The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland 2)

Belinda Cabbage looked at the Rivet Gun curiously, peering down its monster of a barrel. “That’s not how Science works, love. First, you build the machine, then it tells you what it’s for. A machine is only a kind of magnet for attracting Use. That’s why we say things are Useful—because they’re all full of the Use that chose them to perform itself. Understand?”

September didn’t.

“Well, take the Dread Device. Do you think I had the first idea what a squidhole was when I invented it? Certainly not! I was just messing about! That’s when the very best and very Maddest Science gets done, you know. I thought, Why, this alabaster octopus looks like it wants a nice transmission inside it, and fairly soon I had a thing that obviously had a Use, though what that Use could be was a total mystery. I set it out to cool on the windowsill of Groangyre and what do you know, within a year or two it had punched six holes in the damask of space-time (that’s what it’s made out of, if you didn’t know it, and of course, I’m sure you did) and I had a lovely vacation in Broceliande! Take my Sameness Engine over there.” She pointed to the other end of the room, where a huge silver-green machine squatted. It looked like a printing press had grown claws and teeth. “I haven’t the first notion of what it’s for! That’s not why I made it—I made it for the sheer joy of making something new! It’s getting up to telling me what it wants to do, though, I can just feel it. It’s been giggling a lot at night. I expect sooner or later the Rivet Gun will tell me what it’s good for, and until then I have patience. Patience is always the last ingredient in any spell, the last part in any machine, whatever your original blueprints say.”

All the while the Fairy Scientist talked, the gun’s pneumatic tube had crept across the floor toward September like a careful snake. It snuffled at her feet, and at the hem of the Watchful Dress.

“It seems to like you,” Belinda Cabbage said. “If you’re willing to report back in detail, I don’t mind letting you take it for field testing. Sometimes you have to get out in the thick of things to get a really good Use going.”

September did not know how to answer. She had seen the veterinarian Mr. Walcott’s revolver, when he went out to put down a horse that had broken its knee or couldn’t pass a stone, and her swimming coach had a starting pistol, but that was the beginning and end of her experience with guns. Only it wasn’t really a gun, she supposed, not like Mr. Walcott’s revolver was a gun. She knew a little about rivets from her mother, who made use of them on airplane bodies that had to hold together very tightly. But to be sure, a Rivet Gun and Mr. Walcott’s revolver were in the same family, perhaps even siblings. The Rivet Gun looked solid and powerful to her, and she hadn’t a weapon to protect herself except for her Dress, whose feats she could never predict. Now that Ell and Saturday had abandoned her—and she winced, remembering that—she had to take care of herself somehow. She held out her hand, trembling a little, shy.

Cabbage tossed the gun up and caught it by the barrel, handing it over grip first. September took it. It felt heavy and good in her hand. The pneumatic tube snaked up to her waist, tucking its loose end in her little bustle.

“See? You’ll be fast friends in no time. Be sure to keep good and copious notes, time and date stamped, and if at all possible, collect samples of anything it Rivets.” Belinda Cabbage took up a lightning rod and touched each of September’s shoulders with it. “I dub thee September, Temporary Mad Assistant.”

September holstered the Rivet Gun in a silken pocket that formed helpfully in the hip of her dress, just the right size for it. “Do you know which way I ought to go? To get to the bottom of the world, I mean. Where Prince Myrrh sleeps.”

Belinda Cabbage cocked her eyebrow skeptically at September. She turned to the Narrative Barometer and cracked open its glass bell. The Fairy flicked one of the hands to MUSICAL THRONES.

“There’s usually a door of some sort,” she shrugged. “I’m sure there’s one lying around.” Cabbage put both hands against a pile of machinery on her left-hand workbench and shoved it to the back wall of her shop. In the rough wood of the bench gleamed a safe-door. She spun the combination and hauled it open.

“Copious. Notes,” she said in a tone that no one,

even in their wrong mind, would argue with.

September took Cabbage’s hand and climbed up onto the bench. “One last thing,” she said. “I wonder if…being a leader of the Scientifick community, I wonder if you ever knew a…a highly puissant Scientiste, who wore the biggest pair of spectacles ever built, and lived with a lady-Wyvern, and had a wonderful Library?”

Cabbage put on her own pair of spectacles, square industrial nickel-rimmed goggles. “Of course,” she said. “That’s my father you’re talking about.”

September shook her head and laughed. Then, holding her gun tight to her hip, she jumped feet first into the safe and disappeared from Belinda Cabbage’s workshop.

CHAPTER XVI

A PRACTICAL GIRL

In Which an Old Foe Returns, but Not as Expected

September fell out of the workbench, through the safe, and into a courtyard. She was alone, as she had not been since her first step in Fairyland-Below. The gray and black and muddy white cobblestones of the courtyard stretched out into alleys narrow and vast, cobbles upon cobbles, as far as she could see. A few bare birch trees stood with their wide branches leaning over empty benches and empty shop fronts where no one displayed their wares. Over one, an old painted wood sign read: ANYTHING IMPORTANT COMES IN THREES AND SIXES.

Snow began to fall, quiet and slow.

In the center of the courtyard stood a little garden with a low wall around it. Withered-up basil and sage and crushed mallow flowers tangled together around the black, broken roots of a fig tree. Husks of old fruit hung from the branches, and wrinkled dead toadstools ringed the roots. In the center of the garden sat a dry fountain—a high, dark marble bowl with a statue of a maiden sitting cross-legged in it, cradling a horn of plenty in her arms which must once have overflowed with clean, starry water. September had never been so tired, but still she knew that face.

It was a statue of Queen Mallow.

The wine-colored coat wrapped itself tight around September, its fur collar keeping out the soft, dry snow. She took a step forward—and saw a figure sitting on the far lip of the fountain. A young girl sat with her chin in her hands, kicking her feet in the air. September held her breath and walked a little ways around to get a better look. The girl was a shadow, violet and silver and blue lights flickering in the black depths of her skin. The shadow wore a lacy shadow-dress, with thick shadow-petticoats underneath it, along with elegant shadow-gloves and shadow-stockings and shadow-slippers.

And a very fine hat.

At her side, the shadow of a panther stood guard, quietly licking one massive dark paw.

September didn’t move. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to run, and she wanted to take out her Rivet Gun and fire it straightaway. She didn’t do any of that. She just stood there and watched the girl who was the shadow of the Marquess. In the end, she waited too long and the Marquess saw her first.

“Oh!” said the Marquess, dropping her hands into her lap. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” said September.

Iago, the Panther of Rough Storms, turned his great head to look at her. His gaze was as unreadable as any cat’s. Even his shadow would never leave her, September thought, and it awed her a little.