The Boy Who Lost Fairyland Read online

  A lady came striding out of the nearest copse of tangerine trees. Penny stiffened; Tom Thorn and Tamburlaine gawped. She was the most perfectly beautiful person he had ever seen, so perfectly beautiful that she looked entirely wrong, precisely because there wasn’t the tiniest thing wrong with her. She looked like a drawing or a sort of architectural plan for a lady—except she wasn’t really a lady, but a Fairy. Her hair swept up into a wild mob of wine-grape-colored ringlets clasped with live black starlings clamping her curls in their beaks. Her wings folded decorously against her long, slim back, nearly black, so thick and dense were the colors of them. Her skin was pale and ageless, the color of copper gone slightly green with age. Yet she wore the most upsetting dress—a short tea gown made all of iron, from the shoulders to the fringe. It had been hammered together out of horseshoes and wheel hoops and hammer heads and ax blades and manacles. Where it touched her delicate skin it left red welts and tiny blisters like dewdrops, but the Fairy did not seem to mind them in the least; rather, she wore them like proud rubies.

  “I thought Fairies were allergic to iron,” Tamburlaine whispered.

  “Quite,” said the Fairy curtly. Her voice collided with them and burst into a shower of dark honey. “But that’s an absurd reason to be afraid of a thing, don’t you agree? I wear my day dress from nine in the morning to four thirty in the afternoon faithfully. I used to bleed the whole while. Oh, you never saw such a mess! But I am ever so much stronger now. I can put on my crinoline in the evenings and handle a hobnail without the smallest wince. It makes quite the party trick, I can tell you. But enough about my personal regimen!” She clapped her hands together. Her saffron eyes sparkled. “I may just have a fit, I am so thoroughly delighted to make your acquaintance! I asked for the two of you specially. I do so enjoy a spot of the unusual in my house. And folk have a charming habit of doing as I say. Very useful indeed. You may call me Madame Tanaquill. Your…animals may sleep in the stables with my own.” She gestured toward an outcropping of blue rock to the west. A willow tree was trying valiantly to grow out of it. “Go on, my little pups!”

  “I’m no one’s pup, Miss Rustybritches, and I don’t sleep in a stable, thanks much!” snapped Blunderbuss. Scratch stubbornly refused to sing for this person calling him an animal. He stared down with the mouth of his bell. But Madame Tanaquill positively rippled with calm uncaring.

  “I shouldn’t like to call my sheepdogs, but I shall,” she said in a singsong voice.

  Scratch and Blunderbuss went, furiously, the gramophone’s crank winding up indignantly tight. Now he did want to sing—or spit—at her! But he could not seem to find a thing to say or sing, for no song has yet been written that goes: I love Tamburlaine and if you take me away from her I shall play John Philip Sousa at top volume till I explode or you do.

  “Now, that’s all sorted! How nice. Let’s get you started on the laundry, shall we? And after supper I am having an Affair. You will be expected to dress appropriately and present yourselves at the Cranberry Bog at one quarter past nine. I do not abide tardiness, children! Ginnie knows the way to the Laundries. My regular boy is already at his post, so don’t make him labor alone longer than you must.”

  “Tanaquill,” said Tamburlaine slowly. “The Faerie Queene.”

  Tom Thorn nodded and squeezed her hand. “Yes! Spenser! I knew it sounded familiar! You’re the Queen of the Fairies!”

  An impossibly pretty blush rose up in her high cheeks. “Certainly not, child. You embarrass me. Goodness! That was so long ago! Who can remember? Having spent some centuries as a preposterous four-armed statue in a field will do dreadful things to one’s mind. No, Miss Toothpick, I am not the Queen of anything. Once, in my youth, perhaps, I carried the thistle and the fennel. Perhaps I wore the Hungry Crown. Who can say? I may have commanded bullfrog battalions and rode in a silver walnut shell drawn by eleven mad peacocks. But it becomes no one to dwell upon the past! I serve but humbly, at the leisure of the King, without ambition or thought of myself.” She tilted her chin down demurely. “A throne is nothing but an ostentatious bit of chair that matches nothing and ruins the room. I am but a mild and hardworking soul, a simple Prime Minister. A humble public servant, devoted to service and sacrifice. Charles Crunchcrab”—she could not quite conceal an exquisite grimace of distaste at the name—“is my sovereign, and he is…well. He is a charming man. If you are lucky, perhaps one day you will meet him.” She smirked. “Unless King Goldmouth comes back!”

