The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (16 page)

September saw on the table nearest her a great orange-chiffon pumpkin soup with candied almonds, orange sauce in a moat around a castle of carrots and sweet potatoes, and a chocolate cake so rich and dense and moist it shone black and wet the crimson doily beneath it, and the pale plate. It shamed her mother’s cake and September blushed. The frosting sparkled in rosettes and ribbons. And all around the plate was written in very nice handwriting indeed: Everything Must Be Paid For, Sooner Or Later. September ran her fingers over the letters. Was it the same hand as the Duke’s tea-tag? She could not tell.

To say they ate well is to gloss over the hunger and glee with which the whole of Tain devoured their favorites and new delectables, not minding the mess they made, pitching crusts and rinds at one another, toasting everything they could think of. “Here’s to the life of a Gnome!” from one table, “Cheers for my Goblin love!” from another, “Hurrah for the health of all shadows!” from still a third. “So long as they don’t crowd my bogs!” bellowed back a teetering Scotch-wight. And from every table, every cup, “Long Live the Hollow Queen, All Hallow’s Girl!”

Mischief, too, was on the menu. The watery shadow of a Naiad touched the red clay cup belonging to the bald, golden-scaled girl next to her with the tip of her rippling finger. Blue sparks fountained out, and the wine foamed over, each bubble tipped with a tiny sapphire. The scaly maid yelped, giggled, and then drank it down in one gulp, whereupon her face vanished and blossomed into an elephant’s huge, trunked head—though still covered in golden scales, and her eyes flashed garnet flames. She trumpeted, and marigold petals flew from her trunk, becoming tiny scarlet sparrows as they fell onto the shoulders of the crowd. The sparrows sang riotously and disappeared altogether with a loud crash of unseen cymbals. The Revelers burst into applause, and the Naiad’s shadow blushed a pearly gray.

“Oh, I want to try!” cried Saturday.

“I’ve turned her into a Wyvern already,” said A-Through-L’s shadow, not without pride.

“I should have known,” said the Marid, his eyes large and sad. “You have always had the better part of the fun without me, even before. You met her first; you let her ride you—I came along too late to play, and everything went dark and awful so fast!”

“Not I,” said the Wyverary gently. “Never I myself, Saturday. I would never cut the line in front of you. And you came right quick anyhow! Don’t forget the velocipedes!” He nudged the shadowy Marid with his great head. “Go on, now! It’s a Revel! Anything is allowed!”

“Wait!” cried September. “Stop talking about me like I’m a toy you’ve got to share! I have work to do, I don’t want to be—”

But it was too late. Saturday was grinning like he knew a secret, and he had grabbed up both her hands. He kissed them—once, twice, three times.
And there’s four kisses I’ve got in a day,
thought September, who was not at all sure what to make of kissing and at that moment would be granted no time to consider it. Quite without warning, she felt something open up inside her like a balloon suddenly swelling up shiny and bright. She found herself floating lightly above her chair, her wine-colored coat and Goblin’s dress gone. September wore instead a delicate gown of grasshopper wings and the smallest spiderwebs, hazelnut shells, and lacy mushrooms, oak leaves and crow feathers and cornsilk, beaded with fireflies and raindrops. Her feet hung bare above her plush seat, and she felt two long, satiny wings beat slowly at her back, as natural as lifting her arms.

September was a Fairy.

September laughed at the same moment that tears came to her eyes—everyone was staring at her, their jaws slack, their gaze uncertain, as though they, too, did not know whether to laugh or cry. How long since any of them down here had seen a Fairy? But tears did not come—instead, she wept black pearls that shivered into luna moths as they fell, their long wings brushing the heads of every Reveling shadow and leaving licorice blossoms in their hair. September’s laughter rippled and echoed, spooling out into a bolt of sunshine-colored silk that flapped its seams like wings and spun around twice before winking out in a little swirl of light.

“It was so nice of you to dress up for my party, September,” came a sweet, throaty voice behind her, and suddenly the crowd did know what to do. They burst into hollering and ululating, into a long, loud cheer, thumping the table and toasting all over again. September tilted her wings and brought herself around, trying as best she could to neither blush nor look foolish, though she feared she could not avoid the latter. She did her best. Flared her wings wide and shook free her midnight hair. The fireflies on her dress helpfully blazed. Bluebells twined through her bare toes.

