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And then the moose stood up, one by one, quite calm, and wandered off over the green.
“What was that? What? How was that laundry?” Tamburlaine’s fingers rattled together like winter branches.
Penny looked at them oddly. “You can’t see? Oh…that’s…” And she had to sit down, she was laughing so hard. Robin Hood shook his head while she explained. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you? We all get a gob of gnome ointment in the eye first thing, but you came round the back way. I bet this all looks like a lovely countryside to you, doesn’t it? Pretty enough to pitch a village in? It’s just a house. That’s the parlor, where we were talking to Tanaquill, her dressing room in the tangerine trees—she’s got a bedroom in the white hill up there. It’s all just a Fairy’s idea of interior decorating. They make us dress like milkmaids and noble thieves so we match the draperies. If you could see clearly, you’d know we’re in the laundries now.”
“So that was just a lot of bedsheets and petticoats? That’s what you saw? Bedsheets with poison tails?” Tom huffed.
“No, actually, that was a lot of white moose with poison tails,” Robin Hood cut in. “That’s just what Fairy laundry looks like. It hates us and wants us to suffer. It’s not like they wear clothes, really, or sleep in beds that would look like beds to us. Their laundry is…it’s their insides, see? Rage, mostly. A little bitterness and gluttony and power-hungry jealousy thrown in with the delicates. They use it hard all week, and on the Sabbats we get it ready to wear again. But anyway, we still see the meadow and the hibiscus and the gully. We just see the washboards, too.”
“Don’t people get stuck with those tails?” asked Tamburlaine.
“Sure. I know a girl who lost an arm,” answered the young man. He took off his Robin Hood cap, which even Tom had to admit looked silly. “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. You sort of lose your manners around here, like old socks.” He held out his hand and smiled a strange, horribly familiar, lopsided smile.
“I’m Thomas Rood,” he said.
CHAPTER XVI
THE CRANBERRY BOG
In Which a Troll Meets Himself, a Changeling Hides a Ferret in His Pocket, a Girl Made of Wood Says Quite a Lot Concerning the Emperor of Turkey, and a Fairy Ball Commences in a Cranberry Bog
“No, you’re not,” Tom Thorn insisted.
“I am, though,” replied Thomas Rood.
Tom Thorn stared at the boy in his absurd green hose and doublet and cap with a long pheasant feather sticking out of it. He could see it, almost. His own face, his human face, as it would have looked if he’d grown up with a smile other than Gwendolyn’s to imitate, a glare other than Nicholas’s to learn. If he’d hardly ever had a haircut and had worked so hard he had muscles before he had a beard. If he’d spent half his life with his head bent and his jaw clenched. Though, Tom supposed, they’d both done a little of that. He remembered what Sadie had said—a Changeling couldn’t get away from stories in Fairyland. They ran straight at you like dogs that missed you while you’d been gone. Well, I’d better get in on the joke if I’m going to make my way here, he thought.
“Pleased to meet you,” Tom said, and put on his best grin, trying to make it a grin the other Thomas Rood would recognize. “I’m Thomas Rood.”
“No,” the other Thomas said, and to him it was not a joke at all. “You’re not. You’re not!”
Tom Thorn stepped back a little. “No,” he said softly. “No, you’re right. I’m not. I’m not. I’m Tom Thorn…” But he stopped. Shook his head. The time for that was done. “No, no, I’m not either. I’m…my name is Hawthorn.” He had never said it out loud, not since he remembered it for the first time in the Painted Forest. “I’m a troll and my name is Hawthorn.” He couldn’t help it; he laughed, and felt tears swell up in his eyes. “I’m a troll and my name is Hawthorn,” he shouted. A flock of flamingos startled from a swamp in the distance. Probably they were really a piano, he thought, and giggled again. “I’m sorry, I’m not making sense. It’s just that you’re me, you see. Or I’m you. We’re us! Tom, we’re us! Isn’t it marvelous to be us?”
“I don’t care for Tom,” Thomas Rood said. “Shortening things makes them less interesting.”
Tamburlaine glowed like a polished bannister.
“We’re us. We’re Changelings, Thomas. But we’re each other’s Changelings. You got traded for me like a stupid baseball player and you should have grown up in Apartment #7 and gone to Public School 348 and been friends with a boy named Max and written essays for Mr. Wolcott. Our mom should have made a yarn animal for you. Our dad would have…I think Dad would have liked you better. He’d like anyone better, is what I really think. He’d have carried you on his shoulders down on Navy Pier and won you a catcher’s mitt at the shooting range. And you’d probably have known what to do with one! And I’d have done…whatever a troll does. And nobody would have had to do rage-laundry with moose. But it didn’t go that way. So you’re you and I’m me and you’ve never met the girl with the orchids in the hallway painting or hated the stove that wouldn’t light. Do you get it?”
Thomas Rood was crying.
“Yeah,” he choked. “You stole my life.”
“I was terrible at your life, if that helps any.”
Thomas wiped his nose with his Robin Hood hat and tossed it on the ground. He clenched his fists and unclenched them. His face colored darkly and he rushed at Hawthorn with an awful, bloody look on his face—and caught him up in his arms. Thomas Rood hugged Hawthorn so tightly he yelped—not an easy task when one is hugging a troll. Boulders rarely yelp when snuggled.
“It’s okay,” Thomas said into Hawthorn’s ear. “It’s okay. I stole yours, too. Nothing in Fairyland belongs to you unless you steal it. I don’t know what a catcher’s mitt is, but I bet you don’t know how to turn invisible, so probably we’re even. No grudges among Changelings, brother.” He pulled away. “You really are my brother in a funny, mixed-up way. Never thought I’d have a brother. Feels weird. Like a new horse. Hullo, Thomas.”
“No, no. You keep it. It wasn’t ever mine. I was just…sitting on it,” Hawthorn said. “Keeping it warm.”
Everyone stood affably still, not having the first idea what to say next.
“They’re looking for the Spinster,” Penny Farthing said suddenly. “At least, they were when the Office came knocking.”
“She’s in the Redcaps’ cellar,” Thomas Rood shrugged, as though he were saying nothing more complicated than It’s awfully sunny out today, isn’t it?
“Yes, dear, they know that now.”