  Did she know? Tom had never been good at guessing when folk meant the opposite of what they said. He always said exactly what he meant—why would anyone say otherwise?

  “Come now, the laundry won’t wait! Let us see how my backward, upside-down Changelings handle a little honest work.”

  And Madame Tanaquill swept away, her iron dress clunking and clinking and clanging behind her. She disappeared back into the tangerine trees as the starlings sang in her hair.

  Penny rolled her eyes. “That’s about enough of that, I think. It’s worse than scrubbing floors, having to listen to her! She’s really the worst of them, just an insufferable bag of donkey hooves. And such lies!” She began to walk down toward a fold in the meadow where the four brooks met and tumbled into one another. Hibiscus and orchids rouged the mouth of the gully. Tom and Tam jogged after her. “I should have known she’d want you. Don’t swallow a teaspoon of her bunk; she just wants to keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not going to make anything happen. The Fairies are very concerned with nothing happening. Have this as your first bite of Fairy logic.” Penny made her voice high and sweet and teasing and fancified, a fair impression of Madame Tanaquill’s. “‘Things used to happen, and that was fine as ferns until they started happening to us. Oh, wasn’t that just beastly, Mr. Butternut? Undoubtedly, Mrs. Henbane! Why, I was a dung shovel for five whole minutes! Can you imagine? That’s nothing, Mr. Butternut, I was a priceless idiot, so I spent my holidays as hat! I shall never recover! Oh, Mrs. Henbane, never you fear, we’ll make good and sure nothing goes mucking about with happening at all anymore, won’t that be nice?’ That’s what they call it! Our Holiday! A hundred years as garbage and they’re worse than ever. They always say that ugly little mess about King Goldmouth, too. He was the big man when they were strong as gravity. Some whip of a girl with a needle for a sword stomped him flat and good riddance. Now they all hate King Chuck and it’s till Goldmouth returns this and if King Goldmouth could hear you he’d smack the sass off your wings!”

  Down in the gully, a herd of white moose splashed angrily in the cold water, hoot-roaring in rage, vicious blue eyes rolling, their hooves churning the water white. Their tails snaked up behind them, barbed with brilliant red thorns. A boy dressed rather like Robin Hood brandished a black oar in each hand, whacking their flanks whenever he could.

  “Laundry day,” Penny Farthing chuckled. “Aren’t you glad you came all this way to be a washboard?”

  “Stop jawing and help me!” hollered Robin Hood as he smacked another albino moose with his paddle.

  They scrambled down through the orchids to an icy pool that was quickly becoming moose soup.

  “Get the crossbow!” he panted. Tom looked about and saw one laying on the grass. Its arrows stunk of lye, but though his eyes stung, he managed to string it, remembering his Great Battles of Britain and hoping he’d done it right. Tamburlaine and Penny had got hold of several oak branches and were giving the front-most moose a good thrashing.

  “In the eye!” urged Robin Hood, and Tom Thorn wrenched the crossbow up toward the frenzied blue eye of the biggest bull. He closed his eyes as he fired—he couldn’t help it—and it struck the beast in the forehead. But that appeared to be close enough, as the arrow burst into streamers of wet green light and the moose crumpled to his knees.

  The other moose realized their danger and lashed out with their red tails. Wherever the barbs sunk into the water they sizzled, dark red stains spreading through the streams. Tam and Penny and Tom dodged them—T
om felt quite sure they were poison, and one strike would be the last laundry he ever did. He ducked under one brutal, quick tail and rolled through the water, shoving the crossbow up into moose-belly and firing again. He looked over—Tam had somehow gotten on top of one and was beating it about the head frightfully with her branch, nearly crying in fear and confusion. The tail came up to stab her shoulders and he yelped to warn her—but Penny reached up with a knife and cut the tail off at the moose’s rump. It shrieked and fell with a tremendous splash, Tam and all. Robin Hood tossed him one of the black paddles; Tom whirled around and caught the last moose square in the skull, knocking it up onto the dry grass. All four of them stood in the moose wreckage, panting and shaking.

  And then the moose stood up, one by one, quite calm, and wandered off over the green.

