Somebody is investigating all of them, one by one. He is tall and handsome, with thick, curly black hair and a long, noble snout. He is alert and careful. His ears stick up straight so as to miss nothing. His nose is very wet.
His name is the Black Cosmic Dog.
In the middle of the square he pushes a pile of old spectacles aside and begins to dig, furiously, in the soft soil of the Moon.
CHAPTER VIII
WHERE THERE’S A WHELK
THERE’S A WAY
In Which September Walks on the Moon, Is Accused of Sundry Wickednesses by a Lobster and Two Jackals, Hails a Crab, and Meets a Very Unusual Mollusk
We have said before that the world is a house.
You and I have gone together into the basement where the underworlds are kept. We have lounged comfortably in the front room and shared our familiar tea with all things familiar: Omaha and Europe and cruel schoolmates and spy movies and airplane factories and amiable dogs. We have played such wonderful games in the upstairs bedroom, where Wyveraries and Marids and witches and giant talking cats peek out from behind the bedpost and the Lamp is always on. You might think that I will take you to the attic next, where the heavens of a house get bundled up with twine and draped with muslin and wait quietly for our footsteps. But it is not so. In the house of the world, the heavens are not in the attic.
They are on the roof.
Shall we crawl up there and see?
Why, here is everything that soared up high and got lost, everything that wanted to keep safe from marauders below. The tenderhearted old world catches everything thrown too far and too hard, keeps everything fragile whole: baseballs and stuffed bears and birds’ nests and last autumn’s leaves, zeppelins and Icarus and Leonardo’s flying machine, Fairies and pterodactyls and cherubim and hot air balloons and a Russian dog or two. It’s hard to get up there, harder than the stairs down into the basement. It takes longer; you must climb out a window and shimmy up the chimney and pull yourself over by your fingernails without breaking the gutters. Gravity is involved, and unbreakable spells concerning escape velocity. After all, anyone can go down into the cellar if they are not afraid of the dark. Any tale you care to tell calls for a quick trip to the underworld to bring up another bag of flour and a working knowledge of your darker nature. The surface of the world is like a great black net; any moment you could fall through and fall deep. But for every underworld there is an overworld, an upper world just as strange as the lower, just as bright as its cousin is brooding. The snow that falls in one splashes down as rain in the other—and brightness is not less perilous than shadow. An Italian poet got himself a ticket good for both shows once and came back to tell us all about it, which shows excellent manners.
Everything that goes down must come up again.
When you leave the world, the going gets tough, whether you are a chemical rocket or a little girl. Take my hand, I know the way. Narrators have a professional obligation not to let their charges fall onto the pavement.
Aroostook and September idled, each in their ways. The Model A’s rumble mellowed into a thick purr as Ballast’s soda-gas flowed through her insides. The light of the sun on the Moon blazed pure white; the pearly sand beneath those four piebald tires sparkled sharply, purposefully.
September stared. Specifically, she stared up. She could not quite put a name to what she saw towering above her. Even after climbing out of the car and putting the handbrake carefully on, she still could not get her head all the way around it. Her hands shook even though the Moon had stilled some time ago. In the end they had only fallen a few, embarrassing feet. The off-ramp hung miserably behind her, broken off in midair, jumbled and cracked and twisted by the quake. Bits of ivory briar crumbled away into the starry black; an awful metallic whine wheezed out of the silver paving stones. B.D.’s Moondock Salvagation drifted back downroad, righted and ruddered, looking for wrecks. But September barely heard the sounds of the barge and the creaking road. What clanged behind her could not possibly be important.
In front of her yawned the mouth of a seashell the size of a mountain.
