The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (12 page)

They don’t always make sense, but it doesn’t matter. They’re
rules
, and you have to follow them. If you don’t, there are
consequences
.

When a quest begins with the quester not knowing the location of the object she’s looking for, the rule is that she should start walking until she meets somebody magical to give her advice. There’s nothing, not even in the most obscure fairy tale, about waiting for a quest pass.

The day after the Lincoln Center conversation, I skipped lunch again, went to the Schooljuffrouw’s office, and knocked.

“Come in, dear.”

It was not the Schooljuffrouw’s voice, and it wasn’t the Schooljuffrouw’s office. Everything in it was pastel and cozily cushioned, including the man who’d called me “dear.” When I came in, he removed his glasses and let them dangle against his Inside Sweater, which was a delicate leaf green.

I pulled myself together. “Hi. Um. I’d like to speak to the Schooljuffrouw about a quest pass?”

“A quest pass. Well.” The man fiddled with the cord holding the glasses around his neck. “That’s not . . . I don’t think . . . I’m not
authorized
, you see. I’m just the Secretary. Are you sure you really want a quest pass, dear?”

“I’m positive,” I said. “It’s very important.”

He put the glasses on again. Behind them, his eyes were like fish eyes, big and goggling. “You’ll have to talk to the Assistant, then. In there.”

He pointed to a door I hadn’t noticed before and I went through it into the next room.

The Assistant’s office was as spare as the Secretary’s had been cluttered. The Assistant was kind of spare, too. She was all angles and bones, with hair scraped back in a painful-looking bun and a nose like an eagle’s beak. Her eyes, behind thick square glasses, were like twin gray poached eggs.

I went up to her desk. “I need to talk to the Schooljuffrouw about a quest pass, please.”

“No,” the Assistant said briskly. “The very idea! You haven’t even filled out the paperwork.”

“Paperwork?”

“There’s always paperwork.”

As her poached-egg eyes glared into mine, daring me to argue, I suddenly realized what was going on.

When I was little, one of my favorite stories was “The Magic Cigarette Lighter.” It’s about this young policeman, down on his luck, who has to get past three dogs, each with progressively huger eyes and huger bodies to keep them in, before he can get to the Magic Cigarette Lighter that will give him his heart’s desire. There was a lot more to the story, about the policeman’s adventures with the cigarette lighter. But the important point to remember right now was that the guard dogs at the beginning didn’t attack the policeman. They just sat and stared at him. All he had to do to get past them was not freak out.

I stared back at the Assistant. After a long moment, she took off her glasses. Without them, her eyes were small and weak. “You’ll have to ask the Deputy,” she said. “In there.”

The Deputy’s office was gloomy and brown and smelled of very old sandwiches. The only furniture in it were some bookcases and, in front of the far door, a wheeled chair loaded with what looked a pile of brown blankets.

I squeaked forward a few steps, the hair prickling along my arms.

The blankets stirred and groaned, and the Deputy turned to look at me. His (or possibly her) face was a nest of wrinkles with a bony nose and a narrow, sunken mouth. If she (or possibly he) had eyes, they were invisible under a mop of yellow-white hair.

“I know there’s somebody there.” The Deputy’s voice was creaky and thin, like the wind through bare branches. “Identify yourself immediately.”

I reached for a curl. “Neef.” My voice came out in an uncertain squeak.

“Beef? Stupid thing to call a changeling. When I was young, the Folk had style. Nonpareil. Dead Rabbit. Four-in-hand. Geegaw. A mortal could answer to names like that with pride. Come here, Beef.”

Nervously, I took a step forward. A gnarled hand, all bones and skin, snaked out of the blankets and pulled at my arm. I jumped.

“Stop playing with your hair,” said the Deputy. “It’s childish. What do you want, Beef?”

“A quest pass,” I said, snatching my hand behind my back. “And it’s Neef, not Beef. N, as in Nonpareil.”

The claw shook as the Deputy made disgusting liquid noises I guessed were laughter. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? Heard all the fairy tales, learned all the lists, got a magic bag and a pure heart, think you’re ready to seek your fortune? Well, it’s not that simple, Beef.”

It was simple for the policeman: the dogs hadn’t argued. I was beginning to lose patience. “I know. I have to pass a bunch of tests first, and this is obviously one of them. So stop trying to scare me off and tell me what I have to do next.”

“You’re going to be late for your lesson, you know,” the old voice warned. “Unless you leave
right now
.”

Another test. “So I’ll be late,” I said.

The Deputy’s wrinkles grew more threatening. “You could be banished from Miss Van Loon’s.”

“I’ve been banished before,” I said. “I survived. Look, I need a quest pass. Can you please just give me one?”

The pile of blankets pulled itself higher in the chair. “You’ll have to get by me first,” the Deputy said.

It would have been so easy just to shove the wheelchair away from the door. But Astris had dinned it into me that only oldest sons and wicked magicians are mean to old people. Heroes give them their cloaks, or half their lunch. And I was a hero, right?

Well, I didn’t have a cloak. And I suspected that toothless mouth wouldn’t be able to deal with bread and cheese. I thought a moment, then opened Satchel and wished. A cup nudged into my hand. I pulled it out, steaming fragrantly.

The Deputy sniffed loudly. “Is that hot chocolate? I haven’t had hot chocolate in over a hundred years.”

“It is. And I’ll give it to you when you let me pass.” The Deputy’s voice edged into a whine. “I’m not a wicked witch or an evil dwarf. I’m just a poor old mortal, good for scaring away cowards and weeding out bullies. You’re obviously neither. Go on in. But give me the chocolate first.”

I shoved the cup into the Deputy’s bony hands and opened the door.

