The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (18 page)

“Humans can quest, too. I’m certain of it. Lancelot and Galahad and Jason who had the Argonauts and those sorts,” September said shyly. She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not always make herself raise her hand.

The Monaciello put her hand over her small heart. “Of course, we owe a debt of gratitude to those early theorists! And any number of posthumous doctorates! But they were amateurs, really. They didn’t choose their Quests, the Quests chose them. They would have been happy to be done with them, from beginning to end. We seek out Quest-Dense Zones and hop in with both feet. We Experiment. We Prove. Mersenne has gone off into the Jargoon Mountains to work on his thesis, investigating the spiritual connection between dragons and maidens. Candella last reported from the bottom of Blackdamp Lake, conducting experiments on free-range treasure. Red Newton wholly devoted himself to the study of magic apples, immortality causing and otherwise, and that means setting up a year-round camp in the Garden of Ascalaphus. Questing Physicks isn’t like the Quiet and Queer branches. You can’t do it at home in a comfortable chair—you have to be out in the thick of the business, with your tools on your belt and your heart on your sleeve! It’s my turn to stay home and keep the light on for the others, though. I only finished up my Grail Equations in the fall.” Avogadra clearly hoped that one or both of them had heard of her work, but finding no recognition on their faces, sighed a wistful weary sigh. “It is my dearest hope that one day I shall be the one to discover the GUT—the Grand Unified Tale, the one which will bind together all our Theorems and Laws, leaving out not one Orphan Girl or Youngest Son or Cup of Life and Death. Not one Descent or Ascent, not one Riddle or Puzzle or Trick. One perfect golden map that can guide any soul to its desire and back again. I will be the one to do it, I know it. I hope I know it. I know I hope it.”

“Well,
I
want to go on a Quest,” said September stubbornly. “Not for research but because it needs doing. Even if I am human, even if I fail. I have some experience, and I am good at sticking things out till the end. If I am good at anything, I am good at that. I wanted to consult with an expert, but I’ll do it myself if you don’t want to be bothered. And I’ll almost certainly muck it up, and it’ll be a mess, but I’ll keep going anyway.”

Avogadra scratched under her hat. “Well, what sort of thing did you have in mind? An Object Quest is a nice beginner’s run. Or a Damsel in Distress. The Conservation of Princesses Law figures in there, but the math isn’t hard.”

September did her best to fix Avogadra with a steely gaze. “I want to go down into Fairyland-Below and wake up the Sleeping Prince,” she said. Aubergine turned to her, surprised. She fluffed her feathers in distress.

“No one even knows where he is, September,” she fretted. “Or how to wake him up. Or if he’s even real—the Dukes and Countesses like to talk about him, but that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean he’s a real person who really ought to have been King of Fairyland-Below and who can really stand up to Halloween, even if the rest were so!”

Avogadra put a small hand on Aubergine’s purple breast. “Thank you, Sister,” she said solemnly. “Well done.”

Aubergine bowed. “Most welcome,” she answered.

“First Law of Heroics.” The Monaciello grinned up at a confused September. “Someone has to tell you it’s impossible, or the Quest can’t go on. Your friend has volunteered herself as a Non-Euclidean Companion, which is also necessary to proceed to the next stage.”

Avogadra darted off toward the towering bookshelves, leaping onto a ladder and riding it like an unbroken pony as it bucked and shot upward. September reached out for a second ladder, but did not manage to catch hold before the wine-colored coat swept open, revealing the beautiful, coppery Watchful Dress beneath. September tried to pull her coat closed again, but the dress had other ideas. The two pocket watches that draped so gracefully from her waist unspooled themselves and shot upward, hooking around the swan-like necks of a pair of gargoyles further up the stacks and swinging her into the air, reeling her up and onto a safe wooden ledge next to Avogadra.

“Well, that’s a Useful thing and no lie!” said the little monk.

September could not help herself—she laughed. Her cheeks flushed; her heart beat wildly. Aubergine stared up silently from below, flightless.

“I had no idea!” September exclaimed.

