The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Thomas did, indeed, have a desk of his own. He was introduced to it by Mrs. Wilkinson, who had curly hair and wore a necklace of little jade stones. Thomas knew they were jade; he knew the names of all the gemstones just the way I know the names of all my cousins. He looked down at his wooden desk and chair, the slick, brown, skinny-legged creature in the field of red flowers. It had scuffs on the wood and gum underneath it and some time ago someone had carved HUMPHREY! into the bottom-left corner with little lightning bolts around it.

  “Hullo, Desk,” said Thomas softly. He was charmed to meet it. If something is all your own, you ought to treat it well, like a horse or a dog, and pet it and feed it and take it for walks. Or at least look after it better than Humphrey had. “How old are you, Desk? Have you seen many battles? What do you dream about at night when all the children have gone? Do you ever wish you were something other than a desk? What is your favorite thing to have written on you?”

  “Mrs. Wilkinson! Tommy R’s talking to his desk!” wailed one of the Others. Thomas was frightened of the Others. The Other Children his father was always wishing he could be. Normal Children. Nice Children. Other Children. This particular Other Child was a boy with yellow hair and glasses and a pen stain on his cheek. He was much bigger than Thomas. His voice wore a sneer like a cap with a feather in it. Thomas had seen him crying into his mother’s skirt outside the school. The Other Children giggled nervously, staring at him while Pen-Stain pointed urgently.

  “Mrs. Wilkinson! I heard him! He was talking to his desk! You ought to punish him!”

  A little thrill went through the Others as they imagined the exciting shapes and colors of his punishment. But Mrs. Wilkinson seemed to be occupied with a little girl who had gotten her hair caught in a stapler and paid little attention to either of them. Pen-Stain, robbed of his chance to make it clear he was better than at least one other boy on the very first day, reddened in frustration. Then his embarrassment turned into a smile—but the kind of smile that shows sharp teeth.

  “Fine,” he said gleefully. “I’ll punish you, then. After school. Just you wait, freak-o. I’m gonna thump you.”

  Mrs. Wilkinson suddenly noticed that her classroom had gone far too quiet for its own good and pealed forth with what was to become her battle cry:

  “Settle down, children, settle down!”

  Even though they were all quite settled, except for Pen-Stain.

  Thomas did not pay much attention to his lessons that day. It hardly mattered, as Mrs. Wilkinson only seemed interested in how to make an A and what color was magenta and how to add one and one together. Thomas knew all that. Only that morning, he’d been reading a book full of big, violent illustrations of the Great Battles of Britain with quite a lot of magenta in it. At that moment, the Battle of Hastings came into his mind (he liked it best because it had a bull in one corner of the illustration looking on with a bewildered expression on its brown face. Thomas deeply preferred the bull to William the Conqueror). He wondered if School was a Kingdom like Britain or France. If classes were miniature Hastings and Waterloos. You march out in your best clothes and get hollered at and thumped on all day by knights bigger and better equipped than yourself, who talk roughly and angrily in languages not very much like yours, and if you are not very good, you get walloped and wake up French. Thomas did not know. He had not seen enough of the land yet. But he knew he had to be very good. The only question was: What did good mean in this bizarre country? Only when Mrs. Wilkinson began talking about addition and this many cherries and that many glasses of milk did Thomas notice someone staring at him. A girl at her own desk, her hands folded just the same as his, her eyes large and dark and mildly interested, like a bull who has just witnessed the Battle of Hastings and found it reasonably entertaining.

  Beneath his desk, Thomas quietly wrote in Inspector Balloon, so that he would not forget what he had learned so far. The way the boy with the pen stain said After School made it sound like a savage, lawless country of its own. Who knew what Sense was Common in that mysterious place? After all, every Nation has its rules. Some are Neat and Prim and Well-Groomed through many years of constitutional congresses and revolutions and having their hair brushed one hundred times each night before bed. Others are Rude and Roaming and Reckless, having sprouted like raspberry thickets and taken root without watering, feeding, or filibustering. A Well-Groomed Law is written down, on very nice paper, preferably using a quill pen—for in the world of humans a pen with a feather attached has certain properties that undecorated ballpoints do not. Anything written with a quill becomes instantly splendid, official, and eternal. This is why clever senators, wedding officiants, and playwrights always keep one close by. A Rude and Roaming Rule is one that no one invented, or carved on stone plates, but that everyone knows, or learns on the double if they know what’s good for them.

