The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (14 page)

 

CHAPTER VIII

P
LEASE
B
E
W
ILD
AND
W
ONDERFUL

In Which Thomas Summons a Guest (and Her Dog), Learns How a Piece of Wood Became a Daughter, Writes Out a Recipe for Wombat, and Becomes the Legal Property of a Marsupial

Time ran differently in the Empire of After School. If you didn't go home, it could almost stretch on forever. It wasn't like the Kingdom of School. It wasn't a particular place. The great clanging bell could ring at three o'clock and you could play on the swingset and throw a ball against the brick wall of the schoolhouse and still, somehow, not find your way to the Land of After School. But you could drag your feet walking home, spend a precious dime on a strawberry pop, cut through the park, kicking a pinecone down the grass while thinking about what it would feel like to be a hippopotamus and take your baths in the Nile and suddenly find yourself there, in the long orange hours before supper, where a hundred games and a thousand jokes can squeeze in.

The trick to making it last, as Thomas faithfully reported to Inspector Balloon, whose cheerful cover had grown a bald spot and many wrinkles, as befits an old scholar, was to avoid the Enemies of the Empire, which is to say, anyone bigger than you. Teachers would tell you to get on home and remind you to read the longest book they could think of just at that moment for a surprise quiz tomorrow. Big Kids, if they had suffered one of the strange and mystic sorrows that plagued their kind and had a mood on, would probably wallop you one or trip you flat. Parents would flex their magic and you would find yourself boiling spaghetti or sweeping the porch or doing math problems at the kitchen table no matter how much you struggled and strove.

But the best part of the Empire of After School was coming home to an empty house all to yourself, knowing your parents have got to be away visiting their own exotic countries: the Duchy of Dinner Parties, the Commonwealth of Overtime, Dance-Hall County, the misty and mysterious nations where Grown-Ups venture alone, like the dancing princesses disappearing at night.

On this particular evening, Nicholas and Gwendolyn Rood had mounted an expedition to the Marshes of Politics, attending a rally to benefit men like Nicholas, who had gone away to war and felt that things ought to have been better when they got back. The Country of War was so distant and dreadful that Thomas could hardly think about it, could not begin to make a section for it in Inspector Balloon. His father had been there, had lived there, but he would not talk about it. Thomas understood that the Country of War casts a spell of silence when you leave it, so that it can keep its awful secrets forever. Thomas never wanted to go to the rallies—and today would not be the day he changed his mind. Tamburlaine was coming, and thus a herd of Egyptian hippos could not drag him out of his house before she arrived.

It was his turn to let her into his house, his room, his little Nation of the Learmont Arms Apartments, #7. He raced home and tried to think of the rituals his mother used to summon a visitor: sweep the floor, put flowers in the vase on the dining table, turn up the lights, put the kettle on, make little miniature sandwiches. Thomas always vanished into his room when his mother's friends arrived, so he did not know that the kettle meant tea. It only seemed important to fill it with water and make it whistle. Nor did he see why the sandwiches had to be so tiny and thin when people were always hungry in the afternoon and those wouldn't feed a doll, but he did it anyway, slicing cheese and radishes carefully with the big knife. He made his bed, which he never did, preferring to keep it as more of a nest or a cave than a bed. He brushed out all the cobwebs in his room and shoved his clothes into his chest of drawers till it was packed so tight it groaned. He made sure all his troll and fairy-story books were lined up neatly on his bookshelf where Tamburlaine would see them straightaway. And he waited. The kettle screamed—and the summoning seemed to work, for a knock rapped at the door.

Tamburlaine was wearing her wig and her skin again. Behind her she pulled a huge red Irish setter with chocolatey, warm eyes. Thomas hadn't heard a dog when he'd visited her house! Perhaps he lived outside. Tamburlaine seemed strange to him, now he knew what she really looked like. Like somebody wearing clothes she had outgrown years ago. But she didn't take them off or shake out her plummy hair as she had before. She looked around politely, thanked him for the sandwiches, and munched on one with a thoughtful expression. The Irish setter sat on his rear and yawned. Out of her own house, Tamburlaine seemed much less sure of everything in the world.

“I didn't know you had a dog,” Thomas ventured.

“A dog? Oh! Silly me.”

Tamburlaine reached up a hand and smacked him hard on the side of his head. It made a loud
thwack
in the quiet. And it hurt like fire.

“Ow! Hey!”

Thomas's eyes crossed a little—and when they came uncrossed, the Irish setter had vanished. The gramophone stood hesitantly behind Tamburlaine, shifting bashfully on its long brass legs, tilting its bell this way and that.

“He wanted to come,” Tamburlaine explained. “He likes you. Thomas, this is Scratch. I made him, and he's just the most marvelous thing there is. Do you have anything for him to eat? He likes ragtime and jazz and torch songs … but it has to have lyrics. He doesn't have a mouth, you know. He can only say what's on his turntable.”

Scratch arched the neck of his bell in pleasure. He wound up his crank and dropped his needle. The lime-green lady's voice poured out:

Now the curtain is going up

the Entertainer is taking a bow!

Thomas thought he might cry again. But his face decided to grin instead. Scratch was an alive thing. A talking thing. Alive and talking the way he'd always wanted everything, just everything, to be. Thomas went over to his parents' gramophone, which seemed rather shabby and dull just now, and pulled a record out of the cabinet where his parents kept them. It had a great handsome fat man in a sky-blue suit on the cover, his mouth wide open to let the music out.

“And … and sometimes he's a dog?” Thomas handed it over and tried to sound casual, as if he already knew that sometime gramophones could be dogs.

Scratch shook his bell and moved his needle to a different groove on the spinning black record. He sang again:

No, sir, don't mean maybe …

“No, no,” Tamburlaine laughed, petting Scratch's bell. She took the record from him and changed out the lime-green lady for the sky-blue man.

