CHAPTER V
A PITCHFORK SAID NO
In Which September Is Formally Introduced to Her Car, Learns of Strange Doings in the Kingdom of the Giants, Hears Two Nos and One Yes, and Receives a Lecture on the Care and Feeding of Tools
“Sell you a Way, miss?” a voice hissed.
September smoothed her hands over her Criminal’s finery—quite the richest and softest fabric she’d ever known. Even the Watchful Dress had not clung to her this way, almost as though she was wearing nothing at all. But her new clothes were not in the least tight. The silk hung loose and sly and knowing, as if the very stitches were promising to keep her safe, no matter what she might get up to. Though the air crackled with chill, she felt warm and light. She did not want to wear it. She did not want to be marked out. She did not want to let them decide what she should be called. But they did get to decide. This was their place. My dear, when you can change something just by saying a word, that is magic. And it felt so lovely against her skin. She did not want to admit that, but there it was. September pulled the last piece down over her head: a black cap with earflaps and long ribbons meant to tie under her chin. She let them hang free.
“I got all kinds right here, come see,” the voice wheedled. His breath brushed her ear, even beneath the Criminal’s cap. September whirled around.
One of the blue-faced folk in long coats stood behind them. He had the same purply blue hair as the Blue Wind, sticking out under a policeman?
??s cap. His eyebrows stuck out spikily, stiff with frost. When he spoke, his cheeks ballooned like a cherub’s. The man opened his coat surreptitiously, his eyes shimmering in a wild and wily way. Beneath, his clothes flashed—long periwinkle trousers with teal patches and curling cornflower shoes like a jester’s. But what his coat hid within flashed brighter. September gasped. Planets hung on the lining of that thick jacket—small globes full of swirling clouds or shifting seas, continents like tiny chunks of ruby or topaz, cool silver moons and boiling purple suns. Light poured out from the depths of the coat, bathing her in colors. She could hardly look away. But she had to look away, she had to—the creaks and the groans of the Model A being prodded by prospective buyers would not let her stay. September dragged her feet away from the glitter of planets, mumbling apologies she did not mean.
“Come back, miss! You won’t find better Ways than mine if you’ve lost yours. Or if you just want to jump the track and grab hold of someone else’s…” he called after them, even more softly, but the softer his voice, the clearer September could hear it. She pulled the black silk cap around her ears.
The long-coats crowded around Mr. Albert’s car had blue faces, as well, wild hair and frost curling over their fingers. Men and women not in the least blue milled around, picking up shadowy bits and chunks from rickety stalls. None of them could squeeze through to get a peek at the automobile. September saw some brown faces, a few pink cheeks, and one blazing golden fellow with hair like sunbeams. But the blue folk knew their business and jostled for position. The golden fellow drew aside, lured by a young girl with robin’s egg pigtails and a cigarette seller’s tray full of desirables. The crowd closed behind him. When the long-coats breathed on the car, the paint peeled just a little more. When they brushed up against the driver’s door, the metal creaked forlornly.
“They look awfully like you,” September said, and not without disapproval. One of the Blue Wind was quite enough.
The Blue Wind rolled her dark eyes. “I told you, this is the Blue Market. We’re all Winds here. Surely you saw them rushing about when old Greeny threw you over the world like a baseball. Or was he too busy dazzling you with poetry and nicknames? The world is too big for one Wind or six—there’s scads of us. One big, terrible, unreliable, tantrumy family. The Blues, well, he’ll have told you. We’re the cousins they don’t set a place for at holidays. Sneaks and dastards. Freaks and desperadoes. Bitter, freezing, furious gales. Think on the coldest day you can remember, when the icicles hung off your roof like snaggle-teeth, when you took one step outside—and the wind stole your breath. That’s me, that’s us, that’s our nature and our nurture. Can’t help how you’re made. Here’s where we ply and sell, where all the things we’ve stolen away end up. It’s the only place we can swindle fair and square. It’s too easy elsewise. Your lot thinks you’ve got hold of the right end of a deal if you get what you want at a fair price. That’s how we spell losing out. How much better to get what someone else wants and cozen them so sweet they pay you to take it! It’s a game, a sport, a contest—and the prize ribbons are all blue. And you just can’t play at our level.”
“I can haggle just fine. I had the better of a Goblin in her own Market.” September crossed her arms with pride.
The Blue Wind looked pityingly at her. “First off, the littlest lick of a Wind can get the better of a Goblin while sleeping in on a Wednesday. Secondarily, I’d bet you haven’t. The best cheats and chicaneries won’t drop you on your head until they’re good and ready and rested and ravenous. But go on ahead. Buy your little car. It’ll be precious. The going price is two hurricanes, a nor’easter, and a thundersquall.”
“I haven’t got any of those!”
“Wouldn’t be much fun if you did.”
September looked helplessly as the Blue Winds started hollering at one another over the Model A. She heard cyclones tossed into the pot, then an ice storm. I can’t buy it, she thought, her mind racing to logic it out. I can’t steal it with all of them standing about like that. They certainly won’t give it to me…
September smiled sweetly. It is easy to be sweet when you have figured out something to your advantage. “But you can’t sell it to just anyone. It’s a Tool and Tools Have Rights. Whatever that means.”
The Blue Wind scowled. “It means you ought to stop saying it. It has a name.”
“Oh, it does not! I’ve known it for ages, and if it has a name it’s Model A Ford and that’s the beginning and end of it.” September was quite tired of being told how a human car from the human world worked. She might not know much about Fairyland or Lines or magic or even money, but she knew about this.
One of the other Blue Winds stared at her as though she had just said the sun was called Robert.
“She’s called Aroostook,” the other Wind said. She pointed a long, indigo finger at the spare wheel’s burlap cover and the Aroostook Potato Company’s potato-flower logo. “Can’t you read?”
“Of course I can read!”
The Blue Wind picked at something on the furry hem of her rich sleeve. “You humans treat your Tools very shabbily. It’s not stealing at all so much as liberating. The Old Crab says: Use a Tool as you would use your own heart. Ask its leave, hold it gentle, keep it scrubbed, and put it away nice when you’re done.”
“It’s not a tool, anyway; it’s a machine,” grumbled September. “It came off an assembly line at the Ford factory with hundreds of others just like it.”
“Oh, and I suppose you weren’t born in a building with hundreds of others who look just like you?” a short, squat Blue Wind snapped, his beard as thick as ice cream.
“That’s different!”
“Only because you’re squishy and ugly and useless and it’s fiery and shiny and useful!”
A little Blue Wind, hardly more than a child, his big blue eyes full of silver flecks, took pity on September.
“It’s on account of the Pitchfork,” he piped up. “Happened in Parthalia, where the oyster-trees grow and the rum rivers flow black and deep and the Giants pummel their mountains into cities. A Giant’s pitchfork—more like a trident, the size of a cedar—woke up.”