  The Kingdoms of School and After School are full of untamed, unnamed, hungry-hearted rules waiting to pounce upon the unexpected. It was more important than ever to keep Inspector Balloon informed.

  The boy with the pen stain, along with what seemed like the whole of the rest of Underclassmen’s Wing, Classroom 4 and possibly some of Classroom 3, waited for Thomas beside the jungle gym, a twisted pile of metal girders towering like giants’ jaws over the gray stone of the play yard. The Other Boy already had his fists up and looked very much as though he knew what to do with them, so Thomas copied his stance. I’ll be all right, he thought. I have my Troll’s Mantle and my Carnivorous Mittens to protect me. He tried not to think of that morning, when Gwendolyn had tucked his hair behind his ear and said gently:

  “Darling, you do know that those aren’t really tiger paws, don’t you? Tell your mother you know that.”

  He knew what she wanted, but he couldn’t make his mouth do it. It was a just a bit of yarn, of course it was. He’d seen her knitting them over the summer. But Thomas couldn’t, he just couldn’t make himself not believe that they would not become claws and fur and sinew if only he wanted it hard enough, if only his need was great enough.

  “I’m warning you,” Thomas whispered to the jungle gym as he brandished his fuzzy orange fists. He wasn’t quite brave enough to say it to the crowd of children. “My paws have known the jungles of Sumatra.”

  “What the devil is a Sumatra?” Pen-Stain boggled.

  “It’s a place far across the sea where there are tigers and coffee and—”

  “Stop talking! I’m gonna hit you now! Hold still!”

  The part of Thomas that was human, and thus heir to territorial orangutans and Hastings and Sumatran coffee and assorted other belligerencies, wanted very much to not hold still, but rather, punch the boy in the nose before he could get punched himself. But the part of him that was a troll, and thus heir to the gentlest of woolly mammoths (for they are the extremely-great-grandmothers of all trolls; mammoths, and igneous rock) and the most patient of mountains, knew how to do one thing better than anything else: talk to a thing that does not want to listen.

  Thomas fixed the Other Boy with a solemn gaze. He lowered his fists a little—but not all the way. Thomas was not a fool. He made his eyes into deep, endless pools with soft stars in the mud of their bottoms. He didn’t know why he could do that lately. He thought he had probably learned it from the glassy, unblinking button eyes of his scrap-yarn wombat. But when he did it, it made people stutter, and he liked that. It was like a magic spell: Look into my eyes and I’ll take your talk. Thomas put on his best eyes and said in the very softest, kindest, most seductive of voices:

  “What’s your name?”

  “What? Nothing. Max.”

  “Why are you so mad at me, Max?”

  The boy blinked. He tried to look away from Thomas, but succeeded only in looking at his chin.

  “’C…’cause you were talking to your desk like a freak. My dad says freaks and hobos are scum.”

  Thomas opened his eyes wider. The rain clouds above the jungle gym rolled and reflected in them.

&nb
sp; “Max! Do you mean you don’t talk to your desk?”

  “N…no. Why would I? That’s stupid,” Max sneered.

  Thomas blinked slowly. His eyes shone. “Why is it stupid, Max?”

  Max’s voice began to shake. “’Cause…’cause they don’t talk back, dummy.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe yours doesn’t. Maybe you got a dud. Or maybe it can’t talk. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t lonely and sad because you haven’t even said hello to it. My cousin had the mumps when he was little and he can’t talk at all now. But he listens and laughs at jokes and he can make signs with his hands so we all know what he’s thinking. Just because you can’t use words doesn’t mean you can’t talk. There’s lots of kinds of talking. Talking is the best thing in the whole world, I think. Talking is Something Awfully Magic. You can make things happen just by saying the right words, in the right order, at the right volume. You can make your mother bring eggs instead of tomatoes for breakfast or take you to the pier to see the lights instead of staying home and going to bed early. You can make a toy appear in your arms and chocolate appear in your cup.”

