The Boy Who Lost Fairyland Read Free Page B

“If you don’t give a thing a proper fret it’ll never come out right. I know that from my own belly, which always makes a feeling like falling when it doesn’t know what to do. And then … well, my mother says everything in the world is a boxing match in your heart, between Boldness and Not-Boldness. You let them holler inside you and wallop each other with Arguments For and Against. Then you end by betting on one or the other and that’s how things get decided.” He thought about it for a moment. “If you’re my father you bet on Not-Boldness, Being Safe, with a bridge over your head and a good beefy riddle in your pocket. If you’re my mother, you bet on Boldness. Mummy says a choice is a bet you make with the world, and a gambler drinks better than a spendthrift. And all the while it’s happening you have a stomachache.”
    â€œAnd who do you take after?”
    Hawthorn thought back to his garnet nursery, his great toad, his father and his hat, his mother and her pot, the family bridge, with its good, creamy mortar and nice thick stones and new riddles every year. He thought of everything that had ever happened since he had been born, which was really not so many things, but to Hawthorn was the whole of the universe.
    â€œI don’t know!” he cried. “I mostly take after my Toad, I think.”
    The Red Wind grinned, her red lips curling under her red mask. She looked as though she had been given a present just specially for her, all wrapped up in red. “Oh, my darling stumpy mushroom-lad! Quite so! And a toad means adventure . A toad means starting out a nasty clammy little thing and turning into a prince. A toad means sticking your tongue out as far as it can go and gobbling up everything it touches. A toad means golden balls and wells and cursed princesses and archery contests and swelling music and flowers falling from towers and the enchanted bowers of fair maids! Choose, Hawthorn, the Toad’s True Son—a life in the tourist industry, sticking close to home, trip-trapping poor backpackers who never harmed you, or a life of strange lands, wild wandering, splendid machines, and deeds of daring?”
    Hawthorn hopped from foot to foot, quivering and sweating and furrowing his brow. He could feel his fret starting up in him like a sour green balloon, slowly filling and growing. He could see the gorgeous land the Red Wind spoke of on one side of his heart, opening up like a book of many colors, like his book of maps, wonderful, new—and on the other side he saw his beloved whale-skull bed and the opal porridge his father boiled up on Thursday mornings and the dear, familiar shops of Skaldtown all lit up for the holidays. The Equator glittered beneath his feet. Each stone seemed as deep as the sea, as a dark, dark door, a tunnel, through which the troll knew he would find another Hawthorn, a boy he could not even imagine right now, who had chosen adventure and towers and flowers and whatever bowers were, who had a gleam in his eye like a lad who had placed his bet and won.
    Hawthorn wanted to meet that boy awfully.
    The Red Wind gently pulled a strand of Hawthorn’s mossy hair free of his nightclothes. “A choice is like a jigsaw puzzle, darling troll. Your worries are the corner pieces, and your hopes are the edge pieces, and you, Hawthorn, dearest of boys, are the middle pieces, all funny-shaped and stubborn. But the picture, the picture was there all along, just waiting for you to get on with it. Now, grab hold of that bit of grass. That one there, under the guavas. Get your nails underneath, that’s a lad.”
    Hawthorn, his fret still squeaking and swelling, did as he was told. He squooshed his thick fingers into the Jungle earth. It was as soft and sweet as warm chocolate. He felt a hard lip and hauled on it—the edge of the blue grass, the edge of the map, came up in his hand. The Red Wind had snatched up a stretch of