For you cannot bake a three-layer cake with nothing at all to stick them together! Between those wonderful layers of Fairyland’s geographical trifle lie ribbons of berries and syrup and still more frosting: the secret caves and grottoes of Voleworld.
Voleworld is a paradise for all who love to dig—wide enough and high enough for any bulldozing beast. Friendly work lamps twisted into chandeliers light the shadows into a warm, homey glow. Mudpaintings of great diggers dot the walls: Grundler the Mad Mole, Electro-Hare the Holy Holer, Whistlepig the Grandhog, Spadeheart the Bombastic Bilby Rat. Here is where the diggers come to rest. You’ll find a thousand taverns made of shovels and picks battened together, bathhouses hammered out of gold pans and roofed in dud dynamite sticks, and drill-bit dance halls playing all the underground hits on a dirt bottle organ. And, most importantly, Voleworld lies beneath the whole of Fairyland, connecting each acre with each county. Get down into Voleworld and you can get anywhere else you like quicker than an earthworm’s wriggle. Which is why the devoted diggers tell no one about their home, and make certain that no exit or entrance is labeled sensibly.
September, Saturday, Ell, and Blunderbuss opened their eyes to see everything I have just told you streaming past on either side. The portrait of Electro-Hare, the Shovel and Headlamp Inn, the Ruby Rake Night Club, the tunnels leading every which where which wheres can wind. All four of them had the same urgent idea at once: Somebody else’s mouth was no place to be. The Greatvole had September by the back of her emerald smoking jacket, Saturday by his topknot, Ell by his turnip pocket watch, and Blunderbuss by her little fuzzy woolen tail and one hind leg. The emerald-colored smoking jacket split hurriedly down the back so as not to be the cause of its owner’s death. Coats have a strict honor code, and any one failing to protect its owner from rain, snow, hail, or ravening rodents shall be made into overalls at once.
September scrambled up the Greatvole’s onyx teeth and over the top of her nose, grappling onto the red-black crystals to haul herself up. Saturday made no time for a first, second, or third thought: He whicked out a little pair of scissors from his trousers and cut his splendid topknot in half, climbing up after September. Ell looked worriedly at Blunderbuss. He could bite off his watch fob, no problem. But where would that leave the scrap-yarn wombat? She didn’t have any scissors, but even if she had, the loss of a leg would hurt her pride so. The Wyverary twisted round so that his snout poked right up against the greatsnout of the Greatvole. Ell had not met many folk bigger than himself, and if it were not very urgent, he’d sit his red haunches down for a long chat. But it was very urgent, and so the Wyverary took a short, shallow breath—enough to scald, but not to roast—and blew a bubbling burp of indigo flame straight into the left nostril of the Greatvole.
The creature roared indignantly and opened its mouth to give whatever had bothered it a good, deep bite. Ell and Blunderbuss flew up and over those smoking nostrils in a flash of orange and red, tumbling over the Greatvole’s eyebrows and skull, down her neck and black salt spine, and into a shallow space between her shoulder blades where September and Saturday sat on their knees, catching their breath. The emerald smoking jacket had already seamed itself back up into a fetching short emerald-colored bolero jacket, so that September could move about freely and not get a sash snagged on any vole parts. Two large, pearly tears dropped from Saturday’s eyes as he felt back for his proud topknot and found only a ragged, sawed-off ponytail. All September wanted to do was shake him until he explained why he couldn’t remember the most important things that had ever happened to them, but there was no time, no time. And the wombat was on fire.
September leapt forward and batted at Blunderbuss’s hind leg, which smoked and crackled like a broiling Christmas ham.
“Watch where you aim that fire hose, you great red lunkhead! Clodhopper! Donkey! Sir Oafington of Oaf Hall!” the wombat hollered and hawed, trying to stub out her paw on the Greatvole’s back like a cigar. Ell’s whiskers drooped. Saturday sniffled and puffed out his cheeks, then blew a ball of glittering sea foam at the half-cooked wombat-shank. September had seen him do that from a trapeze platform once, with a smile on his face that would blind every star in the sky. But now he did it with no more pomp than a winter’s cough. The foam sizzled as it hit blackened wool, but the embers died out, leaving only steam. Saturday fell back against Ell, exhausted, curling into a little blue ball.