The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

CHAPTER XII
THE MINES OF MEMORY

In Which September Gets Lost in a Book, Gets Some Help with Her Memory from a Large Blue Kangaroo, and Works a Shift in a Mine

September and her friends did not so much fall into the book as crash.

The black space was not an endless empty hole, but a tunnel full of rustling, of pages ripping and turning, of heavy leather spines thunking hard against feathers and scales and skin. Blind, September tumbled and rolled and stumbled, pointing downward in a general sort of way, tasting strange ink as pages flew at her face. The roaring sound of it all sounded like nothing so much as a great, angry tide surging in, wave upon papery wave breaking over her poor head.

Slowly, ahead of her in the dark, a clanking, bonging, metallic sound grew. The papers thinned and finally blew aside like gauzy curtains. September followed the sound of metal being struck and scraped until, groping blindly, her hands fell upon a wooden frame and a hard, cold doorknob. The door wedged shut somewhat below her, and the papers crushed in behind, pushing on her shoulders with little wordy kisses. September put her shoulder against it and shoved. It came free far more easily than she expected, and with a little cry, she fell down through the door inside the book and tumbled out onto an earthen floor. Bits of paper still clung to her hair and the ruff of the wine-colored coat, which bristled and shook them off.

Avogadra had told the truth-the black path through the book ended in a mine. All around her, sharp rocks and dark bluish boulders bulged. A wooden track ran through the great cavern, and on it rickety cars raced by, some empty, some topful of sparkling gems. Now that September’s eyes adjusted to the dimness of the mine, she could see that the light came from the walls. Rich, looping, twisting veins of crystalline stuff shone as though a fire lived inside them, brighter than any jewel September had ever seen-though in truth this was not too many. The harlequin colors mingled and cast a cool reddish purplish greenish bluish goldenish radiance on the bustle of the miners, none of whom noticed that a girl had fallen out of the ceiling.

September stared at the miners: furry turquoise kangaroos with large, inquisitive eyes and powerful tails. They hopped from one cart to another, with pearly lamps on their heads and beautiful long necklaces around their silky throats. They wore brown leather straps in an X over their chests, the better to hold pickaxes and shovels on their backs. They carried gold-pans like little shields on their brown belts. But their chief mining tool was clearly their tails, which they whacked against the rock walls with whoops and trills, knocking loose little falls of rubble, which they panned through and picked through and poked through. One hopped over to the wall nearest September and planted his feet to give it a good thrashing.

“Halloo!” the kangaroo barked, startled by the sudden presence of a girl in a ball gown sprawled in the way of a nice thick vein of peridot. “You came out of the wall.” He looked very flummoxed by this, his gentle face scrunching up with worry. Something was not right, not right at all.

“Yes.” September did not know what else to say. She realized all at once that she was alone-A-Through-L and Saturday and Aubergine had not made it through with her. Her skin prickled with cold.

“Are you a ruby? Or a tourmaline?” The kangaroo did not seem hopeful.

“Certainly not,” September said, and peeled herself up off the floor, brushing pebbles and torn bits of paper from her skirt. She pulled the wine-colored coat close around her, shivering a little. She felt safer with its thick sash tied tight.

“Well, if it’s work you want, I’m sure we could find you an ax and a shovel and a pan. But this is my seam, see, and you…well, you can’t have it. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s only that I’ve forgotten my mother, and peridot-that’s the pretty green spangly stuff you’re, er, sitting on-is frightfully good for motherly memories.”

“However could you forget your mother?” September asked.

The kangaroo adjusted the brown straps of his harness. His gold-pan reflected the pale green-yellow seam flowing fiery around them. “I’m a Järlhopp,” he said proudly. “We’re born without memories. They say all babies are innocent, but no one holds a candle to a wee Järlhopp. If not for my Clutch, I wouldn’t even remember my own name. Which is Gneiss, if you wondered.” Gneiss lifted up the pendant of his long necklace. Dozens of hundred candy-colored stones clung together in a spiky, glittering globe.

September smiled shyly. “But I know about Järlhoppes!” she said. “Mr. Map told me that they keep their memories on a chain around their necks. One called Leef taught him to make maps when they were in prison together. It seems so long ago now!”

“I don’t know a Leef, but that’s no shock. I might have known her, and forgotten all about it, if I didn’t have a bit of seam nearby to remember her for me.” Gneiss nodded his azure head toward the wall. “That’s a seam, there. A thick thread of peridot running through the black earth. It’s what keeps the world together, you know. That’s why they’re called seams. Stitches in stone, hemming up the underside of everything. Without them, everything would just fall apart. But down here, in the deep, the jewels are more than the pretty baubles you find near the surface. They’re memories-the memories of the earth, hardened and polished by centuries of brooding and dreaming and worrying. A Järlhopp’s memories are so small next to the memory of all the whole earth! Ours fill up only the tiniest cracks and flaws in the crystal. See, this here’s full of earthy memories of continental drift and megafauna-but the flaw there? That’s the first boomer who broke my heart, Märl.” The Järlhopp pointed to a sharp dark-red shard in his Clutch. It had a creamy pale flaw in its center. “He ran off with a centaur and threw away the girasol stone that meant me and all his family in the mines, our mushroom and sorrowgrass suppers on stone tables, under stone lanterns. So he’d never even think to come back, see. If you said my name to him he wouldn’t even know the G was silent. But I remember how to say his name. If I press his shard to my heart I can live it again as often as I like. But you have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.”

