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“But what are you painting?” Hawthorn asked.
“Well, I know what a rum cellar looks like, you know,” Tam laughed. “It’s worth a try.”
She worked quickly. Greenish-gold rum barrels floated in the air, reddish rafters and flagstones. Finally, she put in a Redcap, or at least what she remembered a Redcap looking like in books. Hers leaned against a rum barrel, sleeping. The only safe Redcap is an unconscious Redcap, she figured. Dear Wombat Puke, please be a door, she thought hard. Please go straight into the right rum cellar. Please don’t just be a mess.
“Ready?” Tam put her hands on her hips. “I’m either going to be very proud of myself or very embarrassed in a moment.”
Everyone climbed onto Blunderbuss’s broad, grassy back, Hawthorn in front, Tamburlaine behind, and Scratch, delicate as he was, sandwiched between them. His crank spun excitedly:
Ain’t we got
Ain’t we got
Ain’t we got fun?
With a valiant snarl the likes of which no basement has ever heard, Blunderbuss leapt toward the passionfruit painting. They collided wetly and with much gurgling. On the other side, the smell of molasses and yeast and good greenwood greeted them like a fine hello.
The Cellar Steppes had got bored of grasslands and become a long salt flat, red crystals crunching underfoot. The sky flushed a proper daytime blue again, but now there were a hundred moons in it, all shaped like stony white rum barrels with starry spigots hanging off them. Barrels great and small dotted the salt flat, too, red rock banded with red gold and sloshing with red rum inside. Thick liquor dripped now and again from the stone slats onto the desert. Nestled in a circle of particularly robust barrels were several rich red velvet armchairs and red lanterns and red tables, with red glasses set for tastings.
An incredible din filled the air. Hollering, ululating, bleating, laughing, whooping—and a gnash of metal and stone bashing one against the other.
The Redcaps were coming.
They poured in a scarlet screech through the Steppes, some running pell-mell on foot, others mounted on pigs and toads, their spurs and saddles as red as their long, billowing caps, tassels flapping in the air. Hawthorn squeezed his own knit cap, still stuffed into his coat pocket. Their little gnomic faces were transported in joy, their feet sending up clouds of blue and orange dust.
Behind them rolled a bicycle bigger than any Hawthorn and Tamburlaine had ever seen, a bicycle like an elephant, one of the old-fashioned sorts with the front wheel like a giant’s dinner plate. On top of it a woman in blue hollered along with the Redcaps. She raised her fist in the air and barreled down mercilessly upon them.
The Spinster came riding down the Steppes with an army before her.
“Out!” she cried. “Get out! Leave me alone!”
White-and-black-streaked hair flew out from her brownberry head. The wheels of her velocipede spun savage and fierce.
“How did you get in here?” she yelled down, pedaling backward and forward powerfully to keep her steed in place. “Can’t you leave an old woman in peace?”
“King Charlie sent us!” Hawthorn yelled as loud as he might, through two cupped hands.
The Spinster put her head to one side.
“You want we should make kebabs out of ’em, ma’am?” A large Redcap with a mushroom-shaped cap like a chef’s hat, so red it was nearly black, twirled a long scarlet spear in her fist. She smiled broadly and cheerfully, without the smallest flutter of malice in her round face.
“You know very well today is Vegetables Only Thursday, Sir Sanguine. Now, put your armor away, I don’t think we’ll be needing it. Hold on, you lot, I’ll be down presently.”
Sir Sanguine scowled miserably. A little of her fight seemed to leak out. And very suddenly, Sir Sanguine was the only Redcap in the Cellar. The wild throng simply popped out of the world when the Redcap put down her shield.
“Jolly good armor!” the combat wombat squealed. She was suddenly very interested in armor.
The Spinster unhooked a grappling claw and line from her belt and rappelled neatly down the side of her velocipede, which snorted and shook its handlebars as it jutted its kickstand into the salt with a spray of crystals.
“She seems quite spry for an old granny,” Tam whispered up to Hawthorn.
“You’re not such a dry old bird after all,” Blunderbuss bellowed, much more loudly, having no particular manners about much of anything. She peered down at the figure in blue striding toward them.
The Spinster was not wearing a dress, but billowing azure trousers like a djinn, long midnight-colored sleeves like a kimono, and a bodice that seemed to be having trouble deciding whether to be a corset or a blue steel breastplate. Her face was wide and kind and sun-browned, full of the lines of living at her eyes, her mouth, between her stubborn brows. She was not ancient at all, but the sort of age people often call hale or hearty.
“What are you doing here?” the Spinster demanded. “I’m busy—you have no idea how busy I am! I’ve nearly got it figured out. You can’t go interrupting me like this. I don’t have the time for this nonsense.”
“We came to rescue you,” Hawthorn said, not at all sure that they were, now.
