Blunderbuss waggled her hind paw, trying to get a look at the damage. September could see stuffing coming out, but she didn’t want to embarrass Blunderbuss by saying anything. Then the wombat saw A-Through-L’s miserable, embarrassed eyes, pleading forgiveness with every long eyelash.
“Oh, come on, don’t be such a Sensitive Susie! I’ve called you worse over the question of Poirot’s mustache! You know I never mean it. You’re my Sir Oafington and I like you better than all the clowncakes in Oaf Hall. In the Land of Wom, that’s just how we talk to our families! You gotta be nice to strangers even when they are the worst, because they don’t know you well enough to understand how shut your big face can mean I’ve missed you more than the whole world can know. Come on! Call me something! You can do it!”
A-Through-L stared at his feet. He did try. But all that came out was “You have very nice eyes.”
Blunderbuss blinked her very nice eyes. “Ooof. Don’t worry about it, not everyone’s got the knack. Thanks for the escape, Inspector Ell-O. Now where the devil is this ripsnorter taking us?”
September wiped her hands on her legs. The Watchful Dress, though currently shaped like sensible work trousers, did not appreciate it. Mud came off her palms—they were all quite grimy, really. But little black crystals tumbled free as well, pieces of the huge dark rough-cut gems crusting over the creature’s mammoth body. September picked a little crystal up and tasted it gingerly.
“Salt!” she exclaimed. And then understood. “Oh … oh no. I thought we’d only been gone a few hours! But you said … you said we were under the sea all night and into the next afternoon. I didn’t have my breakfast! I didn’t eat my flapjacks or my cordial! This is the Greatvole of Black Salt Cavern and she’s woken from her thousand-year slumber!”
“My name is Brunhilda,” the Greatvole rumbled, like continents crashing together. “If you wouldn’t mind shifting, I’ve got a nerve just there, and you’re pinching it.”
They scrambled to move out of their little shallow between two shoulder blades, farther up so they nestled against the nape of her neck. The ride was much rougher up there. September clung on desperately as the Greatvole stretched her long-sleepy muscles.
“Are you … are you going to devour the world and chew on its bones?” Ell asked carefully.
The Greatvole snorted. The roofs of Voleworld’s taverns and inns fluttered with the force of her breath. “Not today, if that’s all right by you. Worlds give me heartburn. They stick in the gullet something fierce. But thank you for assuming the worst, it’s not at all painful to be wakened by ignorant prejudices!”
“I’m sorry! It’s only that I read all about you when I was a hatchling. You start with G! And all the encyclopedias in my father’s stacks agree that you nearly destroyed Fairyland with your terrible digging and chewing and tunneling, until the Rex Tyrannosaur hit you over the head with a mountain and sent the honeybees of Wallowdream to sting you to sleep.”
“Such a lot of fuss over a few earthquakes! Nobody talks about how beautiful my new mountain ranges looked, or the new ski resort opportunities I opened up every time I broke the surface and shoved up fresh slopes, or how nicely a bottomless chasm goes with any city, no matter the style. Or all the jewels and gold I spat out when I got done chewing through a desert! Or the absolute fact that without me, Fairyland would still be a big flat boring nix and naught full of crabgrass and dust, fit for nothing but lawn chairs! I tunneled out everything here! S’why they call it Voleworld and not Rabbitworld or Meerkatworld. Every time you relax in a lovely valley or tightrope between two towering crags, you ought to thank your lucky geography for Brunhilda the Greatvole! But no! Instead, they all whined and bawled like a bunch of babies because good design takes risks. Because I erased a few rough drafts when anyone could see farming villages just don’t go with tundra ecosystems! Let me be a lesson to you, kiddies—keep your dreams small. Build your own house and they’ll praise you staircase to windows. Build your own world and you’ll get all the thanks a mouse gives a snake. So yes, then Thrum the Rex Tyrannosaur sent all those bees after me and I’m sure he had a grand old party with all his Uptop friends, telling vicious vole jokes and congratulating themselves on getting a spanking-new topography for the bargain price of a vole’s pride. Maybe he’s still lording it on his Cretaceous Throne, guzzling bone-beer and admiring the swanky cave I made for him.”