“But what if someone took your necklace? It’s so fragile!”

“I don’t mind telling you we have to be careful-our Being-Careful stone is one of the first we get, a nice fat pearl. But mining is hard work, and sometimes the Clutch gets knocked about, like mine did when I forgot my mother. I know I forgot her because I have a topaz for my father and a bloodstone each for my brothers, and they all know I had a mother, so I must have. Now I’m after a good knuckle of peridot so I can recognize her again.”

“Gneiss, did anyone else come in before me? From the wall, I mean. One would look like a great black dragon, and one like a boy with black skin and blue swirls all over him, and one is a very quiet Dodo.”

Gneiss smiled, which looked very odd indeed on a kangaroo. “Little ruby, if I didn’t cut out a knob of onyx for Remembering Strangers, I wouldn’t know it to tell you if the Queen herself came parading through. You have to dig new stones for new memories, and that right quick. I try to only do it for the best ones-the times that please me the most or hurt me the most.”

September had been holding on to all three of them when she tripped into the Monaciello’s book, she was sure of it. Perhaps they were only late. They’d be along, wouldn’t they? She leaned into the rough stone wall, trying to listen for the footsteps of a Wyverary.

“I do wish that I could hold on to my memories like that,” September sighed into the flaming green seam. “I forget things all the time. But if I had a Clutch and I remembered to be careful, I’d never forget anything! I’d be able to look just once at my lessons and remember everything perfectly. When I’m lonesome, I’d just press it to my heart and live my mother singing me to sleep over again!”

Gneiss shrugged. “Well, there’s a good shallow vein of sunstone just down the way. I can smell the Topside on you-sunstone would be best for a young thing with not too many years to wedge in. And who knows? Maybe your friends fell out of a different bit of cavern! You never know. Let’s have a look on both accounts.”

September bit her lip and considered whether it was better to wait and hope they came kicking and hollering out of the wall as she had, or search for them deeper in the mine. The hard strange voice woke up inside her again, urging her to keep going, not to stop. This time she listened to it and ran skipping alongside the Järlhopp through the dark kaleidoscope of the mine, trying to keep up with his powerful hops. Other Järlhoppes waved as they went by, and the seams ran through the earth like fine colorful handwriting, but no Marid leapt out to kiss her, no gentle Dodo appeared next to her as if out of nowhere.

Finally they came to a gnarled, thick knot of deep orange stone with coppery sparks leaping hot and bright inside it. Gneiss looked down at her, shining his pearly miner’s lantern in her eyes.

“Halloo!” the blue kangaroo exclaimed. “Who are you? Are you a ruby or a tourmaline?”

“No, I’m September! You brought me here to find my friends and make me a Clutch!”

Gneiss looked dubious. “Was it a very long time ago that we set off? Have we had adventures on a wild rocky ocean? Have we fought alabaster octopi together, or crossed axes with the emerald ogre?”

“No! It was only few moments ago! We’ve not come half a mile!”

“Ah, my apologies, little ruby. I’ve only a little space after a thing happens to snatch up a gem for it and add it to the Clutch. If I forgot to do it, well, I’ve quite forgotten that I forgot to do it, not to mention forgetting the thing I should have remembered not to forget!”

September could not help herself. “Is there really an emerald ogre somewhere?”

“Oh, yes! Her name is Mathilda. She lives up in the north section of the mine and makes a lovely spinach stew. She’s a fierce thing for manners, though! If your please is out of place, she’ll thump you one. I was making you a Clutch? Well, let’s have at it. You’ve got to get your ore yourself, though. No good if I do it.” Gneiss handed over his pickaxe-it was heavy, but not so heavy September could not lift it. Gneiss waggled his huge tail experimentally.

“Be ready with the ax when I swing!”

Gneiss swung. His cerulean tail whacked hard into the cavern wall and a shower of dark rock and shimmering gemstone came bursting down on them both. September swung her axe, breaking up the big pieces into smaller ones, and smaller still, until she’d uncovered a rough fist of sunstone of just the size to wear. Gneiss reached into his pouch and came up with a chain. He bit a hole in the jewel with an enormous sharp tooth and strung it onto the chain and around September’s neck.

“Now, that’ll hold only everything that’s happened to you till now. I’ll stick on a nice chunk of heliotrope to keep you going for the next few days. But if you want to remember more, you’ll have to get more seam for it, mind me?”

September nodded, trying to imagine where she’d get jewels back home. They didn’t make ration cards for diamonds. Gneiss licked an oblong scrap of green jewel with golden streaks and shoved it through the center of the sunstone. It pierced the gem as if it were a marshmallow and stuck solidly there.

“September!” cried a voice further down the mine shaft.

