“Please.” September held
up her hands. “I didn’t mean to offend. Let me ask a question instead: Why do you want to rule Fairyland? Why are any of you so riled up to get the crown? It seems like a bit of a raw deal to me, if I’m to be honest. Assassinations and intrigue and eating the same thing for every meal in case a Greatvole comes to tea and on top of it all you can’t ever quit, even if you want to. Yes, I understand it’s devilish fun to be in charge of things and tell everyone what to do, but I can think of at least three things that I like better! And one of them is being left well enough alone!”
“Well, it’s hard to get anyone to let you eat them if you’re not King,” said the Rex Tyrannosaur thoughtfully.
“If you’re on top, you can make certain you and yours never have to live in a cage again,” Madame Tanaquill said through clenched teeth. “And, even better, you can fill those cages up again with everyone who ever hurt you.”
“Or, if certain folk are gobbling up the whole world for themselves, you can stop them so there’s something left for everyone else,” snarled Charlie Crunchcrab.
“It’s the biggest heist there is.” Cutty Soames sighed dreamily. “The big score, the last hit. When you’re King, you’ve won.”
Tanaquill couldn’t leave it at one answer. She tapped her glass with one long fingernail. “You can make the whole world look just like you, and never have to look at anything frightening or different ever again.”
“And when you see something dreadful, something that needs mending, something that cries out in pain, you can fix it. You can make it right and no one can stand in the way of your rightness,” the Headmistress said softly.
“Yes, that’s the main thing,” crowed Hushnow, the Ancient and Demented Raven Lord. “No one can stand in your way. No one can talk back to you or call you a stupid crow or make you feel small ever, ever again. You get to feel big forever.”
Cutty Soames nodded. His cutlass shone. “Not being King is like a chain round your neck. It’s the only way to be sure you can always do just as you desire.”
“But what do you desire that you can’t have without a crown? None of you are starving. You all wear jewels and smell wonderful and live in splendid houses. What do you want to do that you cannot?”
“Nothing just now,” admitted Cutty. “But there could always be something.”
The members of the Once and Future Club left the knot that had formed at the First Stone’s bar and settled into a number of chairs and sofas. September sat gingerly on a pale blue-and-gold seat that looked like it had escaped from someone’s dining table.
“So.” September sighed, tucking into her water and moss. “I have to race.”
“Obviously,” sighed Madame Tanaquill. “The Stoat of Arms ought to have told you. I shall strangle all of them when I see them next. I haven’t strangled the Stoat for centuries. It’ll be just like old times.”
“Please don’t strangle anyone! I’m sure they meant to tell me. It’s been a busy day! I can hardly keep my feet under me I’m so tired! All right then. I have to race the ancient Kings and Queens of Fairyland this Thursday morning at eight o’clock, which is before breakfast. I don’t suppose any of you would tell me where the Heart of Fairyland is? Just to make it fair.”
“I haven’t the first idea,” said the Prime Minister of Fairyland, shrugging.
“They don’t even know what it is,” yawned Iago, who had snoozed through their quarreling, curled up by the fireplace.
“Well, that’s the trick of it,” said Cutty Soames a bit guiltily. “If we knew, it wouldn’t be much of a race. I suppose it could be anything: a doorknob, a bag of wind, a jeweled necklace, a rhinoceros…”
“A hot air balloon, a spinning wheel, a tear from the eye of a phoenix, a bicycle pump…,” added Pinecrack.
“An egg with a needle inside, a book that reads itself, a golden ball, a golden toad, a golden sword with a golden toad’s soul in the blade…,” Thrum growled. “Or a great lot of things scattered all over the blasted place.”
“We don’t know.” Madame Tanaquill silenced them all with a glance. “Some of us have ideas—some of us have moronic ideas—but we don’t know.”
A small shadow fell over Iago’s green-yellow eyes and the glowing hearth. A girl’s shadow.
“I know,” said the Marquess. She stepped into the room imperiously, as though she had never for a moment ceased to own those chairs, those lamps, that fireplace, even the glasses and plates.
Madame Tanaquill rolled her eyes. “Oh, do shut up.”
The Marquess knelt beside Iago and stroked his ears. He purred in delight. “I do know what it is. Perhaps the rest of you spent your time in the Briary counting your gold or your servants or your toenail clippings, but I did not. Even before my first reign, Queen Mallow’s reign, I was a student of Dry Magic and Dry means books. I know more about Fairyland than any of you could scrape off the floors of your glitter-rotted minds. Even you, Foxy. I’ll meet you all at Mummery with pots of tea and a footbath ready, and when you’ve had a nice rest, you can all go hang. Coming back the first time was so hard, so difficult. But this? This is easy. This is nothing. This is a postmistress’s work. Get the package, deliver it, collect postage fee, which, in this case, is my crown.” She looked straight at September. “You wicked little thief.”
“It’s sweet when humans try to lie,” Crunchcrab sneered. “They’re such amateurs. You’re nothing but a filthy farmer’s daughter and the only thing you know is what to feed a cow. I don’t know why anyone is pretending we don’t know what will happen on Thursday. Tanaquill will win and grind all our faces into the dirt, and we’ll have to call her Your Highness for a thousand years. That is how the world works. The worst wins. I wasn’t bad enough, that’s where I went wrong. And you? You’re not even on the books, Missie Marquess.”
The Marquess’s hair flushed deep cerulean blue, like the underside of the sea. She smiled. It was a smile that grew in the grinning, deeper and wider and kinder and brighter, until September shuddered. She remembered that smile. It froze her bones.
“And you are a Ferryman who abandoned his boat. You ought to be ashamed. Do you even know where she’s anchored? I do. Starfish have chewed halfway through the hull, giant seagulls have pecked out the portholes, and there’s a family of sea lions living in the captain’s cabin. That poor ship. I’ve half a mind to mend her myself.”
Anyone else might have ignored her, or scoffed at her, for it would never list among the immortal lines of villainous banter. But Charles Crunchcrab the First flushed deeply, horror and shame flooding his face. His eyes filled with hot tears. The Ferryman of the Barleybroom said no more.