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“Listen to all those Ms!” Mabry ently: “Oh, Mallow Met a Marvelous Man, by the name of Mabry Muscat…”
“Listen,” Mallow interrupted “I haven’t any interest in following you to a stash of gold in the hills or dancing at a Fairy ball or answering riddles or ible Fairy dukes who have a castle just on the other side of a curtain of ician—mostly—and I am on my way to the Foul like everyone else Don’t try to charirl”
“Those are ed the subject as though she had said nothing at all “Do you ad
“I do!” Mallow said, louder and happier than sheout
“Well,witchly friend, come and ride with eless Horse, Belinda Cabbage’s newest invention, which I a to the Foul at earliest convenience I proularly upon the way, not bother you with questions of personal history or futuretoo many puns But I cannot promise not to char nature”
Mabry Muscat removed himself from the lamppost with an easy, nimble hop, and as he did his velvet suit shifted to the cobblestone greys and whites of the platforreen of the trees, and finally to the black and red of the Carriageless Horse as he opened a door for her in the beast’s vast belly and gave, very briefly, a half-ss at his shoulders (though that certainly did not mean he had none) and wondered if this was the “at least one” Jack-in-the-Green of the Winesap census It was, however, never polite to inquire after a creature’s nature If he wanted you to know, he’d have made it apparent Anyway, Jack-in-the-Greens were tricky folk—they had a wallop of a talent for hiding and a passion for stealing
Mallo better than to get into a strange carriage with a strange ht not love thievery better than his own , and attendance was, after all, mandatory She felt that if she had to, she could thuet out, and walk the rest of the way if the whole business beca
The interior of the Horse gloith the light of a little red lantern; the walls shone cream and damask, the seats a plush scarlet It was all anyone could want of a carriage, save that they rode inside the body of another creature, which unsettled Mallow A slender horn curlicuing down from the roof allowed Mabry to tell the beast to be off He called it Peppercorn, and it harruruffly back that they would rest for dinner in two hours, and to please not bother it, as it had to concentrate
“Shall we play Bezique? Or Nightjack? I’ve cards, or chess if you prefer, but I’ve always found chess to be a bit too ame”
Mallow did not play cards, as that often led to losing things, since Fairies cheated as a us Crumblecap would have told her, had she opened the book to On Taking Tricks It’s just two sodsa mess with fifty-two pieces of paper But Mallow did not open her newest literary acquisition “How long have you lived in Winesap?” she countered instead
“Oh, off and on, off and on, for nearly just about forever,” answered Mabry in a dreamy tone “Since my love vanished, at least, and before that, too, I think, though it gets juirl, it doesn’t much matter where you live Everywhere is just The Place She Isn’t, and that’s the front and back of it”
Mallow looked out theinto the rolling golden valley, the winerows and the red sundown Not a Fairy living didn’t have a tale of love lost or found They traded them like money Mallow had always found love to be like a spindle or bobbin she could take up for a time—when her sorcerer friend visited, for example But she could always put it dohen she liked, and be quite all right until the ti affairs of Fairies exhausted her But all the rees up the subject of one’s love, the other party is obligated to ask after it and listen to whatever ballad ht follow To do otherould be just terrible manners
“Tellform
Mabry Muscat looked at her out of the corner of his eye “Oh, it’s a long and exciting story, sure to charm and make you swoon over me Let’s call custom satisfied and skip the tale, shall we?”
Mallow’s attention sharpened to a point “It ood story if you don’t want to tell it Everyone wants to tell theirs When I first set upthe tale of the boy she loved for seven years before so trollop named Janet stole him away In alliterative verse With a tambourine”