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A gorgeous old basilisk wearing deep black sunglasses hobbled forward, carrying a book nearly as large as herself, which was no small feat, as Mrs. Grandiloquent Cockscomb was a scaly reptile the size of an igloo. Her orange-and-violet-feathered tail rose up even farther than her head, which looked very much like the head of a stegosaurus September had seen illustrated in one of her history textbooks.
“After conferring with the twenty-one members of the Society of Probability Paupers,” began Mrs. Cockscomb in a reedy, raspy voice, “I am honored to recite to you, gloriously gathered Fairylanders (and Others), the Hallowed Odds. The Paupers prefer to begin with the winners: We find Madame Tanaquill favored to take the crown at two to one, followed by the Marquess and Queen Mab at three to one. A surprising upstart rising up the rankings—Gratchling Gourdbone Goldmouth comes in at four to one, and old Hushnow close behind. Now, on to something more interesting! We are offering generous odds on Thrum being effervesced into his constituent atoms by lunch, the Blue Wind snatching the crown and hiding it for not more than three years, but not less than two, causing three-quarters of a revolution in Pandemonium, and that bloody great wombat unraveling completely before all is said and done. Please see myself or one of my Lamblers to place your bets. Gold and silver not accepted—today we are taking foreign currency only! Human dollars, pounds, rubles, drachma, et cetera, chimeric lodestones, kneecaps, or firstborn children, but only nice ones, let’s not have a repeat of the Bleakness Cup incident!”
The Stoat of Arms sighed with relief. “Thank you, Mrs. Cockscomb. And now, may I introduce the Racemaster, who will, if everything goes swimmingly, make sure I never have to see most of you again!”
The horns sounded again. A-Through-L hid his head under one wing. September and Saturday clapped her hands over their ears—and when they uncovered them again, they were alone.
The Plaited Plaza stood empty, not a single long-dead monarch, waving dryad, or pastry seller remained. No Stoat of Arms, no Mrs. Cockscomb, no scrap-yarn wombat, nor even one solitary spot from the tail of a Leopard.
And no Aroostook.
The sun still beamed overhead; the fountain still gurgled pleasantly; the grass on Gingham Green still sparkled with yesterday’s rain. But September, Saturday, and Ell stood by themselves in the middle of a suddenly silent Pandemonium.
CHAPTER VI
THE MAN FROM BLUE HEN ISLAND
In Which September Meets Babe Ruth, Acquires a Steed, and Learns a Great Deal About What Lies Ahead
“What’s happened?” Ell bellowed, spinning in a great red circle on the empty cobblestones.
September squeezed her fists together. “Have we lost already? Is everyone else that much faster? Where’s Aroostook? And Hawthorn and Tam and Blunderbuss?”
Saturday wanted to comfort her, but he had no good thoughts to offer. “Maybe we did something wrong,” he fretted. “Maybe we’ve been disqualified. Or the Marquess has done something awful to everyone.”
“Ought we to just … start running? The Ghostloom Gate is open, perhaps that was the starting gun. How are we to know?” September took a step forward, but she was not at all sure of the step.
“Races begin with R,” Ell said mournfully. “I much prefer Dances. And Fairs. And Ball Games.”
An ear-battering smack of drums and firecrackers echoed through the air. A swirl of a thousand colors filled up September’s eyes so that she could see nothing else. The colors whirled and spun round one another, spinning out in front of A-Through-L and up into the air. Finally, they unfolded and became an impossibly slender, pointed man made all of racing silks and checkered flags, in every color and every pattern, as though someone had ripped off a patch from the costume of everyone who had run a race since before the mile was invented. He did not seem to have hands or feet so much as the twisting silk of him came to graceful points at the ends of his arms and legs. His face was a marvelous origami—noble crests, green chevrons, black stripes, lace handkerchiefs given as favors in some long-forgotten joust, all folded tight together to make a sharp, clear face with searching, canny eyes.
Now, all races must have a Racemistress or Racemaster. To find an ideal Racemaster, first track down a school principal who loves nothing better than tricking students into misbehaving, unless it was coming up with the most joyfully complicated punishments. Make certain that she has studied all her life to become an expert in every sport and game, from poker to croquet to Arcanasta to Daemoninoes to the Royal Game of Ur, the way ninjas train to perfect every martial art. For the Cantankerous Derby, the Stoat of Arms would sooner have lived out its days in a petting zoo than chosen anyone other than the greatest Racemaster who has ever lived or breathed or fired a starting catapult directly in the ear of a Glashtyn—and just such a one floated nimbly before them.
The man made of flags bowed, flourishing his arms and bending his head. “Good morning, Queen September, I will be your Racemaster for the next many days. Years, possibly! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. My name is Ajax Oddson. By my reputation, you will know you are in hands both good and fair.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know a thing about you,” September said cheerfully. She had long ago ceased to be embarrassed by not knowing a thing in Fairyland.
