Work Text:
It was lovely fun when Polychrome visited in the Emerald City, but after a while Button-Bright felt bad that she had to keep leaving her home and coming down to the ground to see him. He knew she was busy in the sky, and she had lots of family. So he suggested they find a way for him to visit her.
Polychrome agreed this was an excellent idea, and danced off to ask her sisters and her aunts the best way to bring a human into the sky and keep him safe once he arrived.
The first time she took Button-Bright to visit the kingdom of the sky fairies, all went well. Polychrome had to keep hold of his hand every second so her magic made him light enough to walk on raindrops and sunbeams -- at least until her aunt Iris wove him a charmed bracelet from starlight and a summer breeze that kept him safely aloft. But that was all right.
Polychrome's hand fit nicely into his own and having her close made it easy for her to tug him this way and that as she showed him all the delights of her father's castle. It also stopped her sisters from whirling him away, which they were prone to do to any guests, Polychrome said. The sky was lovely, but also vast and often empty, and visitors were rare and treasured things.
That visit lasted a day, a night, and another day, after which Button-Bright's picnic meals ran out and Polychrome sadly carried him home to the Emerald City.
They were both determined that the second visit would be even better. Button-Bright asked Princess Ozma and the Wizard to help him pack and shrink a whole week's worth of food, Polychrome asked her aunt for help weaving a blanket of moonbeams to keep Button-Bright warm in the chill of the upper air, and they picked a week that should start and end with sun, but have some rain in the middle so Polychrome could show off the sky kingdom in all its moods and weathers.
It was a very good plan.
Unfortunately, both Button-Bright and Polychrome had a problem with plans going awry, and since they had both worked hard on this one, perhaps it was unsurprising that so many things went wrong.
To tell them all would take hours upon hours, but to sum up, after a flock of geese harassed them off course, a Hurricane blocked their way home and a Tornado caught them in its funnel, and a terrifying moment when Button-Bright's hand nearly slipped from Polychrome's as the storms flung them about through the dark, roaring sky, they landed on the drenched cobblestones of a side street in Philadelphia, with nothing but their clothes and the soaked remains of Button-Bright's picnic basket.
Button-Bright took a deep breath and squeezed Polychrome's fingers. "That was unpleasant. I'm glad we're safe."
Polychrome nodded, but a worry line creased her lovely forehead as she peered around the brick houses and shops, all closed and shuttered on account of the storm. "I'm glad we're together! But I think we may have been thrown out of Fairyland altogether -- this certainly doesn't look like any fairy kingdom I know. It may take a long while for my family to find us, and then for my father to gather enough magic to touch down in a mundane country and fetch us home."
"Oh, that's all right," Button-Bright assured her. "This is Philadelphia and we're only just round the corner from my parents' house. I'm sure they'll be happy to see us, so we'll have somewhere warm to stay while we wait for the rainbow."
"Wonderful!" said Polychrome, drifting an inch or two off the ground as her spirits lifted. "You've met all my family, but I hadn't even thought to ask about meeting yours. Why, without those geese and those storms, I might never have met them at all."
"Chance is a funny thing, I s'pose," Button-Bright agreed, and offered his arm the way his father did when escorting his mother down to supper or out for a walk. Polychrome laughed and tucked her hand around his elbow, and they strolled around the corner together feeling quite fancy and grown-up.
The house was just as Button-Bright remembered, though the holly bushes under the alcove window had grown a foot taller and the shutters were painted gray instead of white. When he rang the doorbell, it made the same two-toned chime that echoed from the bells in the hallway, back into the drawing room and forward to the stairs.
The housemaid who answered the door was new, and she blinked in polite confusion at seeing Button-Bright and Polychrome on the doorstep, him in soaked jacket and knickerbockers and Polychrome in her robes that looked like a thousand strips of gauze, each a different, delicate shade of her father's glory. "Hello there," said the housemaid. "I'm afraid there aren't any children in this house, so if you were coming to visit friends you've picked the wrong door. If you're looking for charity, I can probably round up a nickel or two and maybe a slice or two of buttered bread."
"The reason there aren't any children is because I left to see the world," said Button-Bright. "I'm not 'zactly sure how many years ago that was, because I've been in Fairyland, where time don't work quite the same as here, but my name is Saladin Paracelsus de Lambertine Evagne von Smith and I'd like to introduce my friend Polychrome to my parents."
The housemaid frowned like thunder. "Now see here, this is a good house and we won't stand for anyone coming round and pretending to be poor lost Master Saladin. It's not funny and it's cruel to give Mr. and Mrs. von Smith false hope. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
Button-Bright blinked. It had never occurred to him that anyone might pretend to be him, or that his parents would still be sad he was gone -- he'd left them a letter when he started his journey with the magic umbrella, and sent them another a few months after he decided to stay in Oz. They must know he was all right.
"Why should I be ashamed of being myself?" he said. "This is my house. That's my room, right there with the little diamond-shaped panes in the window." He pointed upward toward the third story. "When I was six, I painted each of them a different color and Father made me clean them all myself even though he laughed and said I'd 'herited his mother's artistic spirit."
"I wish I could have seen that -- it sounds lovely," Polychrome remarked.
