“Well, that’s what you get with Third Class. But no book of ours would ever just tell you a thing. The Quest would spoil, just as if you added the wrong chemical to a medicine. It would turn poisonous and rancid. A Quest is not followed, it is engineered. Now, in you go.”
Avogadra turned several chapters at once and came to a frightening, hideous page: all black, from margin to margin.
“In?” September trembled.
“In. Didn’t you hear? You’re headed for the bottom of Fairyland-Below. This place is made up of layers like a thick, dark cake. You have to go down—you’ll have to sooner or later so might as well get a start. Just hop in—I know it looks dark. It is dark. It’s a mine, as a point of fact. But that’s where you need to go, and I’m opening the door for you.”
September peered into the utter blackness of the page. “I can’t go without my friends,” she whispered.
“No time,” the Monaciello said. “A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world. But this one is a real door, too. They float through all the books of the library. At noon, they’re in the Biographies, at tea-time they flit into the Advanced Slaying section. Dally too long, and they’ll go winging off somewhere and it’ll take weeks to find one again.”
“But I can’t just leave them!”
“I’m here,” said Aubergine softly, and September started. Without a sound the Night-Dodo had slowly and doggedly climbed the ladders to where they stood peering at their book, hooking her beak over the rungs one by one by one.
But Saturday and Ell, still sleeping in the cold Tain morning! She couldn’t just let them wake up without her and no note or message to tell them where to find her. Could she? Can’t I? I snuck off without them just fine. Either I trust them or I don’t. A hard, brave, strange voice inside her stood up to have its say. But the voice was not very big yet.
“Then I shall have to get down some other way,” September said. “Even if this is easier. Anyway, it’s very black down there at the bottom of a book.”
Inside the bodice of the Watchful Dress, a little satiny door opened. A small, agitated pocket watch flew out, its chain looping up and around to make a pair of tiny wings. It darted off, buzzing so fast September could not see it at all, down the stacks of books and out of a great round window. A moment passed, then two, then three, as Avogadra glanced worriedly at the open book. The black page rippled, impatient to be on the move.
And then A-Through-L came rising up through the air, his powerful, shadowy wings beating the morning winds. He peered through the window. Saturday sat on his back, rubbing his sleepy eyes and batting at the pocket watch, which jangled alarms in his ear and buzzed all about the poor boy’s blue-black head.
“I will smash that thing—see if I don’t,” he growled.
“Oh, Ell!” cried September. “I wasn’t going to leave you, I promise! Hurry, hurry, fly up here!”
The Wyverary did, squeezing through the window with a groan. He marveled at all the hundreds and thousands of books along the way, books he could not stop to read or alphabetize. But finally, all four of them perched or hovered together, an unruly, motley crowd. September hugged them and Aubergine, too. She hooked her arm into Saturday’s elbow, and her other around Ell’s dark claw.
“You don’t have to go, Aubergine,” she said, realizing something she ought to have said before. “I know Groof said you had to, but you don’t. You don’t really belong to us at all. You are a free beast, and should do what you please. You can stay and study with the other Physickists and be happy.”
The Night-Dodo said nothing. Quietly, she moved closer to September, that was all.
“Everyone ready?” said Avogadra, beaming under her wide black hat. “I suggest jumping right now.”
“Are we going somewhere?” asked A-Through-L.
Before she could answer, the Monaciello gave September a shove, and all four of them tripped into the book. They seemed to fall terribly slowly, and the black page got bigger and bigger beneath them until it swallowed them up completely.
CHAPTER XII
THE MINES OF MEMORY
In Which September Gets Lost in a Book, Gets Some Help with Her Memory from a Large Blue Kangaroo, and Works a Shift in a Mine
September and her friends did not so much fall into the book as crash.
The black space was not an endless empty hole, but a tunnel full of rustling, of pages ripping and turning, of heavy leather spines thunking hard against feathers and scales and skin. Blind, September tumbled and rolled and stumbled, pointing downward in a general sort of way, tasting strange ink as pages flew at her face. The roaring sound of it all sounded like nothing so much as a great, angry tide surging in, wave upon papery wave breaking over her poor head.
Slowly, ahead of her in the dark, a clanking, bonging, metallic sound grew. The papers thinned and finally blew aside like gauzy curtains. September followed the sound of metal being struck and scraped until, groping blindly, her hands fell upon a wooden frame and a hard, cold doorknob. The door wedged shut somewhat below her, and the papers crushed in behind, pushing on her shoulders with little wordy kisses. September put her shoulder against it and shoved. It came free far more easily than she expected, and with a little cry, she fell down through the door inside the book and tumbled out onto an earthen floor. Bits of paper still clung to her hair and the ruff of the wine-colored coat, which bristled and shook them off.
Avogadra had told the truth—the black path through the book ended in a mine. All around her, sharp rocks and dark bluish boulders bulged. A wooden track ran through the great cavern, and on it rickety cars raced by, some empty, some topful of sparkling gems. Now that September’s eyes adjusted to the dimness of the mine, she could see that the light came from the walls. Rich, looping, twisting veins of crystalline stuff shone as though a fire lived inside them, brighter than any jewel September had ever seen—though in truth this was not too many. The harlequin colors mingled and cast a cool reddish purplish greenish bluish goldenish radiance on the bustle of the miners, none of whom noticed that a girl had fallen out of the ceiling.
September stared at the miners: furry turquoise kangaroos with large, inquisitive eyes and powerful tails. They hopped from one cart to another, with pearly lamps on their heads and beautiful long necklaces around their silky throats. They wore brown leather straps in an X over their chests, the better to hold pickaxes and shovels on their backs. They
carried gold-pans like little shields on their brown belts. But their chief mining tool was clearly their tails, which they whacked against the rock walls with whoops and trills, knocking loose little falls of rubble, which they panned through and picked through and poked through. One hopped over to the wall nearest September and planted his feet to give it a good thrashing.
“Halloo!” the kangaroo barked, startled by the sudden presence of a girl in a ball gown sprawled in the way of a nice thick vein of peridot. “You came out of the wall.” He looked very flummoxed by this, his gentle face scrunching up with worry. Something was not right, not right at all.