Halloween, the Hollow Queen, stared up at her. September stared back. Neither moved first as the Revelers went wild around them.

The shadow
was
September. A shadow-September still wearing the shadow of her old orange dress and worse—the shadow of her beloved green smoking jacket. She wore the shadow of one sweet little mary jane. The Queen’s face was just the same as her own, though shaded with azure and lavender and perhaps a little more canny, a little more used to getting her way. When September had watched her shadow go into the water with the Glashtyn, it had been flat and dark and featureless, but now it had weight, shape, dimension. Halloween was a person. Her gaze sparkled with mischief and a secretive glee. On her familiar head rested a wispy crown of autumn mist, and within that misty ring rode a small autumn moon like a crown jewel.

September did not feel shy or cowed. She could not—that was
her
wearing that crown, her own self, left behind and gone quite fey, but her self all the same. It was not like looking at the Marquess in her finery. She felt quite able to speak, and even a little impatient with herself. Had she really been so frightened? This was her own face in a mirror! Herself from a year past, still with only one shoe. No, she was not afraid. But she was not confident either. If only Saturday hadn’t turned her into a Fairy! She felt ridiculous. The other Saturday would never have done it, not without her permission.

“Hullo, shadow,” said September, and she tried a tiny, hesitant smile.

“Hullo, girl,” said Halloween, and smiled identically.

There was nothing for it but to try. September extended her hand, covered with faintly glowing Fairy tattoos. “Come home with me. Don’t you want to go home?”

The Hollow Queen laughed. She laughed so long and high and loud that her laughter began to echo around the towers of Tain and come back to her doubled and tripled. The scaly-girl’s elephant head shrunk back down, and the shadows all got very quiet. As Halloween laughed, everyone’s glasses filled up again, even those drained dry.

“Why would I
ever
want to go home?” September’s shadow sneered in her own voice. “Haven’t you noticed that home is
terrible
and
boring
and
nothing
ever happens there? Come
on,
September! Tell me you didn’t spend all year just waiting to come back to Fairyland, pining away and reading up on centaurs and looking out your window for our Green friend?” Halloween spread her shadowy hands. “Tell me you spent your days just
basking
in the wonderfulness of Nebraska and appreciating its simple joys, having just as many lovely adventures as you would have had here, happy as a clam not to be in a place where magic is real and everyone knows your name! Look me in the eye and tell me it’s true, and I’ll come back with you right now. I’ll tag along like a good little doggy!”

September’s heart flooded with shame, and Saturday’s magic chose just then to shrivel up. Her wings wrinkled away. Her heavy wine-colored coat and the hidden dress beneath came rushing back around her with an indignant snap, the rough leather brushing her ankles. She landed on her chair and stepped down from it hurriedly. She and Halloween were, naturally, the same height precisely. The shadow of the green smoking jacket reached out a curious sash to the red coat and stroked its sleeve hopefully. The wine-colored coat allowed its own sash to flow out, just a little, to meet it, and the two girls watched their clothes greet each other.

“I can’t say that,” September admitted.

“Of course you can’t! Come home with you? Never in a hundred thousand evers! I don’t want to have to go to school and lie there on the floor while you learn long division! I don’t want to wash shadow-teacups while your fingers get all wrinkly from the dishwater! When I can be Queen and have parties whenever I like and eat pumpkin tarts every single day and dance on mushroom caps while the Glashtyn sing and drum the night down? No, thank you! If you thought about it for half a second, you’d agree with me. It’s no kind of life being your shadow! Or anyone’s shadow! My name is not September, it is Halloween! We are not your tails to wag! We are our own hounds, and we will not be bossed about any longer!”

The Reveling shadows roared approval.

“I might agree,” said September, “I might. Magic is powerful fun, and I did want to come back to Fairyland, more than anything. Except what will you leave me to come back to? Or anyone? Don’t you know they’re rationing magic in Fairyland-Above? It’s bleeding away, because you’re taking their shadows! Soon there will be nothing magic left up there. All the wildness and fabulous happenings and strangeness will be down here in the dark!”

