The brass ball scowled at Ell’s shield, which showed the sharp crescent of Fairyland’s Moon resting on its side, full of books, surrounded by a ring of all the letters in the alphabet.
Greenwich sighed flamboyantly. “Oh, very well. I did so want to throw someone to the bears today. It’s a thankless life I lead! Fine! If you must insist on speaking to me and being alive and wanting things and all that rot, so be it. As I have said, I am Greenwich Mean Time. I safeguard the Library’s Time. I am the most precise, the most exact, the most correct timepiece ever born! I was the first colt sired by Piebald, the Stallion of Time, and I came of age in the harsh climes of the Hourglass Waste. I hunted wild chronologies and drank from the Ticking Stream, which turns the wheel of the Bygones Mill. Christopher Wren himself lassoed me while I slept and brought me to Meridian to look after the Library. I hate him for it and love him for it by turns—this is a loving century, but soon I will spit at his portrait again! I keep the Watch. I set the Due Dates and the Hours of Business. My precise and impeccable calculations determine how long any one person with jam on their fingers is allowed to spend in the Special Collections Pantry. My left cheek is tracking the time for the Cantankerous Derby as we speak.”
Saturday leaned forward eagerly. “How are we doing? Has anyone won yet? Are we behind or ahead of the pack?”
“Won? Aren’t you an impatient little inkblot! There’s plenty of time yet for winning and for losing. I would say you’re a little behind the pace, though I’m not meant to tell you any such thing. But I do like folk to know when they’re failing. But I won’t say more! No! I alone hold the time! All Fairyland clocks take their measure from me!”
“All clocks?” said September sharply, recalling a room in the Lonely Gaol crammed to the ceiling with clocks of every kind, each clock belonging to a human child in Fairyland …
“ALL. And don’t think your Hourglass has stopped, young lady. Plink, plink, plink go the sands!” Greenwich Mean Time laughed cruelly. His clock-hand tail shook with delight.
“I don’t know why you need to be quite so mean,” Saturday scowled defensively.
The brass ball grew serious and quiet. “All time is mean, young man. It takes and does not give, it rushes when you wish it would linger and drags when you wish it would fly. It flows sullenly, only in one direction, when it might take a thousand turns. You cannot get anything back once time has taken it. Time cheats and steals and lies and kills. If anyone could arrest it, they would have time behind bars faster than you can check your watch.”
September felt very hot in the dim light of the Mystery Kitchen. I got something back from time, she thought. But it’s all jumbled up. When I was old I felt young, I felt myself, as I am now, and whenever I looked into a mirror I got a shock like a bit of lightning in my cheeks. But now that I am young again, I feel old, I feel myself, as I was when I was the Spinster, quite grown up.
Yes, September. We have all of us got it jumbled up. You never feel so grown up as when you are eleven, and never so young and unsure as when you are forty. That is why time is a rotten jokester and no one ought to let him in to dinner.
“We need to find the Heart of Fairyland,” September said. “We thought it might be here, in the middle of everything.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” snapped the brass ball. A bit of the green verdigris on his forehead crumbled off. “Isn’t it fun to be wrong? No, it is not. But it is fun to watch someone else be wrong.”
But the Reference Desk looked up at Ell with its large, innocent green lamp shining. It closed the Oxtongue Fairyish Dictionary with a heavy thunk. When it opened the ponderous book again, it was no longer a dictionary of any sort, but something called The History of Fairyland: A How-To Guide. It looked very old but very well cared for, the kind of book that would spend most of its time asleep in a glass case.
“Oh, you vicious little flirt!” breathed Greenwich Mean Time. “They don’t even have gloves on! You put that back.” The Reference Desk straightened its legs, refusing to be shamed. “Young lady, if you so much as dream of putting a bare finger on one page of that volume I shall have the book bears on you before you can footnote!”
“What are book bears?” said September irritably. “You seem to be very fond of them.”
“No one is fond of them,” groaned Ell. “When I worked in the Lopsided Library I learned to be vigilant! Once, I stayed up for three days and three nights, armed only with my flame and my claws, to keep them out. All the while I could hear them scratching at the door, fiddling with the window locks, trying to scrabble down the chimneys! I roasted one just as he was ruining a thesaurus.”