The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (14 page)

“How can you tell what time it is? There’s no sun!” September said, for she felt she needed a good dose of sunshine. The gloaming and moonlight made her feel heavy and sharp all at once. She missed her usual feeling.

“How do you tell time with the sun?” asked Aubergine innocently. “The crystal moon makes it easy—look up, it’s half past ten in the evening.”

They did look up and saw that a rosy dark shadow shone faintly on the surface of the moon:
X
. It flickered faintly, not quite bold and true yet.

Gleam tucked her arms and legs back inside her lantern and floated down to discuss something with her enormous friend, and the foursome settled in on the not-at-all-unpleasant skin of the Weeping Eel, which kindly made slightly moist lavender seats and cushions for them. The tea cart came trundling up, but September had had quite enough tea. She asked for a nice mustard sandwich after Ell assured her everything was quite safe when not purveyed by Goblins. She got, instead, a towering confection that might have thought about becoming a sandwich at one point, but had gotten greater ambitions along the way. Sweet ice-colored leaves layered upon dark, smoky spreads and oozing honey-cream, with black plums and blacker figs and very blackest inkfruit peeking out, crushed between slices of something that was decidedly not bread. It was fluffy and wholesome-seeming, but dove-gray, and tasted a little of pastry and a little of cider and a little of snow.

“Do you know,” said September as she ate her sandwich thoughtfully and carefully, sharing with Aubergine and Saturday by turns, “everyone seems to know what they are about but me! When I met the Sibyl, she said that she guarded doorways even when she was a little girl, younger than I! And Glasswort Groof went hunting her Market when she was a maid, and even Gleam has grown up and gotten a profession. I suppose I ought to be thinking about that sort of thing, but I’ve no idea what I shall do when I am grown! I don’t suppose there is much call for Knights or Bishops or Heroines in Omaha or even Chicago. And I’m sure other girls are much better at it than I. I don’t believe I have done anything forever and ever the way the Sibyl did.” September turned to the Night-Dodo, about whom she really was terrifically curious, but had not wanted to be rude. “Do you know what you’ll do now that you’re free of Groof? Not that she was so bad. She seemed rather nice. Because, you know,” she cleared her throat, slightly embarassed, “where I come from, Dodos are somewhat … extinct.”

This was a very impolite thing for September to say, and she oughtn’t have brought it up until they were better acquainted, but the Night-Dodo just nodded sadly, fluffed her feathers, and settled down on her haunches. September noticed that Aubergine was shaped a little like Ell, squat on two powerful legs, only excepting a different sort of tail and scales and a fiery breath.

“It’s very far from here, where I was born,” she said shyly. “In the city of the Dodos, which is called Walghvogel, far away over the Bitter Stout Lagoon where the dunkel-fish sing, further than the Squashflower Desert where the giant Alifanfaron dwells with his beautiful wife, further even than the Isles of the Lotus-Eaters or the Balalaika Wood on the shores of the Forgetful Sea.”

“Is Fairyland-Below so big?” asked September wonderingly.
And how deep does it go, if there is a Prince sleeping at the bottom of it?

“As big as Fairyland. It must be—they are twins, mirrors, each country with its mate up above and down below. But Walghvogel is hidden well, in the center of the Forgetful Sea, on a sweet island full of juicy grasses and gnarled, spindly tambalacoque trees that bear good berries and fat seeds. In the center of the island stands a small mountain of which we are very proud, with many caves for hiding in. When the wind goes howling through Walghvogel, the mountain sings. Sweet September, Dodos are extinct everywhere, or very nearly. Only on Walghvogel do we live and squawk and waddle as we will. Everywhere else, men hunted us most fierce, for our eggs.”

“Are they marvelous in some fashion?” said Ell’s shadow, eager to add to his knowledge of things that began with D.

