“But this isn’t the Worsted Wood at all!” cried September. Her frustration felt like a bellyful of boulders. Would they never get on the right track? She reached back for Saturday’s hand.
“If we win, you will…” But he couldn’t think of how to finish.
September touched his face. “Just hold on, Saturday. We’ll find out what’s wrong.”
A-Through-L howled. “There’s no woolly trees or pumpkin pies or anything! Where are we?”
Blunderbuss opened her nostrils wide and sucked in the scents of the place that was decidedly not the Worsted Wood.
“Slap my bony rump if that’s not the best whiff I’ve ever gulped! What’s your problem? Come on, you dags! Open your mouths and huff! Chew on that air! Each breath’s as good as a meal! You don’t know, it might be the Wood! Maybe the spriggans have redecorated since you last popped by. I’m sure it is! You said the Worsted Wood was beautiful—isn’t this beautiful?”
Blunderbuss wasn’t wrong. The smell of the place was wonderful—rich and sweet and savory and sharp. But it was so strong. September felt faint, as though a bushel of apples had pummeled her head. The scrap-yarn wombat scampered on ahead.
“Are those blue tongues? Ell, you gotta try these! They turn your tongue blue, see?” She dove headfirst into a thicket of electric-blue berries and came up sticking out her scrap-yarn tongue, stained ultramarine with juice. Ell adjusted his sea-glass spectacles and checked his turnip pocket watch.
“It’s quarter past that rotted bit there,” he fretted. “Hadn’t we better figure out where we are and get back to the Derby? Someone could cross the finish line anytime and we wouldn’t even know unless Ajax sent us a note! We have to go!”
“I know! I know!” Blunderbuss danced from paw to paw, hardly able to contain herself. “But … but we’re here. Now! What if we never find it again? Even though you won’t let me have my turn with the specs, let us DEDUCE the STUFFING out of it, mon ami! Whaddowe got? Quandongs?” She snarfed a big red one off a bush. “Check. Macadamias? Check. Passionfruits?” She ripped a dozen off their vines and gobbled them down. “Huge spanking check! Emu apples, golden wattles, blue tongues, warrigal greens? Cram ’em in your face! Top-shelf digging dirt? Oh yes, we have some right here! And if that’s not enough, look, look, follow me!”
The scrap-yarn wombat leapt out of the brush and scurried up over a hill covered in blue tongue berries. Her paws left wet prints full of smashed cerulean fruit. They scrambled up after her. Blunderbuss was already crowing and jigging and spinning around three times in excitement. She bent down and bit the earth, to show that she liked a thing, and that she thought a thing was delicious, and that she thought it was hers.
“We’re in the Land of Wom!” Blunderbuss roared.
September got herself up to the top of the hill, slipping on berries all the way. She looked down into the north end of the valley. A village spread out as happily as a cat in a sunbeam. It was a shantytown, full of clapboard houses and peeling boardwalks and rusty nails and swinging signs. Warm wind whistled through the slats of the buildings. But the slats and boards and posts and roofs were all painted like the night sky. Deep black and blue and burning stars, white comets and tiny, twinkling red planets. I’ve never seen painting like that, September thought to herself. Even that fellow in Rome couldn’t make that bakery look so exactly like the Milky Way.
“I’m home! Me! Blunderbuss! The Great Chicago Wombat! What are the odds?”
September smiled. She thought of the door she’d chosen and was glad for Buss. But she’d chosen to win against odds—Oddson. She’d thought it would take them right where they needed to go. But why would the Heart of Fairyland be hiding in the Land of Wom? This couldn’t be right. “Buss, if you’re from Chicago, how do you know we’re in Wom?”
Blunderbuss puffed out her chest proudly. “When Hawthorn asked me to come to life, he specifically said: Please wake up right now this moment and be alive like Scratch and be a real wombat and be able to talk and walk and bite and do marvelous things like firing passionfruits and horseshoes and whiskey bottles out of your mouth at our enemies and singing the ancient songs of the Land of Wom, which we both know is the most beautiful Land that ever was a Land. He’s a very polite boy and he thought of everything and now I am HOME and HOME means BITES, FOODS, and OTHER WOMBATS. Last one to Wom is a kangaroo!”
“Wait, Buss, we can’t stay! Wait!” September protested.