“Well, if that doesn’t just top the tart,” Charlie said with a sigh.
Charles Crunchcrab I looked down. He shivered. And an extraordinary thing happened. A dragonfly buzzed out of his fine peacoat. Then a little brown nightingale flew out of his trouser leg. Then Crunchcrab the Fairy wriggled and writhed and vanished. A pile of peacoat and flying cloak and the most delicate and lovely shoes you ever saw lay on the broad back of Wenceslas the Roc—as well as a cow, an antelope, a goat, and a very confused-looking ifrit with a smoky tail. All the creatures Fairies had evolved from, which is to say all the creatures they had stolen the best bits from, just as Charlie had told September so long ago. Wings from dragonflies and faces from people and hearts from birds and horns from various goats and antelope-ish things and souls from ifrits and tails from cows and we evolved, over a million million minutes.
Wenceslas grumbled over the extra weight of a sudden cow, but he persevered. He would get them to shore—the Roc could see it in the distance, a beach full of golden scepters and crowns and jewels and necklaces. Inside the left sleeve of Crunchcrab’s peacoat hid a very handsome frog. The frog’s name was Charlie and he knew if he came out from his sleeve the other creatures would be very angry with him. So he stayed where he was. Where he was felt good and safe and, most important, easy. No one would ask him to rule the sleeve or know its capital. No one would tell him he was sleeving wrong. No one would bother him at all. And I will tell you the truth: That frog looked happier than any ferryman ever born.
“Jolly good!” Ajax Oddson congratulated all of them. Hawthorn and Tamburlaine hugged each other while Scratch danced a pirate jig on the upper deck, singing into the wind. But the Racemaster had not finished. “Now, it’s come to my attention that certain rules have been broken! Certain bad behavior has gone without punishment! Certain cheaters have prospered! Is this so? Not on my watch! Queen September, I sentence you to Lose A Turn! To the Penalty Box with all cheaters, rogues, and silly little girls!”
September banged on the edges of the frame as they went up around her like steam. “What are you talking about? I didn’t cheat!”
The Perverse and Perilous Sea grew cloudy and dark in September’s vision—and so did Skaldtown, still sunny and bright beneath the image of the distant dueling ground. So did Ell and Blunderbuss and Saturday and Hemlock the troll.
Hawthorn waved his hands in the air as he melted away, trying to catch her eye.
“September!” he called out to her, but his voice faded, too. “September, don’t forget about the name tags!”
Hemlock the troll stared, dumbfounded, at the empty chimney cones of his village. Only a moment ago, he’d been chatting away to a wyvern and a wombat and a Marid. And then that girl the alphabet loved had gone all thin and misty and there’d been a pirate ship and a ruddy great Roc where she’d been standing. Hemlock had a horror of pirates—always had and always would. Nothing could be worse in this world than a pirate come to take what you loved and then sing a shanty about it. Hemlock had tried to look unafraid—and then there’d been a lot of yelling and exploding, and now they were all clean vanished: wyvern, wombat, Marid, girl, alphabet, pirate ship and all.
But he’d seen the captain of that ship. The moment the image of it sailed across the hills of Skaldtown. A troll. A troll in a funny coat with a nose like a boulder.
“That’s my son!” he’d gasped to that absurd wool wombat with her button eyes. Why the beast looked like he’d just told her it was her own birthday he hadn’t the faintest.
CHAPTER XVII
A PRACTICAL GIRL
In Which September Finds Herself Alone in a Strange House, But Not for Long
September opened her eyes and knew three things: She was very far from Skaldtown, she was cold, and she was alone.