It lay on its side, a sea-snail shell tapering for miles into a slender point on one end and a massive knobbly spiral crown on the other. Along its spine rose great prongs tipped with glowing white flame. It seemed to be every color at once, jade-green and amethyst and quicksilver at the crown, swirling into deep blue and indigo and bright fuchsia, and then into white-orange and copper and gold as its tail swept away up the shore. For the off-ramp emptied out not only directly into the giant shell but onto the shore of a scarlet, frothing sea, its waves washing the curve of the sea-snail and leaving pink rinds of salt behind. The height of the thing made September dizzy. Polished mother-of-pearl lined the shell’s wide mouth. It opened gracefully inward like a smile. A steep coral staircase led up to the lip of the entrance and what could be inside September would have ventured no guesses.
“It’s all right to gape, girl. I love it when people gape! Means they recognize the spectacular when they see it.”
September startled. The great snail shell had so swallowed up her attention that she’d noticed nothing else, not even the trio of creatures guarding that steep staircase. On the left side of it crouched a black jackal with great dark ears and bright silver eyes. On the right side perched a white jackal with a long, pale snout and piercing dark eyes. Between them, a large, muscular, and very green lobster stood watch. In her thick, powerful claw she clamped a long, two-pronged fork whose tips glittered as if to assure September of their sharpness. Her antennae and the jackals’ tails wafted to and fro in the same rhythm. Two of the shell’s fiery prongs framed the three of them. It was the white jackal who had spoken.
“If you need more time to be amazed, just give us an estimate, love,” said the black jackal. Their voices were quite high and human-like.
“What is this place?” whispered September. The shushing sounds of the sea seemed to rub against her, making her skin feel prickly and hot.
The lobster cleared her throat—do lobsters have a throat? September wondered.
“Welcome to Almanack, the All-In-One! Sanctuary, Safehouse, Home of the Stationary Circus and the College of Lunar Arts, Number One Tourist Destination on the Heavenly Circuit and Capital of the Moon! These are my associates Rushe and Waite, Knights of the Crepuscular Girdle, and I am Nefarious Freedom Coppermolt the Third, Lobster of the Watch.”
“This is Almanack? There’s…a city in there?”
The white jackal laughed, a shrill yip and cry.
“What else would it be? The highway leads here, after all.”
“But highways might lead anywhere!”
Nefarious Freedom Coppermolt the Third stamped her fork. “They might, but they don’t. King Crunchcrab decreed that in a proper Empire, all roads lead to capitals, and they couldn’t have rogue roads just lying about leading anywhere they pleased. A road has to go to a city at the least, or else it will be arrested and sent to the countryside for rehabilitation.”
September could not quite believe this, but she could not quite disbelieve it, either. She thought she ought to visit Charlie, and sooner rather than later.
“Of course, the Moon isn’t strictly speaking part of Fairyland,” Rushe, the white jackal, growled.
“No it is not,” harrumphed the lobster. “My great-great-grandmother, for whom I am named, would pinch her own gravestone rather than see it happen. She fought in the Battle of the Whelk when the Moon washed its hands of Fairies and threw away the bucket. Wrestled a basilisk to a standstill, my gran! Lost her claw in a Fairy’s mouth, but it was mostly turned to stone anyway. Lived to lay her eggs and shed her shell and show no mercy to collaborating crayfish. Now I serve in her name and in her place! Nobody throws a fork farther. I also juggle better than you might expect,” she added confidentially. “Just to pass the time.”
“But the Road starts in Fairyland, so it’s theirs, too, and they get to order it about and tell it its shortcomings and sen
d it to sit in a corner and think about what it’s done,” finished the black jackal Waite.
“For now,” said Nefarious Freedom darkly. She clapped her pincers together.
“Well,” said September, taking a deep breath, “if this is Almanack, this is where I’m meant to be!” She pulled the long, carved box from the backseat and held it before her like a shield. “I’m to take this directly to the Whelk of the Moon.”
The Lobster of the Watch tapped on the lid with her claw and listened for an echo. If one sounded, September did not hear it.
“Well, I don’t think that’s likely,” barked Waite.
“You must be joking,” growled Rushe.
