JOURNEY TO MUMKEEP REEF
In Which Saturday Goes Home, Leaves a Wombat and a Wyverary Alone, Though on a Very Nice Beach, While September Meets Both a Bathysphere Named Fizzwilliam and an Alarming Number of Octopuses
Blunderbuss dug in her woolly heels.
“Nope. No, thank you! Not an inch farther till we eat! I know it’s a race but we won’t go far if we start skipping meals. Top athletes eat more than anybody, that’s the truth. If you don’t have dinner, you don’t have anything!”
Reluctantly, September and Saturday laid out their supper under the hundred million stars of Meridian. They congratulated themselves on their practical planning as they set out the plates, the salt and pepper, the bowls and the cups. They’d packed a blanket as well, so that nothing got damp or dirty. For A-Through-L they had a basket of good bitter radishes and a number of lemons, alongside a cold joint of mutton swiped from the Briary stores. Saturday helped himself to a luckfig bun and a parrot pie from the Plaited Plaza carts. September dug through their satchels until she came up with some oranges, arugula, and cinnamon biscuits for Blunderbuss, who also helped herself to most of the clover and nodding little bluebells growing round their picnic blanket.
But for the Queen of Fairyland, for the Engineer, there was only roast legislamb cutlets, gruffragette salad, and somewhat lukewarm regicider. In the early hours before the Derby began, September had filled a hamper with her royal suppers and breakfasts, each wrapped carefully in wax paper or poured into small, sturdy flagons that would not leak. She still wore the crown—she hardly even felt it anymore. But as long as it stayed on her head, she had to make certain the Greatvole and the Wickedest Whale kept dreaming away and not doing whatever dreadful things they waited so eagerly to accomplish. If those meals had ever tasted nice, they certainly did not once they’d gone cold and traveled a thousand miles by Library Catalogue. September sighed and chewed on her rather tough, rubbery cutlets.
“Is your thumb all right, Saturday?” September did not want him to see her worry, for when she was afraid, he got afraid, which made her more afraid still, until they both had to go and sit down in the sun for a while so they did not egg each other on so much.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” the Marid said, and neither did he show a wick of worry on his face. “It doesn’t hurt. It was only one bear, after all. I expect I’ll suffer no worse than a stray exclamation point dangling off my name. Saturday! Sounds rather bombastic, doesn’t it?” But it did hurt. It burned in the dark.
Blunderbuss rolled one of her oranges between her paws playfully, wriggling her haunches. She lobbed it over to Ell, who nudged it back bashfully. “So Fairyland has a broken heart. Poor poppet. But what does that mean for us? Is the Heart in pieces, then? Off crying in different corners, playing sad saxophone music and writing poems? Two pieces? More?”
September sipped her regicider and made a face. It tasted thin and sour. “I think it might mean just that, Blunderbuss. If it means anything.”
Saturday sat up, rubbing his bare blue arms with his hands. “But there has to be a solution—there has to be a Heart to find. Ajax Oddson would never cheat. I’ll believe trickery of anything in Fairyland, but Oddson wouldn’t put his hand in if there wasn’t a way to win. And I had an idea, while I was reading that story in the Library. An idea about where to go next. Only—” The Marid’s shoulders slumped in the starry shadows. The Wolf’s Egg rose over his beautiful shoulders. “Only it’s a little bit selfish. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I just want to go home. I can’t tell if I’m on to something or I’m just homesick. We haven’t got much time for mistakes.”
“Home?” asked Ell.
“In the story, one of Fairyland’s friends was the Sea. The Moon danced with the Sea and whispered in her ear, remember? And I thought perhaps … perhaps the Sea knows where Fairyland’s hid her broken heart. Perhaps Fairyland hid her heart down there. Because you can hide anything under the ocean. The Sea knows more secrets than any of us will keep if we lived to be as old as longing. And the Sea’s mysteries aren’t just words or books or locks of hair tied with a ribbon. They’re a place. Mumkeep Reef, down deep in the dark blue barrens of the Obstreperous Ocean. Whenever the Sea finds something she likes, in a pirate ship or a hurricane or a nereid’s hideaway, she makes off with it immediately and stashes it in Mumkeep Reef. I’ve never spoken of it to a … a dryhair. That’s what we call people who don’t have the good sense to live in the ocean. Or the good gills. Mumkeep Reef is the kind of secret that secrets hope to be when they grow up. You can’t ever tell anyone I told you. Even if we don’t give it another thought between us. You can’t even say the word Mumkeep to a dog.”