This time, it really was the Schooljuffrouw’s office, complete with books and huge wooden desk, with the Schooljuffrouw behind it, looking into a large crystal ball. When I came in, she covered it with a piece of cloth.

“I understand you want a quest pass,” she said.

When the policeman got past the guardian dogs, he’d found a magic treasure. I’d only found another guardian. I took a tight grip on my impatience. “Yes, ma’am.”

“A quest pass is a privilege, you know. No student is entitled to one just for the asking. You have to have a good reason.”

“I have to find the Mermaid Queen’s Magic Mirror,” I said. “If I don’t, she’ll drown Central Park in salt water.”

The Schooljuffrouw frowned. “Our policy here at Miss Van Loon’s is to avoid taking sides in inter-Neighborhood squabbles and let our graduates handle them.”

“I’m the only changeling the Lady’s got.”

“And whose fault is that?”

I twisted my hands behind my back. “Listen, I know the Green Lady is hard to love. She’s unreliable, she’s dangerous, and she can’t stand mortals. She doesn’t even like me very much. But she doesn’t deserve to be wiped out. She was the Genius of all Manhattan once. She’s been here since the island was covered with swamps and hills and forests of poplar and maple.”

“The island has changed since then,” the Schooljuffrouw said. “The Lady has not changed with it.”

I was starting to feel desperate. “Well, what about the Park Folk? If the Mermaid Queen poisons the water, a lot of innocent Folk are going to get hurt.”

“Innocent? Park Folk? The Wild Hunt’s hardly innocent. If they had their way, they’d eat every live thing in New York.”

“There are other Folk in Central Park besides the Wild Hunt!” The Schooljuffrouw winced—I was shouting. “What about the giants and wyrms on Wall Street?” I went on more softly. “What about the Scalpers on Broadway and the ogres and the disease spirits and the alligators in the sewers? What about the Mermaid Guard? They’re all just as dangerous as the Wild Hunt. Which, by the way, only the Lady can control.”

The Schooljuffrouw held up her hand. “Enough. I note your persistence and your affection for the Park. These are points in your favor. You could have been more polite, though, and you need to watch that temper of yours. Thankfully, the final decision is not mine.” She reached into a drawer, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and handed them to me. “Fill out these forms and give them to the Secretary.”

I took the forms. “I need this quest pass soon, Schooljuffrouw. I’ve got to get the mirror to the Mermaid Queen by Midwinter, or it’s all over.”

“Midwinter? That’s months away,” the Schooljuffrouw said. “You’ll hear when you hear. That’s the rule.”

 

The Deputy had been right: I was very late to Diplomacy. The Diplomat didn’t even give me a chance to explain, just pointed me toward a bulging sack of feathers. Tiffany almost burst trying not to laugh, and I saw the Harbor changeling Airboy staring at me warily, like a cat watching a beetle. Maybe he knew about the Mermaid Queen’s threat. Maybe he thought it was a good idea.

I turned my back on all of them and got to work on the feathers. By the time I finished sorting, the last horn had blown, the last changeling had left the schoolyard, and the sun had set.

I traded my starless Inside Sweater for my coat and took the Betweenway home.

 

 

N
ot knowing when, or even if, I was going to get my quest pass made me crazy. I wanted to
do
something—find the ballet-loving dwarf, maybe, or even go track down the goblin’s nymph and make her tell me where she had found the mirror. Espresso said I should go for it; Stonewall pointed out that champions who go off on side quests usually don’t come back.

Mukuti suggested I go to the library and work on the Bloody Mary problem.

This almost counted as a quest. The Librarian had a very Folkish attitude to all the Van Loon’s rules on library use. Open your magic bag in the library, turn down the corner of a page, leave a book open on its face, and she’d be on you like a pigeon on a crumb.

I left lunch early and went up to the library. The Librarian was sitting at the checkout desk, reading a book and petting the library cat, which was asleep on her lap.

“Good morning, Librarian,” I said in a library-friendly murmur. “Can you please tell me where I can find the books on urban Folk lore? Oh, and exorcism, too.”

She fished a pair of glasses on a chain out of the pocket of her scarlet Inside Sweater and peered at my starless sweater. “That’s
advanced
material,” she said. “I’ll need to see a letter of permission or a quest pass before I can—”

I couldn’t have this conversation again. I just couldn’t. “Never mind,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

Back in the hall, I saw a slender shape darting toward the stairs.

Airboy had been listening at the library door.

Ever since the Equinox, I’d been tripping over Airboy everywhere. In Diplomacy and Mortal History, I could feel his black eyes drilling holes in me from the back of the room. In the lunchroom, he’d moved to sit nearer our table. And every time I’d tried to talk to him, he pretended I wasn’t there.

This time, I’d make him pay attention.

I bounded up the stairs three at a time, reaching the third floor just in time to see him disappear through a door at the end of the hall. I followed him into a room sporting a row of sinks, marble stalls, and some unfamiliar plumbing against the wall.

I was in the boys’ bathroom.

Airboy spun toward me, his cheeks blazing. “Get out!”

Thinking fast, I locked the door. Somebody rattled the knob. I shouted for them to get lost. They yelled. I made retching noises. They went away.

I turned to Airboy. “Why are you following me?”

Airboy turned to the sink, turned on the water, and splashed his face. “I don’t talk to liars, cheats, and thieves.”

“Who are you calling a thief?”

“You stole the Mermaid Queen’s Mirror, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t. I won it in the Riddle Game. If anyone’s a cheat, it’s the Mermaid Queen. Did you know she tried to drown me?”

“That’s her right.” Airboy turned off the tap and faced me. “She’s a Genius. You’re just a mortal land-dweller. And you took her mirror.”

“What’s the big deal? Champions win talismans from Folk all the time—it’s the whole point of questing.”