September laughed and held a little tighter to the arms of her chair, suddenly not entirely certain of the sort of locomotion Spoke intended to use on her. “I’ve got to see the Whelk of the Moon, if you please,” she said nervously.
The Taxicrab made a burbling sound somewhere deep in his shell, an uncertain sort of giggle.
“Pardon and all but you’ll have to be more specific. Where there’s a Whelk there’s a way, I always say! Well, we all say. I can’t take credit. It’s the Taxicrab motto.”
“I…I don’t follow, sir. But I’ve got a lovely long casket”—she felt it best to talk up the box a little so no one would think it suspicious—“and I’m meant to bring it to the Whelk of the Moon and I hoped someone else would know who that was. I’m not from these parts—I’m not even from the parts this part is part of!”
The Taxicrab bubbled again. “Nup, nup, I’ve got you now. Don’t spin your head about it. I’ll spin it plenty on my ownsome!”
Spoke reared up like a pony, stabbed his fore-claws down into the stuff of the street, and launched forward with a tremendous vault, clearing streetlamps, a skating rink, and a throng of little Naiads with ribbons in their seafoam hair, who squealed in delight and waved their hands. They came down with a chin-jarring crunch near a shop full of round rice candy in the windows and skittered away so fast September’s hair blew back and her eyes watered. The Taxicrab obeyed no logic at all. He dashed up one wall and swerved toward the ceiling until September cried out in terror, having no seat belt and hanging nearly upside down. Then he leapt out, checkered legs splayed wide, and landed in some poor soul’s back garden, shredding their delicate snow-colored grapevines—which tore off and trailed out behind them like streamers when he leapt again.
“On your left you can see the Stationary Circus in all its splendor! Not far nor wide will you find dancing bears more nimble than ours, ringmasters more masterful, Lunaphants more buoyant!”
September looked down and leftward as best she could. She could see the dancing bears, the ringmaster blowing peonies out of her mouth like fire, an elephant floating in the air, her trunk raised, her feet in mid-foxtrot—and all of them paper. The skin of the bears was all folded envelopes; they stared out of sealing-wax eyes. The ringmaster wore a suit of birthday invitations dazzling with balloons and cakes and purple-foil presents; her face was a telegram. Even the elephant seemed to be made up of cast-off letterheads from some far-off office, thick and creamy and stamped with sure, bold letters. A long, sweeping trapeze swung out before them. Two acrobats held on, one made of grocery lists, the other of legal opinions. September could see Latin on the one and lemons, ice, bread (not rye!), and lamb chops on the other in a cursive hand. When they let go of the trapeze-bar, they turned identical flips in the air and folded out into paper airplanes, gliding in circles all the way back down to the peony-littered ring. September gasped and clapped her hands—but the acrobats were already long behind them, bowing and catching paper roses in their paper teeth.
“Up top you’ll find the College of Lunar Arts—home of the Lopsided Library and the Insomniac Coliseum. Oh! Too late, we’ve passed it—look faster! If you practice, your eyeballs can move so quick you can see yourself go by before you’ve even thought to leave!”
Everything flew by in a sleek swirl of color. September’s eyes swam. “Maybe a crab can!” She gasped.
“A Taxicrab must be as limber as time and twice as punctual!” Spoke rocketed over a vast expanse of pale, milky flowers waving sweetly. “Straight lines are a loser’s game! I once picked up an old lady hobgoblin, no bigger than a stump, eyes like a lantern fish! Got her to an appointment she missed when she was a maiden, just in time to give a man a donkey’s head, kick him twice, and still turn up early for supper.”
“You don’t mean to say—”
But they reared up again, dizzyingly, the house-cluttered ceiling of Almanack yawning into view and out again—and then the crab stopped short, claws clicking triumph.
“Here we are, Central Almanack, Executive District! Off you hop, no need for thanks, I’m wanted down the circus, careful now, my belts do like to tangle, there you are, safe and sound, and here I go—check your watch, I’ll get to the off-duty bear before she sees her bicycle’s sprung a flat! All in a day and a night, my girl, just look sharp and you’ll find your mark.”
And the Taxicrab was gone. His checkered body zoomed off faster than September’s eyes could follow.
Spoke had left her in a little grotto so thick with mother-of-pearl it humped up in stalagmites and antler-points and great dark bulbs. A thin filigree net stitched with tiny specks of light like fireflies hung high up above her head. Bowls of liquid lay on every flat surface, as though a great party had just ended and no one had finished their drinks. Down in the heart of the grotto stood a very pale, very small, very beautiful person. After a moment, September caught her breath—how jangled and bashed about she felt after the quake and the crab!—and started down the rills and hillocks of hard, slick colors. The person stood in a kind of alcove, very still.
