Jacquard opened up her black rib cage into a sewing machine once more. The needle whirred to life, pounding the presser foot furiously. But there was no fabric beneath it, no silk, no goldcloth, no wool, no linen. Just air. For a moment the needle pattered against nothing. And then—a scrap of orange appeared against the Mantelet’s black heart like the first crocus of Spring.
It all came roaring out of her in a rush: the orange explosion of her own Watchful Dress, stitched with droplets of gold, garnets hanging from its familiar neckline, its skirts dimpled with black rosettes, its green silk rope circling the waist, even the twin pocket watches dangling from the bustle. The warm wooden handle of the Witch’s Spoon, the gleaming patent leather of her dear old mary janes, somewhat larger now, for she no longer had twelve-year-old feet. Hello, shoe! September has missed you so! And finally, a green velvet cuff shot free of Jacquard’s chest. The emerald smoking jacket flew off the needle joyfully, flinging itself toward September and wrapping her up safe in its plush arms, tying its sash round her waist with a great sense of personal satisfaction.
Somewhere far away from the Royal Closet and far below the towers of the Briary, September could hear a horn honking.
“Thank you! Oh, thank you, Jack!” cried September, hugging herself tight so as to hug the smoking jacket. For the first time since she fell off the Moon, she felt quite herself again. Such feelings rarely last long, for the meaning of oneself changes as quick as clouds skipping. We ought to let our girl roll around in it while she can, don’t you think?
*
When she had quite recovered, September went to Jacquard and held out her hand. “I am a human girl. I am not allergic to you.”
The Mantelet took her hand, hesitantly, as though she expected the Queen to yank it away at any moment. Though September could not know it, no one had touched Jacquard in two thousand years. So you understand why, without either of them understanding how it happened, the handshake turned, as if by magic, into a long embrace.
“Are you quite certain you don’t want to be Queen?” Jacquard whispered into the jeweled crown of the one girl in all the world who could hug her and live.
Just then, September was not certain at all.
*
September closed the birch-trunk door of the Royal Closet. She looked round for the Stoat of Arms, but the crotchety old menagerie seemed to have abandoned her.
In its place stood a man with a neat green beard, wearing a green carriage-driver’s cloak and green jodhpurs, and smart green winklepicker boots. Beside him, a large and handsome Leopard sat on her haunches, licking one paw with casual interest and purring loudly.
The Green Wind had found his moment. A Wind always looks for his moment, knowing it will come and the whole of the world will be better for his having waited. Hamlet arrives on his cue, and not a moment before. The Green Wind leaned casually against the wall of the Briary, green out of green, shining from his shoes to his cap, as though he’d been there for a hundred years.
“You seem an ill-tempered and irascible enough child,” he said with a grin. “How would you like to be stuck in the middle of a hopping grand mess?”
“Green!” September cried, and dashed across the copper and jade floor to throw herself into his arms. “I thought you’d got lost forever!”
“A Wind never gets lost. Only distracted,” he answered, and squeezed her tight. “You mad little thing. I leave you alone for one minute and you go and make friends with a wombat!”
CHAPTER III
AN AUDIENCE WITH THE QUEEN
In Which September Has Her Supper, Learns a Number of Rules (One Involving a Kraken), Beds Down in a Wyvern’s Nest, and Receives an Unusual Invitation
“Now,” said the Green Wind, when he and September and the Leopard of Little Breezes had turned thirteen corners, run down six blind hallways that led nowhere, and opened three doors onto scenes they certainly ought not to have witnessed, and come at last to a curtained archway in the viny walls, “there are important rules in governing Fairyland, rules which cannot be broken, jostled, or teased. Oh, I suppose you will break them, being yourself and not another. And in fact, if you want to win the Derby, you should probably get to breaking them sooner rather than later. But I gave the Stoat of Arms the night off on the condition that I would look at you very sternly and shake my finger most emphatically whilst laying it all out. We have always been aces at rules, that girl and I, I told him. While you are mainly aces grumbling. So let us pretend for a moment that you, September, cannot break these rules, even though you have never met anything so small as a leg nor so large as a moon that you could not break in two.”
Two Zinnias guarded the archway, their flowered helmets shading steely, determined eyes.