“I will not say, Mr. Wyvern, for that very thing was so desired by all that they drove us into the sea to get at our nests, shot us from our beloved tambalacoque trees, cracked the shells of our young and fried them in skillets. No, I cannot tell the secret now. But it happened that Wuff, the Great Ancestor, for whom my mother was named, fled from a boisterous hunt and came upon a cleft in the mountains where he lived. Standing in the cleft was a most beautiful lady, so beautiful that even though Wuff knew to fear people, he did not run from her. She wore a silver soldier’s coat, and a silver pith helmet, and a silver sash, and silver snowshoes. She had long silver hair and silver skin and sat upon a great tiger, who, strangely enough, did not terrify bold Wuff either. And she said, ‘You seem a poor and beset little beast. How would you like to come away with me and be safe forever?’ Well, Wuff squawked his most secret and alarming squawk, which would call his flock even from the highest crags, and they came running. The lot of them squeezed through the cleft after the tiger’s tail just as the first shots of the hunting party spattered the side of the mountain. And that is how Dodos came to Fairyland.”

“It must have been the Silver Wind!” said September joyfully. Again, the passengers behind her burst into applause and cheering, as if they shared her glee. Again, the horse-headed boys merely stared. September remembered all the colored Winds from Westerly, not only Green but Blue and Black and Silver and Red and Gold. Silver had gotten into some sort of trouble, if she recalled it right. Oh! But hadn’t the lady in the rowboat had silver skin and silver hair? Perhaps she had come by Wind the second time, too, and not even known it!

“Really, they’re so excited to be Eeling along they’d cheer at anything,” groused Saturday.

“Oh, I wonder if the Green Wind has a shadow I might meet here in Fairyland-Below?” said September. “I do so miss him, and he has been nowhere to see me, which I think is a
bit
rude, but Wind manners are like that I suppose. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a billow of wind cast a shadow, so I oughtn’t get my hopes up. Still, how wonderful that we both came into Fairyland by Wind!”

Aubergine clucked mournfully. “Oh, but upsider-child, it was worse in Fairyland! For Fairies do love to gamble. They cozened Wuff and just about all the rest into becoming mounts for their Oathorn Races, which used to be held every full moon round a great track that ran the border of Fairyland. That is how fast Dodos could run, once upon a time. Racing Dodos was all the rage in Fairy society. Such saddles they made, dripping with fringe and lace and boughs of cherries, piled up so high with magic carpets and cushions and chairs enchanted for every kind of advantage that the Fairy Jockey and her Dodo never had to formally meet. They raced poor Wuff until, on the last lap of the Creamclot Derby, his heart just burst. His Jockey, a blackthorn Oread who flaunted her one-sixteenth Mabish blood to anyone who asked and most who didn’t, came tumbling down off her high seat and broke her neck. The Fairies howled for Dodo blood, for vengeance is also a great hobby of Fairies, even if they didn’t care much for the dead maid in question. In the stables that night, Wuff’s sister Scuff called all the flock together, and they made their desperate choice: They flew south for Asphodel and disappeared under the world forever, carrying their magnificent saddles with them, mercifully empty.

The saddles still rest in Walghvogel, a little orchard of Fairy furniture where we bring our chicks to tell them the tale. So that they know they must keep silent and secret in the center of the Forgetful Sea, the only safe place in all the worlds.”

“The Fairies don’t hold Races anymore,” began Ell quietly.

“Good,” finished Aubergine for him. She had no interest in the strange mystery of the Fairies’ disappearance—as far as she was concerned, they could disappear forever.

“But if it is so secret and safe, how did you end up traded to a Goblin?” asked Saturday. The gentle darkness flew by outside the light of the Eel’s Electricks. The great beast swayed lightly from side to side.

“Well, that’s the trouble with Goblin Markets and Bones’ Desires.” The frosty blush crept up Aubergine’s throat again. “They can find you anywhere. Scruff and her band, their legs still powerful but awfully sore and broken from use, had hardly roosted in Fairyland-Below before the Markets scented them and came running. Well, we didn’t want any dresses or spinning wheels or magic shoes or philtres or powders or even fruit—well, we did want fruit, really, but we had learned a little of Fairy food by then. The Markets howled and whined, but cleared off. Leaving only Glasswort Groof and her Bone’s Desire.”

