September drew her wrench from the depths of the Watchful Dress. It gleamed in the sun as it had the day she pulled it from the casket in the Worsted Wood. Blunderbuss sang out the ancient Wom songs of defiance, which roused the hearts of Oatmeal, Snagger, Shilling, Watchpot, Banjo, and even the beautiful Fair Dinkum to bursting. Home, September thought, to the beat of Blunderbuss’s mighty paws. Home to Aunt Margaret and my own bed and oranges for breakfast and algebra and the daisies under the kitchen window where the Green Wind came.
This time, when the Rex Tyrannosaur tried to slash at her with his jaws, September swung her wrench back like a bat and brought it crashing against his snout. Several teeth went flying into the sunshine, twinkling like broken glass. The jarring blow shook her wrench out of her hands. It went tumbling across the dirt. Thrum roared in agony. Goldmouth roared outrage from his judge’s box. Blood showered the dry earth. The wombats roared from their night-porches.
“A cracking cart-wheeler!”
“What a drive! Full points!”
“Ooh, she’s got an arm on her!”
Blunderbuss cackled. She skidded around, not feeling the new cut on her rump in the least. Stuffing puffed behind her like steam from a train engine. “Home run!” she yelled. “Get yer peanuts, get yer popcorn, get yer souvenir dinosaur teeth! Come on, girl, don’t stop now, just one more go and we’ve got him!”
“I don’t have any more weapons, Buss!” September hissed. But they all heard her. The Watchful Dress had only a pair of short bandit’s daggers to offer, no use at all against dinosaurs.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” the scrap-yarn wombat said, stalwart and bold. “You’ve got me. Only I feel a bit funny in the tum. Uff. And if I go in for the bite he’ll get me good and I probably … I probably … well! Never mind!” And she warbled out one last ancient and sorrowful song of Wom, full of longing and stubbornness and hunger.
“Right!” cried Tugboat, the Great Tobacconist of Wom. She leapt over the rail of her porch. “Are we going to let a measly T. Rex come in and bash up our family?”
“NO!” snarled the nation of Wom as one.
“We are wombats! We bite! We claw! We dig! AND NO ONE INTERRUPTS OUR FAMILY DINNER!” Tugboat got her paws under her, hurtling toward the Rex Tyrannosaur at furious speed. Behind her rode a hundred wombats snorting the glorious anthem of the Infinite Mob as they made their town shake. Tugboat screamed to the skies: “FOR WOM! FOR CHICAGO! FOR MOB AND FOR NIGHTGOWN! FOR BLUNDERBUSS THE BRAVE AND SEPTEMBER THE BONKERS AND FAIRYLAND NEVERENDING!”
The wave of wombats slammed against Thrum and swarmed over his legs, his haunches, biting into his belly, gnashing his tail, climbing up to the top of his ponderous skull and dragging him down, down to the dust and the street and the legends of Nightgown ever after. Goldmouth bellowed powerlessly, beating his red-threaded fists against the doppelg?nger’s spell, cursing viciously, swearing all their deaths.
But when the Rex Tyrannosaur hit the earth, he was nothing more than the dry bones he had been before the Derby ever dreamed of beginning.
September dismounted and pulled the Greatvole’s black whisker from a long, petrified rib. As she slid it back into the Watchful Dress’s sheath, Ajax Oddson’s voice bonged out through the streets of Wom like the bells of a church no one ever asked for. September could barely hear him over the cheers of the wombats and A-Through-L and Saturday and her own relieved, giddy cries, which she wanted to stop making, for they surely sounded silly, but could not, because she was alive and an alive thing wants to make noise.
“The old Cretaceous tango plays out like always! Mammals: on top! Reptiles: boo-hoo! Now, I think you’ve all had far too easy a time of it! I’m falling down on the job if you look so pleased with yourselves! Are you ready for a taste of the old Blue Hen double-cross? It’s Halftime! ONE, TWO, THREE! Everyone switch places!”
The Land of Wom disappeared around them like a curtain falling.
CHAPTER XVI
A TROLL IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH
In Which September Woos an Alphabet, Answers a Riddle, and Judges a Duel, While Charles Darwin Rides to the Rescue
They landed hard in a chilly meadow, nothing like the wild, thick tangle of the Land of Wom. Soft green hillocks flowed all around them, full of wild violets and clear rivers and sturdy stone bridges. Rather a lot of rivers. Rather a lot of bridges. In fact, the meadowy hills seemed completely crosshatched with brooks and streams, and each one had a strong stone bridge over it that looked as though it had stood since the invention of both stones and streams. Everywhere that did not have a river running through it or a bridge arching over it was peppered with odd clay cones sticking up out of the ground like toadstools. One pair of cones had a sign leaning against it:
WELCOME TO SKALDTOWN