Below it hung a long silk banner painted red:
WELCOME RACERS!
Pinecrack, the Moose-Khan, antlers and all, rocketed through the air and slammed through the sign, sending pieces of RUNNY and MEDE showering down to the square below, onto the heads of a furious throng of would-be Kings and Queens. Curdleblood, the Dastard of Darkness, fired his onyx flintlocks at Horace the Overbear’s roaring ivory-armored face. A woman with long, terrible teeth put her hands to her sides, screamed up to the heavens, and shivered into an enraged woolly mammoth, charging the Happiest Princess, tossing her tusks like a bull in the ring. Penny Farthing fenced the Ice Cream Man, whose pistachio epaulets hung in bloody tatters round his shoulders. Hushnow, the Ancient and Demented Raven Lord, darted in and out of the mob, pecking at heads and eyes and the odd fallen jewel he wanted for his new nest. Queen Mab chased Hushnow through the air in her hazelnut chariot, wrested back from poor Sadie Spleenwort who’d gotten it in the lottery. Sadie had only lost one finger to Mab’s wrath, which both ladies considered fair. Sadie shot her sourbolt crossbow at Madame Tanaquill, but they only shattered into green smoke against the Fairy Prime Minister’s back. Horace the Overbear had already bitten the Knapper six or seven times, but it didn’t seem to slow the assassin-king down much. Half of them, comically, still wore the name tags they’d been assigned in the Briary grand hall. Winds of every color spun and sprang through the spires of Mummery on catback, whooping, hollering, blowing war-horns, shouting: Behind you! Down below! Incoming emperor!
And in the midst of it, Gratchling Gourdbone Goldmouth bellowed his fury at a troll, a wooden girl, and a gramophone. Scratch sang defiantly back at the clurichaun King in the voice of the Siren who once sang the greens:
Huff, puff, and howl, but I ain’t afraid
Can’t make a girl cower and a bird can’t be swayed
Go on, turn out the sun, slap the moon up in chains
I’ll just sit on my rock in the sea and the rain
Singin’ these greens till the dawn comes again
Ajax Oddson danced above it all, the points of his racing silks bouncing from racer to racer to juggling club to torch to card-house to jester’s cap to his own broad banner.
“Welcome, one and all, to The End!” he cried in his radioman’s voice. “As none of you followed instructions and brought me the Heart of Fairyland, you’ll just have to fight it out between you! It’s one for the ages, yes sir, a Battle Royale to end them all! I, for one, can’t wait to see how it shakes out!”
“I’ll take the elephant if you knock Curdleblood into a primary color,” said Mallow. She wore her old black dress and petticoats and splendid stockings, but not her hat. Never again.
September turned to her. “I didn’t think you’d come. You didn’t have to. I didn’t ask.”
“Do you see that red stitching over Goldmouth’s shoulder? That’s where I cut off his arm. You need me. You’ve come a long way, Susie One-Shoe, but I don’t think you’re the arm-severing type. This is my last fight. I wanted it to be a good one.” Mallow winked at her and ran her hands through her short blond hair. It curled and thickened and lengthened and went black with electric blue ends once more. “I fought a cuttlefish for this hair! It’s mine, fair and square.” She mounted Iago and rode off into the fray.
“Up you go!” cried Blunderbuss, butting into September from behind and wrestling her up onto the scrap-yarn wombat’s back. “Ready to bust heads?”
“I wish there were another way,” September said with a sigh.
“There isn’t!” Buss assured her. “Good thing you’ve got a combat wombat and a fire-breathing Library on your side!”
September shook her head. “No, no, Ell, you should go somewhere safe! You are not a combat Wyverary!”
The Wyverary nuzzled her with his red snout. “Are you suggesting that I would ever leave you, September? You might get squashed or roasted and if you get squashed I’ll be squashed and roasted right along with you because we go together like two chapters, small fey. Besides, if I go, there’s no telling which of those beasties will lock down my wings next. I can be very useful. It’s the best part of being big.”
September held up her arms and A-Through-L, half Wyvern, half Library, bent his neck low so she could climb up onto his back. Blunderbuss felt cheated for a moment. But she knew it was right and proper and she’d get to bite things anyhow. September lay flat against her Wyverary, feeling the heat of his huge heart booming away inside him. And now that she looked, really looked, she could see a history of balloon travel written on his wings, ever so faintly, in red ink on red skin.