“She didn’t do it to be nice. She did it so she could say she was nice,” snapped Bayleaf. “And school was only so we could give geometry concerts every night and play the grumellphone in the Municipal Orchestra and steal the Pooka’s shapeshifting recipe.”
“I wish I had a grumellphone now, I’ll tell you what,” said Sadie with a harsh, short laugh like a hammer blow. She wrapped her braid around one hand nervously, as though someone might hear her.
“And if somebody wanted us, we could go away with them.” Penny Farthing’s lip quivered. “They asked nice and everything back then. I had a Fairy mother. We rode wild bicycles every day and ate tire-jerky round the campfire and she loved me till she wasn’t allowed to love me anymore.”
“Nobody wants to hear about your stupid mother!” cried Herbert. He had big blue eyes, the kind that are made primarily to fill up with big, blue tears. “Nobody else got one! It’s not fair! I hate your mother!”
“Shut up,” hissed Penny.
“I get it,” growled Blunderbuss, who was at that moment nearly having her ear wrenched off by the distressed Herbert. “The Fairies came back and now they’re in charge and they’re nobody’s mummies and once a kidlet lands here they’re good and owned by one beastie or another. Yes? Am I right?”
“There’s waiting lists,” Sadie whispered. “You can put in for one of us at the Office in Idlelily. We cost the same as a carriage horse in good health. A little cheaper, even.” She looked up to the peeling ceiling and gritted her teeth. “I’m Sadie Spleenwort,” she hissed. She thumped her fist against her chest. “That’s me. I’m worth more than a horse!”
“And it’s like…like being in service?” Tamburlaine asked gently, trying not to offend. “Like in books they have in England. Butlers and maids and stables and things.”
“That, too,” nodded Bayleaf, and everyone suddenly got very quiet.
Penny Farthing started to speak, but Sadie interrupted her. “I’m sorry, Penn. I love you, but you can’t tell them. You don’t know. Your house works you, but you don’t have to…to do it. Calpurnia would never make you. You’re lucky. You’re so lucky.”
“Don’t tell me what I know,” Penny cried. “Do you know what Calpurnia Farthing had to do to keep me when the Fairies came back? She did used to have two hands, Sadie Spleenwort. You’re not the only one who used to be brave! I rode at the head of a Bike Gang and even the bulls came when I called! Cal and I were the first in Fairyland to cross the Perverse and Perilous Sea by velocipede! They threw us a parade in the Antipodes when we kicked our stands down on dry land at last! Tell me again how much more you know than me!”
“They’ll find out soon anyway,” piped a boy with great brown eyes like hard toffees. “They’ve got their shoes. The Office will be coming for them soon. They’ll have to Stand in the Corner like we all do!” And he burst into tears.
At that moment Tom and Tam doubled over, sank to their knees, and cried out together. Their stomachs burned, their hair felt as though it were falling out all at once, and their teeth ached as though they wanted to fire from their mouths like ivory bullets. Blunderbuss bellowed, her mustard-colored mouth showing as she roared. Static flew from Scratch like awful, screaming smoke. The wombat leapt out of Herbert’s strangling hug and jumped this way and that, trying to stand between her troll and whatever was biting him. Scratch screeched, his needle flying, his crank whirling wildly. Tom and Tam held on to each other desperately. A sickening crack snapped the air. The wood of Tam’s left foot split open and gold began to pour out—gold like maple syrup, oozing and hot and glittering. Tom Thorn looked down at his own foot; his shoe was already spilling over with the same sticky, dripping gold.
They were not the only ones—the girl with round cheeks and earrings screamed along with them, clinging to the side of a mirror to keep from collapsing on the floor.
“That’s the work bell,” said Bayleaf, who looked a little glad to see the newcomers suffering as the rest had done. “You have to go. It’ll only get worse if you shirk.” He pulled up his trouser-leg to show them—one of his feet was solid gold from the knee on. “Some of us do try to say no. Run off.”
Penny Farthing hooked an arm under each of Tom’s and Tam’s elbows and pulled them up. Tom thought his arm would come off in her hand—his bones burned.
“The Office! The Office!” wept the littlest children.
“Come on,” Penny said. “I’ll go with you. The Fairies can’t really tell us apart. They call off the gold as soon as someone shows up. Ginnie?” The girl with round cheeks nodded gratefully and dragged herself over to Penny. They held hands, and Penny’s red hair turned into Ginnie’s brown curls like ice melting. “We swap a lot. When one of us is just too tired. Or when it’s a Laundry Sabbat. You rest, Gin. Sleep. I left some cocoa in the sink.”
Tom Thorn could hardly see. His foot felt so awfully, horribly heavy. “The Spinster,” he gasped. “You said…” But he could not finish.
“What do you want with that dried-up old tragedy?” Sadie Spleenwort, lately of the swamps, scoffed. “You’d best look to your own business or you’ll find yourself with a golden head. She’s with the Redcaps. Holed up fast in their rum cellar and they’ll never let her out, so you just keep your head down and learn how to say yes, sir, like it was your first word.”
CHAPTER XV
THE LAUNDRY MOOSE
In Which Tom and Tam Go to the Office, Meet a Humble Public Servant, Fight Several Albino Moose, and Do a Spot of Laundry
The Office had come to collect them.
The Office towered over their heads, blotting out the sunlight and puffing little white cards into the air like smoke. It was a man taller than a tannery, wearing a sweeping dark robe stitched with all the symbols on a keyboard that sit lonely, used but rarely, ampersands and percentages and brackets and at signs and carrots and asterisks. It glowered at them with scalding red eyes.
“IN YOU GET,” it bellowed, and opened its robe to reveal its chest: a barrel-shaped card catalogue. Brass handles were bolted into its long drawers below little cream-colored cards with addresses printed neatly on them.
17 Love-Lies-Bleeding Lane rolled smoothly toward them, as spacious as a coffin.
“Hullo, Rupert,” sighed Penny Farthing with a weak smile. “Doing well?”
“FINE,” thundered the Office. “MISS MYGNOME. WAS A CUSHY GIG, THAT. I GET A SORE THROAT SOMETIMES BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO.”
“Comes with the job, I imagine,” she agreed. Tom and Tam tried vainly to stand on their own. They left gold footprints where they’d come running. “All that hollering takes a toll.”