  Max was breathing slow and heavy. The Other Children leaned in, their mouths open, listening fiercely.

  “Maybe, if I can think of the right words, I can even make you stop wanting to hit me. I’ll make you a deal, okay?”

  “Yes,” Max breathed.

  “If my desk hasn’t talked by the time we’re out of this school, you can hit me. Twice. And your fist will be bigger then. And if it does—”

  “You get to hit me?”

  “Sure, if that’s what makes you happy. I get to hit you. Sound fair?”

  It worked better than Thomas had thought it would. His parents were mostly immune to this sort of thing by now. Max nodded. He looked like he was going to cry. Thomas felt it best to exit while he was still mercifully unpunched. He turned to go, almost tiptoeing, as if he could give them all the slip and vanish like a spy in a comic book. But he couldn’t, not in real life. Max came to and flailed out with his foot. He knew he’d been shown up somehow, and no small primate can bear that for much longer than a minute. Max’s kick landed and Thomas went sprawling, the Secretive Satchel flying open, his baseball and his pencil and Inspector Balloon skittering out under the toothy mouth of the jungle gym. His mittens did not unravel into real paws. They landed in a freezing, half-dried mud puddle. One of his Golden Galoshes came loose as he landed on the pavement. One of the Other Children snatched it up. His stocking foot soaked through in a moment with filthy, sludgy water.

  Goodbye, shoe.

  “What’s that?” one of Max’s friends shrieked. “Is that your diary, Thomas?”

  The Other Children gasped all together at this juicy bit of fresh meat thrown before them. Thomas scrambled for Inspector Balloon, but Max was faster. He seized it and held it up like a hunter parading the head of a vanquished lion. Only then did a snag in his plan seem to dawn in his eyes.

  “Well, but I can’t read it, though.”

  Thomas breathed relief. Saved by Mrs. Wilkinson only having gotten to the letter L today. But it was not to be: A girl in the back of the throng trilled out:

  “Make him read it!” The voice was only a little thing, strangely flat and soft, but it carried over all their heads and into Max’s ear.

  Max, triumphant, shoved Inspector Balloon back into Thomas’s muddy hands. “Read it or I’ll thump you till your mummy won’t know you,” he barked. “Nice and loud, Bobby’s deaf in one ear.”

  Thomas wiped the rainwater off of his notebook. He shoved the Carnivorous Mittens in his pocket and sniffled. They would hate him forever if he read them his rules. They would stare at him like his father did and tell him to shut up shut up shut up. They would know he wasn’t Normal. That he had no Common Sense. That he couldn’t understand things the way they could understand them. He would be a leper in the Kingdom of School forever. For the first time, Thomas Rood longed for his house full of things that he wanted so desperately to be alive but stubbornly refused. Real alive things were terrifying. And they could pull out your stuffing if you disappointed them. But none of the Great Battles of Britain had much to say on the subject of just wanting to go home and have some milk and a sulk.

  Thomas tried to make his eyes deep, endless pools with soft stars in the mud of their bottoms. But he was crying too much and his nose was dripping and they just stayed a little boy’s red eyes. He tried to make his voice kind and hushed and seductive, but it cracked and shook like a skinny twig in the wind.

  “The Laws of the Kingdom of School,” he squeaked. “One: A Teacher is the same thing as an Empress only a Teacher wears skirts and uses a ruler instead of a scepter. Two: Be present at eight o’clock sharp or you will be marked Tardy and if you are Tardy enough you will be banished to the Land of Detention, where no food or joy can live. Three: If you write that you shall not do a thing five hundred times you cannot do it again for your whole life. Only Teachers possess this magic, as Mother and Father have never tried it. Four: A race of Giants live in the Kingdom of School. They are the Big Kids and they dwell in the Upperclassmen’s Wing. They must be treated as dragons and never bothered or they will destroy us, for they know great and terrible magic as well as how to drive cars. Five: When the clock strikes three in the afternoon, the power of the Teacher is broken with the pealing of a bell and all go free. Six: There is a curse called Homework a Teacher may cast if she longs for her power to continue after the great bell has rung…”

  Thomas stopped. Twenty children stared at him. Twenty children gawped at Thomas the Un-Normal in the wet, gray play yard. Finally, Max coughed.

