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“You should have said! I’ve always wanted to meet a Batty from … Chicago, was it? Well, I’m a mad old duffer, ask anyone, but I own up when I’m wrong. Of course you’re one of us! No one but a wombat could disrespect me so lovingly! Welcome! I’m called Conker, this is my store—Oy, Bluestocking!” Conker yelled into the shop. “Come meet the biggest Batty you’ll ever see! Now, there’s not room for you inside, I’m afraid, and you do seem to have a lot of friends, and that one’s a bit … well, he’s a bit all over Wyvern for my comfort, but you won’t want to stay out in the sun and roast. Let’s get you into the Night-Barn! It’s where we have our after-dinner dances and our pre-lunch layabouts. Hurry now, you great hippo, you’ll want to meet everyone!”
“Not everyone,” whispered September. “Please. The Derby.”
“Just let me have a minute,” pleaded the wombat. “A minute at home. Don’t you want a minute at home?”
September suddenly felt so tired she wanted to lie down in the road and pull it up over her like her bed under the Briary. Home. Home, with Mom and Dad and oranges and a cake in the icebox. Home.
“I’m starving!” said Saturday, and bolted off toward the barn. “The Derby will keep! Just a bunch of silly running around anyway!”
Where was her Saturday? What had happened to him? They should never have gone to Mumkeep Reef, September thought, and that was the truth.
They walked down the wide wombat road, past star-spattered signs that told them all about Dog’s Breakfast Bakery, the Happy Shovel Tool Repair (A Happy Shovel Is a Dirty Shovel!), and Bustnose’s Fine Joolery, a cozy moonlit inn called The Courageous Quokka attached to a less cozy but much larger pub called The Querulous Quokka (known jointly as the Brave and the Bonkers, for no one had time to say all that mess together), Tugboat’s Terrific Tobaccos and Constitutional Law Shoppe, and dozens of little sturdy black and blue houses gleaming with constellations. The great glittering barn at the end of the road opened up invitingly, full of shade and the bustle of wombats. Long garlands of macadamia flowers hung on the walls, fine cool dirt covered the floor, and the stars on the rafters lit it all in soft silver. As she stepped through the door frame, September touched the barn-boards with her bare hand—and snatched her hand away as though it had scalded her. The Night-Barn had no wood in it at all. The slats were slick and hard and blisteringly cold. She could feel the frozen winds of space howling through them, the winds she had felt tearing at her on the Moon. She almost thought, if she leaned too hard, she would fall into the ragged, beaten boards and tumble into the naked black sky.
The wombats had built their town out of the night itself.
“Are Chicago wombats nocturnal?” Conker asked politely. “We figured a ways back it made no sense to confine your loafing, feasting, digging, and dancing to the nighttime! You lose fifty percent of your fossicking time that way! S’why we built our little town of Nightgown, so we could have our comfortable dark all round anytime we liked and not lose a moment of puttering and prattling. Best village in Wom, no competition! Plus, when you think about it, if you’re nocturnal, you can only have supper, dinner, a nightcap, and a midnight snack. Really limits your gorging options, yeah? Stick around in the daytime and you get breakfast, lunch, tea, and afternoon nibblies as well!”
“But when do you sleep?” asked Blunderbuss, who had never heard that she was meant to be nocturnal in the first place.
“We wombatnap now. Screamingly efficient. Fifteen minutes an hour will keep you sharp!” Conker hopped up, grabbed a rope hanging from a big, dented bell, and swung back and forth, ringing the thing within an inch of its life. Wombats banged open their doors all over town, wriggling their soft noses in the wind and trotting on down toward the barn, laughing roughly and growling and biting one another as they came.
