The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (22 page)

“I chose, you know,” September said, embarrassed by the silence and the deference the Glashtyn Knights showed her. “I chose to do it. I could have let you take the Pooka girl and kept my mouth shut—though perhaps I couldn’t have. I’m not very good at keeping my mouth shut! But, anyway, you mustn’t feel so bad about it. I made the choice.”

“But we made you choose,” the Oat Knight said wretchedly. “And we meant it selfishly. A Knight should not be so selfish. But we hated the ferry so. We hated the hauling and the endless work of it! We wanted to end it. We would have done anything to end it.”

“But it is ended!” Ell said. “You can be happy now!”

September had not thought a horse could blush, but the Oat Knight did, his whole face heavy and hot with shame. How could she have feared this boy so? He was hardly older than herself!

“We are free of the Marquess now. We no longer pull the ferry—we no longer have to. You must not think we are ungrateful. We know what it cost. September, look there and see the emblems of our gratitude.”

September looked. It took a long time to see it, like a half-finished puzzle whose picture you cannot guess until it snaps into focus all at once. The pleasant hills that guarded the Glashtyn village were not hills at all, but vast, heavy chains, grown over with grass and moss and kelp, with little hardy trees growing up out of their green links.

Pale scars shone on the Oat Knight’s slender chest where once he had borne those very chains. The Knight touched them lightly.

“Someday, perhaps, I may sow my poems as I wished to, because of you.”

“Then what’s wrong?” September asked. “Why do you seem so glum, when you have your own lovely town by the sea?”

“I mislike telling a lady that we practiced deceit,” the Glashtyn said. She rather liked his formal way of talking. It was how a Knight ought to talk. “In all things we prefer to play fair. Even Fairies obey the letter of their pretty laws.”

“I forgive you,” September said kindly, even though she had no idea what he meant. But forgiving seemed to be the sort of thing a Fairy Bishop ought to do when faced with a humble Knight.

“We meant to take her down and use her most selfishly,” confessed the Oat Knight. “Your shadow, I mean. Our Hollow Queen. You cannot blame us. We needed her, you see. Because one of the rules of Fairyland-Below is
Do Not Steal Queens. A Girl in the Wild Is Worth Two in Chains
. And you gave her to us. Not completely freely, but
mostly
freely, and one has to work with what one has these days. We said we meant to put her at the head of our parades—and we did. I am sure you have seen it. It is the thing to see in Fairyland-Below, the gorgeous Revels she invents night by night. But we also meant for her to go deep, as deep into Fairyland-Below as anyone has ever gone, and find something. Something valuable to us. Something we have longed for. For at the bottom of Fairyland-Below the Prince of the Underneath sleeps. Prince Myrrh, Who Never Wakes. Princes do that, sometimes, you know. Fall asleep for years at a time.”

“I do know, actually,” September said.

The Oat Knight did not seem particularly surprised. “Everyone knows that, I suppose. I did not mean to be prideful in assuming you did not, my lady. We meant for Halloween to do what must be done. To find the Sleeping Prince and wake him up for us. But she didn’t want to do it. She said, ‘I don’t want to marry any silly Prince who can’t even set his own alarm clock. I shall be Queen for my own sake, and if he doesn’t like it, he can have a couple of cups of coffee and come see me about it.’”

“Good for her,” said Saturday, and September privately agreed. She did not like the notion that her shadow was just a tool for the benefit of a boy neither of them had ever heard of. But then, she meant to use that very boy as a tool for her own use, didn’t she? She looked down at her drinking chocolate, and further, to the waves churning beneath the pier.

“Yes, well, we didn’t begrudge her,” the Oat Night continued. “Shadows own a wildness we do not. And you defeated the Marquess, anyway, for which we owe gratitude.” The Glashtyn saluted her, putting his hand over his heart. “So we didn’t strictly need the Prince so much, to go up and free us from her. We might have liked to be the ones to do it ourselves, of course. We don’t like to have to say a girl from Away saved us. But that’s no matter, in the end. Everything worked itself out, and for a long while Halloween made things such fun that we didn’t really mind. We asked if we could just
call
her the Sleeping Prince, to satisfy prophecy and make it all neat and tidy. She said we could, if we didn’t mind being thumped. But … oh, we were not as strong as our Queen! We got so
tired,
dancing and feasting every night. We needed a rest. So we came here and built our village. We meant to stay for a summer and return to Tain in the fall.”

