The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (26 page)

The hand that lit the candle belonged to a well-dressed and bespectacled Minotaur.

The Minotaur rested in a luxurious chocolate-colored chair, like those one might find in a lawyer’s or principal’s office. September had got quite used to thinking of Minotaurs as boys in her reading, for they always seemed to be—but this one was most certainly a lady. Enormous, curving dark horns crowned her head. She had a very wide nose with a light covering of nearly invisible fur, save that the candlelight made her scant pelt ripple with fire when she moved. She wore a thick brass ring in her nose, and her ears were furry and long like a cow’s, but beyond that her face was quite human, with big, liquid brown eyes behind her librarian’s glasses, and full, dark lips. Her hands folded gracefully in front of her. Under the desk, strong, hard hooves peeked out from under a plain brown schoolmarm skirt.

“This can’t be right,” said September, climbing down from Iago’s broad back. The Marquess’s shadow followed her, but hung back, close to the Panther’s glossy flank. “A Minotaur lives in the center of the labyrinth, and I haven’t set foot inside one! I think I would know a maze if I had already solved it!” She peered over the desk at the Minotaur, who might have been a statue, she sat so still.

Slowly, the Minotaur laid her head to one side. “What did you think you were doing, then, when you went up through one door and down through another, turning this way and that, through the pages of a book and a deep mine and an entire ocean and the hideout of a wise woman? My dear, labyrinths ensnare and entangle; they draw one inexorably inward—but it would not be much of a labyrinth if you waited in line with a ticket to get in and the door was clearly marked, like some country-harvest hay maze. All underworlds are labyrinths, in the end. Perhaps all the sunlit lands, too. A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world.”

“Is Prince Myrrh here, then? Do you have his unopenable box in your collection?”

“No.
I
am here. I am the dark anchor at the bottom of the world. And I will decide whether to let you go further down.”

September knew she ought to be asking important, urgent things of the lady Minotaur. But a statement jumped the line and leapt out of her ahead of all those questions. “I thought only bulls had horns.”

The Minotaur’s thick eyebrow quirked. “And I thought all human girls wore dresses. Yet I am sure you have worn trousers in your life. Do you never prefer to wear boy’s clothes when they are more suitable, and more sensible?”

“I suppose so, when I have hard work to do.”

“Ah, my dear girl! I always have hard work to do.” She stood up. The Minotaur towered over all of them, her shoulders muscled, her legs powerful—that was easy enough to see, even with the plain skirt to cover them. She crossed to a home-hewn rocking chair near the hearth and settled herself into it, taking up a scrap of knitting from a basket, the ball of translucent yarn looking very much like the spindle in the painting above her. She gestured absentmindedly at the black logs with one knitting needle. They burst into eager flame. Her fingers wrapped the yarn deftly as she talked.

“Minotaurs are all descended from the same poor, sorry fellow. You have probably heard of him—Grandfather is quite famous. The Queen of a distant land fell in love with a bull. Nevermind how odd that sounds! The ancient world was an appalling place. Even if it were not, love may unclose itself between any number of seemingly upside-down and turned-around folk. Especially if one is a Fairy Bull who can talk and write poems and have tea and discourse on natural philosophy. In any event, a Queen and a bull are not mixable elements, and so she called on a Fairy Inventor to help her. I believe you met his great-granddaughter. In those days one could transit between worlds as easily as one takes a trolley now. The Inventor came on a pair of wax wings he had invented himself and made a heifer out of ivory and leather and mirrors for the Queen to live inside, so that the royal wedding could take place. When their first child came, he was, as might have been predicted, half bull and half human, huge and monstrous and frightening. His own mother hid behind the bureau when he cried for milk. So the Inventor built a labyrinth to hide the child, so that his mother would not have to look at him, yes, but also so that no one in the country would try to stab him or vanquish him in some way to prove their strength. Every once in a while, they would try to send that first Minotaur friends to play with, but a Minotaur’s play is rough, and some did not survive. Others must have. Eventually, the Fairy Bull died in battle with a certain Babylonian scoundrel and his hairy giant of a brother. The Queen found a nice young man who did not inquire into her previous marriage and had a perfectly lovely daughter with him—that’s her there, my Auntie.” The Minotaur gestured at the portrait above her head. “And all the while, down in the labyrinth, a whole village had grown up in the dark. Grandfather lived quite well with the youths and maidens who had gone down, not very eagerly, to make nice with the monster. They built houses together in the maze, traded grain and oil, had country dances and learned to make cheese and beer. The youths and maidens grew up and found it pleasant that no one bothered them about things like taxes and foreign wars. They stayed in the labyrinth-town to have children or open up a nice carpentry service. The Minotaur wasn’t so bad, once you got to know him, and if you were nimble enough to avoid the horns. And it must have been possible to love Grandfather if you were not his mother, for some brave girl made him her husband, and the rest of us owe our lives to that noble maid. We are all Tauruses, naturally. We are good, wholesome monsters. I am named Left, for generally speaking, if one keeps turning left, one finds one’s way out of a maze, no matter how tangled.”

