The waters of Mumkeep Reef bubbled as though they meant to come to a boil. But they didn’t.
A squadron of gorillas and orangutans bubbled up into the ocean from nowhere at all. They wore diving helmets hammered out of saucepans, having no friendly Fizzwilliam to help them to a shave. They shrieked and hooted and giggled out their primate war cries. But the helmets made them look like hideous, monstrous astronauts. Their faces were invisible behind metal grills, long, hairy arms beating back the water, bearing down on September and Saturday. The diving apes brandished baby rattles and dollies with buttons for eyes and dynamite for hair. One swung a baby’s mobile full of painted sailboats in one fist and a knitted blanket in another like a trident and net. Another twirled a wooden train round his head like a ninja’s flying wooden sticks.
Saucepan-headed ape. Sack of giggling baby toys.
September could almost have laughed, if she weren’t about to be thumped soundly by an underwater gorilla wearing a saucepan on his head and pointing a toy fire truck at her face.
September turned to Saturday. “I can’t think of anything!” she whispered.
“Of course you can,” Saturday reassured her. “I heard you call Sir Sanguine a great talking punch-bag with rum barrels for ears in the Cellar.”
“I know! But Sir Sanguine’s my friend. It’s easy when you’re friends. Then it’s just like a hug that’s got its love on backward. But he’s right, he’s right. I am an unremarkable ape.”
Saturday ran his hand over the carved copper hair of her breathing mask. She could not feel his dear fingers, but she could feel their comforting weight. “Don’t say that. Never, ever. You are my remarkable ape. Don’t go beating yourself up before the gorillas get a chance.” He clapped his long blue hands and gave her a playful push. If we win, she will stay. He had to get her to fight. “Let’s get mean! You can do it! Everyone’s got a big hot sour lump of everything hateful they didn’t say because their manners outboxed their cussedness. I know you can be a grumpy, ornery, bitey old bear. Pretend you’ve only just woken up in the morning. What did you call me last Sunday when I tried to rouse you by seven?”
“A vicious rotten blueberry,” September said, and blushed shamefully. She never meant anything she said before ten in the morning.
“See? You’re a natural. But you’d better be quick with your blueberries, or else I think we’ll both get a rocking horse to the head.”
The army of undersea gorillas and orangutans had gotten their sea legs under them. They’d be on her in nothing flat. One orangutan the color of rust on a steamship aimed his pale pink rattle with lavender bows painted all round it directly between her eyes. September thought the ape meant to taunt her, but six quick bolts of lightning fired out of the rattle. Three forked off harmlessly into the deeps, one pranged off a jagged shard of coral—and two caught September squarely in the face. One scorched her left temple; the other charred her right cheek. If not for Fizzwilliam’s shaving-cup mask, September would have burnt out like an old lamp. She smelled baby powder as the smoke cleared, the way you smell ozone after a thunderstorm. You just got lucky, September thought. What if he’d aimed for your chest? Say something! Anything! Come on, self, hit back!
September dug deep for muck to fling at Cutty Soames. But all she found were freak, crazy, nitwit, and weirdo lying around at the bottom of her heart like skinny old rats in a cellar. But no—something else glinted out from under her pride. She kicked backward suddenly, swimming well free of Saturday, a maniacal adrenaline grin aching on her face.
September poked herself in the chest and lashed her voice up into a stern whip. “September, you are nothing but a grumpy, ornery, bitey old bear! You can’t even boss Sunday morning around, what do you want with a crown?” And it was true, it was true—if she couldn’t even tell off one solitary undead pirate, how could she manage the giants and dragons of ruling Fairyland?
The waters of Mumkeep Reef closed in on her, black and blue and heavy. It felt like slipping into one of the expensive fur coats down at the Brandeis & Sons department store on Douglas Street. She always knew she oughtn’t—her mother could never afford one of the long black minks or the custard-colored beaver-fur capes. Those were for fancy people, not for them. Oh, Mom, if I come through this I will find a way to get you all the capes in the world. I will. How she’d loved to hide in the coats, closing them up until only her little nose peeked out. Now, at the bottom of the ocean, September felt a thick, stout, white fur button up around her. This time, not even her nose showed.