September was a polar bear.
The roar came all the way from the pads of her shaggy paws, up through her powerful snowy haunches, her huge, fleecy belly, slurping loudness from her bear-bones and her bear-blood all the way up. She’d never owned something so big as that roar in her life. It was as big as an ice floe, as big as a fat, tasty, unsuspecting seal asleep on the snow, as big as Aunt-Arctica. September swung her great furry arms wide, slicing through the water with her fabulously vicious claws, and roared like every bear who’d ever tried to sleep through five more minutes of winter rioting all at once. The ape army recoiled. A gorilla threw his dolly at September. It bounced harmlessly off her strapping fuzzy chest, exploding meekly when it hit the reef, quite embarrassed to have even made the effort. September roared again. Roaring was really the most perfectly excellent thing in the world. She told herself to do it more often.
September banged her front paws together. When she pulled them apart, fiery balls of sleepy morning sunshine skewered themselves on each black claw. The ape army charged the sun-wielding polar bear. They swung their wooden trains against her and fired their rattles. Her fur smoked where she took her hits, but they only annoyed September, like bees buzzing in her ears. She flung her little morning suns at gorillas and orangutans alike, whanging their saucepan diving bells around, setting their fur on fire, roaring all the time, roaring fit to deafen a thundercloud.
The apes vaporized into seawater bubbles. The September-bear lunged to chomp the bubbles in her snout and pop them with her claws. A giggling polar bear is a very disconcerting sight, let me tell you. It is probably for the best that as soon as the last baby rattle disappeared, her bear-head fell back like a hood and her shaggy chest split down the middle. September stepped out of her bear-skin just the same way she stepped out of the coats at Brandeis & Sons when her mother found her at last: a little chagrined, but not in the least sorry to have done it.
Cutty Soames let out his own roar on the bridge of the shadowy sea horse. September might have been frightened, had he done it five minutes earlier. But now she just laughed.
“You should work harder on your roar,” she said breezily, still giddy with bear-ness. “Use your diaphragm! Really give it some proper breath, you’ll get a much deeper pitch.”
The Captain of the Coblynows gripped the hilt of his cutlass until his knuckles looked like they might make a run for it. His red eyes smoked like coals in a furious hearth.
“I’m going to hang your bones from my mainsail, you ladle-brained peasant! You’ve got the brain of a sunburned badger, the courage of a bowl of porridge, and the grace of a giant with a head injury! You prancing, marshmallow-hearted cow!” Cutty’d run out of breath by the end of it, but he yanked out that last with a hoarse belch.
“That’s the second time I’ve been called a cow today.” September sighed. “I don’t know what’s so horrid about being a cow. Mrs. Powell’s cow is called Marjorie and she’s well behaved and very useful. But I suppose I did jump over the Moon.”
September talked slowly to buy herself time. He called me an ape, she thought furiously. That’s all right, humans evolved from apes, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t get sad, get smart! Think! Coblynows evolved from … I think Sir Sanguine said chimneys? There ought to be something juicy there …
The waters of Mumkeep Reef roiled and glugged again. A gang of giants with bandaged heads galloped out across the ocean floor. They wore peasants’ rags and rode majestic, ice-hoofed cows with horns forged from beaten plowshares. Marshmallow bells hung from the beasts’ necks, skins crinkling black, as though roasted by an invisible campfire. The deep water slowed them down, but they did not wait. Each giant hoisted a monstrous ladle aloft and whirled it round his head like a mace. Every time the ladles came round, they lobbed boiling black porridge at September, Saturday, Sepia, Brother Tinpan, the Pieces of Eight, anything they could see through their bandages. The dark globs ate through whatever they landed on like acid with butter and brown sugar on top. A mob of flaming badgers wove in and out of the cows’ legs, scampering across the dueling field, their fur burning the water around them into acrid steam and smoke.
September tried to get a roar going down in the bottoms of her feet, but it would not come. The giants hollered out battle songs in the old tongue. She took a deep breath through the mouth of her mask.