“Here we go! Here’s our mob! Blunderbuss—and what a great big chomp of a name that is!—this is Shilling, she’s our candle maker, and here’s Meatpie and Snagger, our glassblowing brothers, Bluestocking, my wife, the mudbrained buffoon of my heart, Oatmeal, our tinker, Banjo, the town poet, Chicory, our dressmaker, Fair Dinkum, the town beauty, Watchpot, our soup maker, Gregory, well, Wom only knows what you do around here…”
And on and on they came, each large and bright-furred and loud, each terrified for a moment of Blunderbuss and A-Through-L, then rambunctiously affectionate once all had been explained. September and Saturday and Ell said more Hellos and How Do You Dos in a quarter of an hour than they thought they’d said yet in their life.
Conker crooned in delight as a particularly robust wombat wearing a powdered judge’s wig made her entrance. “And this, Blunderbuss, this is Tugboat, our Tobacconist and leader of all the nations of Wom! We’ll show you how we do our governmenting after tea.”
As the scrap-yarn wombat was busy impressing everyone by telling them she already knew of the Fair and Just Tugboat and how she chewed up the laws suggested by the wombattery at large and spit them at the wall, keeping what stuck and chucking the rest, Conker and Meatpie and a bright yellow wombat named Lollygag made the tea. They stuffed pawfuls of tea leaves into tin buckets, filled them with hot water from an enormous simmering pot at the back of the barn, and holding their waistcoats out of the way with one paw, swung the pails around their heads frightfully fast to get it all steeping.
“How do you choose a Tobacconist?” Saturday asked. He popped a gooseberry into his blue mouth.
“Only because in Fairyland proper they apparently do it by running all over the place like a madwoman’s laundry,” Blunderbuss said with a giggle, munching on a heap of golden wattle-flowers.
“Eh,” yawned Conker as he poured the tea into a long starry trough so they could all drink as equals, “she wanted to? And no one else minded?”
Tugboat laughed gruntingly. “These bludgers don’t like the taste of the laws. Oh, they’re nasty, they taste like sour nuts and bitter old stinky fur and being responsible for things! Waa, waa, waa! Gnawknuckle over there took one lick of the Law for Fair Distribution of Gravy and sicked up all over the place like a picky little baby. They taste fine to me! Fine as a yam in a pot that says ALL FOR TUGBOAT on it!”
“I like the taste of anything,” Blunderbuss gruffed happily.
“I bet you do, you great fat Sunday roast! Ah, but that’s the trait of a true wombat. Good to know even the Chicago mob shares our values! Unconquerable Bellies! Mighty Bities! Stiff Upper Pouches! That was my campaign slogan, you know. Pickiness is for mammals! We are marsupials! And you can’t make a marsupial without soup, and it is time for my soup, and I want my soup. Watchpot! Soup me!”
The Tobacconist of the Land of Wom trundled off to the soup barrels.
“Did you hear, September?” whispered a breathless Blunderbuss. “She called me a great fat Sunday roast! Tugboat the Tobacconist called me a fat glob of meat!”
“Congratulations?” ventured September. “Can we ask the way to the Worsted Wood? Or is that only polite after tea?”
“I swear, you lot never listen to a word I say. That means she thinks I’m beautiful and wonderful and practically her daughter and I should definitely, definitely come round for All Bowls Day this year—that’s in November. You can come, too, I’m sure she won’t mind—”
A vicious, booming roar crashed through the Night-Barn. It rang in September’s ears. Ell groaned, digging at his. Saturday spun to defend himself, drawing his scissors and holding his breath. The wombats of Nightgown lifted their noses and snuffled at the sound, mildly interested.
“Just knock, how about that?” Conker hollered. He waddled over and flung the barn doors open.
Outside stood Thrum, the Rex Tyrannosaur, his teeth out and his eyes blazing. His green-black scales shone darkly in the sunshine.
“Thrum! What are you doing here?” September’s ideas of what was sensible and what wasn’t shoved her right out of being scared. “What could you possibly be doing here? We didn’t even mean to come here! Did you actually come looking for the Heart of
Fairyland in a wombat town?”