Halloween smiled, and this time it was not September’s smile, but something altogether narrower and more sly. “So? I like the dark.”

“You can’t just take things without asking,” September said, feeling somehow that she was not winning this argument as handily as she had thought she would.

“Since when are you such a rules-minder? You ate Fairy food! You went into the Worsted Wood! You took a sceptre and a sword and all sorts of things without asking! It’s all right for a
real
girl, but not a shadow, is that it?” A hot, shrill pain lanced through the Queen’s voice, pain and fear and a heap of words that had been waiting so long to be said. September remembered suddenly that a whole handful of years had passed in Fairyland. Halloween was not new at ruling, and in fact, though she looked no different than September, she must be much older now, perhaps fifteen or even sixteen! Almost a grown-up. And she must have been stewing over this, chewing over her fear in the dark, the fear that she was not real. That she was only a reflection of September, a poor, ignored little sister. September felt suddenly sorry for her. But she remembered Taiga and Hreinn and the Sibyl and the magic rations in her pocket, and her anger came rushing back as bright as before.

“I took things I needed, not for fun, but to do what wanted doing! And I didn’t keep any of it. You can’t just hoard everything for yourself! You’ve got enough! Stop it! If Mother were here, she’d scold you silly.”

A terrible gray blush flared in Halloween’s cheeks. September had struck home. The shadow-girl drew close to her and screeched furiously, sounding more and more like a child.

“I can
so
hoard everything! Everything! I can have it all here, with me, and no one will ever leave me for some stupid war or hurt me, because we’ll all be together in my city, in my palace, in my Fairyland! I don’t care
one bit
for Fairyland-Above! Or Mother, either—did she even notice I was gone? I doubt it! What did Fairyland ever do for me? You threw me away as soon as you got there, you miserable little brat! I hate you, and I hate them, and I
will
have what I want. I
always
have what I want.”

Halloween calmed herself. She smoothed her shadow-skirt with her shadow-palms. When she spoke again the child’s tantrum had gone from her voice, replaced by something hard and old and strong.

“I am a good Queen, September. I am not the Marquess. You will not find a whole nation of folk happy to see me go. I am the shadows’ mistress, and I am loved. I am everything you aren’t brave enough to be. I am what you cannot even admit that you want to be—Queen of Fairyland, which is how all the best heroines end up. And this
is
Fairyland. I will make it the
only
Fairyland. Not Above, not Below. Let the rest hang—my country will outshine all.” She smiled again and reached out quickly, taking September’s hands.

September gasped—she felt the space between their skin shiver and crackle. The weight of her shadow’s fingers felt cool and soft.

“But we don’t have to bicker like a pair of quarrelsome sisters. You could stay; you could stay here with me, and with Ell and Saturday and whoever your Dodo friend is. You could be Queen with me. You could be Queen for the Undersiders, the others who aren’t shadows at all. It would be an elegant arrangement, one Queen for each. The Hollow Queen and the Princess of Wild Beasts—you’d have to be Princess to start, of course. I’ve been at this longer. But I would teach you, every day like composition class, and it would be ever so much more fun than long division. You could be Queen after you graduate. I wouldn’t be selfish and hoard all the Queening to myself. You’d be my sister. We’d share everything. Why bother growing up and having a job or a baby or a house or any of the things you’re supposed to have?
We’d
have a Coronation, the greatest Revel anyone ever saw! And if you wanted, if you missed her very much, you could bring our mother here. The Wimble could do it, I’m almost sure. If we found the right spot. At least it could get hold of her shadow. Mother would build us an airplane of cobwebs and moonlight. We’d fly together. Aces.”

Oh, how she made it sound! To never have to worry about what she’d be when she was grown, or composition class, to always be wrapped up in magic, to never have to leave or choose which part of herself to lose—to never have to lose anything, because everything was gathered together and happy and no one hurt. And perhaps, if Halloween had not mentioned the Wimble, September would have forgotten all about the Alleyman and been tempted just enough, just barely enough, to give in.

“But it is the
Woeful
Wimble, Halloween,” she said softly. “People are frightened of it, and if they are not frightened of you, they are of him, and he belongs to you.”