between the braided clouds. The stars seemed awfully close. September could see wispy bits of their flames curling out all around them. She supposed it should have been hot, with all those stars just as close as the sun, but instead the shantytown seemed to hunch up under a chill, turning up its coat collar against the constant wind. Sweet little houses lined the streets, compasses stamped on their paper doors-but all the lights in the windows were dark. The boardwalk led straight to the center of town, a great square as full of people and sound and doing as the houses were empty.
The square was a great map, inked in vermillion and viridian and cerulean and citron and bold, glossy black, fairly glowing in the twilight. A thousand countries crowded in upon it-and most of these were being stepped on and jumped on and jigged on and fallen on and stamped on by some fellow or other. September would have liked to have spent hours crawling over every line and legend-was Fairyland there, the dear island she had sailed all the way around? Was her own home? But she would not get the chance. Folk hustled everywhere, dressed in long, thick coats with brilliant buttons and deep pockets. Some wore hats and some wore helmets, some wore scarves and some wore smart little caps, but no one went bareheaded. September touched her own dark hair, feeling suddenly unprotected. She could not help but notice how many of the shadowed and shadowy faces were as blue as the Blue Wind’s. Music ballooned up here and there, though September could see no instruments. It made a disorganized sort of tune, as though it grew wild as a mushroom in the forest, where songs and ballads and symphonies got themselves planted nicely in sweet little rows and watered from a clean spout every morning. Drums whump-thumped, horns squwonked, piccolos trilled, concertinas went squeezing in and out, but there was no order to any of it, only the occasional and wholly accidental harmony.
“That’s a pleasant sort of noise, even if you couldn’t sing along,” September ventured.
The Wind nodded her blue head, her own furry hat gleaming wet with melt. “Music has more rules than math or magic and it’s twice as dangerous as both or either. There’s plenty here to buy and barter, to have and to haggle, but don’t you go bothering instruments-I haven’t got time to clean you off the Till.”
For in the middle of everyone and everything, where the map’s colors pooled densest and darkest, squatted a hulking old-fashioned cash register as big as a Roman fountain. It was the old-fashioned sort, with a hand crank, which September had only seen in books. It gleamed all over, its wooden cylinders and brass keys polished till it all shone like a candelabra. The glass of its display bore not a streak or a smudge. Within, on black squares blazing with curly white letters, the words NO SALE could be clearly read for miles.
On top of the Till sprawled a long, coppery crocodile.
As they drew closer, September saw that his scales were not scales at all but pennies, some green with age, some clean and new. His tail wrapped around himself and cascaded over the Till-not a crocodile’s tail but a fan of deep emerald-colored feathers like a beautiful rooster. Deep, emerald-colored bills, folded so expertly they flowed and ruffled like feathers, showing their denominations when a breeze blew by. The crocodile watched the commotion below with glinting silver eyes: clusters of dimes, pale fires behind them, golden glass spectacles before them.
“Well, on you go,” said the Blue Wind testily, pushing September a little closer to the register. “You saw the sign. I’ve brought you to the Way Station safe and sound. You should thank me and buy me supper and tell me how fetching I look in these shoes. Just look at that croc! Scary as a stormfront, isn’t he? You should say: What wonder! What majesty! That nasty old Green Wind just dumped me in the ocean, but you, you have outdone him flat-out!”
“What wonder. What majesty,” September said with a little sneer. She had never tried on a sneer before. It felt rather nice.
“Oh, aren’t you just the rottenest wet blanket who ever spoiled a sport,” snapped the Blue Wind. “You ought to try to make it nice for me. This is my first experience with smuggling humans across the border. If you rain on my fun I shan’t bother again. Why, I didn’t even make you solve a puzzle or stand in line!” The Blue Wind crossed her arms and spat, a coil of icy snow splattering onto the map of the square.
But September was not listening. She had sighted the Model A, surrounded by long-coats who were pressing their ears to the hood and trying the horn and sucking bits of air from the tires. “They’ll spring a flat if they keep that up! I’ll see about the crocodile in a moment-”
“No, you will not!” hollered the crocodile in a barreling, jingling voice. His feathers flicked over the NO SALE tiles. “Present yourself or I’ll have you audited faster than you can blink those big, wide, my-goodness-gracious human eyes!”
The Blue Wind gave her a much firmer shove and September tripped forward toward the brass plates below the Till.
“Now then,” began the copper crocodile. When he spoke, bits of green feather popped out of his mouth like punctuation. “I am the Calcatrix, Agent of the Crown, Excellent Exchequer, and Chief Beast of Imp-erial Ways and Treasures, which is a very new department and thus very fashionable. I get into all the best dancing halls just by flashing my scales. I will be conducting your Inspection this evening. And you are?”