Avogadra nodded as she ran her fingers along the book spines. “That’s one of the four Object Types: Useful, Wonderful, Deceitful, and Mutable. Mutable Objects always seem like something silly or plain, when they are actually marvelous. Or they appear marvelous while being secretly useless. But if I’m not mistaken, that’s a Bandero dress! I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one.”

“Is that … a wicked thing?” September asked.

“Well, it all depends on how you look at it. Most things do, down here. The Bandero are spies. Girls with bat wings and lion tails and scarlet eyes that can see a thousand yards in the dark. All women—and don’t ask me how they make more of them because they keep it a secret. Fiends for secrets, the lot of them. They collect secrets. They have a vault made of whispering glass up in the mountains, past the fireline. Some say they eat them—they need secrets like you need bread. Some say they sell them at prices only the stars could pay. Perhaps I’ll send Mersenne after the secret of their secret! Or go myself. I’m exhausted with all this sitting still. Anyway, they all wear getups like that. To help them in their spycraft. But I’ve never seen one on a plain girl with no wings or tail at all. They guard those dresses something terrible. Ah, here we are.”

Avogadra reached up on her tiptoes, her caramel-colored sleeve spilling down into her tiny face. September reached up to help her and pulled down a large velvet-covered dove-gray book embossed in silver. It read,
Sleeping Royalty and Other Politickal Conundrums
. The Monaciello flipped past beautiful illustrations of sleeping maidens, spinning wheels, a cross-section of a mountain, and one very complex diagram of an apple. The chapter she settled on had no pictures at all.

“Other than revolution and assassination, falling asleep for a hundred years or more poses the biggest danger to royalty these days. They’re all at risk, though just try to tell them that! You’d think one of them would keep a Physickist on retainer for these kinds of emergencies but no—it’ll never happen to
them,
they
invited all the right people to their coronation!
They
don’t even have a stepmother!” Avogadra frowned. “Prince Myrrh sleeps at the bottom of the world, yes, yes, we know that,” she scolded the book as if it was an erring child. “Why do you vex me?” The book riffled through its pages, embarrassed. It settled on a page thick with text. “Ah, now
there’s
something!”

“Does it say where he is?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. But if my numbers are right, there’s a minotaur involved, which lets us know we’re running a basic Theseus Quest–model, and that’s a great help!”

“Is it?”

“Certainly! It means there’ll be a labyrinth somewhere—where there’s a labyrinth, there’s a minotaur, and vice versa! I can’t imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. It’s not done! You don’t go out of your house without any clothes on, and a minotaur doesn’t go into the world without a labyrinth to keep him warm.” The monk hopped to another ladder, which whirled her up and away, further into the heights of the horn. The Watchful Dress suddenly filled its skirt with air, a great balloon, and just as quickly puffed it out through the bustle, shooting September up like a little orange rocket. It repeated this several times until she came to rest once more beside the Physickist, who had hauled out another enormous book. This one was powdery white, with onionskin pages like a dictionary September had once seen in the huge library in Omaha. It read,
A Ryte and Goode Historie of Fairyland-Below (Unabridged)
. This book did not wait to be scolded, but whacked open and flew through its chapters without being asked. The Monaciello beamed at September, as if to say, “Look how well my babies behave.”

“Just as there are different types of stars—red and white and brown and blue and dwarf and giant and all that lot—there are different types of Quests, and if we determine what type you face, we shall have a much easier time managing the whole business. We’re doing very well. Already we know that Prince Myrrh is an Endgame Object Type W—that’s Wonderful, since we have yet to see if he will be any Use in governing. He sleeps suspended in a Theseus-type narrative matrix, however he does seem to have some gravitational pull on events, which is unusual for a T-Type. After all, we still remember him even after all these years. It’s far easier to forget something than to remember it. Remembering takes all kinds of magic. No one knows who he is or what he looks like or where to find him, and yet we all know of him. We all know he sleeps in an unopenable box on an unbreakable bower. That’s a frightfully strong E.K.T. Field for one little creature!”

“What’s an E.K.T. Field?”