“But you couldn’t,” said Aubergine. September jumped a little. The Night-Dodo could be so quiet, September was always startled when she spoke. “No matter how you tried to remember how much you liked it in Tain, or that you really did mean to go back, it just slipped away from you. There was such a lot of good grasses and birds to eat, and the moonset made you so sleepy and happy.”

“Yes,” sighed the Oat Knight. “You understand.”

Aubergine clucked lightly. “This is the Forgetful Sea. Over and away in the middle of it is Walghvogel, my home. The sea breeze and the spray makes the mind sleepy, though it’s nothing compared to a dunk in the stuff.”

“We do
mean
to go back,” said the Oat Knight plaintively. “The Revels were so beautiful. And Halloween loved us specially.”

“Of course, you mean to,” Aubergine said comfortingly. “It’s not your fault at all.”

“If we’re so close, Aubergine,” September said gently, “do you want to go home? I have said it before, but you don’t really belong to me at all. I’ve got terribly fond of you, but you can get away home right here and now. I can go on, we can all go on, and we’ll be all right.”

The Night-Dodo looked out over the moony waves. “Without a boat, I would not even know my name by the time I got there,” she sighed. “I suppose I could build a Quiet Ship, given enough time. And there would be time here. I could resist the spray for long enough.” Her plum feathers ruffled in the breeze. “But I don’t want to go back,” she said with a savage determination September had never heard her quiet friend use. “They traded me to Glasswort Groof, and though I understand they had a desperation, and though Glasswort looked after me decently, they still used me as money, and I can’t forgive it. I am not a coin. Besides, I want to go back to Tain when this is all done. I want to go back to Shearcoil and study Quietly, to become the Quietest of all, so that whenever a young thing aims to be a Physickist they will say, ‘I want to be just like Aubergine the Night-Dodo, Mummy! Wasn’t she the very best and most powerful Physickist of all of them?’ And their mothers will have to say, ‘Yes, yes, she was.’”

Once more September marveled that even the Dodo knew what she wanted to be when she was grown. She simply could not think what she herself might do. September expected that destinies, which is how she thought of professions, simply landed upon one like a crown, and ever after no one questioned or fretted over it, being sure of one’s own use in the world. It was only that somehow her crown had not yet appeared. She did hope it would hurry up.

September hugged Auberine, who put her feathery head against the wine-colored coat. “I am glad not to lose you,” September said. She turned back to the Glashtyn, her thoughts spinning up to something, though she did not quite know what. “If you love Halloween so and she loves you, why have you not forgotten about the Prince entirely? You live in a forgetting place! I’m only curious, you understand. But the thing of it is, Myrrh might be no better. If I remember my stories, people only tend to sleep that long if they’re very beautiful and very stupid and mess about with things they shouldn’t, like apples and spindles and such.” But she remembered what Avogadra said about the field cast by the Prince, and how folk would want to talk about him. The Glashtyn certainly did.

September frowned. Everything had rollicked along so fast she had hardly had a chance to consider much of it. But now the considering broke over her like a wave. “It seems rather silly to put all your eggs in one basket, King-wise. Just because he was born to it doesn’t mean he’ll be a good King, or do what you want. He’ll be a real walking, talking person, and maybe he’ll be bad. Anyone can be bad. And I warn you, in chess, Kings are important pieces, but they are very weak. They can only move a little, and the smart money is never on them to do much at all. Why not just have a revolution? It’s easier. Then you can rule yourselves.”

The Oat Knight looked shocked. “We
love
our Queen. We don’t want her hurt or banished or embarrassed!”

“She is a little bit violent,” Ell said by way of explanation.

“Queens are very splendid things!” the Glashtyn insisted.

“They are!” agreed Ell happily.

“How would we count the time without one? How could we have Coronations or Royal Banquets?”

“You could have a Congress,” September said sheepishly. It sounded a very strange word down here under the world. “And a President. That’s what we have where I come from.”

“What sort of crown does a President wear?” the Oat Knight asked dubiously. “Does she know enough riddles to rule a country? Is Congress where she keeps her magic?”

