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“Your day was a thousand years ago,” snapped the Headmistress, who had ruled only a short while before King Goldmouth swallowed her whole, and was extremely unhappy to be teleported from her tidy ghost-crosswords into this intolerable clutter.
“And it was a wretched day, I must say,” said a sweet young lady with candy-cane bows in her hair and a dress all of butterscotch and marshmallows. When she conquered Fairyland, folk called her the Happiest Princess, though at the moment she felt quite cross. But she didn’t stop smiling, even as she spat at Curdleblood: “You painted the whole country black! I was still scrubbing behind the mountains when I lost my crown!”
“Still,” the Moose-Khan mused, “we shouldn’t like to appear ignorant. Much may have changed since the age of hoof and snow. I don’t want the Queen to think me old-fashioned.”
Pinecrack sat back on his haunches and lifted one hoof into the air. The Headmistress, ever conscious of manners, followed suit.
“Her?” snarled Charlie Crunchcrab, who had been King Charles Crunchcrab I only ten minutes ago. It’s very hard to make such a quick adjustment, and we ought not to think too harshly on him for behaving as poorly as he is surely about to do. “Her? She’s not the Queen. That’s just September! And that name is a Naughty Word, you know. She’s the Spinster. She’s a troublemaker. She’s a revolutionary and a criminal and a dirty cheat. She’s a human girl! She hasn’t even got wings! If she’s the right and proper Queen, then my hairy foot is the Emperor of Everything!”
“Sir, I beg your foot’s pardon, but I am the Emperor of Everything,” a young boy in a dizzying patchwork suit interrupted. Though he was a child, his voice rolled deep and sweet across the floor, like cold chocolate poured out of a dark glass. “At least I was,” he finished uncertainly. And he raised his hand in the air.
“Oh, I see, you’re trying to show me up!” cried Cutty Soames, the Coblynow Captain who sailed Fairyland across the Sea of Broken Stars to its current resting place. He stuck one sooty, filthy arm up with a sneer.
Others did the same, one by one, more and more, paw and hand and hoof and talon. No one wanted to be singled out as a country rube or an unfashionable cretin who didn’t know the wonder and mystery of the Raised Hand. Finally, the grand hall stood quite silent, filled with all the Kings and Queens of history politely waiting, like schoolchildren, for the teacher to be satisfied with their manners.
“Thank you,” said Queen September, lowering her hand. “Now, you must stop behaving like a stepped-on sack of scorpions or we’ll be here till Christmas, at least! And I don’t think any of us would really like to holiday together, so let’s all serve ourselves a nice big plate of hush.”
“HELLO,” said the First Stone from the long lawn of the Briary.
“Hello!” answered September brightly. “See, isn’t it nice to act like somebody raised us well?”
“Who the devil are you?” hollered a mermaid soaking in the Briary’s saltwater fountain, resting smugly in the arms of a silver statue of herself.
“You’re a human being! You’re not even allowed to look half of us in the eye!” howled a man in a waffle-cone hat and doublet and hose made all of mint ice cream. Have a care not to laugh—once, centuries ago, every soul in Fairyland feared the Ice Cream Man. “Get down off that wombat so I can break your neck, there’s a good girl.”
Madame Tanaquill swept through the throng, her head held high, striding forward with the sure knowledge that the sea of kings would part before her. It did. The train of her iron dress steamed and sizzled behind her, burning the floor of the Briary and several unfortunate toes, any Fairy thing it touched, for none could bear iron but Madame herself. She glared at Hawthorn and Tamburlaine as she approached, but turned her sweetest smile toward September. And it was a sweet smile, the sweetest since the invention of kindness, full of patience and love and understanding. It chilled September to her toes. Madame Tanaquill put a hard, cold, possessive hand on September’s foot.
“My dear friends!” she sang out. “Most beloved and respected jewels of Fairyland!” The way she said beloved and respected sounded very much like rotten old rubbish and not worth the rust on my décolletage. “May I present to you this marvelous morning, the brave and bold September, our darling monarch, our hallowed Queen! I’m sure you will soon come to love and admire her as I do.”
September wondered if every word Madame Tanaquill said meant just the exact opposite of what actually came out of her rosy, prim mouth. The Prime Minister did not love or admire her any more than she loved or admired a glass of spilled wine in her dancing hall. This same woman had dropped September and Saturday and A-Through-L in prison and promptly forgotten about them. But just now the great Fairy was looking up at her with every ounce of affection and joy a face could wring out, her wings fluttering demurely, a blush riding high on her glorious cheeks.
