The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [79]
I nodded.
“Now I think you’d better get out of here. You, too, Airboy. I’ll talk to the Queen later about making you an official Junior Attaché to the Embassy. Let’s hope you get longer than I did to learn about being an official Voice.”
We went. Somehow, the swim back to Battery Park seemed much easier than the swim out.
Epilogue
Three days after Hallowe’en, I was sitting in Advanced Diplomacy, listening to the Diplomat’s latest made-up problem.
“A leprechaun has entered into a contract to provide two pairs of dancing slippers for each of the twelve daughters of a Chief Executive Officer. When he delivers the two dozen pairs of shoes, the CEO’s assistant informs him of two things: his contract obliges him to repair the shoes; the CEO’s daughters dance through the soles of their shoes every night.
“To whom should the leprechaun complain?”
In real life, I figured the leprechaun would probably keep his mouth shut and repair the slippers until there was no more upper to attach the soles to, while planning how to trick the CEO out of every gold piece in his coffers. But I was pretty sure that wasn’t the answer the Diplomat was looking for.
I raised my hand. “He’s got a couple of choices. He could wait until a Full Moon Gathering and take his complaint to the Genius of whatever Neighborhood he lives in—although if it’s the Wholesaler of the Garment District, probably all he’ll get is a review of his shoe designs.”
The corners of the Diplomat’s mouth twitched slightly. “And his second choice?”
“He can track down the Voice of the Wholesaler and get him or her to work things out with the Voice of whatever neighborhood the CEO lives in.”
The Diplomat nodded. “What do the rest of you think?”
They thought a lot of things. I didn’t listen.
It was weird being back in school, sitting in lessons and answering questions like everything was just as it had been. My quest for the Mermaid’s mirror felt like it had happened a hundred years ago, to somebody else. I had changed. Everything had changed.
For instance, Airboy was sitting next to me.
We’d been seeing a lot of each other over the past three days. Apparently, being Junior Attaché to the Embassy of the Mermaid Queen meant that Airboy was responsible for setting everything up for the alliance. I’d helped things along by talking Astris into inviting him to tea with the Pooka and Councilor Snuggles. It was a little awkward at first, but by the time the Autumn cookies were gone, Snuggles had promised to arrange an “accidental” encounter with the Lady by Bethesda Fountain.
The meeting itself had been kind of fraught. There wasn’t going to be a moon, so it had to happen in the afternoon, when the Lady is never at her best. As soon as she saw Oxygen and Airboy, she totally snaked out, scales and twirling eyeballs and everything. Airboy told me later he thought it was pretty impressive, but not as bad as the Mermaid Queen’s rages. “She isn’t really going to bite anybody. She just wants you to think she might.”
Which was pretty much what I thought, too.
Once she’d recovered from her fairy fit, the Lady listened quietly to our proposal.
“The Wild Places Alliance,” she said thoughtfully. “Okay, I’m in. As long as Old Fish-Face keeps her scales clean.”
There was a ceremony, of course. Oxygen presented the Lady with a huge pearl that would turn red when the Harbor was threatened. After some thought, the Lady produced an acorn enclosed in a hollow stone that would split when the Park was in danger. Then she disappeared, and Councilor Snuggles went off to present Oxygen to the rest of the Lady’s council, leaving Airboy, the Pooka, and me alone by the fountain.
“That’s that, then,” the Pooka said. “You look dead beat, the pair of you. Home to bed, my heart, and may a blessing of sleep be upon you for four-and-twenty hours. And where are you off to, boyo?”
Airboy was climbing the steps that led to the street. “Home,” he threw over