“Improbabilities?” asked September.
“Oh yes. Even Magic handles the probabilities—whether or not a thing is likely to happen given this and that and the other thing. Odd Magic deals in imp-probabilities—which is more like gym class than math. The Imp-probable Master can look at that happening and tell just when and where to put his finger or move a teensy little stone or place a dinner plate in the middle of the road to send all those fuddy-duddy probabilities flying off in every direction, to cause the most trouble, the most chaos, the most Unlikeliness. But that’s not much good to a soul who longs to play fair. My Odd Heart could only tell me how astronomically Unlikely I was to come out the victor, down to the last and loneliest and moldiest decimal. So depressing! Knowing that you will lose is as disheartening as knowing that you will win. It’s the unknowing that quickens the spirit and puts sweat on your brow! But the Derby!” The Racemaster leapt from the fountain to the awnings of the shops to the ledges of windows and back down to balance on the tip of Ell’s wing. “The Derby is not just a race, it is a battle and a dance and a scavenger hunt. It is not won by the swiftest, nor the strongest, nor the creature with greatest lung capacity or slow-twitch muscle mass. No! The Derby is won by the cleverest, the most devious, often the most vicious, but sometimes the most kind, and always, always, by the seat of one’s wits! For just as I was growing bored with the same old games, Fairyland was growing bored of racing with Dodos and tracks and linear thinking. It was, indeed, Headmaster Hexagon who invented the first Derby—for each Derby is unique, with its own laws and customs. Hexagon’s Derby took seven years, flattened two separate villages, used up all the salt in the sea, and everyone still feels rather uncertain about who won. Isn’t that just the best thing you’ve heard all week? Yes, in the Derby I found the grand love affair I had always sought. And I found myself. For when Dandies come of age, we make new, fleet, nimble bodies out of whatever obsesses us, whatever we adore unreasonably. My mother is a creature of arrows and catgut strings and curving bows, my father a marvelous beast of folded sheet music. And I? I gathered together the racing flags of every Derby I won, and the proud silks of every opponent I defeated until I could stitch together the finest limbs anyone has ever made—a body of victory! After all, my darlings, the clothes make the man!”
The Racemaster spun round again and bowed. September could not help herself, she clapped without meaning to, and then felt quite silly.
“That’s all wonderful, Mr. Oddson, it really is … but … where has everybody gone? Have we won already? Or lost?”
The Racemaster stroked his chin with one blue-and-green-checked hand. “Ah. Ah-ha. Stoatums did tell me one of you was a foreigner and wouldn’t know a Derby from a dervish. Are you her?”
“I usually am,” September said with a sigh.
Ajax Oddson smiled with the tips of two pink flags. “It’s to keep the whole thing fair. If everyone could see where everyone else dashed off to first, then you’d all have a pretty good idea where to start looking for the Heart of Fairyland and there wouldn’t be any sport in it. Besides, people tend to make a hash of the starting line. Pushing and shoving and stabbing and turning into turtles. As a courtesy, all racers have been enclosed in a small bubble of space and time. They cannot see us and we cannot see them, but I assure you they are all safe and sound and so are you. These bubbles will last for a few hours after the Ready Steady Go to ensure a fair start for all. It’s a fantastically difficult bit of hexing, I’m told. Something about Wet Magic and Severe Magic and Shy Magic all at the same time and also a certain very expensive opossum. At the same time, all participants have been delivered to their individual and individualized Starting Lounges, arranged in a large circle around the city of Pandemonium, so that no one has an advantage. Some of them are quite near to us right now—but our little space-time opossum has provided this lovely peace and quiet before it all goes absolutely mad. Within their bubbles, each registered racer is at this very moment hearing this exact speech from their own personal copy of Ajax Oddson. The race will begin once everyone has heard the rules and asked whatever adorable questions they have in their back pockets.”