The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (6 page)

“Everything copacetic?” Espresso asked kindly.

Fish Boy didn’t answer. Somebody behind me made a smart crack. There was a ripple of laughter and everybody started talking again. I shrugged and turned away.

Stonewall stopped me. “Where are my manners? Airboy, this is Neef of Central Park. Neef, this is Airboy of New York Harbor.”

Now I was really embarrassed.

I’d been to New York Harbor last summer, to get the Magic Magnifying Mirror of the Mermaid Queen for the Green Lady. It had not been fun. I’d been imprisoned in a magic bubble full of air and towed through murky water by mermaids with spiked hair and pierced fins. Who’d almost drowned me. Twice. The Mermaid Queen was a sore loser.

Which wasn’t Airboy’s fault.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said, showing off my basic manners.

Airboy picked up a piece of raw fish, popped it into his mouth, and chewed. Stonewall rolled his eyes and led us back to the table.

As we sat down, Espresso punched my arm.

“Ow,” I said. “What was that for?”

It took me a minute to figure out that she was talking about Abercrombie and another to realize she was being complimentary. I felt my ears burn. “He’d have grazed
me
if you hadn’t backed me up.”

Espresso shrugged. “You’re the front man, I play bass. Everything’s copacetic.”

This must have been a good thing, because she was grinning.

 

Over the next few days, I learned how Miss Van Loon’s worked.

The gold stars, for instance. When you did anything really smart in class, you earned a gold star point. When you did something really stupid, you lost one. Once you’d earned enough points, you got an actual gold star to sew on your Inside Sweater and could stop going to that lesson.

When you’d earned enough gold stars, you could leave Miss Van Loon’s. Starting as late as I was, I’d probably be there until I was as old as the Diplomat.

There were one or two lessons every day, with a lunch break in the middle. Every day was different. Sometimes a whole day would be devoted to Talismans or History of New York Between, sometimes just a half. Sometimes Diplomacy for Ambassadors came two days in a row, but never on the same day as Basic Manners.

Every morning, we checked a board in the front hall for our schedules. The Schooljuffrouw announced any changes in assembly, after the school song and a reading from
Miss Van Loon’s Big Book of Rules
. She read five rules a day. Fortran, Number Man, calculated that it would take about a year to read through the whole book, with days off for full moons, Solstices and Equinoxes, Hallowe’en, and weekends.

Weekends fell whenever the Schooljuffrouw felt like announcing one.

My first weekend came nine days after school started. Because of Rule Three, it took some fancy talking to explain to Astris why I didn’t have to go to school for two days. When she finally got it, her whiskers perked up. “Good,” she said. “Then you can clean your room. It’s getting to look like a hooraw’s nest.”

I did that. I also had a game of lily polo with the nixies in the Reservoir, played hunt-the-acorn with some squirrels, and had a picnic with Mr. Rat and Stuart Little by the Turtle Pond. When the third morning dawned hot and bright, it was really hard to get myself to the Betweenways station.

 

My first lesson that day was Questing.

Everybody had to take Questing. You couldn’t get a gold star in it, no matter how good you were or how long you’d been at Miss Van Loon’s. You never knew, the theory was, when you might have to climb a building or a tree, wrestle a kappa, or outrun an ogre. You always had to keep in practice. The students were mixed, little kids and kids who’d earned almost enough gold stars to graduate, East Side, West Side, Up, Down, and Midtown, twenty of us at a time in different combinations, at least once a week. I never knew who I’d be racing or facing for wrestling or karate practice.

When I got to the Questing Room, I saw the far wall had been transformed into the fronts of two ordinary brownstone buildings with steep stoops and flat roofs. The space between them was spanned by an iron beam.

The Quester had us form a long line. I caught sight of someone tall and blonde and willowy and hoped it wasn’t Tiffany or Abercrombie or Bergdorf. They gave me the willies.

“Listen up,” the Quester said. “Today, we’re climbing brownstones. Count off by twos. Even numbers climb the West Side building; odd numbers climb the East Side. If you meet another student on the beam, cooperate to pass. Slide down the drainpipe on the other side, and you’re done.”

She gave us all a serious look. “You all get fairy dust. I don’t care if you live in the Empire State Building. No arguments. There’s being a hero, and there’s being stupid. If you fall, it’s a long way down. Of course, it’s better if you don’t fall. Got that? Good. Now count off.”

I was a two. I couldn’t tell what the blonde was.

Central Park isn’t exactly packed with brownstones. While I waited my turn, I watched the others scramble up the stoop, swing themselves to the nearest windowsill, and work their way upward, using window frames and decorative friezes, jamming toes and fingers into the spaces between brownstone blocks. Some of them looked like they were having fun, but only Airboy made it look easy. He might be skinny, but he was strong. I could see his muscles bunch as he pulled himself up the building, sure as a lizard, darting his head back and forth looking for handholds. When he got to the top, some kids cheered. I thought I saw him blush.

The line moved me closer to the building.

A little kid—Tosca, who hadn’t known what to say to old women at crossroads—climbed up the stoop and clung to the wall while the Quester sprinkled her with fairy dust, instructed her to think happy thoughts, and gave her a boost. Tosca clambered to the windowsill and stayed there, whimpering.

The next kid in line helped her climb to the top of the window. She looked down, freaked out, and wrapped herself around his neck, tumbling both of them off the building. The helpful kid drifted gently to the floor and detached her, howling like a thunderstorm. Obviously trying very hard not to break Rule 98 (Students must never laugh at another mortal’s tears), he patted her on the shoulder.