"I was too little to think of a rainbow so it was mostly a big mess. I could do a much better job now," Button-Bright told her. He turned back to the housemaid, who now looked twice as confused and only half as angry. "Anyway, I don't recognize you and you don't recognize me, so obviously you weren't here to remember all that. Does Mrs. Erde still work here? She'll recognize me for certain. And then Polly and I could get lunch, since we lost ours in the storm. Mrs. Erde makes the best roast beef sandwiches," he added to Polly. "It's because she makes her own mustard, and it's better than even the fancy French mustard Mother's aunt and uncle send to us each Christmas."
By now the housemaid was completely confused, and resorted to throwing the problem into someone else's lap. "Follow me to the kitchen," she said, "and Mrs. Erde will sort out if you have any business being here."
"Can we have the buttered bread you promised?" asked Button-Bright.
"That's too heavy for me," Polychrome reminded him. "But a thimble of sugared water would be nice, perhaps with a drop of lemon for flavor. Can your Mrs. Erde make that?"
"Mrs. Erde can cook anything," Button-Bright said with bone-deep trust. "I think she's secretly a little bit magic -- she can even make vegetables taste good."
And then they were in the kitchen, where Mrs. Erde dropped her rolling pin on top of a half-made pie and dashed forward to swoop Button-Bright into her floury arms. "Master Saladin!" she cried. "My little Button-Bright! It's been years and years and you not a day older than when you left -- where have you been this time? And what became of your great-great-grandfather's umbrella?"
"I've been in the Land of Oz," said Button-Bright, submitting to the hug with calm acceptance. "I went some other places first and I lost the Magic Umbrella in the Land of Mo, so I couldn't come home. I did send a letter."
"One letter is much better than nothing, but your poor mother and father have worried every day since what might have happened to you after you last wrote. It's one thing to move to Fairyland, Button-Bright. It's another entirely not to let your family know that you're safe and well."
"Nobody dies in the Land of Oz, but I'll write when I remember," Button-Bright promised.
"And then it will be another five years between letters. No, you'll write every month and get somebody more responsible to remind you," said Mrs. Erde. She pulled a dishcloth from her apron pocket and began dusting her floury handprints off Button-Bright's jacket. Each whisk of the cloth cleared away damp and dirt as well, far more than such light strokes should. "Mabel, go fetch Mr. and Mrs. von Smith and let them know Master Saladin's come home and brought a guest."
The housemaid, still looking completely confused, nodded and fled the kitchen.
"Speaking of guests, why don't you introduce me to this young lady?" Mrs. Erde raised her bushy eyebrows and shot Button-Bright a meaningful look of the sort he'd never quite learned to read.
"Oh, this is Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter," he said, reaching out to clasp her hand once more. "Polly, this is Mrs. Erde, the best cook in Philadelphia."
"Pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Erde, and bobbed a curtsey. "You're a sky fairy, unless I miss my guess."
"I am, and I'm pleased to meet you as well," said Polychrome. "I've never met a witch who lives outside a fairy kingdom, but there's quite a lot of magic in this house, and what isn't in the attic is all down here in the kitchen."
"I knew you were a little bit magic," Button-Bright said in satisfaction.
Mrs. Erde smiled and held a finger across her lips. "So I am, but don't spread that about. Magic is a shy and secret thing these days, and it's best not to give anyone ideas."
Button-Bright had never quite learned why ideas were dangerous, but he knew from experience that grown-ups were all convinced this was true and it wasn't any use to argue the point. So he smiled back and held his own finger across his mouth to show he wouldn't tell. Beside him, Polychrome did likewise.
"Is it safe to let Button-Bright's parents know I'm a fairy?" she asked as she lowered her hand. "I don't think we can keep that secret for very long, and especially not when my family find us and my father stretches down to earth so Button-Bright and I can return to Fairyland."
"It's fine for guests to be magic," Mrs. Erde assured Polychrome. "Everyone knows foreign lands are different. It's only trouble if magic gets mixed up in the everyday. A visit from a fairy princess is something to brag about. A cook who knows a handful of spells makes people worry, and I'm too old to move to Fairyland."
That made no sense to Button-Bright, but he supposed Mrs. Erde knew things he didn't -- grown-ups generally did, even if they didn't always pay attention to what was right in front of them -- and was certainly better at guessing how other grown-ups might react. So he let her seat him and Polychrome at the battered table in the corner where she and the housemaid and the gardener and the driver took their meals, and serve him a thick sliced of buttered bread and Polychrome a tiny crystal glass of sugared water with lemon.
When Mother and Father dashed into the room, a bit more worn and worried than he remembered, he hugged them both in turn and promised he'd write more often.
When Polychrome's father found them two weeks later, he still didn't understand why Mrs. Erde thought she was too old to move to Fairyland -- Dorothy's aunt and uncle were plenty old, and Cap'n Bill was even older than that -- but he thought she might enjoy a visit to the Emerald City. His parents would probably like him to visit Philadelphia even more than they'd like him to write letters, and if he came back once a year he wouldn't have to prove he was himself to new people each time.
"Polly, do you s'pose we can stop in the Land of Mo before we go back to Oz?" he asked as they held hands and ran along the broad, arching curve of the rainbow toward the castles in the sky. "I think I ought to try finding my old Umbrella."
"That sounds like an excellent plan," said Polychrome.
But what came of that adventure is a tale for another day.