September hid a smile under her hand. “I suppose Congress is where the President keeps magic,” she said. “Laws are a bit like magic. They have a lot of complicated words and they can make you do anything they want.”

“You can call your Queen a President if it makes you happy.” The Oat Knight shrugged. “It’s not that we didn’t want the Hollow Queen or the Revels. We only wanted
our
Prince back, too. And though we might forget what we mean to do in the future, what we have done wrong in the past sticks to the heart. We took Halloween and meant to use her, as though she were not her own beast who deserved to choose her fate. I wished to give you my confession, September, for you, too, were wronged in our acts. And I have given it.” He put his hand over his heart once more.

“Well.” September smiled, putting her hand on his arm. “I do forgive you. And I shall make you a present to show that I do: I am going to wake up the Sleeping Prince.” September wanted to say,
Just see if I don’t,
but the Glashtyn was so noble and formal that she said instead, “I swear it.”

A-Through-L and Saturday stared at her. They hadn’t known her plan until now, but they had been so loyal and stalwart in the onion-field, that September judged it safe to let the secret slip.

They had reached the end of the pier. It stretched awfully far from the shore, out into deep water, filled with shadowy fish and dark shafts where the light of the crystal moon did not fall.

September smiled at her wonderful friends, in all their colors and bright eyes and gentle ways. “You know, in Fairyland-Above they said that the underworld was full of devils and dragons. But it isn’t so at all! Folk are just folk, wherever you go, and it’s only a nasty sort of person who thinks a body’s a devil just because they come from another country and have different notions. It’s wild and quick and bold down here, but I like wild things and quick things and bold things, too.”

Saturday put his hand on her shoulder, and they looked out over the underground ocean toward Walghvogel, far off and invisible. September’s heart swelled; it beat hot and happy.

“I’m sorry,” the Marid said gently. “I mean well. You can’t see that now, but you will. It’ll all be wonderful, and we’ll live together in a house of pumpkin and gold.”

“I’ll live there, too,” said Ell, tears forming in his great dark eyes. “And bring you all the books in all the world.”

“What are you talking about?” September laughed.

But she did not get her answer. Instead, before the Oat Knight could cry out or Aubergine could step between them, her beloved Saturday looked longingly into her eyes, kissed her cheek, and pushed her as hard as he could.

September fell, too shocked to scream, into the foaming depths of the Forgetful Sea.

INTERLUDE

T
WO
C
ROWS

In Which We Return to Our Friends Wit and Study, Who Discover a Number of Things Familiar to Us, but Not to Them, and Pass Over Something Tremendously Alarming Without Noticing It at All

What have our two humble crows been doing all this while, you ask? Have they been lolling about in the clouds or have they been eaten up by some Fairy beast?

I shall tell you, for we are becoming good friends, you and I, and friends may tell each other anything.

Wit and Study flew high and wide over Fairyland. They marveled at what they saw passing by below them. A country all of Autumn and one all of Winter, side by side! A herd of bicycles snorting like bison! A city all of silk and cotton and corduroy without any stones at all! In the late, golden afternoon, a whole flock of cast-iron ducks flew past them in a sharp, impressive V, quacking out a merry hello.

“What an extraordinary place this is, Study!” Wit exclaimed to his sister as they passed over a trio of witches brandishing wands that looked very like—but no, it couldn’t be!—long wooden kitchen spoons. “I think I should like to live here forever!”

“I wonder if there are any crows here, or if we should be the first?” mused Study. “Perhaps here, in the future, crows will set aside berries and grasshoppers for Uncle Wit and Auntie Study! Wouldn’t that be a thing to caw home about?”

Wit laughed, which for a crow is a loud, rough sound. Crows look down a bit on birds that make pretty, trilling sounds.
Pandering to humans,
they say.
Just shameless
.

The pair of them saw the sea coming up ahead over the curve of the world. Violet waves crashed onto a beach covered in glittering golden junk. Their crow-hearts quickened and the shine and shimmer of the shore made them quite drunk. Their bellies rumbled for the very delicious fish that surely swam very close to the surface in this country, having no idea that two sleek and clever hunters were on their way. Wit and Study flew faster still.