“September!” he trumpeted—and before September could answer him by vaulting over the circulation counter into his welcoming wings, a strange and awful thing happened.
A plume of indigo fire erupted from the Wyverary’s throat. He threw back his head toward the domed ceiling. The flame flowed thick and oily through the air, coiling and sizzling as it rose. Several lanterns burst into purple sparks and charred chunks, raining back down onto the books. The roof blackened—but it could not get much blacker than the black blast-stars which already scarred it. Finally, the flame sputtered out, leaving A-Through-L looking mortified. He hid his head in one scarlet claw.
And then, without warning, he shrank.
September was sure she saw it: One moment he was as gargantuan as always, towering, a great red beast who could eat two barns for lunch and still have room for tea. The next, he had dropped a foot or two, and cinched in a foot or two, and even lost a foot or two of tail.
But September could not make the time to worry about that. She cried out in joy, finally, a mighty whoop swelling up in her and bursting out at last, a popped bubble, a cut rope. Fairyland at last, even if it was the Moon, and her friend, impossibly, brassy and bright as ever, nothing lost, and not one fig given whether or not she had grown up a little. She laughed and reached up her arms to the Librarian’s chair. Ell looped his tail around her and hauled her up, nuzzling her face and blushing furiously. She who blushes first loses, September thought. But her own face flushed anyhow and she was not sorry.
“I’m very well, thank you,” snapped a little piping voice. A final glop of indigo flame hissed from Ell’s mouth, landing on the glass chair and sizzling away into lavender steam. A puffball festooned with ribbons yelped and stamped at a smoking book some falling nugget of lantern had stove in. “Oh, why shouldn’t you take on a Wyvern, Abby? Everyone deserves a claw in the door. He’ll be aces at shelving, with those wings!”
“September,” said A-Through-L with deep embarrassment, “may I present Abecedaria, the Catalogue Imp. Who is really very nice when there are patrons underfoot…”
The puffball hopped over the cairns of books and perched on a stack of periodicals. Abecedaria was a large powdered wig. Her curls and tiers were as splendid as any of the Founding Fathers or French Kings September had read about in her history books, fastened with black velvet ribbons and little black rosettes. She had no head beneath the wig; several of those sausage curls and corkscrews and puffs formed themselves into waggling eyebrows and a noble nose and a mouth. Two fat poodle-puffs made for legs, which ended in tiny black slippers.
“But what do you see?” the wig wailed in despair. “Do you see patrons?”
“She’s a Periwig,” Ell whispered. “Aldermanic Order, from the Foxtail Haberdashery. Very crispable, but a wonder with figures and sorting and classification and fiddly things that take patience that people’s heads just don’t have. Periwig begins with P, but she begins with A and we know each other quite well anyhow by now. Oh, I am so happy to see you!”
“An empty Library!” cried Abecedaria. “A silent Library! Can you imagine anything more miserable?”
September blinked. “I thought Librarians liked silence! I’m sure someone shushed me on the way in!”
“I can’t help that I make shushing noises when I walk! It’s a far sight better than squeaking loafers! You poor girl, what sort of aged, unfriendly Libraries have you met in your short life? A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can’t-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar! And that is why I did think a Wyvern would be a perfectly boisterous and bombastic Librarian. I have only myself to blame.”
A-Through-L groaned in sorrow. “Oh, A is for apology and F is for forgiveness and I hope that you’ll take the one and give the other, for I am as sorry a beast as ever flew! You know me, September, as well as anyone who ever walked on toes instead of claws. I never use my fire unless I mean to! At least I never did! Why, before a year ago I could count on one foot the things I’d scorched. See, I’ll fess up to all of them: a certain real estate office, a flock of gillybirds when I was very hungry, a bonfire at Midautumn, and On the Criminology of Fairies by Quentin Q. Quince, Volumes II-IX. I only meant to burn up three of those and they did ask me to do the bonfire and I’m very sorry about Mr. Quince. I am not a vicious beast! It is only that I cannot help it! Lately, when I am excited or frightened or feeling things very strongly it just comes bellowing out. I try to keep it in, I swallow snow by the drift and gargle salt water and eat plenty of greens, but it’s always there, just waiting to come out, and I am so awfully, terribly sorry that I hurt our poor lanterns and damaged property and gave September a nasty shock, I’m sure! If you both hate me for it, I shall understand, but you mustn’t hate beasts for things they can’t help. I do wish books weren’t so burn-up-able! But we must all live with our weaknesses.” A single orange tear dropped from Ell’s eye.