September held her breath. “What did she offer you?”

Aubergine’s tears finally fell, spilling onto the lilac skin of the Weeping Eel and trickling off to join his own tears on the great salt track below.

“Walghvogel,” she whispered. “I have described it to you—but I have never been there. Glasswort had it in one of her booths—the only booth—when the others scattered and left her knowing she had the only thing we truly needed. It sat in miniature on her violet velvet pillow: the tambalacoque trees, the mountain full of caves, the sweet grass, the freshwater ponds. And all in the midst of the Forgetful Sea, so that anyone who did find it would forget it by the time she reached shore again. It was perfect. A place to rest. But how,” the Night-Dodo’s gaze turned back where they had come, toward the Goblin and the stalls that had long vanished in the Eel’s rushing progress. “How could we pay for it? Those were heady days, the days of the Bustard’s Market (the Bull and the Bear are nothing to the mad prosperity of a Bustard), and Groof didn’t want kisses, she didn’t want time, and, oh, we had tears to enrich the lowliest sprite, but, no. She wanted a Firstborn. A Firstborn female, of course. No one in Fairyland yet knew the secret of the egg, but the Goblins knew others wanted it, so it must be valuable. Groof would have it first of all Goblins, and there was no dissuading her. You cannot blame anyone for what happened next. For Walghvogel, anything would have been a bargain.

“All the Dodonas brought their firstborn squabs for Groof to choose from. My mother tried to hide me, to give me a great long tail so I would look like a Dodono, but Groof is a canny buyer, and she was not fooled. She looked at me and only me. We both stood very still.”

September and Saturday and Ell sat very still, too, holding their breath, even though they knew how the story must end. The passengers behind them craned forward to hear.

“Well, the trouble is, you’re right, September. Sometimes you know what you are when you are very young. Not always—don’t worry yourself, kind sunny-girl! But sometimes. And I was even then a prodigy of Quiet Physicks. I stood very still, and this was a mistake, for when I stand very still—not only very still but the stillest it is possible to stand—strange things occur. Sometimes I vanish. Sometimes I become a statue of black marble. Sometimes I glow with a terrible light that freezes all it touches, so that those things become as still as I. A true Master may control it and do so much more. In my time with my Goblin mistress, I have become a Journeyman only, though no Quiet Quorum would acclaim me. I vanished, and Glasswort crowed delight.

“Groof raised me as her own. She stayed up all night and drank pennywine and stole stamps from any poor postman she came across—but she wasn’t cruel. She named me for her favorite vegetable, along with Parsnip the Ouphe-lad and Endive the Greencap-girl, who she’d got in other bargains. She taught me to count currency and follow the speculations and futures Markets and her own Loud Magic—which I was always hopeless at. You cannot go against your nature. This was, naturally, before the Market crashed and we Firstborns lost all our value.

“In the end, Groof chose me, my flock got Walghvogel and a fleet, sleek Goblin Schooner to take them there without suffering the effects of the Forgetful Sea. I turned to my mother who was also named Wuff. I said good-bye. Quietly.”

CHAPTER IX

T
HE
W
OEFUL
W
IMBLE

In Which a Friend Bids Farewell, the Capital City Is Explored, an Enemy Is Sighted, and September Has a Lesson in Both Underworld Geography and Quiet Physicks

Folk flowed off of the Eel as if in a single body. Bells and guitars struck up; a chorus or three rose then died as the revelers’ hearts lifted and they descended upon the city in a colorful, delighted cloud. Nearly everyone pulled a mask down over their features as soon as their feet hit the road. When the gates of Tain opened, a wave of music boomed out, so sweet and dark and strange it caught September’s breath and tied it in a bow.

“Come with us, Gleam,” she said finally, looking back up at the lavender wall of Bertram the Weeping Eel and the crackling light of his electric globes. The orange lantern hanging near his great sad eyes looped her golden writing once more.

I cannot.