“Miss Cabbage said I was born under the sign of the Bull,” ventured September, hoping to make a beginning of friendship.

“Well, perhaps you have a little Minotaur in you, child. Of course, the town didn’t end well. Some years later, a ruffian broke into the place and bashed Grandfather’s head in, just to impress his daddy with how big and strong he was. Still, we all remember, somewhere deep and untouchable, that town, those dark corridors. Something in our monstrous blood still seeks the underground, still wants to be wrapped up cozy in a maze, wants to draw youths and maidens to us and judge them, wants to guard, wants to hide. You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.”

“I’m a monster,” said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. “Everyone says so.”

The Minotaur glanced up at her. “So are we all, dear,” said the Minotaur kindly. “The thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them.”

Iago yawned, showing his generous shadowy pink tongue. “There’s something to be said for breaking things. They make a satisfying sound when they crunch.”

“I break everything,” whispered Maud. Her hair hung deep blue around her shadowy face.

“Hush,” purred Iago. “All that’s done now.”

“I need to get to the Prince,” said September, resting her hand on the great desk.

The Minotaur did not look up from her knitting. “I am aware.”

“Well … are you going to show me the way or not?” September asked.

The Minotaur laughed. “You’re terribly impatient! And a bit ill-tempered, I must say. Is there some reason you’re in such a damnable hurry?”

“The Alleyman takes more shadows every day, and the magic in Fairyland-Above is leaking out. Soon there will be nothing left.”

“Oh? Is that all? Well, perhaps they could do with a bit less magic up there. You saw what this one did with it.” The shadow of the Marquess narrowed her eyes in disdain, the old fire sparking in them. “Well, certainly, let’s get on with things!” The Minotaur put her knitting aside and stood up. She slipped her long fingers over the mantel of her fireplace, feeling for some hidden thing. “Of course,” she mused, “if that’s all the danger you’ve discovered on your journeys, perhaps you aren’t the right beast for this sort of thing at all. A more curious child would have arrived at the end with all the knowledge she needed.”

“I
am
curious!” said September indignantly. “If there’s some other awful thing afoot, you should just tell me, instead of teasing me. It’s not very nice.”

“We’ve already discussed the fact that I am a monster, and that I play rough. I’ll tell you what. Give me that fine gun of yours, and I’ll let you pass.”

September put her hand on the grip of the Rivet Gun. She’d only just gotten it, and she’d promised to take copious notes for Belinda Cabbage, which probably did not mean handing it over to the first person who asked and taking notes on what she got for it. But more than that, she wanted it with her. It had chosen her. She felt safer with it, even though she knew it was probably quite dangerous.

“No,” she said finally. “I can’t. What if I need it?”

“Good girl,” said the Minotaur. “A warrior never gives up her weapon.”

“I’m not a warrior.”

“No?”

