But the Stoat of Arms would not let September rest. Her mother did not appear. The stoats nipped at her heels; the human girl pushed at her back; the unicorn whinnied softly; the chickens grumbled; and the Fairy on top kept tossing shimmers from her tiny wand to mark the path. September squeaked, trying to breathe in the perfume and the gloam, but the chickens squeaked louder.
Finally, they came to a plain, round door in the lush wall. It didn’t have a knob in the shape of a magical flower. It didn’t have any copper or gold or little rubies in it. It was just a few birch-trunks slapped together, hardly even a door at all. It reminded September of the janitor’s closet in her old school, full of mops and bleach and napkins, never meant to be noticed among the classrooms.
The Stoat of Arms bowed slightly. It couldn’t manage more than a slight bow, being made of two stoats, three roosters, three silver stars, a little girl, a unicorn, and a Fairy. More than a little bow was simply too much choreography. “If you please, madam. The Royal Closet will only open to the hand of the Queen.”
September’s curiosity swept aside her worry. Her curiosity had always lorded it over most of the rest of her, and by now, it was mightily accustomed to getting its own way. September put her hand flat on the pale birches. She didn’t know whether to push or pull, and didn’t want to make a fool of herself by getting it wrong. But in the end, the door swung inward as soon as it felt her fingers land. Within, she saw only a wide, soft darkness.
“We shall wait here for you, Your Majesty,” said the Stoat of Arms, and all of the creatures that made up the Stoat of Arms bowed as one.
September reached out one hand and scratched Rex behind one ear. Rex felt quite, quite humiliated, but he did not protest, for a Queen has the right to pet anyone she likes. “You don’t have to be so formal with me. We have met before, you know.” Which was how she knew he hated being scratched.
“Have we?” The Stoat of Arms wrinkled its several noses doubtfully. “I’m sure we would remember.”
“Oh, I’m terribly easy to forget!” September said airily, and smiled a much older woman’s smile, the sort of smile a girl learns on the back of years of holding her tongue. “When Madame Tanaquill and Charlie Crunchcrab locked me away in the Redcaps’ cellar, you were having a cup of punch and chatting up an undine. Come now! You must remember! It was the night of the Summer Sabbat and I’d only just come back from the Moon. My friend, the Vicereine of Coffee, swiped an invitation for me. I do have so many friends in Fairyland these days, it’s quite extraordinary! Saturday and I drove across the Wishbone Wastes in my darling Model A Ford Aroostook while Ell flew gaily overhead. It was our favorite way to travel. We all arrived at the border of the Candelabra Desert just as the sun set. How the lanternweeds blew in the summer wind! How the absinthe cacti bubbled and overflowed! How beautiful all the Fairies shone and spun! They were everything I could have imagined. Their wings glittered like all my old dreams. And I saw you nibbling on a great huge slab of saguaro cake, surrounded by Fairies who laughed at every joke you made. I’m sure they were really wonderful jokes, Sir Stoats! I should love to hear them someday. Yes, the night we met, I wore orange; you wore chickens. The brass band struck up ‘The Kraken’s Waltz.’ Saturday and I took to the desert dance floor. He put his arm around my waist. Ell let a gout of indigo flame erupt into the air for the delight of all the gathered lords and ladies. My love and I saw the violet sparks reflected in each other’s eyes. And then—oh, I just can’t recall what happened next! You must help me, Sir Stoats! What was it? You do remember now, don’t you?”
The Stoat of Arms, for perhaps the first time in its long, long life, looked distinctly embarrassed. “Then you were arrested by Madame Tanaquill’s personal constabulary and buried in a cellar for two years. The car was impounded, I believe.”
“Yes, that’s it! How silly of me to forget.” September quirked her eyebrow and laughed quite deliberately, a hard, barbed laugh she had learned long ago from the dancing, dastardly Blue Wind. “She who blushes first loses,” she said in a gentler voice, and tapped the Stoat on the nose.
My darlings, I am quite as surprised as you! A narrator looks away from her charges for half a tale and returns to find they’ve gone wily and wild in her absence, and learned all manner of new magics she intended to teach them much later.
September straightened up and tugged on the (rather oversized now) long blue dress she’d worn when she was the Spinster and hatched her plots from the depths of a rum cellar. “This is where I’m to be coronated, is it? Well, Stoats, we’d best get it over with. Will you be all right on your own? I wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
“We have brought a magazine, and our pipes.” The two stoats, three cockerels, unicorn, Fairy, and human girl that made up the Stoat of Arms each produced handsome churchwarden pipes and waved them at September.