Saturday squeezed her hand. “Is there anyone in the human world who plays a game so well that everyone knows his name, so well that his name becomes the game, and you can hardly think of one without the other?”
September thought for a moment. “I suppose there’s Babe Ruth. That’s baseball. It’s a bit like sword fighting and a bit like juggling but far less interesting to watch than either one.”
“What a funny name!” said A-Through-L, his nostrils flaring. “Babies oughtn’t play with swords, unless they are trolls.” He rocked from one great red leg to the other. “If Fairyland has a Babe Ruth, then Ajax Oddson is him. I’m very pleased and also nervous to meet him. I thought we might. Who else would take charge of the most important race that’s ever cried on your mark?”
The R
acemaster inclined his head demurely. “You’re too kind, Master Wyverary. Your Majesty, allow me to put you at ease. I had my education at the Home for Excessively Competitive Children on Blue Hen Island, where any child who loves to win more than he loves to eat or sleep or drink or have one single friend goes to be among his own kind. There we can be cared for by folk who understand our needs and wants and need-nots and want-nots. On our first day, we found a single blue poker chip lying on our pillows with the motto of the school stamped on it in gold. IN LUDO VERITAS. In the Game Is Truth. The day we turned that one chip into one thousand, we graduated. And my specialty has always been Derbies.”
Ajax Oddson twirled around, his chevrons and checks and diamonds flying. “Now, I am a Dandy. You may think me large and grand and beautiful, but”—he leaned in and held one pointed silken hand to his mouth, sharing a delicious secret—“in actuality, I am no bigger than a bullfrog. I have short, thin, highly breakable legs—anyone could beat me in a race. My old headmaster, Babel Y. Hexagon, whom I could defeat at Go while underwater and half asleep, could gallop all the way round the world faster than I could crack the four hundred meters. I could not get much better, tiny as I was, without wings or any particularly pragmatical magic. Oh, I am a dismal magician. My only aptitude is for Odd Magic—I can feel the improbabilities of any event with an outcome as surely as I feel the swelling of my nose when I am sick.”
“Improbabilities?” asked September.
“Oh yes. Even Magic handles the probabilities—whether or not a thing is likely to happen given this and that and the other thing. Odd Magic deals in imp-probabilities—which is more like gym class than math. The Imp-probable Master can look at that happening and tell just when and where to put his finger or move a teensy little stone or place a dinner plate in the middle of the road to send all those fuddy-duddy probabilities flying off in every direction, to cause the most trouble, the most chaos, the most Unlikeliness. But that’s not much good to a soul who longs to play fair. My Odd Heart could only tell me how astronomically Unlikely I was to come out the victor, down to the last and loneliest and moldiest decimal. So depressing! Knowing that you will lose is as disheartening as knowing that you will win. It’s the unknowing that quickens the spirit and puts sweat on your brow! But the Derby!” The Racemaster leapt from the fountain to the awnings of the shops to the ledges of windows and back down to balance on the tip of Ell’s wing. “The Derby is not just a race, it is a battle and a dance and a scavenger hunt. It is not won by the swiftest, nor the strongest, nor the creature with greatest lung capacity or slow-twitch muscle mass. No! The Derby is won by the cleverest, the most devious, often the most vicious, but sometimes the most kind, and always, always, by the seat of one’s wits! For just as I was growing bored with the same old games, Fairyland was growing bored of racing with Dodos and tracks and linear thinking. It was, indeed, Headmaster Hexagon who invented the first Derby—for each Derby is unique, with its own laws and customs. Hexagon’s Derby took seven years, flattened two separate villages, used up all the salt in the sea, and everyone still feels rather uncertain about who won. Isn’t that just the best thing you’ve heard all week? Yes, in the Derby I found the grand love affair I had always sought. And I found myself. For when Dandies come of age, we make new, fleet, nimble bodies out of whatever obsesses us, whatever we adore unreasonably. My mother is a creature of arrows and catgut strings and curving bows, my father a marvelous beast of folded sheet music. And I? I gathered together the racing flags of every Derby I won, and the proud silks of every opponent I defeated until I could stitch together the finest limbs anyone has ever made—a body of victory! After all, my darlings, the clothes make the man!”
The Racemaster spun round again and bowed. September could not help herself, she clapped without meaning to, and then felt quite silly.
“That’s all wonderful, Mr. Oddson, it really is … but … where has everybody gone? Have we won already? Or lost?”
The Racemaster stroked his chin with one blue-and-green-checked hand. “Ah. Ah-ha. Stoatums did tell me one of you was a foreigner and wouldn’t know a Derby from a dervish. Are you her?”
