The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (Fairyland 4)

“And who do you take after?”

Hawthorn thought back to his garnet nursery, his great toad, his father and his hat, his mother and her pot, the family bridge, with its good, creamy mortar and nice thick stones and new riddles every year. He thought of everything that had ever happened since he had been born, which was really not so many things, but to Hawthorn was the whole of the universe.

“I don’t know!” he cried. “I mostly take after my Toad, I think.”

The Red Wind grinned, her red lips curling under her red mask. She looked as though she had been given a present just specially for her, all wrapped up in red. “Oh, my darling stumpy mushroom-lad! Quite so! And a toad means adventure. A toad means starting out a nasty clammy little thing and turning into a prince. A toad means sticking your tongue out as far as it can go and gobbling up everything it touches. A toad means golden balls and wells and cursed princesses and archery contests and swelling music and flowers falling from towers and the enchanted bowers of fair maids! Choose, Hawthorn, the Toad’s True Son—a life in the tourist industry, sticking close to home, trip-trapping poor backpackers who never harmed you, or a life of strange lands, wild wandering, splendid machines, and deeds of daring?”

Hawthorn hopped from foot to foot, quivering and sweating and furrowing his brow. He could feel his fret starting up in him like a sour green balloon, slowly filling and growing. He could see the gorgeous land the Red Wind spoke of on one side of his heart, opening up like a book of many colors, like his book of maps, wonderful, new—and on the other side he saw his beloved whale-skull bed and the opal porridge his father boiled up on Thursday mornings and the dear, familiar shops of Skaldtown all lit up for the holidays. The Equator glittered beneath his feet. Each stone seemed as deep as the sea, as a dark, dark door, a tunnel, through which the troll knew he would find another Hawthorn, a boy he could not even imagine right now, who had chosen adventure and towers and flowers and whatever bowers were, who had a gleam in his eye like a lad who had placed his bet and won.

Hawthorn wanted to meet that boy awfully.

The Red Wind gently pulled a strand of Hawthorn’s mossy hair free of his nightclothes. “A choice is like a jigsaw puzzle, darling troll. Your worries are the corner pieces, and your hopes are the edge pieces, and you, Hawthorn, dearest of boys, are the middle pieces, all funny-shaped and stubborn. But the picture, the picture was there all along, just waiting for you to get on with it. Now, grab hold of that bit of grass. That one there, under the guavas. Get your nails underneath, that’s a lad.”

Hawthorn, his fret still squeaking and swelling, did as he was told. He squooshed his thick fingers into the Jungle earth. It was as soft and sweet as warm chocolate. He felt a hard lip and hauled on it—the edge of the blue grass, the edge of the map, came up in his hand. The Red Wind had snatched up a stretch of cantaloupe-continent, and as Hawthorn watched, she heaved it up, up, up, over her head. The Panther of Rough Storms bit a pale swath of moonflower-arctic in his black muzzle and yanked it free. The troll gritted his sharp teeth and pulled harder, hardest, until his scrap of sea came up as well, and they all three tripped and tumbled toward each other, dragging the grass and flowers and stones behind them like capes, until suddenly all was dark. The boiling sun was gone. They crouched together, breathing fast, huddled inside the bundle of the world like a fort of blankets. The rich smell of flowers and roots and soil and growing, living, rhyming things swirled and danced in the shadows. Hawthorn’s fret popped in an emerald burst. He peered at the Wind and her Panther with great bright crimson eyes like nursery-garnets and Redcaps and poison apples.

“There isn’t really a choice, is there?” he whispered. “Adventure cheats. It’s so much shinier and louder than Not-Adventure.”

Solemnly, the Red Wind held out her free hand to the troll in pajamas. With the other hand, she held the world together.

“Aren’t you the cleverest thing,” she said, and pulled him in close to her scarlet side, to her Panther, to the Equator, and the infinite sea of maybes she clutched in one strong, red fist.

CHAPTER II

HOW TO SEND A TROLL BY POST

In Which Hawthorn Chooses Between a Variety of Attractive Packaging Options, Meets a Certain Benjamin Franklin, and Receives a Commemorative Stamp

I have told you three times that the world is a house—and everyone knows a thing you say three times must be true. But now I shall tell you how the world is shaped for the fourth time.

Fours are a funny business. No one ever gets four wishes from a genie in a great brass coffeepot. Nobody demands you perform four tasks to be done in order to win the heart of a rhinoceros, or accepts four gifts from the suspiciously overeager witch at the bottom of a well. A joke repeated three times is a satisfaction, four tires the patience and the jaw. I have never heard hide nor hair of the fourth blind mouse, nor what the fourth little pig might have found left over to build his house with when his brothers had done. The fourth wish, the fourth gift, the fourth mouse—they live outside the story of stories, outside the rules. Anything might happen to that poor white-eyed creature nosing in the dark. She might find herself crowned Queen of the Kingdom of Drywall and rule with an iron paw. One simply cannot know what to expect. Not even me—and I know quite a lot of things concerning stories, as well as the care and keeping of royal mice.