“The Quince was practically his first act as Assistant Librarian,” sighed Abecedaria. “All my patrons run away and gone, in a spectacular display of Wyvern!”
“I shall wear a muzzle if I have to,” Ell said miserably. “And turn my face to one side.”
“Oh, you big stove, don’t take it so hard. What would I do without you? I’m getting on in years, I can’t even reach the romances anymore.” The Periwig patted Ell’s ruddy flank. “There, there,” she crooned. “That’s what curses are for. You’ll get the better of it, I just know it. And then you’ll be ready for a circulation of your own.”
September gasped herself. “You’ve cursed Ell?” She was ready to stand for her friend right there and call the imp a dozen kinds of rotten, nasty, no-good tyrant.
“Yes, I did, young lady, and I’ll thank you not to judge until he turns your house into a purple fireworks display and explodes every book you could call your own!”
September turned to look at Ell, who clearly wished he could pull up the whole Lopsided Library over his head and disappear.
“It’s a Pedagogickal Curse,” Abecedaria said defensively. “Simple Severe Magic. All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory. A Library at its ripping, roaring best is a raucous beast to ride. When he learns his lesson it’ll snap like fingers. Every time he fires off like that, he shrinks. It doesn’t hurt him and I daresay he’s got a ways to go before it makes a difference in his lunch portions. No use whining; it can’t be undone till you undo it.”
“Oh, poor Ell!” September threw up her arms and the Wyverary lowered his long red snout so that she could hold him as best she might. He was so much bigger than her that it always felt like hugging a building; she did it all the same. His warm skin smelled just as it always had, was just as leathery and dry as she remembered. But it was not the same—not quite. Her arms had never been able to reach quite so far around his neck before. But she would not shame the Wyverary by blurting out how much smaller he had gotten.
“Fire begins with F,” he wept, “and so does Flame. Perhaps it’s hopeless, in the end.”
“Nothing’s hopeless! After all, I’ve found you on the Moon—I can’t think of anything more unlikely in the world and yet here we are!” September gave him her warmest smile.
“Oh, but it’s not so unlikely!” cried Ell excitedly, his curse forgotten in his eagerness. “September, you only left a few months ago! You left us dancing with the shadows, and that went on for a good while. I had quite a lot to say to my shadow, it turned out! And so did everyone else! It took so long King Crunchcrab called a national holiday so the whole business could get a proper hash out. I had breakfast with the other Ell every morning. Radish tart and goblin quiche! But then Belinda Cabbage sent for me—or rather her Automated Elecktro-Whiskered Apprentice did. That’s a sort of mechanickal meerkat fueled by worry. The more you fret about a thing, the harder they work to fix up the trouble! Miss Cabbage built a whole mob of them and they all came running when she popped up in Fairyland-Above again. So many anxious folk milling about! Well, that little bronze meerkat flashed and squeaked and trilled and rolled back and forth on her tiny wheels and then spat out a little curl of paper that said Miss Cabbage and some creature called Avogadra had done some Questing Mathematickals and that when you came home—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say home; I mean to say when you came back?
??you’d land on the Moon or thereabouts. And here you are! Mathematicks are wonderful things, even if they begin with M.”
“I don’t think I shall ever understand how time manages its affairs in Fairyland,” said September, shaking her head. “For me a whole year has gone by, and a little more besides. But…you keep saying I,” September said softly. “Where is Saturday? Did he come with you to meet me? I left you together.”
Ell put his scarlet head on one side. “Haven’t you seen him yet?”
“No!”
The Periwig interrupted them. “I’m sure it’s all deeply mysterious but I’ve got soot to scrub and you’ve got a box under your arm so let’s have at one or the other of them, shall we?”