Avogadra grinned. “Whilst on an expedition to prove the Rule of Three, my honored colleague Black Fermat hypothesized that certain Quest Objects cast a field around them, like a magnet or a planet—an Everyone Knows That Field. This is how they draw in unsuspecting Heroes. When an E.K.T Field is in effect, everyone within its power will know a good deal about the Object, even if they can’t say where they heard about it or why it’s so deathly important to remember all that dusty old nonsense. They’ll chat about it with any passing stranger like it’s sizzling local gossip. ‘Oh, the Troll-Goblet of Clinkstone Hall? A Forgetful Whale swallowed it, and took it to her pod so they could bring the Whale-Maiden Omoom back to life. Everyone knows that!—the sword Excalibur? Nice lady down by the lake will let you see it for a dime, swing it for a dollar—Everyone knows that!’ Trust me, if you want to know the score, just find out What Everyone Knows, and you’ll be on the scent. Of course, the Field might not be on his own account. See here: ‘Long ago, a great Sorceress pulled up the earth over the Prince like a blanket, and sang him to sleep in the dark at the bottom of the world. She called on her Powers to guard him, and these were horses and bulls and tapirs and other beasts. Then she whispered in his ear the time and manner of his waking, but only the earth heard it.’ So it might be the Sorceress bending the tale to her boy. He might not be a proper Prince at all, I suppose. Being the subject of sorcery tends to elevate one in society.”

“Can you find
anything
in these books?” September wondered. “Anything at all, so long as it’s to do with Questing?”

“Nearly! Of course, a library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.”

September felt a pang of guilt at having left Ell behind in the courtyard. How he would have loved this place!

“Can it tell me how to put a person and their shadow back together again?”

Avogadra peered cannily at her.

“Well!” September said defensively. “It’s not so odd a question. Halloween is my shadow! Everyone knows that. At least they seem to.”

“Quite so,” said the Monaciello, and put two of her fingers into her mouth. She whistled loud and sharp. A book flew off a shelf several feet away and shot toward her—a black one, with a cloudy-pale title.
Rhymes of Knowing and Not-Knowing
. It looked new, only just printed, or written, or however books were made in Fairyland. She flipped it open and licked her thumb as she hunted through the pages.

“Here! ‘Not thread nor glue, not nails nor screws, will ever self and shadow wed.’ Helpful, those poet-types. Perhaps this one: ‘Seek the grimy queen of dread machines, if you your errant shadow miss.’ Now that’s quite good! As a Prophetic Utterance, Third Class (Vague Hints and Mysterious Signs), you couldn’t ask for better. It’s downright plain-spoken!”

“It isn’t at all! I don’t know who it means or what. I’m hardly better off than before!” September cried.

“Well, that’s what you get with Third Class. But no book of ours would ever just
tell
you a thing. The Quest would spoil, just as if you added the wrong chemical to a medicine. It would turn poisonous and rancid. A Quest is not followed, it is engineered. Now, in you go.”

Avogadra turned several chapters at once and came to a frightening, hideous page: all black, from margin to margin.

“In?” September trembled.

“In. Didn’t you hear? You’re headed for the bottom of Fairyland-Below. This place is made up of layers like a thick, dark cake. You have to go down—you’ll have to sooner or later so might as well get a start. Just hop in—I know it looks dark. It
is
dark. It’s a mine, as a point of fact. But that’s where you need to go, and I’m opening the door for you.”

September peered into the utter blackness of the page. “I can’t go without my friends,” she whispered.

“No time,” the Monaciello said. “A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world. But this one is a real door, too. They float through all the books of the library. At noon, they’re in the Biographies, at teatime they flit into the Advanced Slaying section. Dally too long, and they’ll go winging off somewhere and it’ll take weeks to find one again.”

“But I can’t just
leave
them!”

“I’m here,” said Aubergine softly, and September started. Without a sound the Night-Dodo had slowly and doggedly climbed the ladders to where they stood peering at their book, hooking her beak over the rungs one by one by one.

But Saturday and Ell, still sleeping in the cold Tain morning! She couldn’t just let them wake up without her and no note or message to tell them where to find her. Could she?
Can’t I? I snuck off without them just fine. Either I trust them or I don’t
. A hard, brave, strange voice inside her stood up to have its say. But the voice was not very big yet.