But we are seasoned travelers, you and I. We have gone together every which where: into the front parlor of our own dear planet, full of diamonds and dinosaur bones and Canadian geese and the Cathedral of Notre Dame and ballpoint pens. We have crept up into the lush, painted bedroom of Fairyland and bounced upon the bed until feathers flew. We have slipped through the cluttered closets between worlds, down into the dark cellar of the underworld, up onto the roof to see the lost baseballs and fallen stars and astronauts left all about. We have sailed and spelunked and flown hand in hand—we have even walked on the Moon. How wonderfully expert we have become at the whole business! We know just where our traveling socks are kept. At the drop of a page, we polish our passports and pack our overcoats and turn up the collars on our rather fetching matched luggage. We shall go to the Country of Four together! What fun it shall be! The Country of Three is such a safe place, after all. It is so comforting to know that the third house always stands fast, no matter how the wolf blows. But the fourth? Who can tell?

This time I shall not lead you into a new corner of the house of the world. We know it so well by now, after all. We know where the Fairies live and where the shadows fall, where the cobwebs really ought to be cleaned up if anyone ever gets around to it, where a window is loose, where a door creaks. We are annoyed by the stove that will not light, by the weeds in the garden, by that ungodly mess in the closet. A thing too familiar becomes invisible.

It is time for us to Go Out.

But do not fear, even if it is colder outside than you might prefer, if Spring has been once again rudely tardy, if the trees only have a breath of green at their tips like a fine lady’s jade rings, if the sun is pale and h

igh and makes you squint, if the wind, for there is always wind, bites and pierces deep. Tug up your best coat round your neck and tie your longest scarf tight. You may hold my hand if you like. I promise, it is good for your health to step outside the house of the world. After all, we are not going far.

Only so far as the mailbox.

When one wraps oneself up in a blanket of earth, one expects, quite rightly, to find oneself underground when all is wrapped and done. But when Hawthorn opened his eyes (which he had scrunched up tight in case of a frightful rush of air, a bang or a flash, any jostling or walloping that might accompany a crossing of, or indeed a burrowing into, the Equator) he stood outside, on a pleasant, clipped lawn, with a number of respectable hedges and flowerbeds about. The sun sparkled in a cloudless sky; a brisk breeze ruffled rows of several-colored tulips in neat beds. Hawthorn shaded his eyes, dazzled. Before him rose quite the largest building he had ever seen. Troll architecture is mainly accomplished by having a good long talk with a hill or a swamp about the marvelous advantages to be found in doors, windows, and indoor plumbing. But this was a palace. Twelve black columns rose up, all tangled round with golden moss and briars bursting into deep violet roses and deep violet quill-pens, their feathers drooping elegantly toward the grand steps. A great triangular roof capped the columns. Beautiful carvings danced upon it, a parade of dashing daredevils: Peasants and princes and spriggans and salamanders, fairies and firebirds and fauns, maidens in armor and maidens in chariots, strange, smartly suited folk with plain faces and more buttons on their coats than anyone needs, horses and dogs, clerks with sharp pens, all laughing as though they had heard the same excellent joke. All passing parcels and letters between them, some secret and furtive, some open and glad. And below this stone gathering, bright blue letters read:

GREATER FAIRYLAND POSTAL SERVICE

STATION NO. 1

NEITHER ROUGH STORMS NOR GLAMOURS NOR FIREDRAKES NOR GLOOMY NAIADS WITH THEIR DRESSES OFF

STAYS THESE COURIERS FROM THE SWIFT-ISH COMPLETION OF THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS

A great rush of folk hurried in and out of its grand doors. Some carried bundles under their arms, some letters, some nothing at all. A Fairy boy with blinding orange wings clutched a sheaf of papers to his chest and wept. A manticore tore joyfully into a bushel of toffees wrapped in brown paper right there on the steps. The Red Wind and her Panther gazed up at the post office with a certain sort of familial fondness.

“Are we going to post a letter?” asked Hawthorn wonderingly. He plucked at the sleeve of his nightdress, feeling suddenly very shabby. He would have dressed up if he’d known he was going to meet the post office.

“In a manner of speaking,” chuckled the Red Wind, and prodded him up the long, shining path through the grass. It was cobbled in brass plaques, most worn and faded by foot traffic. Hawthorn peered down—they were postmark plates, for a few familiar places and hundred thousand cities the troll had never heard of. Cockaigne, Brocéliande, Seattle, Buyan, Pandemonium, Lilliput, Chicago, El Dorado, Paris, Norumbega, Tain, Odessa, Melbourne, Almanack, London, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Omaha, Walghvogel—and there! Skaldtown! Hawthorn squeaked with glee. He longed to stay and read them, every one, the wonderful names and the plain ones, home and far-off. But the Panther of Rough Storms nipped at his heels until they were jogging along much too fast to get any more good looks. And as they drew close to the great palace of post, he saw that the black columns and walls were not smooth stone as he had thought, but thousands and millions of brimming inkwells packed together like bricks, their dark ink rippling safe within or trickling out or oozing from cracks in the round glass globes. By the time they reached the top of the gloriously dizzying staircase, Hawthorn’s feet had gotten quite soggy with purple-black ink. The Red Wind turned aside the door: a leaf of parchment paper as thick as a girl’s arm. For a moment the troll worried about tracking ink inside—but the damage had already been done. The floor of the post office was the color of closed eyes.