Something boiled up in September’s heart, hot and furious. The moment she started to raise her voice, Maud put a charcoal hand on her shoulder. This only made the boiling thing spill over. “
Stop it!
I am tired and hurt and all my friends have abandoned me except the one girl I never wanted to see again. I don’t even know where I am, and I don’t know how to get out. Either help me or fight me or say I’m not what’s wanted and a disappointment to the Minotaur Nation, but speak plain and let me keep moving. I want to keep moving!
Now.
”

A wisp of green smoke puffed up from the pocket of the wine-colored coat, smelling sharply of sunny grasses and warm winds. “Oh, no!” September cried, fishing out the smoking, charred magic ration book. It had no more cards, and, in a moment, had crumbled entirely to green ash. “But I didn’t ask it to do any magic! I was saving it!”

But the Minotaur had already found the latch on her mantel and turned it. The fire in the hearth went out, and a pearly, waxen light appeared deep in the fireplace, which yawned up and in, becoming a long tunnel.

“You have your shadow with you,” said the Minotaur. “Right at your back, holding on tight. I admit, I feel a little silly—I had meant to hold out on you. But you do Want things so terribly hard. Magic gets what it wants. I’m only one monster.”

“She’s
not
my shadow!”

Maud took September’s slightly scorched hand. “We are alike, I said. I said that before. I did say it, I’m sure of it. I am
her
shadow, but I can stand behind you, too.” She paused for a moment, as if digging something up from the bottom of her heart. “It would break your heart, September, how alike we are.”

“You Wanted it—that was like kindling. That shadow was a spark, and the ration card caught flame. Now, if you’re going to snap at me, you might follow me when I am so good as to hold the door open for you.” The Minotaur wrinkled her velvety nose.

September yanked her hand away from the Marquess. She did not for a moment want to hear how alike they were. Once had been enough. She stepped over the charred logs and into the tunnel, which seemed to be made of a very nice mud brick, like the basement of some ancient pyramid.

*   *   *

September fell out of a patch in the sky. Iago floated down, and the Minotaur, even larger in this place than her study, simply lifted her skirts and stepped out into a wild, tumbling expanse of moorland, gray and purple and black with mist. Heather and gorse and long curlicued vines of rampion and icy hard peas grew everywhere.

A high wall greeted them, the only object for miles. It did not look like the little wall September had tripped over when she entered Fairyland. It looked infinitely older, of a stone that probably remembered when the moon was just a baby. Weather and abuse had lashed the rocks and left them crumbling here, impenetrable there. As with any wall that has the gall to stand in the middle of nowhere with nobody guarding it, folk had written things on it, painted and chiseled their names or some little message, a thousand years of graffiti. Some were little more than signs and sigils, as old as writing itself. Some September could read, even if she didn’t understand most of them.

Philadelphia 9 Million Miles That-a-Way. Beware of Dog. Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. No Trespassing—This Means You. I Miss My Mother. Theseus Was Here. I Told You Not to Turn Around—You Never Listened to Me. No Parking Any Time. Never Let ’Em Take Your Necklace.

September ran her hands across the letters.

“Look here,” the Minotaur said imperiously, and September did not argue. In the midst of the wall she saw a hole, a crack in the stone. It looked as though someone had put their fist through the wall—its edges sheared off broken and ugly, covered in pale moss, sharp and ragged. Up above it someone had written in childlike handwriting, “
Why Did the Chicken Cross Fairyland?
”

“Is that the way to the Prince?” she asked. “Will I look through and see him?”

The Minotaur said nothing, only continued to point. When September still hesitated, the beast put her hand on the girl’s neck, hard and unignorable, rough and hot. She pushed her down before the hole in the wall. September stumbled to her knees and peered through it. This is what she saw: A field of warm, rich grain, still tinged with green, a May field, and a sweet little house at one end of it—why, it was her own house! And the lights were on! And there! Could those be the shadows of her mother and her dog moving behind the distant curtains? It looked like early evening, only a few minutes after she’d left. September laughed and tried to wave to her mother through the hole in the world. The Minotaur stayed her hand.

“No one can see or hear you—yet. There is no wall on the other side of the wall. Only a world. You will not believe me, but that is a part of Fairyland-Above, in the far, far west of the land.”

“But that’s my house! I can see it! There, in the yard, that’s my bicycle with the basket! There’s the milkman’s empty bottles!”