A-Through-L stomped beside her, his orange eyes filled with sympathy. She was only somewhat smaller than the Wyverary—the ground trembled a little as they squashed it underfoot.
“My father was a Library,” Ell said comfortingly, “and when I was young my family all lived together among his strong, sturdy stacks. Back then, my brother T-Through-Z used to say the world is divided into the riders and the ridden, and I always thought he was being pompous and grim because those are his favorite things besides roasting romance novels, but I believe him now. Half of everyone thinks I’m September’s horse. As if I don’t know my multiplication tables! As if I wasn’t there when the Marquess fell! I know that I can be ridden, but I needn’t be. I could ride somebody, if that somebody was big enough. It’s not my fault I’m too heavy. It’s their fault they’re so little.”
Blunderbuss sniffed a little. She tore up a patch of Barleybroom grass and clover and flax flowers and chewed resentfully.
“We were gonna win,” she huffed. “Me and Hawthorn and Tam. We were gonna do a double flip and land on the Briary with all our feet planted and a crown for each of us. I wanted to see the look on Scratch’s bell! Now who’ve they got with them? Probably Sadie’s mangy dumb jackal with his face stuffed full of biscuits. And he’ll get to wear a crown while I get nothing! I never get anything!”
“We might win, you know,” said Saturday, who certainly felt their chances were better than a couple of Changelings fresh from Chicago, wherever that was. If they won, September would stay. It was all he could think. You couldn’t be a long-distance Queen. She would stay and he would never have to turn to say something to her and find no one there ever again.
Blunderbuss gave him a pitying look. “No offense, but your girl doesn’t even want to boss Fairyland about. You can’t win without a want boiling in your belly. Besides, my kids have magic leaking out of their ears. None of this would have happened without them.”
“Oh yes,” said September slyly. “Thank you, Hawthorn and Tamburlaine, for bringing Goldmouth back to life. A king so wicked there’s a statue of him dying in the capital for everyone to wash their stockings in. I’m sure we’re all terribly grateful.”
“I wouldn’t go talking about bringing ornery things back to life, Miss Egg. It doesn’t look too good on you.”
September laughed. She knew the wombat meant to sting her, so she laughed instead of blushing or sputtering, which never got a girl anything but rolled right over. It was a fair point, anyhow. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. The wind pushed it right back, hot and sweet and full of the best sorts of city smells. She took a breath and said the thing that had spent the last three days pacing all the rooms of her mind. “Maybe I don’t want to be Queen, exactly. But if we don’t win, then someone dreadful might. We’ve got to win, because we can’t count on the Marquess or Tanaquill or Goldmouth losing. And … and I’d be a good Queen, I think. I wouldn’t be bad, anyway. Maybe I could be the opposite of a tyrant, an un-tyrant, and Fairyland would be, well, like a story in a book.”
And if I were Queen, I could stay, she added silently. I could stay in Fairyland. I could be good at Fairyland, the way the Sibyl was good at guarding the entrance to the underworld and the Calcatrix was good at the magic of money. A terrible longing for her mother pressed on her chest. Her mother would tell her that if there was ever a chance to do something extraordinary, it ought to be snatched immediately. Only, if I stay, will I ever get to hear her tell me a single thing again? Perhaps … perhaps I could bring my parents through the Closet Between the Worlds and we could all be together here. Halloween brought my father to Fairyland-Below, and she’s only my shadow. You’re allowed to do that sort of thing when you’re Queen.
Darling September! That is why anyone wants to rule. Oh, they would never admit it. But at the bottom of their hearts, anyone who longs for power longs to have everyone and everything they love safe and happy forever in one place, no matter the cost. It’s only what happens to those they do not love that makes it all go wrong-headed and hard.
Saturday stared out over the river, into the dry hills beyond. He could not quite tell where Pandemonium had settled herself. They had to get moving. If they won, she would stay. He whispered it over again in his mind like a song. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to figure something out before the opossum’s bubble pops and we’re surrounded by the worst family reunion that’s ever packed itself a picnic.”