Scratch lowered his needle gingerly.

Tell me, tell me, what did you do to me

I just got a thrill that was new to me …

Scratch bounced his bell joyfully. He liked the record. It would let him say new things, exciting things. Tamburlaine gave him such a tender, happy smile—a new smile Thomas had never seen her make before, and he wished it had been made for him.

“It's a glamour,” she said. “So that we can walk down the street together without people staring. A glamour is like … if there's a hole in your wall because somebody opened a door too fast or wasn't careful enough moving a bookshelf, you could hang a picture over it, so nobody sees. The hole's still there, it's just hidden.” She seemed to grow suddenly shy. “I could show you … if you want.”

Thomas did want, more than anything. “Tam … can I call you Tam now? I know you said not to but I understand now why you didn't like it. It can be just our secret, I'll only say it when we're alone. Tam … I know you think we're the same, but you must see we're not. I can't make a Scratch. Believe me. I've been trying to since I was little. Nothing comes alive just because I want it to be alive. I don't have any flowers on the inside. You … you
are
marvelous, and your gramophone is, and your painting … but I can't do any of that. I wish I could. You have no idea. I know what I said the other day but … but I'm still just Thomas. Just a boy.” Tell me I'm wrong, his heart begged. I want to be wrong.

Tamburlaine nodded. She put down her plate and wiped her mouth. “I can prove you're not. I guess … I guess I thought it would be nice if you believed me. Because I'm technically your oldest friend and all. I guess I thought it would feel nice if you just looked at me and
knew,
down deep in your gut. The way you knew the word
Changeling
. But that's okay. This will be fun, too. It'll be like when we made those clay mugs in Mrs. Miller's class.”

Thomas licked his dry lips. He'd made a beautiful mug—shaped like an elephant, with a little clay palanquin and a little clay prince for a lid. His father had dropped it a week after he brought it home and shattered the poor prince all over the floor.

“First: materials. Do you have anything you can use like a wand? Something that's yours, not like a rolled-up sheet of math problems. Something you like.”

Thomas shook his head, trying to shake it into sense again. A wand? He was having a conversation with a girl in which wands had a starring role.

“Um … yeah. Sure.”

He knew what it had to be. Without even thinking about it, it popped into his head like the answer to a riddle. Thomas darted down the hall to his room and yanked open his desk drawer. He pulled out a long, yellow No. 2 pencil. The Magic Pencil. When he turned around, Tamburlaine was standing in the doorway to his room. Scratch peered curiously over her shoulder. She knew Vampire Law, too: You have to wait to be invited. Thomas held out his pencil toward her.

“I've had it since forever. My mom gave it to me. When I was a baby. She pulled it out of her hair and gave it to me and I've been really careful, I haven't used it up yet, because…” He was aware he was babbling, and clammed up before the rest could come hurrying out
. Because I'm on a quest. She gave me a quest. She pulled this pencil out of her head like a sword out of a scabbard and I knew it was a sacred quest, the kind Galahad got. She charged me to go to the Kingdom of University and meet a Girl Called Lovely and Practice Psychology like my Father before me. And I want to, I want to, but it's taking so
long. “… Well, I guess for no good reason. It's … it's okay, you can come in.”

Tamburlaine stepped in lightly and sat on his bed. He wished his quilt weren't so plain, that he had something extraordinary to show her besides cheese sandwiches and a pencil. She squinted and eyeballed his pencil, turned it over in her hands, poked her fingernail into the eraser.

“Okay,” she said, nodding satisfaction. “Now, pick something you like.” Tamburlaine grinned up at him, eager, enjoying being mysterious, stretching out the game like a stage magician.

“What do you mean?”

“In the house. Pick something you like. Anything you think is pretty or interesting or nice?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Just pick something, silly. We don't have all night. It has to be something you like or it won't work. Don't ask me why. I don't have any whys. I only know a couple of things and they're only the things I know. And the only reason I know things you don't is that I couldn't help knowing. It's hard to go along thinking everything is fine and someday you'll go to nursing school when you have plums growing out of your palms.”

Thomas looked around. He didn't have much in his room—he'd broken most of his toys ages back. His baseball sat quietly on his desk, his books in their shelf, his alarm clock, his bedside lamp … and his wombat. Thomas's eyes fell on the scrap-yarn wombat his mother had made him so long ago, her patchwork colors mismatched, her stuffing showing near her tail, her lopsided button eyes dull and scratched. Tamburlaine followed his gaze.

“Perfect,” she said. She picked the scrap-yarn wombat up off his pillow with both hands—she was really rather enormous for a toy—and handed her to him. “I like wombats. What's its name?”

Thomas hesitated, scratching the back of his neck. He had never told anyone the names of his belongings before. “Her. Her name's Blunderbuss. I like to name things; I know it's dumb.”

“Of course you like to name things,” Tamburlaine said with a little smile. “We all do.”

“Tam, what if I can't do … whatever it is you think I can do? You keep saying we're the same but I'm not … I'm not a tree.”

The troll inside Thomas clapped its hands. Not a tree, it giggled, a rock.

Tamburlaine looked startled for a moment. Then she laughed, and under all her strangeness was a twelve-year-old girl again.

“Well, I'm not either!”

He looked doubtfully at her wig, hiding its secret flowers.

She waved her hand. “I'm not. Honest. Thomas, we're only different to look at. It's like how you're a boy and I'm a girl, but it doesn't make any difference. We're both people.” Tamburlaine clapped a hand over her mouth, as though she'd just accidentally let a curse word slip. A wicked excitement flooded her eyes. “Only we're not. I'm not. You're not. I'm a…” She trailed off just as he had done, and he realized all at once that she had never told anyone about herself before, either.