  “What was that? What? How was that laundry?” Tamburlaine’s fingers rattled together like winter branches.

  Penny looked at them oddly. “You can’t see? Oh…that’s…” And she had to sit down, she was laughing so hard. Robin Hood shook his head while she explained. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you? We all get a gob of gnome ointment in the eye first thing, but you came round the back way. I bet this all looks like a lovely countryside to you, doesn’t it? Pretty enough to pitch a village in? It’s just a house. That’s the parlor, where we were talking to Tanaquill, her dressing room in the tangerine trees—she’s got a bedroom in the white hill up there. It’s all just a Fairy’s idea of interior decorating. They make us dress like milkmaids and noble thieves so we match the draperies. If you could see clearly, you’d know we’re in the laundries now.”

  “So that was just a lot of bedsheets and petticoats? That’s what you saw? Bedsheets with poison tails?” Tom huffed.

  “No, actually, that was a lot of white moose with poison tails,” Robin Hood cut in. “That’s just what Fairy laundry looks like. It hates us and wants us to suffer. It’s not like they wear clothes, really, or sleep in beds that would look like beds to us. Their laundry is…it’s their insides, see? Rage, mostly. A little bitterness and gluttony and power-hungry jealousy thrown in with the delicates. They use it hard all week, and on the Sabbats we get it ready to wear again. But anyway, we still see the meadow and the hibiscus and the gully. We just see the washboards, too.”

  “Don’t people get stuck with those tails?” asked Tamburlaine.

  “Sure. I know a girl who lost an arm,” answered the young man. He took off his Robin Hood cap, which even Tom had to admit looked silly. “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. You sort of lose your manners around here, like old socks.” He held out his hand and smiled a strange, horribly familiar, lopsided smile.

  “I’m Thomas Rood,” he said.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE CRANBERRY BOG

  In Which a Troll Meets Himself, a Changeling Hides a Ferret in His Pocket, a Girl Made of Wood Says Quite a Lot Concerning the Emperor of Turkey, and a Fairy Ball Commences in a Cranberry Bog

  “No, you’re not,” Tom Thorn insisted.

  “I am, though,” replied Thomas Rood.

  Tom Thorn stared at the boy in his absurd green hose and doublet and cap with a long pheasant feather sticking out of it. He could see it, almost. His own face, his human face, as it would have looked if he’d grown up with a smile other than Gwendolyn’s to imitate, a glare other than Nicholas’s to learn. If he’d hardly ever had a haircut and had worked so hard he had muscles before he had a beard. If he’d spent half his life with his head bent and his jaw clenched. Though, Tom supposed, they’d both done a little of that. He remembered what Sadie had said—a Changeling couldn’t get away from stories in Fairyland. They ran straight at you like dogs that missed you while you’d been gone. Well, I’d better get in on the joke if I’m going to make my way here, he thought.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Tom said, and put on his best grin, trying to make it a grin the other Thomas Rood would recognize. “I’m Thomas Rood.”

  “No,” the other Thomas said, and to him it was not a joke at all. “You’re not. You’re not!”

  Tom Thorn stepped back a little. “No,” he said softly. “No, you’re right. I’m not. I’m not. I’m Tom Thorn…” But he stopped. Shook his head. The time for that was done. “No, no, I’m not either. I’m…my name is Hawthorn.” He had never said it out loud, not since he remembered it for the first time in the Painted Forest. “I’m a troll and my name is Hawthorn.” He couldn’t help it; he laughed, and felt tears swell up in his eyes. “I’m a troll and my name is Hawthorn,” he shouted. A flock of flamingos startled from a swamp in the distance. Probably they were really a piano, he thought, and giggled again. “I’m sorry, I’m not making sense. It’s just that you’re me, you see. Or I’m you. We’re us! Tom, we’re us! Isn’t it marvelous to be us?”

  “I don’t care for Tom,” Thomas Rood said. “Shortening things makes them less interesting.”

  Tamburlaine glowed like a polished bannister.

