The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making

CHAPTER XXI
DID YOU SEE HER?

In Which All Is Reasonably Well, but Time Is Short

The sun fell golden and warm onto a field of gleaming wheat-just a touch blue around the edges and rosy in the middle, as is the way with glowerwheat. Broad trees full of gleaming fruit shaded four bodies. They lay in the grass as though dreaming. A girl in a green smoking jacket with long, curling dark hair and a high, healthy blush in her cheeks rested with her hands closed over her chest. A boy with blue skin and rich, thick hair gathered up on top of his head slept curled next to her, with no bruises at all on his chest. A little ways away a great red Wyvern snored pleasantly, his red scales whole and unbroken.

Near his tail an orange lantern glowed dimly.

September rose up and stretched her arms, yawning. Then she touched her hair, and it all came back to her: the Marquess, the Lonely Gaol, the awful storm. She looked down at Saturday, sleeping sweetly. She moved over to him and lay very close, and then she cried, quietly, so that he couldn’t see. All the ache and horror of it, the sea and the fish and the sadness of Queen Mallow and Iago and all of them, poured out of her into the grass, into the day. Finally, she touched Saturday’s blue back ever so gently, with the tips of her fingers.

“Saturday,” she whispered, wiping her eyes. “It worked. I think it worked, anyway.”

His eyes slid open.

September pulled at her curls. “How did my hair grow back?”

Saturday rolled over in the long grass. “You wished for everyone to be whole and well again,” he said softly.

September crept over to Ell. She could hardly breathe for hope. Slowly, she touched his huge face, his broad cheeks, his soft nose.

“Oh, Ell, do wake up. Do be well.”

One great orange eye creaked open.

“Did I miss something?” A-Through-L yawned prodigiously.

September squealed delight and threw her arms around the Wyverary’s nose.

“And Gleam! Gleam, you’re back!”

Golden writing looped across her face:

Paper can be patched.

September hugged the lantern, though this was a bit of an awkward operation. Pale green arms reached up out of the paper and embraced September but vanished quickly, as though Gleam was embarrassed of her limbs, as if they were a secret, just between September and herself. Still, if she could have smiled, Gleam would have beamed like Christmas.

“Halllooooo!” came a bellowing, booming voice out of the sky. The four of them looked up to see a Leopard swooping and leaping down to them, and none on her back but the Green Wind, in his green jodhpurs and green snowshoes, his green-gold hair flying.

September thought she would burst. She lost count of the hugs and cat-lickings and tumbling about.

“But how can you be here? I thought you weren’t allowed!”

The Green Wind grinned broadly. “The Marquess’s rules are done with! No chain could keep me from you now, my little chestnut. And I have brought gifts!”

The Green Wind snapped off his green cape and lay it on the ground with a flourish. Immediately, it covered itself in every delightful green thing one can eat: pistachio ice cream and mint jelly and spinach pies and apples and olives and rich herby bread-and several huge, deep green radishes.

The Leopard paced nervously, however.

“Has my brother come with you?” she growled. “I do not see him.”

September’s face fell.

“You did not wish for him,” Saturday whispered fretfully.

The Leopard gave a little cry, quite like a kitten who has lost her litter mate. “It is all right. He would have gone back for her. I’m sure of it. For that which was Mallow still, whom we both loved. And he was always good in a storm.”

“She is only sleeping, Green,” said September slowly. “Might she come back someday?”

“One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for a while yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”

September looked at her hands. She did not know quite how to ask what she needed to know.

“Green,” she said, her voice trembling. “I know it was not my clock the Marquess showed me. But… where is my clock? How much time do I have left?”

The Green Wind laughed. A few fruit fell from the trees with the boom of it. “You don’t have one, love! The Marquess knew it, too, which is why she tried to trick you with hers. The Stumbled have clocks. It is their tragedy. But no one has quite the same tragedy. Changelings can’t leave without help. And the Ravished…” The Green Wind pulled an hourglass from his coat. It was filled with deep red sand, the color of wine. On its ebony base was a little brass plaque. It read,

SEPTEMBER MORNING BELL.

The upper bell of the hourglass was almost empty.

“That’s still a clock,” Saturday pointed out.

“True. But the Ravished have their own miseries. The Stumbled cannot stay-the Ravished cannot leave.”

“What?” cried September.