“You do know the lee side is riddled with holes and tunnels?” Nefarious Freedom added in a low voice. “I don’t know why you’d even try to come in by the front gate in broad daylight. Bold of you! But goodness, why? Has someone told you we were easy marks? That we could be bought? It’s not so, or my name isn’t—”
September leapt in. “What on earth are you talking about? I only want to put this thing down where it belongs and be on my way!”
Rushe narrowed his dark eyes. “You mean smuggle in some sort of device or weapon or counterfeit or…”
“…stolen property or wicked beastie or bomb,” finished Waite.
“Certainly not!”
“But you’re a Criminal!” snapped the Lobster of the Watch.
“Oh, I’m no such thing,” September sighed.
“But you’re dressed like one,” whined Rushe, his pink tongue lolling out of his muzzle.
“Well, if you’re going to go passing judgment on those what wear black,” retorted Waite, thumping his black tail, “then so am I.”
“What’s in there?” Rushe sniffed at it, his ruff bristling.
“I…I don’t rightly know, but a Wind gave it to me specially and though Winds can be rather rude sometimes, they’re very rarely nasty. I’m sure it’s nothing like what you said!” But was she sure? It was terribly heavy.
Nefarious Freedom clapped her pincers again in exasperation. “If you’re wearing silks, you’re a Criminal of the Realm. Tell me you haven’t got a writ in your pocket!”
September could not. She pulled it out of the deep, soft slits of her black trousers and unfolded it for the guards to see. Nefarious Freedom covered her eyes and would not look at it.
“We don’t go in for Fairyish decadence up here. Commit your crimes under cover of darkness like an honest crustacean, I say. Folk down below might treat you fancy just because you’ve got a dash of official danger on you—and danger approved and accounted for is hardly danger at all if you ask me and my grandmother—but here on the Moon, we call them like we see them and I see you plain as the tide! No Writ of Rascalry recognized! Petition denied! Take your trash elsewhere, missy!”
But the lobster could not help being at least a little curious. She peeked through the rough teeth of her green claw at September’s scroll. Then she opened it wider. And wider still.
“Professional Revolutionary?” she cried, reading the writ. “Do you mean to say you’ve led revolts? Real rebellions? In Fairyland?”
September demurred. “No, no, it’s all a misunderstanding, everything’s got twisted round…” But she saw the jackals’ ruffs rise and the lobster stiffen. She cleared her throat and changed her tack. “What I mean to say is that I brought down the Marquess who ruled over all of Fairyland, but it wasn’t a revolt, it was just me.”
“Don’t be modest!” roared Nefarious Freedom with delight. “Any enemy of the Fairy establishment is a bosom companion of mine. My gran would drop her shell if she caught me treating rough with comrades-at-arms!”
Rushe bowed, stretching his legs in front of him like a cat. “Right up the stairs, ma’am,” he purred, “and watch your step.”
Waite licked his chops. “And if there’s a thing we can do to aid and abet you just howl and we’ll hear it. Excellent acoustics in Almanack.”
September did not like using the Marquess as a strange sort of password. It had been so much more complicated than that. And it felt like bragging, which was not at all nice when you considered the consequences of it all. Nor could she understand how these beasts could hate Fairyland so—and Fairies, who were nearly as extinct as dimetrodons, save a few stray orphans like King Charlie and Belinda Cabbage and Calpurnia Farthing. But she had little to barter with but her reputation. The sooner she finished with this nonsense, the sooner she could set about finding A-Through-L and Saturday.
“You could winch up my…my friend. I fear she won’t make it up the steps.” September did not know what to call Aroostook, but what use might a lobster and two jackals have for the word car?
The lobster-knight looked dubious. “Your friend would crack the pearl! Smash it right to bits. We’ve got strict preservation codes. No Alien Conveyances Allowed. But never you worry. You’ll find Almanack has taken care of all your needs, I promise. Travel by Public Tram, Taxicrab, or Regularly Scheduled Trapeze! See the Grand Moonflower Lawn from the sack of a luxury lunar pelican! You’ll have no cause to complain, friend.”