September turned toward it so quickly she nearly got her legs tangled up in each other. Saturday! She ran down the shaft after the voice, Gneiss thumping along behind her. Following two thin thready veins of amethyst and gold, she darted past carts and rock piles until she found them, all three of her lost friends, sticking half out of the wall of the mine.

Saturday had his head and arms free and was trying to push himself all the way out, the way you might push yourself out of a wet pair of trousers. A-Through-L and Aubergine had gotten buried in the cavern up to their necks, their snouts jutting out of the wall like hunting trophies. September grabbed Saturday by the arms and hauled. She pulled as hard as she could, and then just a little harder, but he would not budge.

“We lost you in the book,” Saturday panted with effort. “And we must have been too slow climbing down, because the whole thing closed up right around us! Maybe the door went off into another volume while we were inside.” He shuddered. “Oh!” he suddenly cried, and then blushed slightly blue with embarrassment. “I forgot.”

The Marid shut his eyes and opened his hands, turning his palms up. “I wish for all of us to be free of the wall,” he said calmly.

And they were. The Wyverary and the Night-Dodo stood next to Saturday in a neat little line.

“But you haven’t been wrestled!” September cried.

“I told you, I don’t have to do that kind of awfulness here,” Saturday shrugged. “I just Want it badly enough, and it happens!”

“Then why can’t I just want things badly enough? Why can’t I just want us to the Sleeping Prince, or even better, want to know how to put myself back together with my shadow?” September kept herself from stamping her foot in frustration, but only barely. How could things be so easy for him and so hard for her?

Aubergine fluffed her violet-green feathers. “Because you haven’t got a shadow,” she said. “You can’t do magic.”

A-Through-L nodded. “You’d never notice what was wrong unless you tried something really savage or magical, but the wild bits of you have been shrinking up and blowing away bit by bit. It’s only that you don’t really need them in Nebraska. You probably just thought you were growing up. It’s an easy mistake.”

“I think I ought to say what parts of me I need and where!”

“But it’s all right, September! We can do any sort of magic to you. We’ll help. Anything you need done, just ask your boys, and we’ll be ready with a wish or a spell.”

September frowned. She did not feel like anything had gone missing inside her. But hadn’t she wondered if staying shadowless so long would cause any trouble? Didn’t it make sense that if Fairyland-Above was losing its magic to Fairyland-Below, she would lose something, too, having lost her shadow before anyone?

“I shall do what needs doing myself, thank you,” September said finally. “And I’ll ask you kindly to stop telling me what I need and what will be wonderful just as soon as I agree with you! And most importantly to stop turning me into things I didn’t ask to be and kissing me when I didn’t ask to be kissed! You stole my First Kiss from me, Saturday. I haven’t forgiven you just because I haven’t had a shout about it yet. I’ve been busy! But I think I’m the only one who gets a say about when I get kissed or turned into a beast! Not that it wasn’t nice to be a Wyvern or a Fairy. I’m not saying it wasn’t nice.” September could not help adding the apology. But she would absolutely not go meekly along relying on everyone else to fight and speak and wish for her. She would not have things done to her when she could do them on her own! She’d done plenty-and shouldn’t Ell know that? Perhaps only her own dear red Ell would understand that she could not just let everyone else do her work for her. Her mother did not just hope some other man would come along and take up the work that needed doing in her factory. She did it herself, and so would September. She reached into the pocket of the wine-colored coat and came out with her magic ration book.

“Take me to the Prince!” she said plainly and loudly, before anyone could protest. September ripped off one of the ration cards. With a wisp of green smoke, it vanished in her hand, leaving a sharp smell of sunny grasses and warm winds behind.

A new shaft opened up in the mine, just in front of them, breaking the amethyst and gold veins in two. It gaped wide, leading down into blackness. September looked back at all of them defiantly.

“Are you all coming? Or do you want to sit around jawing about nonsense?” She remembered her manners and turned to the Järlhopp. “Thank you kindly, Gneiss. I shall not forget you, I am sure!”

“Halloo!” cried Gneiss. His blue fur rippled. “Are you a ruby? Or a tourmaline?”

September bent down and picked up a tiny fleck of sunstone. “Remember me, Gneiss. If you want to. It’s up to you. Everyone should get to choose their own way, and that’s all I mean by yelling. But I shall choose to remember you, and it would be nice if it went both ways. That’s how it generally goes in my country.” But does it? September thought. If a body is hurt, they try to forget the person who hurt them and never think about the pain again. Remembering aches, like when I remember my father. It’d be so much easier to never wonder about him. I’m sure he remembers my face, but it’s hard to remember his, when he’s been gone so long! Perhaps memory is a thing that everyone involved has to work at, like stitching up a big quilt out of everything that ever happened to you.

The Järlhopp took the stone happily, and stuck it onto his Clutch between a piece of jade and a tiger’s eye. September hugged him quickly, and then, rather more terrified than she was willing to let anyone see, jumped into the mine shaft with both feet.

“Good-bye, September,” said the blue kangaroo.

The others, after only a moment’s shocked pause, jumped in after her.