“September, do you remember your big orange book that you like so much, full of old stories and tales? And do you remember a certain girl in that book, who went underground and spent the whole winter there, so that the world mourned and snowed and withered and got all covered in ice? And because she ate six pomegranate seeds, she had to stay there in the winter and could only come home in the springtime?”

“Yes,” said September slowly.

“That is what it means to be Ravished. When the sand runs out, you must go home, just like poor Mallow. But when spring comes again, so will you, and the hourglass will turn over again. It will all begin anew. You are bound to us now, but you will never live fully here, nor fully there. Ravished means you cannot stay and you cannot go. You ate heartily in Fairyland, and I am so terribly glad you did, even though it was certainly naughty of me to have tricked you so. But I do think I warned you not to eat, so you cannot bring suit against me.”

September laughed. “You did warn me.” She thought of her mother, of leaving her every spring. But then, hadn’t the Marquess said that when you go home, it’s just as though you never left? Maybe her mother would not miss her. Maybe it would be like dreaming.

A-Through-L tucked his huge head against September’s little neck, nuzzling her.

“When spring comes, I shall meet you at the Municipal Library, and you will see how much I’ve learned! You’ll be so proud of me and love me so!”

“Oh, Ell, but I do love you! Right now!”

“One can always bear more love,” the Wyverary purred.

Suddenly, September thought of something that had, excusably, escaped her until this moment.

“Green! If the old laws are all broken, then Ell’s wings needn’t be chained down anymore!”

“Certainly not!”

September ran to the great bronze chains-they were still bound with a great padlock, and no amount of rattling budged them.

“Oh, if only I knew how to pick a lock!” sighed September. “I’ve turned out to be no kind of thief at all!”

You and I may imagine this simple plea floating up and out of the golden field and up into the sky, winding and wending toward our stalwart friend, the jeweled Key, which had sought September through all of her adventures. We cannot fully understand the joy that exploded in the heart of the Key as it heard September’s cry, and how fast it flew, knowing she needed it, knowing its girl cried out for it.

Winking down out of the sun, the Key fell like a firefly. It flashed and sparkled, a glittering dart, and came to rest just where September longed for it to be-nestled in the lock of the Wyverary’s chains. It glittered with the shock of arriving just when it was called for, the pleasure and surprise of it. With a click, the Key turned. Peace and contentment flooded through its tiny body. The padlock fell away; the chains slid to the earth. A-Through-L, for the first time since he was a tiny lizard at his mother’s side, spread his wings.

The great scarlet things cast them all in shade and kicked up warm winds as he flapped them once, twice, and lifted uncertainly into the air. Ell choked, tears welling in his eyes.

“Did you know I could fly, September? I can! I can!” The Wyverary soared up, whooping, spitting joyful fire into the clouds.

“Oh, I did know, Ell,” September whispered as her friend looped and did somersaults in the sky. “I did.”

September looked down at the Key, finally. Her Key, with which she had unlocked the puzzle of the world. It basked in her gaze.

“Have you followed me all this way?” she gasped.

It spun around, terribly pleased.

“Oh, Key, how extraordinary!”

The Key thought it might die of the sound of her voice. September gathered it up in her hand, and it felt it must die all over again, for the touch of her fingers.

“Will you do something for me?”

It would do anything, of course it would.

“Go and unlock the others. All over Fairyland, everyone chained and unable to fly freely. When you’re done, it will be spring and time for me to come back, and then we shall not be parted again, and you shall ride on my lapel, and we will share jokes in the moonlight and look very fine on parade.”

It bowed to her, not a little puffed up. Then the Key rose up and flew away out of sight, twinkling like a tiny star.

“It’s almost time,” said the Green Wind gently. The wine-colored sand was nearly spent.

“I understand now,” September said ruefully.

“What?” said Saturday.

“What the sign meant. To lose your heart. When I go home, I shall leave mine here, and I don’t think I shall ever have it back.”

“I will keep it safe for you,” Saturday whispered, barely brave enough to say it.

“Will you see the witch Goodbye gets her Spoon, Green?”

“Of course, my lambswool.”

“And you’ll show Gleam Pandemonium and the sea and the highwheels and all sorts of things, Ell? Like she wanted, to see the world.”

Above them, the Wyverary laughed. “If the Library gives me weekend liberty, I shall!”

The orange lantern bounced and shone.

September turned to Saturday.

“Did you see her?” the Marid said nervously, looking at her with great dark eyes. “Our daughter. Standing on the Gear. Did you see her?”

“What?” said September-and then she winked out, like someone blowing out a candle, and all the field was still.