“Very well, then!” said the Queen with a deep breath, and stepped inside the great round door.
It shut behind her with a satisfied clunk. September calmed her hammering heart. She was not so wily or wild that it did not terrify her a little whenever she had to pull on haughtiness like a party dress and whirl about in it.
Within the Royal Closet, lamps bubbled to life all along the walls, glass goblets filled with liquid light of blue and gold, like cups of punch at a birthday party. September stared—the room yawned on forever. She could see neither ceiling nor walls. A beautiful velvet floor spread out before her so that her feet fell without the littlest sound. Everywhere she looked she saw splendid clothes hanging neatly, or displayed on dress forms, or laid out for mending, or soaking in laundry tubs. Hatboxes towered up into the shadows beyond the goblet-lamps. A sea of shoes lapped at the hems of the hanging gowns and suits and cloaks and trousers. Umbrella stands bristled with swords, canes, scepters, staves, wands, and the occasional umbrella. The ranks of shining clothes were only broken by mirrors here and there, mirrors taller than a Wyverary and framed in gold, in ice, in green flame or indigo, in ancient oak, in unicorn and narwhal horns, in ships’ ropes, in curious, blinking eyes, in gemstones September could not name, in pocket watches, in brocade, in lost love letters. In the center of the vast wardrobe stood a little podium with a large and beautiful book lying open on it, along with a pot of scarlet ink.
September could hear her footsteps echo wildly as she crossed the hall to peer at the book. At the top of each thick, parchment page, she read:
GUEST BOOK.
PLEASE SIGN IN.
And below that, a number of neat columns with titles like NAME, SPECIES, and TIME IN/TIME OUT, each one brimming with magnificent signatures. She ran her fingertips over the last two entries in the lovely ledger: The Marquess. Human. 2:15 p.m., April 2nd, the Year of the Yellow-Tongued Hobgoblin/Deposed via Ravished Girl, 10:58 p.m., May 24th, the Year of the Valiant Teacup. Charles Crunchcrab. Fairy. Midnight, August 9th, the Year of the Unhappy Hippogriff/Deposed via Dodo’s Egg, Teatime, March 15th, the Year of the Emerald Acrobat. September searched for a quill pen—under the edges of the book, on the ledge of the podium. She felt a little like the older kids who scratched their names—and other, bolder things—on the bathroom walls at school. Surely, someone would come along and scold her any moment now. But she found nothing.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” came a brisk, tidy voice, a voice like snug seams and straight hems. “How unprofessional of me! Wait just a moment.”
September whirled round. A creature clattered forward through the rows of wonderful clothes. Her slender limbs were made all of wrought iron, curling and twisting in lovely patterns like the ones in a fine old gate. The wrought-iron girl stood much taller than September, her long legs bent backward like a heron’s, her hair forged in a crown of leafy iron vines round her dark skull. As September stared, the lady opened her wrought-iron rib cage like the lid of a secretary desk. A sewing machine unfolded out of her, kept hidden where her heart might have been. She reached down and pulled a coil of plain linen from a scrap basket sandwiched between an Elizabethan gown and a motorcycle jacket and fed it through her machine heart. The needle moved up and down merrily and when the linen emerged, it had become a graceful quill pen with a sharp bronze nib. The quill was a real quill, too, a sturdy turkey feather with gold and red speckles.
September pulled it free and dipped the new pen into the scarlet inkwell. She bent down to the guest book, trying to make her face as brave and bold as the one she’d shown to the Stoat of Arms, and she only hesitated a moment before writing: September Bell. Human. A Bit After Teatime, March 15th, the Year of the Emerald Acrobat. She frowned at her handwriting—it looked rather plain next to the dashing flourishes above, the t’s crossed with rapiers and i’s dotted with alchemical sigils of the other “guests.”
“Most excellent. Now we can begin!” said the wrought-iron lady, folding up her black rib cage again. “I am the Archbishop of the Closet, the Sartorial Seneschal. You may call me Jacquard. Jack, if you are lazy and cannot manage two whole syllables. I’m here to help with your fitting.”
September smiled broadly. “You didn’t call me Your Majesty or Your Grace or Your Highness.”