I heard a lot of suppressed sniggering from the East Side. To be fair, I heard it from the West Side, too. I couldn’t help smiling myself, even though I knew how much I’d hate it if it was me they were laughing at.

Mortal tears are funny. That’s all there is to it.

Soon, it was my turn.

“Your first time, right?” The Quester reached into her bag of fairy dust. “Remember: happy thoughts. And don’t look down.”

I’d climbed plenty of trees in Central Park, but that didn’t help me now. Trees aren’t flat and hard. They have broad branches where you can sit and rest. They usually slope, and they provide little intermediate steps in the shape of small branches set close together. Buildings have none of these things. By the time I hauled myself onto the roof, I was sweating and panting, my arms and legs were burning, and I couldn’t make a fist. But I hadn’t fallen, which was pretty good for my first time, I thought. All I had to do now was cross the beam to the next building and slide down the drainpipe, and I’d be done. Piece of cake.

I wiped sweat out of my eyes, shoved back my hair, and stepped onto the beam.

At the other end was Tiffany, the Debutante Terror.

She wasn’t sweating, not that I could see. Her grin said that in a minute I was going to be floating with my butt in the air, a stupid expression on my face, and everybody in the room laughing at me because there’s no rule against laughing when somebody takes a fall. It was a Wild Hunt grin, a troll grin. It made me mad.

Iron beams are a whole lot easier to walk on than log bridges. I felt pretty stable as I walked toward Tiffany, who was walking toward me. Neither one of us held our arms out for balance.

We met somewhere around the middle.

“Back up, Wild Child.”

“No way.”

Tiffany gave me her best menacing stare. It was like being hit with ice balls. “Don’t tell me you expect
me
to back up?”

I shrugged. “We could cooperate. Everybody else seems to have managed. I’m sure we could think of something.”

“You could jump.”

“So could you.”

The Quester shouted up at us. “Move it, you guys. Time’s a-wasting.”

“You heard the Quester,” Tiffany said.

“I heard.”

Faintly, I heard the Easts and Wests who’d made it up to the roof yelling at us to hurry. Tiffany grinned evilly.

“You’re holding everybody up,” she said. “That’s selfish, you know. Nobody likes a selfish mortal. Everybody’s going to hate you even more than they already do.”

“I don’t care,” I said, and took a step toward her.

I intended to take her hands and swing around as I’d seen the other kids do, but Tiffany must have thought I was going to push her off. She flailed her arms wildly and fell off the iron beam.

I was so surprised, I nearly followed her, but managed to wobble over to the other building, where I sat down and put my head between my knees. I heard a few muttered “good work”s and a “right on” or two, along with several variations on “you’re in big trouble now.”

From down below, I heard laughter, and somebody, probably Tiffany, pitching a fairy fit.

After I’d slid down the drainpipe, the Quester lectured me about fair play and cooperation and made me spend lunchtime scrubbing the West brownstone’s steps with salt. Tiffany had to wash the East brownstone’s windows. Every once in a while, I’d look over and see her glaring at me.

I hadn’t been at Miss Van Loon’s a full cycle of the moon, and already I had a mortal enemy.

 

 

S
ix days later, I wore my spidersilk dress to the Full Moon Gathering.

The dress was soft and silver-gray, with leaves woven into it. I’d found it in the Shakespeare Garden last summer, right before the Solstice Dance. I loved it. I thought it made me look like a wood elf, or maybe a hawthorn dryad—something bushy, anyway. Astris had hinted, more than once, that it was far too magic for a mortal, but I’d worn it on my quest, so she couldn’t tell me not to, even with her whiskers.

It’s always confused me, how the Folk can consider mortals important enough to steal, take care of, play with, and even use as heroes and champions, and still treat us like inferior beings. But that’s Folk for you. Not even Astris really understands that mortals have feelings, just like trolls and magical animals do.

The Autumn Equinox was only a week away. Even though the weather was still hot and humid, summer was definitely dying. The grass was brown, the dryads were getting sleepy, the days were growing shorter. During my before-Gathering swim in the Turtle Pond, I overheard the ducks arguing about the best routes south. The field mice were already moving their nests to the Castle cellar, and the resident ghosts were already grumbling about the noise.

At sunset, the trees clacked their branches to summon Folk to the Gathering. Astris and I crossed the courtyard and joined the crowd of moss women and flower fairies, were-bears and fox-wives from the Zoo, peris and corn-spirits and fauns all flying and lumbering and rolling and scampering toward Central Park Central.

A roiling fog at the edge of the field hung over the demons and water-horses and vodyanoi, the trolls and ogres and hags who ride the air with the Wild Hunt.

Astris and I joined Mr. Rat and Stuart Little at our usual Gathering spot beside a grove of pin oaks. It was close enough to the great lawn of Central Park Central to let us see what was going on, but sheltered enough to keep us from getting trampled if the Wild Hunt got out of hand. They’re not supposed to rampage at a Gathering, but you don’t want to get too close in case they forget.

As the sky darkened, the windows of the buildings around the Park began to light up like constellations of low-hanging stars. The trees gave a woody flourish, and the crowd of Folk parted to make way for the Lady’s Court.

At the head of the procession, dryads and nymphs trailing late summer draperies of dusty green and brown scattered dry leaves and twigs on the grass. The Lady’s scouts scampered after—squirrels and rats and a few big black crows flying above, cawing raucously. Next came the Lady’s Councilors, one from each of the different kinds of Park Folk: Nutter the Squirrel King, Chiron the centaur, Iolanthe the fairy, Pondscum the ondine, Snuggles the werewolf, the Huddlestone Bridge troll, and Herne of the Wild Hunt.