September disappeared down the dark and lonely hall, pursued by a Stoat. Saturday, A-Through-L and Blunderbuss, Hawthorn and Tamburlaine and Scratch were left suddenly alone to find their own way. The Briary was not their old friend, full of familiar spots and happy memories. It was their new and wild and unknown maze, and they had no bread crumbs to mark their path. They all stood very still for a moment, glancing at one another uncertainly.
A clicking, scuttling, businesslike clatter saved them from simply bedding down in the center of the grand hall: the smart, swift footsteps of a broad, polished, black-and-white-checkered crab. He looked up at them with glittering crustacean eyes and snapped his great fore-claws.
“Hullo, misters and missuses! My name’s Spoke, and I’ll be your Scuttler this fine evening. First visit to the Briary? I can always spot first-timers…”
*
When all the glittering mob had gone and the floor of the grand hall stood empty of all but their boot-scuffs and discarded gum wrappers and magic cloaks and loose change and lost hair combs, a figure peeped in from the sunny afternoon. He had cloven feet and shaggy fur upon his legs. He had horns upon his head and a devilishly handsome beard. He looked all round the grand hall, but there was nobody left to greet him.
“Am I late?” said Pan.
CHAPTER II
SOMETHING NOT SO GRAND AS A GRYPHON
In Which September Collects Herself, Meets an Iron Lady, Acquires Her Regalia, Finds Several Lost Items, and Discovers an Old Friend Lying in Wait
The Briary is not alive in the way you and I are alive. But it is alive. Its roots, if I may be forgiven for discussing such things in public, go all the way through Fairyland and come out the other side as a small hut covered in black tulips. This is a very secret place, so I’ll thank you not to tell anyone about it, or else I shall be sacked. Think of the Briary as a very large, very old Burmese python in whom you can very happily live; a python tastefully furnished with gilded couches and fringed lamps and a great lot of paintings in every imaginable style. The Briary can squeeze up and in until it is almost unnoticeable if no one is at home. It can stretch up and out and twist round and about if guests have arrived for supper and more room is needed. It is quite an understanding Royal Residence.
Through all these snakelike halls and ways, the left-hand stoat of the Stoat of Arms pushed her velvety nose at September’s back. The left-hand stoat was called Gloriana, the right-hand, Rex. September hopped a little, walking faster up a long, rose-patched hall winding its way to the heart of the Briary.
It was the first quiet September had held in her hand since that ridiculous, astonishing wombat had barged through the walls of her prison cell. Sunlight drifted through the green walls like a breeze, chasing shadows, brightening their edges, and running off again down staircases and laundry chutes and dumbwaiter shafts. She remembered the first time she set foot in the Briary, a thousand years ago and a thousand more, it seemed to her now. How frightened she had been! And all she’d done was stand very still while the Marquess sneered at her and say no when she tried to have her way. September had never even thought to wonder what that polleny palace looked like further in and farther out. All she could see then was the Marquess and her terrible smile.
But now, it was her house, at least for a little while. September tried to pull that thought over her head, to get her arms in the sleeves, to smooth out the skirt of it. This is my house. I live here. But it wouldn’t smooth. All she could think of was her own dear house in Nebraska with her father and mother in it, only now she pictured the creaky old farmhouse covered in far too many flowers, their small and amiable dog jumping up on everything and snapping at visiting bees. I probably have my own bathroom, she thought idly.
That did it.
It all came rushing in at her: escaping prison and falling backward into seventeen again and the terrible look in Madame Tanaquill’s eyes and the crown on her head and how much she did, finally, miss home and her parents and that silly, daffy dog and the big rude roan at the Killory farm and her school with its nice, safe, quiet essays to be written and equations to be solved. The smell of flowers in her nose got so thick and heavy that September couldn’t breathe. She wanted to sit down. She wanted to sleep for a hundred and fifty years. She wanted her father. She wanted to have nothing to do today but fix an old fence. She wanted her mother to appear and fix everything for her, to just take it all over and make the decisions and sweep up all the nastiness into a bin. Her mother would make a good Queen, September thought. Her mother wouldn’t blink.