“Betsy, I will thrash you a good one, and you know I can. Don’t forget who whipped the Lord of Leafglen and rode him about like a dog. I am not a tourist. I will not be treated like one,” said the Green Wind.
“No, you’re not a tourist,” growled a thick, phlegmy but much quieter voice. A little woman—no bigger than September and, perhaps, a bit smaller—hopped out of the gargoyle and up onto the podium. The gargoyle’s eye-flames snuffed out, and its great shoulders sagged. The little woman’s muscled chest was shaped like a bear’s, her legs thick and knobbly, her short hair sludged up and spiked along her scalp, sticking up in knifepoints. She chewed on a hand-rolled cigarette; the smoke smelled sweet, like vanilla and rum and maple syrup and other things not terribly good for you. “You’re not a tourist,” she repeated in a grumbly, gravelly voice. “You’re greenlist, and that means no-good scoundrel, and that means No Entry Allowed, Orders of the Marquess.”
“Betsy, I filed my immigration request with the stamps of the Four Clandestines weeks and weeks ago. I even have a letter of reference from the Seelie Parliament. Well, the clerk. But it’s on official letterhead and everything, and I think we all know that stationery makes a statement,” the Green Wind said defensively.
Betsy quirked a hairy eyebrow at him and hopped back into the gargoyle-puppet, quick as a blink. It roared to life, all fiery eyes and clanking arms.
“GO AWAY. OR SEE WHO GETS THRASHED.”
“Green,” whispered September, “is she … a gnome?”
“Too right I am,” grumbled Betsy, squeezing out of the puppet again. It slumped in her absence. “And very perceptive of you, that is. What gave it away?”
September’s heart still hammered all over the place from the yelling of the gargoyle. She held her trembling hand a little above her head.
“Pointy,” she squeaked, and cleared her throat. “Gnomes have … pointy hats? I thought … pointy hair is as good as a hat, maybe?”
“She’s a regular logician, Greeny. My grandmother wears a pointy hat, girl. My great-grandmother. I wouldn’t be caught dead in one any more than you’d like to wear a frilly bonnet. Gnomes are modern now. We’re better than modern, even. Just look, you,” and Betsy flexed an extremely respectable biceps, the size of an oilcan. “None of this flitting about in gardens and blessing thresholds for me. I went to trade school, I did. Now I’m a customs agent with my own great hulking hunk of heave here. What have you got?”
“A Leopard,” answered September quickly.
“True,” considered Betsy. “But you have haven’t got papers or both shoes, and that’s a trouble.”
“Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.”
“They do. You just can’t see them right,” Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. “All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that’s all. Whereas Rupert here? He’s as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.”
She scratched the hulking shell behind what might have been an ear. It remained still and dark.
“Then why tell me it’s all puppets and engines? Don’t you want me to let you peer at me?” asked September.
Betsy beckoned her closer, until they stood nose to nose and all September could smell was the vanilla and rum and maple syrup of her cigarette, which was all through the gnome’s skin, too.
“Because when humans come to Fairyland, we’re supposed to trick them and steal from them and whap them about the ears—but we’re also supposed hex them up so that they can see proper-like. Not everything, just enough so as to be dazzled by mushroom glamours, and not so much that we can’t fool you twice with Fairy gold. It’s a real science. Used to be done with ointment. It’s in the rule book.”
“Are you going to put something very foul in my eyes, then?”
“I told you, kid. Gnomes are modern now. I have personally picketed the Hallowmash Pharmacy. There’s other ways of opening your thick head. Like Rupert. He’s great with thick heads. Most people, I show them Rupert, they see anything I tell them to. Now, papers, please.”
The Green Wind looked sidelong at September and then at his feet. September could swear he was blushing, blushing green through his beard. “You know very well, Betsy,” he whispered, “that the Ravished need no papers. It’s in the manual, page 764, paragraph six.” The Green Wind coughed politely. “The Persephone clause.”
Betsy gave him a long look that plainly said, So that’s what’s afoot, you old bag of air? She blew her sweet, thick smoke up into his face and grunted.
September knew she could not have been the only one.
“Don’t answer for you, though, tall thing. All right, she can go, but you stay.” Betsy chewed her cigarette. “And the cat, too. I’m not violating the Greenlist for the likes of you.”
The Green Wind stroked September’s hair with his long fingers.
“Time for us to part, my acorn love. I’m sure my visa will come through soon … maybe if you put in a good word for me with the embassy. In the meantime, remember the rules, don’t go swimming for an hour after eating and never tell anyone your true name.”
“My true name?”
“I came for you, September. Just you. I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.” He leaned in close and kissed her cheek, courtly, gentle, dry as desert wind. The Leopard licked her hand passionately.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
September did. She felt a warm, sunny wind on her face, full of the smells of green things: mint and grass and rosemary and fresh water, frogs and leaves and hay. It blew her dark hair back, and when she opened her eyes, the Green Wind and the Leopard of Little Breezes had gone. In her ear floated his last airy sigh: Check your pockets, my chimney-child.