The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(20)

“Most welcome, Maid September!” cried the Vicereine, and September recognized her musical voice as the one that had asked for the password at the door. She kissed September’s cheeks; a lingering scent of spice remained as she pulled away. Her children looked eagerly at September with bright, interested gazes. “These are my darlings—Darjeeling, Kona, Matcha, Peaberry, and of course, the pride of my pot, the Littlest Earl.”

Darjeeling, the oldest girl, wore a flapper dress of thin, glittery silver chains, dozens of them, each ending in ball-strainers full of tea leaves. The Littlest Earl, youngest and smallest of them all, stopped scampering and smacked the ball-strainers of his sister’s dress to watch them whack against each other like abacus beads. His hair was all a tangle of thin black leaves pinned into curls like his father’s, with thin bright orange rinds and wrinkled mauve flower petals. He pointed at September with one fierce finger.

“It’s the Queen! The Queen’s come to see me! Has she come to give me presents?”

The Duke and Vicereine blushed with embarrassment and hushed their son.

“But she is the Queen!” insisted the Littlest Earl. “Look at the mole on her cheek! And the pretty blue stripes in her hair!”

“What have we said about shadows?” admonished the Duke sternly. “You mustn’t embarrass her that way.”

The Littlest Earl squinted at his father. He did not seem convinced.

“So she’s the Queen’s shadow, then,” the child said with finality.

“The other way ’round,” said September with a gentle smile, but this idea seemed to frighten the Earl terribly, and he hid behind his mother’s skirt.

The Duke of Teatime spread his hands. “It’s a difficult thing to explain to children, you understand! The shadows have been coming down so thick and fast we can hardly keep up with the ethics of it all. But now that the boy brings it up, what does that make your rank, my dear? Certainly you are not a Queen, but I’m hard-pressed to say you’re not nobility of some sort.…”

“Oh, no, Sir, I’m not in the least noble! I’m not a … a maid, either. I’m just September, that’s all.”

But the Duke was already deep in thought, tapping his temple with a ringed forefinger. He mused while leading the troupe of them further into the massive, crowded central hall of the Samovar. “Rank is defined by one’s relationship to the Queen, so naturally you’ve got to be called something. Or else how should we know how to treat you? We might commit some grave breach of etiquette! Just September won’t do at all. We could call you the Princess of Nebraska. That might sum up the speed of things nicely.”

The Duke shooed a pack of sleek black dog-shadows off a cerulean couch so that Ell could sink onto his haunches and lap at a barrel of fine, hot tea. September perched on a golden chaise and accepted a black porcelain cup from the Lady Grey. But the cup was empty. The child called Matcha, whose long green hair floated around her head as though it was underwater, waited with several lacquered teapots balanced in her hands.

“Our family supplies all of Fairyland with tea and coffee,” said the Vicereine with clear pride. “Morning and Teatime are our Duchies. Without us, no tea plant would bloom, no coffee cherry would grow, no pot would whistle, no leaf would steep. Our families were once savage enemies. How vicious and cruel were the Wars of Cream and Sugar! Hardly a soul lived who did not take a side. I met my husband on the battlefield, in my Roasted Armor, my Clove Mace held high over his head—but I saw the gentle face beneath that Oolong Helm, and I was lost. I offered him my hand instead of my blows, and the houses joined. Heralds trumpeted the Afternoon Treaty! Our marriage was celebrated with full cups all round!”

The Duke wiped away tears of memory. “Please, precious bean, we must determine her title before we proceed further, or I shall become terribly uncomfortable. This is a Royalist House, after all. And we cannot serve her until it’s settled! Imagine if I were to pour you the blend we call the Redcap’s Ruby Whip, and you were not a Princess at all but a Viscountess! It would taste foul to you, and you would have bad dreams.”

“Husband, she may prefer something stronger,” the Vicereine interrupted haughtily. “But, of course, if you were really and truthfully a Baroness, and I brewed the Grootslang’s Plunder for you, with its bite of cardamom and cayenne? Why, it’d taste like licking a penny, and you’d develop a nasty case of wanderlust.”

September had only had coffee once, when her Aunt Margaret had snuck her a sip while her mother wasn’t looking. It tasted bitter, but wild and strange. She rather wanted to taste it again. “Why do I have to be anything? It’s only a cup of tea. And I’m not the Princess of Nebraska, I’ll tell you that for certain.”

A-through-L laughed. It was almost the same laugh September remembered. A little darker, a little heavier. The shadow of a laugh. The Vicereine of Coffee sat daintily on the arm of the golden chaise.

“Did anyone ever read your tea leaves, back home where you live?” she asked. A green berry came loose from her hair and rolled lazily down to the shining floor where Kona picked it up and flicked it at one of his sisters.

“No,” September admitted. “Though my mother used to pretend she could do it. She put a scarf around her hair and peered at the cup and said I was destined to fly to the moon or be the captain of a beautiful golden sailing ship.” September blinked and laughed a little. “I suppose I was the captain of a sailing ship, if you look at it sideways!”