“Welcome.” The voice seemed to come from all over, an echo of an echo. “I am Almanack.”
September could not tell if Almanack was a man or a woman. The creature had long, silken hair the color of rosewater candy, and a delicate, pointed face. Long, peach-pale tendrils uncoiled everywhere, looping like vines around draped satin and gauze that covered its body, dipping into the bowls wherever they found them. Almanack had at least six hands, four folded gracefully and two open, held out toward September.
“I beg your pardon,” she said shyly, a little out of breath and a little overcome. “I thought the city was Almanack.”
Almanack smiled; its lips colored deeper to a dusky ginger. It spoke very kindly. “The city is Almanack, little one, but Almanack is me. It is my shell; it grows out of me, more and more and longer and wider each year. When one of my folk needs a thing, I provide. I squeeze shut my eyes and push out a house for them, or a mountain, or a museum for umbrellas. Almanack,” it said softly, “takes care of all your needs before you know you have them. I am the Whelk of the Moon. What is it you need, little rushing bashful two-legged beast?”
“All of this, all of it, the circus and the college and the lawns and the river—it’s all you? Your…your body? People are living inside you?” After a moment, September added: “And I am not a beast.”
A rosy ripple moved through Almanack’s cotton candy hair. “A Whelk will grow as big as it’s allowed before it is eaten or crushed or starved. Give it a little crystal bottle and you will have a little crystal Whelk. Give it an ocean and who knows where it will end? Give it a moon and you get…me. I have never been eaten or crushed or starved.” One of its tendrils found a fresh bowl and sank into the burgundy liquid there. Almanack shut its eyes in joy. “Forgive me, I am hungry. I a
m forever hungry. It takes so much to feed me now. I am vast. Vastness longs for vastness, don’t you find?” After a moment, the Whelk added: “And we are all beasts.”
September nodded shyly, perfectly willing to defer to the Whelk’s opinion on such things, not being very vast herself.
Almanack opened its four folded hands, holding them out, pearly palms showing. “I was once unvast, like you. I dimly remember it. But even then, barnacles and mussels lived on the outside of me and little marine mites lived in me, so tiny you couldn’t see them—but I could hear them, their invisible briny holidays and squabbles over philosophy. We are safe in the shell; outside the shell we are not safe. There is not much to a mite’s mind, but what there is, is gentle and uncomplicated. As I grew, I could hear them less and less, and I became lonely. One day a bishop-fish walked into me—I’d grown so large she thought I must be empty and available for a nice hermitage. She wore a miter on her trouty head bigger than she was, and her legs were a jumble of fish-hooks with but a little skin left. We got on very well. Her philosophy had more starch in it, dialectics and philippics and things, but it came to the same in the end: We are safe in the shell; outside the shell we are not safe. More and more came, and they needed so much. The first time I made a hut grow I thought I would die from happiness. I watched my bishop-fish fall asleep in it and I sang to her. Haven’t you ever wanted to give someone everything they needed, to make them safe within your own arms, to feed them and keep all harm outside?”
September thought of her father and the soreness in his leg and his heart and his memory. She thought of her mother, so worried and tired all the time. And she thought suddenly of Saturday, who had once been locked into a cage so small he could not stand up.
“As I got bigger, that feeling got bigger in me until it was big enough for all,” Almanack went on. “My heart is a house with room to spare. I wanted to make the marine mites’ philosophy true. Perhaps my philosophy is not so sophisticated. It goes: Come inside. I love you. A Whelk’s love will grow as big as it’s allowed.” Almanack sipped a distant bowl of inky black syrup with one of its tendrils. “There. I have turned the lights on in the college dormitories. A whole bank of lamps in the shapes of their least favorite professors, just to make the students laugh.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll use you all up? There’s so many people, and only one of you!”
Almanack closed its pink eyes. “They are all hungry, too, you know. At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn’t converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food—for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them. Even the mites and the mussels. But no one can use you up unless you let them.” Almanack gave a great and happy sigh. “The whole point of growing is to get big enough to hold the world you want inside you. But it takes a long time, and you really must eat your vegetables, and most often you have to make the world you want out of yourself.”
September’s eyes tingled with tears. Of all the Fairy strangeness she had known, this seemed suddenly both the strangest and least strange of all. How she would have liked to be looked after like that, cared for and watched over. And yet at the same time, she understood the Whelk, and wished she could grow big enough to hold on to everyone she loved at once. To keep them safe and with her always and know their secret needs well enough to answer them. When she spoke, her throat had got thick and tight.