The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home Read Online Free

or, if you are a dinosaur or a bird or a rock or a slice of cheese, we’ll just sling it round your neck on somebody’s spare jewels. Do remember to spell it out for me if anyone’s got runes or umlauts or apostrophes or extinct letters in! Who’s first?”
    The Marquess stepped forward. She spelled her name through clenched teeth. M-A-R-Q-U-E-S-S. A sour and sneering titter bubbled up from the royal horde.
    â€œOh, darling, that’s not how you pronounce it,” clucked Titania. “And anyhow, don’t you know that’s a boy’s title?”
    â€œHow embarrassing!” chuckled Madame Tanaquill, covering her mouth with a shimmering hand. “Who raised you, child?”
    The Emperor of Everything wrinkled his noble nose. “I suppose they’re letting anyone wear the big hat nowadays. Look around; this room is half bumpkins and half barbarians. I’d wager she’s never so much as dog-eared a page of the Whomsday Book!”
    â€œOr stayed up till all hours reading Ichabod Lurk’s Peerage, Spearage, and Fearage under her blankets!” smirked the Headmistress.
    The Marquess flushed horribly, redder than her hair and blacker than her dress. “If I had my lions, you wouldn’t dare say such things!”
    Whipstitch waved his ringed hand in the air. “If wishes were dishes we’d all tuck in, lovey! If I had my Button-Down Guard, you’d have a poleax in your eye! We all have our disappointments.”
    â€œ Have you got lions? Or have you got a wee brace of kittens you just call lions to puff up their chests a bit, the way a dirty little wastrel calls herself a Marquess and thinks she’s somebody?” Titania asked, tilting her shining head in sympathy.
    Hawthorn didn’t pause. He kept writing out name tags, one by one, tearing strips out of Inspector Balloon, wincing with each tear. Tamburlaine pinned them to chest after chest like particularly unhappy medals.
    â€œShut up,” hissed the Marquess. “I chose it, you miserable, rouged-up idiots! Why shouldn’t I have a boy’s title? People listen to boys! They fear boys—they fear a King and hope a Queen will show them mercy! Why shouldn’t I be a Marquess? I rule the world! I say how things are pronounced! I say what belongs to boys and what doesn’t!”
    â€œYou don’t, though,” interrupted September calmly. The calm came up from inside her, pooling into her heart, smoothing everything clean. It had been so long. She had done so much—faced down a Yeti, shot her own shadow, seen the world from a prison cell, raced up to forty years old and back to seventeen again. September found she no longer feared the Marquess much at all. She even looked a bit short and sorry to her now. “You don’t rule the world. You don’t rule anything but yourself. You can still be a Marquess, if you like. But it means nothing more than saying you’re somebody’s old Auntie they only see once a year at Easter. You’re just like everyone else. It’s your turn to hope there’s a box of mercy in the pantry.” September sucked in her breath. The words formed in her mouth but she didn’t want to say them. She needed to think. She needed half a moment to breathe. But you couldn’t breathe in front of this lot. Breathing showed weakness. She didn’t need Tanaquill to tell her that. “ I rule Fairyland—”
    â€œNo!” squawked a voice from the rear of the assembly. Not one voice, but eight, all speaking together in perfect harmony. “Nope! Nope! No! Don’t say another word, Missy! Make way!”
    The Stoat of Arms barreled through the grand hall, the seal of a nation come alive. If you have ever seen a passport, try to remember the strange tangle of animals stamped on the cover, for all nations have them. Now, imagine them all leaping off that little leather book and yelling and squawking all