September would not cry this time. She would not.
The Blue Wind hooted triumph once more, throwing her Kaiser-hat up into the air and catching it. As she worked herself up, all around them, whirlwinds and flurries worked themselves up as well, spitting and wheeling and scattering apart. September’s dark brown hair and the Wind’s purply blue hair streamed out around them as though they were underwater. The wind screeched through the holes in the high, rickety towers. September knew that sound! Suddenly she forgot all about her burning cheek.
“Wait!” she cried. “Are we in Westerly?”
The Blue Wind stopped short like an unplugged radio. All her gusts died in a moment. She crouched down, balancing on her blue leather toes, tented her fingers, and looked up curiously at September.
“Where else would a Wind call home? Well, not Westerly proper, you know. Not Westerly the Big Fat Club of Rottens That Won’t Let You in for No Reason at All. This is the suburbs, girl. The hinterlands. Where the criminals and the carnivals and the concatenating counterfeiters of no morals to speak of make a home. Mercator’s off the tourist track. It’s where you come if you can’t go through official channels. If you need to trade or buy or sell or rent or smuggle or feed something you oughtn’t. It’s the underground. That’s what suburb means, you know. Under the city. It’s Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it. This is the Blue Market, where you turn up when the world tells you no.”
September turned to look down the book-boardwalk into the murky, twilight town. Folk moved down the streets, but she could not see their faces in the gloam.
“Perhaps you ought to give me directions to Westerly, then. I…I met Latitude and Longitude once. They might remember me. I still know all the puzzle pieces to go from one world to another. I think I could get them to open up again and take me through the official way. I shouldn’t like to go sneaking through the back door when I could present myself nicely at the front.”
The Blue Wind opened her mouth and closed it again. Her great dark eyes danced with amusement. She patted September’s hair. “Oh, my wintry waif, don’t you know what happens when the government totters? Or, in this case, gets dropped soundly on its head by a certain spoiled traipsing tourist. Out goes organization and in comes skewered-if-you-do, roasted-if-you-don’t, in comes smuggling, bribery, graft, skimming, back alley deals, and might-as-well-do-it-all-while-no-one’s-looking. A whole fabulous bouquet of ways and means! It’s so sweet that you think Latitude and Longitude look anything like they did when you went ingenue-ing about years back! I think they’ve retired to Paraguay. Now it’s Line-jumping and squeezing through by the teeth of your skin and don’t forget to bribe the door on the way out.”
September felt a chill. “But there is a government! Charlie Crunchcrab is King—it even says so on the sign.”
“Oh, the Old Crab is doing his best to pinch it all back into shape. Nice and Imperial, he says, Just Like the Old Days. But”—the Blue Wind spread her hands and shrugged—“what does a bandit care for a King’s little hobbies? Now, if you’re entirely finished, I’ve got goods on the barrel and you’ve quite ceased to be interesting.”
“Goods! You mean Mr. Albert’s car! You can’t just go selling it. It isn’t yours!”
“I suppose you think it’s yours? Or this Mr. Albert, who sounds even more insufferable than you?”
“Well, yes, of course, it’s Mr. Albert’s!”
“Don’t you ‘of course’ me, my blueberry-brat! You’re wrong three times over!” The Blue Wind ticked her fingers off one by one. “It’s not yours and it’s not Mr. Albert’s and it’s not mine, either!” She held up her hand. “It’s a Tool and Tools Have Rights. I’ll split the proceeds with the—it’s a car, is it? Measly word—fair and square, and we’ll have a good sit-down between us and decide which buye
r the beast likes best.”
September sputtered. “You can’t have a sit-down with a car! It’s not a Fairyland car with a story and sorrows and sugar on top—it’s just a car. From my world. It doesn’t even work very well. It can’t talk and it can’t spend money and it certainly doesn’t have rights!”
The Blue Wind whistled. She stood up, spreading her satin-gloved hands, washing them of all things September. “Well, I’m sure you’re right and I’m wrong and there’s absolutely nothing you don’t know about anything.”
