The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (Fairyland 4)

A little thrill went through the Others as they imagined the exciting shapes and colors of his punishment. But Mrs. Wilkinson seemed to be occupied with a little girl who had gotten her hair caught in a stapler and paid little attention to either of them. Pen-Stain, robbed of his chance to make it clear he was better than at least one other boy on the very first day, reddened in frustration. Then his embarrassment turned into a smile—but the kind of smile that shows sharp teeth.

“Fine,” he said gleefully. “I’ll punish you, then. After school. Just you wait, freak-o. I’m gonna thump you.”

Mrs. Wilkinson suddenly noticed that her classroom had gone far too quiet for its own good and pealed forth with what was to become her battle cry:

“Settle down, children, settle down!”

Even though they were all quite settled, except for Pen-Stain.

Thomas did not pay much attention to his lessons that day. It hardly mattered, as Mrs. Wilkinson only seemed interested in how to make an A and what color was magenta and how to add one and one together. Thomas knew all that. Only that morning, he’d been reading a book full of big, violent illustrations of the Great Battles of Britain with quite a lot of magenta in it. At that moment, the Battle of Hastings came into his mind (he liked it best because it had a bull in one corner of the illustration looking on with a bewildered expression on its brown face. Thomas deeply preferred the bull to William the Conqueror). He wondered if School was a Kingdom like Britain or France. If classes were miniature Hastings and Waterloos. You march out in your best clothes and get hollered at and thumped on all day by knights bigger and better equipped than yourself, who talk roughly and angrily in languages not very much like yours, and if you are not very good, you get walloped and wake up French. Thomas did not know. He had not seen enough of the land yet. But he knew he had to be very good. The only question was: What did good mean in this bizarre country? Only when Mrs. Wilkinson began talking about addition and this many cherries and that many glasses of milk did Thomas notice someone staring at him. A girl at her own desk, her hands folded just the same as his, her eyes large and dark and mildly interested, like a bull who has just witnessed the Battle of Hastings and found it reasonably entertaining.

Beneath his desk, Thomas quietly wrote in Inspector Balloon, so that he would not forget what he had learned so far. The way the boy with the pen stain said After School made it sound like a savage, lawless country of its own. Who knew what Sense was Common in that mysterious place? After all, every Nation has its rules. Some are Neat and Prim and Well-Groomed through many years of constitutional congresses and revolutions and having their hair brushed one hundred times each night before bed. Others are Rude and Roaming and Reckless, having sprouted like raspberry thickets and taken root without watering, feeding, or filibustering. A Well-Groomed Law is written down, on very nice paper, preferably using a quill pen—for in the world of humans a pen with a feather attached has certain properties that undecorated ballpoints do not. Anything written with a quill becomes instantly splendid, official, and eternal. This is why clever senators, wedding officiants, and playwrights always keep one close by. A Rude and Roaming Rule is one that no one invented, or carved on stone plates, but that everyone knows, or learns on the double if they know what’s good for them.

The Kingdoms of School and After School are full of untamed, unnamed, hungry-hearted rules waiting to pounce upon the unexpected. It was more important than ever to keep Inspector Balloon informed.

The boy with the pen stain, along with what seemed like the whole of the rest of Underclassmen’s Wing, Classroom 4 and possibly some of Classroom 3, waited for Thomas beside the jungle gym, a twisted pile of metal girders towering like giants’ jaws over the gray stone of the play yard. The Other Boy already had his fists up and looked very much as though he knew what to do with them, so Thomas copied his stance. I’ll be all right, he thought. I have my Troll’s Mantle and my Carnivorous Mittens to protect me. He tried not to think of that morning, when Gwendolyn had tucked his hair behind his ear and said gently:

“Darling, you do know that those aren’t really tiger paws, don’t you? Tell your mother you know that.”

He knew what she wanted, but he couldn’t make his mouth do it. It was a just a bit of yarn, of course it was. He’d seen her knitting them over the summer. But Thomas couldn’t, he just couldn’t make himself not believe that they would not become claws and fur and sinew if only he wanted it hard enough, if only his need was great enough.

“I’m warning you,” Thomas whispered to the jungle gym as he brandished his fuzzy orange fists. He wasn’t quite brave enough to say it to the crowd of children. “My paws have known the jungles of Sumatra.”

“What the devil is a Sumatra?” Pen-Stain boggled.

“It’s a place far across the sea where there are tigers and coffee and—”

“Stop talking! I’m gonna hit you now! Hold still!”

The part of Thomas that was human, and thus heir to territorial orangutans and Hastings and Sumatran coffee and assorted other belligerencies, wanted very much to not hold still, but rather, punch the boy in the nose before he could get punched himself. But the part of him that was a troll, and thus heir to the gentlest of woolly mammoths (for they are the extremely-great-grandmothers of all trolls; mammoths, and igneous rock) and the most patient of mountains, knew how to do one thing better than anything else: talk to a thing that does not want to listen.

Thomas fixed the Other Boy with a solemn gaze. He lowered his fists a little—but not all the way. Thomas was not a fool. He made his eyes into deep, endless pools with soft stars in the mud of their bottoms. He didn’t know why he could do that lately. He thought he had probably learned it from the glassy, unblinking button eyes of his scrap-yarn wombat. But when he did it, it made people stutter, and he liked that. It was like a magic spell: Look into my eyes and I’ll take your talk. Thomas put on his best eyes and said in the very softest, kindest, most seductive of voices:

“What’s your name?”

“What? Nothing. Max.”

“Why are you so mad at me, Max?”

The boy blinked. He tried to look away from Thomas, but succeeded only in looking at his chin.

“’C…’cause you were talking to your desk like a freak. My dad says freaks and hobos are scum.”

Thomas opened his eyes wider. The rain clouds above the jungle gym rolled and reflected in them.

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sp; “Max! Do you mean you don’t talk to your desk?”

“N…no. Why would I? That’s stupid,” Max sneered.

Thomas blinked slowly. His eyes shone. “Why is it stupid, Max?”

Max’s voice began to shake. “’Cause…’cause they don’t talk back, dummy.”

“Are you sure? Maybe yours doesn’t. Maybe you got a dud. Or maybe it can’t talk. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t lonely and sad because you haven’t even said hello to it. My cousin had the mumps when he was little and he can’t talk at all now. But he listens and laughs at jokes and he can make signs with his hands so we all know what he’s thinking. Just because you can’t use words doesn’t mean you can’t talk. There’s lots of kinds of talking. Talking is the best thing in the whole world, I think. Talking is Something Awfully Magic. You can make things happen just by saying the right words, in the right order, at the right volume. You can make your mother bring eggs instead of tomatoes for breakfast or take you to the pier to see the lights instead of staying home and going to bed early. You can make a toy appear in your arms and chocolate appear in your cup.”

Max was breathing slow and heavy. The Other Children leaned in, their mouths open, listening fiercely.