“I can’t just leave Aroostook. What if someone made off with her or vandalized her parts? Oh, I’m sure they wouldn’t mean to, but she’s a complicated machine. A Tool, really, and Tools Have Rights.” September fell back lamely on the only law she knew by name.
The jackals exchanged glances. “Who told you that?” they said together.
“Never mind, never mind!” cried Nefarious, waving her emerald pincers in the air. “We’ll watch over her nice and snug. Safe as seahorses. It’s what we do, after all! Come back for her when you’re finished.”
September felt very reluctant indeed to leave the Model A. Fairyish folk seemed so terribly fascinated by the automobile. But faster in, faster out! September turned off the engine and pocketed the key. She patted the burlaped wheel. “I won’t be long,” she whispered. “Don’t go running off this time! You can’t trust just any old person who comes along with a hundred puffins and a pretty face!”
Aroostook settled into silence as September walked up the coral staircase and into Almanack.
When she was quite out of sight, a peculiar thing happened. The big, rusty horn nestled into the driver’s-side door melted away into hot steam. In its place billowed up a huge cobalt and white striped phonograph bell. A squeeze bulb ballooned out from the bottom of it, looking a bit like a tulip bulb, delicate and coppery and sheathed in gauzy layers like a live thing.
The jackals sniffed at it. It smelled of sunshine.
September stepped inside the snail-shell and onto a long shimmering street full of sound and tumult. It spiraled down and in along the floor of the great shell—but up and down had clearly become such good friends here that it hardly mattered who was who. Almanack was all mother-of-pearl, silver-green, and blue-violet chasing each other in gleaming ribbons. Houses and streetlamps and storefronts and skinny bright towers and fountains and bridges and pavilions sprung out everywhere: not only out of the floor of the shell but sticking out sideways from the walls and upside down from the misty reaches of the ceiling. It looked as though they had grown there, budded out of the shell itself like mushrooms. Every bank and gambling hall and bakery and public house flashed with the same mother-of-pearl. Everything was Almanack and Almanack was everything. Fishwives cast nets in a pearly river that ran across a curve of spiral wall and should have spilled out all over the avenue and September herself, but somehow did not. People and creatures and carts walked and rolled along, chatting merrily, the men wearing fabulous anemones like corsages, the women tipping coral top hats to anyone they passed. A great pelican whose tail sported no feathers but flapped a long, diaphanous goldfish’s tail behind it wafted overhead, its hefty pouch filled with a tumult of mermaids splashing in a specially provided pool.
With a skittering thump, something barreled toward September, nearly crashing into a lovely, tall mother-of-pearl candelabra that lit the way into Alm
anack, only righting itself with a wild thrashing of four of its eight legs as it careened up on its side. It brought itself in hand with a thud and a scrabble and looked up at September with piercing, intelligent eyes: a broad, polished, black-and-white-checkered crab.
“Afternoon,” he said crisply. “Name’s Spoke and I’ll be your Taxicrab on this fine day. First visit to Almanack? I can always spot a first-timer. Can’t stop gawking at the ceiling. Sometimes they throw up! Please don’t throw up. I’ve just had a wash.”
September looked from the checkered crab to the green pearl ceiling and back again. “But I didn’t call for a…a Taxicrab,” she said softly.
“Who calls for one? Screamingly inefficient, if you ask me! Almanack takes care of all your needs. I suppose if you felt like insisting on it I could fetch you a walking map, but they’re a devil to catch and take at least four hands and an opposable tail to operate so it’s my professional opinion as a crabbie of venerable years that you ought to climb on and let me scuttle you wherever you need to scut!”
Indeed, a very comfortable-looking cushioned chair was strapped to the crab’s chessboard back with a number of enormous black belts. Throw pillows in all the shades of mother-of-pearl plumped invitingly along the seat.
“I’m afraid I haven’t got a fare…” September bit the inside of her cheek so as not to show the fullness of her embarrassment. How hard she had tried to avoid this! How carefully she’d saved!