“You needn’t worry,” September said flatly. She didn’t like to say things flatly, but sometimes it is the perfect antidote to someone trying to convince you the noose in their hand is a lovely silk ribbon for your hair. “I don’t want to be Queen. I didn’t ask to be Queen. I shan’t be Queen any longer than lunchtime if I can help it! I daresay a kitchen chair would make a better Queen than me.”
Madame Tanaquill’s smile grew even deeper and more genuine, even more like a mother filled to bursting with pride. But the bottom fell out of her dark eyes; hateful lightning flashed within.
“I don’t have a care what you want, you horrid little insect,” she hissed through her smile. “The Crown chose you. You are Queen of Fairyland. It’s about as appetizing to myself personally as a pie full of filthy, crawling worms, but it’s a fact. You can pull and pry and blubber, but that Crown won’t come off until you’re dead or deposed. I could cut you down in a heart’s-breadth, but the rest of these ruffians would have my head. They take regicide terribly personally. Make no mistake; this present predicament is entirely your fault, you and your wretched Dodo’s Egg. You will want my help to sort it limb from limb. You are a stranger in Fairyland—oh, it’s charming how many little vacations you take here! But this is not your home. You don’t know these people from a beef supper. But I do. I recognize each and every one. And if you show them that you are a vicious little fool with no more head on her shoulders than a drunken ostrich, they will gobble you up and dab their mouths with that thing you call a dress. You may not like me, but I have survived far more towering acts of mythic stupidity than you. I am good. I know what power weighs. If you have any wisdom in your silly monkey head, from this moment until the end of your reign—which I do hope will come quickly—you and I shall become the very best of friends. After all, Queen September, a Prime Minister lives to serve.”
Madame Tanaquill turned her shining face to the assembled Kings and Queens of Fairyland, some of whom still had their hands up.
“You must forgive her. She is only a new Queen, and new Queens are like baby horses: They do not know what their legs are for yet, but they are perfectly adorable while they try to work it out! All of us remember our first days in the Briary, I’m quite sure. We were all then grateful for the patience shown to us as we searched for the necessaries and put down rebellions and turned our enemies into flamingoes. Ah, memories! Let us now extend that patience with both hands to the newest member of our very exclusive club.”
She clapped her shimmering hands together—and applause filled the hall.
“It’s perfectly clear what’s happened—an illicit Dodo’s Egg was brought onto the premises by persons of dubious intent and cracked open on the floor like the world’s worst breakfast. Some of you may recall that a Dodo’s Egg restores what was lost. This is a very dangerous magic, for it can get rather overexcited and run wild where other magics would sit nicely with their eyes on their own paper. This is why we Fairies only used them privately, in the safety of our own homes, and after working hours. But some people haven’t got the class a Fairy holds in her handbag, and so, here we are. All the lost Kings and Queens of Fairyland, dead and alive and other, found and rounded up and come round for supper with no notice at all. It’s very awkward for all of us, I’m sure! But we must make the best of an absurd situation.” Madame Tanaquill held one hand delicately to her forehead, as though all that had thoroughly tired her out. “Goodness! There’s enough out of silly old me! You’d think I had the Crown! I shan’t say another word until we’ve heard from the lady in question.”
The Prime Minister looked expectantly at September.
In chess, a Queen can do anything she wants, September thought. No one else is going to come and tell me what to do, so I had better get on with doing for myself.
“Good afternoon!” September cried out in her best Queenly voice. “I’m very pleased to meet all of you, even though I can tell by the fire coming out of a few of your noses that almost none of you are pleased to meet me. Except the big rock in the back, and I’ve got to tell you: At the moment, he is by far my favorite. Um. I think, for my first decree, I had better insist that no one maim or murder anyone else for at least a week. You can all hold out that long. I know better than to ask for longer. Some of you have very sharp claws.” September took a deep breath. She remembered the Blue Wind—she who blushes first, loses. If she let them think they awed her, she was lost. “For my second decree, I shall have to ask that you all wear name tags. I know you were all very important once upon a time, but you might as well be portraits in a museum to me.” September thought she’d done that quite well. Having spent a little time being forty years old helped a bit, when it came to scowling down Grown-Ups and saying wicked things so that they didn’t sound wicked, only a bit bored.
A young girl in a black dress and a black hat as tall and tiered as a wedding cake looked up at September from the throng. Her hair glowed deep, angry
red.
“You know me,” said the Marquess softly—oh, but how sound carries in the Briary! Her hand fluttered to her fine hat, as if everything might be all right, might be just as it was, if only she still had it.
“Yes,” answered Queen September. “I know you.” A look both dark and bright passed between them. “Perhaps you’d better stay where I can see you.”