  “You got any more?” he whispered.

  When Gwendolyn Rood collected her son from his first day at school, she was surprised to see him surrounded by boys and girls, all smiles and chatter and See you tomorrow, Tom! Bye, Tom! My mother says you can come round for cake if you want, Thomas! Thomas was surprised to see her waving in the distance. It had not occurred to him that his exile was not final and absolute, that he would be allowed visitors—that he would be allowed to go home and have toast with honey and play with his toys as though the castle on the hill did not exist at all. He folded this away with all the other facts he had learned about the fell land of Public School 348, drawing it into a kind of map he could hold in his head, a map that showed the classroom and the play yard and Mrs. Wilkinson and HUMPHREY! and Max and staplers and carpets with little red flowers on them.

  A warm hand settled on his shoulder. At first, Thomas thought it was a teacher, or perhaps, perhaps—the hand felt like something he could almost remember, but not quite, another hand, gloved in red, and how it moved on a pelt of black fur…But the hand did not belong to the Red Wind, nor to Mrs. Wilkinson. It belonged to a girl his own age. It belonged, in fact, to the girl who looked like a bull at the Battle of Hastings.

  Thomas turned and saw two curious, hickory-brown eyes dancing before him. The girl was staring at him with acute interest, standing awkwardly, like an improbable giraffe poised to flee through the long grass. She twisted the ends of her hair in her fingers, fine and thick and black. Her skin was darker than his, and in places here and there the fine lines of scars snaked over her limbs. Her skirt had a threadbare hem and she clutched her satchel like it could save her from drowning.

  “What happened to your shoe?” she said in a soft, bright voice. He’d heard that voice before, only then it had said: Make him read it. Thomas opened his mouth and closed it again. He lifted his sodden stocking foot.

  “I lost it,” he said.

  The girl smiled. It was a smile like a soapbox racer—tiny, uneven, crooked, a smile that looked brand new, as though she had just made it in her cellar and was trying it out for the first time.

  “You didn’t lose it,” she said, letting her soapbox smile run free, careening all the way across her face. “You left it.”

  She held up one of his Golden Galoshes, rinsed clean and shining.

  “My nam
e is Tamburlaine,” she offered.

  “That’s a funny name,” Thomas said, and immediately regretted it.

  “It’s not funny, it’s Marlowe,” she sighed. “My father is a librarian.” She seemed to think this was an explanation.

  And she left him to his boots and his mother and his sudden, bursting desire to know who Marlowe was.

  The Kingdom of School is guarded by a peculiar breed of demon-wights called Report Cards. As I have special privileges concerning all the belongings of Thomas Rood, particularly the secret ones, I shall snap my fingers and summon one of these cruel beasties to guide us out of the gates of the realm:

  REPORT CARD: THOMAS ROOD, GRADE 1

  Mathematics: Good

  Language Skills: Excellent

  Penmanship: Poor

  History: Fair

  Science: Excellent

  Deportment: Very Poor

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rood:

  I am writing to share my concerns regarding your son, Thomas.

  Thomas is a bright and intelligent child, although we might perhaps wish he were less bright and intelligent at the end of a long day with him. We all think your son is going places! However, I have reason to be worried by his classroom behavior. Thomas, as I’m sure you’re aware, is extremely talkative and inquisitive, which has become quite disruptive. Last week, when asked the sum of 3 + 1, young Mr. Rood responded with the following: When Carbuncle, the Emperor of the Deeper Trolls, was exiled from the Citadel of Gullion, she took with her three wishes granted her by the Elk-King of Mottleworst, and only one arrow for her bow of stone, making her treasures four and her soul bereft.