  “We’re us. We’re Changelings, Thomas. But we’re each other’s Changelings. You got traded for me like a stupid baseball player and you should have grown up in Apartment #7 and gone to Public School 348 and been friends with a boy named Max and written essays for Mr. Wolcott. Our mom should have made a yarn animal for you. Our dad would have…I think Dad would have liked you better. He’d like anyone better, is what I really think. He’d have carried you on his shoulders down on Navy Pier and won you a catcher’s mitt at the shooting range. And you’d probably have known what to do with one! And I’d have done…whatever a troll does. And nobody would have had to do rage-laundry with moose. But it didn’t go that way. So you’re you and I’m me and you’ve never met the girl with the orchids in the hallway painting or hated the stove that wouldn’t light. Do you get it?”

  Thomas Rood was crying.

  “Yeah,” he choked. “You stole my life.”

  “I was terrible at your life, if that helps any.”

  Thomas wiped his nose with his Robin Hood hat and tossed it on the ground. He clenched his fists and unclenched them. His face colored darkly and he rushed at Hawthorn with an awful, bloody look on his face—and caught him up in his arms. Thomas Rood hugged Hawthorn so tightly he yelped—not an easy task when one is hugging a troll. Boulders rarely yelp when snuggled.

  “It’s okay,” Thomas said into Hawthorn’s ear. “It’s okay. I stole yours, too. Nothing in Fairyland belongs to you unless you steal it. I don’t know what a catcher’s mitt is, but I bet you don’t know how to turn invisible, so probably we’re even. No grudges among Changelings, brother.” He pulled away. “You really are my brother in a funny, mixed-up way. Never thought I’d have a brother. Feels weird. Like a new horse. Hullo, Thomas.”

  “No, no. You keep it. It wasn’t ever mine. I was just…sitting on it,” Hawthorn said. “Keeping it warm.”

  Everyone stood affably still, not having the first idea what to say next.

  “They’re looking for the Spinster,” Penny Farthing said suddenly. “At least, they were when the Office came knocking.”

  “She’s in the Redcaps’ cellar,” Thomas Rood shrugged, as though he were saying nothing more complicated than It’s awfully sunny out today, isn’t it?

  “Yes, dear, they know that now.”

  “Then that’s what’s to talk about?” Thomas shrugged. “We’d better get ourselves powdered for the Bog tonight. Our room’s a patch of desert just over that rise. Servants’ quarters. It has a palm tree and a tent and some nice stars over it. Not bad. I’ve slept in worse.”

  “What do you mean that’s what’s to talk about?” Tamburlaine said, narrowing her eyes. “There’s rather a lot to talk about.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about because you can stop looking.” Thomas Rood was already up and over the edge of the gully, heading for a low, shadowy hill. “Have you ever met a Redcap? You know why they’re called Redcaps in the first place?” Hawthorne scrambled after his other half. Redcaps! That boy had seen Redcaps! And murder
wives too, probably! “They don’t get those hats red with beet juice, they soak them in blood. They eat hearts. Hearts. It’s disgusting.” Rood went on, hardly even out of breath. “A Redcap is a blood tornado with a bonnet on. They tried to eat the Spinster when she started meddling with the Fairies’ business, trying her old curses on them, making all sorts of trouble. Tanaquill told them to have her for a midnight snack, but old Spinny was too quick for them. Redcaps don’t like taking orders anyway. So they’ve got her locked up, guarded with a fearsome, fire-breathing something-or-other and a loyal warrior who never sleeps. Pretty standard situation when you poke at Fairies with all ten fingers. But that was ages ago. Everybody thinks the Spinster can do whatever they can’t do themselves. We’re hungry! Oh, have you heard? The Spinster can spin gold into wheat. We’re sick to death of Fairies? Well, the Spinster can kill ten of them by blinking. Poor old cow. I think she’s just a sad old woman who’d like to see the sky again. But she won’t. Not ever. Fairyland is like that sometimes. It just…doesn’t play nice.”

  They climbed up over the ridge. A little round patch of golden-orange desert stretched out below them. A camel with three humps and blue fur munched on the fronds of a small palm tree. A tent of rich tapestries waited for them. Thomas Rood ran down the hill and jumped up to grab coconuts off the palm tree. The camel spat.

  “Crack it open on the ground,” he urged them.

  Tam smashed hers hard against the rocky desert floor. Out spilled a hunk of moist dark bread, a rind of cheese, a flask of water, and three peppermints. Hawthorn gave his a good whack: a leg of chicken, black grapes, cold cider, and a pot of gravy.