The puffin on her shoulder shook his head disdainfully at September. The Blue Wind turned sharply and marched off down the boardwalk of book spines and into the crowd of Mercator. The scarlet light of the sky caught the silver thread in her jacket and sparkled.
“No, you don’t!” snapped September, stomping after her. “I am coming with you and if someone is going to buy that automobile it’s going to be me. And then you’re going to tell me how to get into Fairyland like a Wind should—” September caught herself. That was not an argument this Wind would like one bit. She wouldn’t care at all for what a Wind should do—if she were in the habit of acting as she should she wouldn’t have lost her Leopard. And without a Wind, how would she get to Fairyland? There were no others about; it was the Blue Wind or nobody. September took a breath. If the most trouble came from taking folk seriously, she would do just that. “You’re going to tell me how to get into Fairyland,” she revised, “because even though I am spoiled and you don’t like me, it’s a good bet I’ll stir some manner of consternation up there and kick things over and make a mess, because I’m a person and that means trouble and trouble means me.” September drew herself up and grinned, even though she did not feel in the least like grinning. The Winds were mischievous, that was certain—so she had to be as well.
The Blue Wind said nothing. She did not stop. Her blue leather boots made soft noises on the boardwalk. But after a moment, she held out a long turquoise hand.
September took it.
CHAPTER IV
A PROFESSIONAL REVOLUTIONARY
In Which September Is Wayed and Treasured, Meets a Well-Connected Crocodile, Learns a Spot of Fiscal Magic, and Becomes an Official Criminal of the Realm
The sun set in Mercator.
But that didn’t seem to mean much. The sky turned a sort of lemony lavender, and strange, unfamiliar magenta stars came on between the braided clouds. The stars seemed awfully close. September could see wispy bits of their flames curling out all around them. She supposed it should have been hot, with all those stars just as close as the sun, but instead the shantytown seemed to hunch up under a chill, turning up its coat collar against the constant wind. Sweet little houses lined the streets, compasses stamped on their paper doors—but all the lights in the windows were dark. The boardwalk led straight to the center of town, a great square as full of people and sound and doing as the houses were empty.
The square was a great map, inked in vermillion and viridian and cerulean and citron and bold, glossy black, fairly glowing in the twilight. A thousand countries crowded in upon it—and most of these were being stepped on and jumped on and jigged on and fallen on and stamped on by some fellow or other. September would have liked to have spent hours crawling over every line and legend—was Fairyland there, the dear island she had sailed all the way around? Was her own home? But she would not get the chance. Folk hustled everywhere, dressed in long, thick coats with brilliant buttons and deep pockets. Some wore hats and some wore helmets, some wore scarves and some wore smart little caps, but no one went bareheaded. September touched her own dark hair, feeling suddenly unprotected. She could not help but notice how many of the shadowed and shadowy faces were as blue as the Blue Wind’s. Music ballooned up here and there, though September could see no instruments. It made a disorganized sort of tune, as though it grew wild as a mushroom in the forest, where songs and ballads and symphonies got themselves planted nicely in sweet little rows and watered from a clean spout every morning. Drums whump-thumped, horns squwonked, piccolos trilled, concertinas went squeezing in and out, but there was no order to any of it, only the occasional and wholly accidental harmony.
“That’s a pleasant sort of noise, even if you couldn’t sing along,” September ventured.
The Wind nodded her blue head, her own furry hat gleaming wet with melt. “Music has more rules than math or magic and it’s twice as dangerous as both or either. There’s plenty here to buy and barter, to have and to haggle, but don’t you go bothering instruments—I haven’t got time to clean you off the Till.”
For in the middle of everyone and everything, where the map’s colors pooled densest and darkest, squatted a hulking old-fashioned cash register as big as a Roman fountain. It was the old-fashioned sort, with a hand crank, which September had only seen in books. It gleamed all over, its wooden cylinders and brass keys polished till it all shone like a candelabra. The glass of its display bore not a streak or a smudge. Within, on black squares blazing with curly white letters, the words NO SALE could be clearly read for miles.