The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

CHAPTER XVI
A PRACTICAL GIRL

In Which an Old Foe Returns, but Not as Expected

September fell out of the workbench, through the safe, and into a courtyard. She was alone, as she had not been since her first step in Fairyland-Below. The gray and black and muddy white cobblestones of the courtyard stretched out into alleys narrow and vast, cobbles upon cobbles, as far as she could see. A few bare birch trees stood with their wide branches leaning over empty benches and empty shop fronts where no one displayed their wares. Over one, an old painted wood sign read: ANYTHING IMPORTANT COMES IN THREES AND SIXES.

Snow began to fall, quiet and slow.

In the center of the courtyard stood a little garden with a low wall around it. Withered-up basil and sage and crushed mallow flowers tangled together around the black, broken roots of a fig tree. Husks of old fruit hung from the branches, and wrinkled dead toadstools ringed the roots. In the center of the garden sat a dry fountain-a high, dark marble bowl with a statue of a maiden sitting cross-legged in it, cradling a horn of plenty in her arms which must once have overflowed with clean, starry water. September had never been so tired, but still she knew that face.

It was a statue of Queen Mallow.

The wine-colored coat wrapped itself tight around September, its fur collar keeping out the soft, dry snow. She took a step forward-and saw a figure sitting on the far lip of the fountain. A young girl sat with her chin in her hands, kicking her feet in the air. September held her breath and walked a little ways around to get a better look. The girl was a shadow, violet and silver and blue lights flickering in the black depths of her skin. The shadow wore a lacy shadow-dress, with thick shadow-petticoats underneath it, along with elegant shadow-gloves and shadow-stockings and shadow-slippers.

And a very fine hat.

At her side, the shadow of a panther stood guard, quietly licking one massive dark paw.

September didn’t move. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to run, and she wanted to take out her Rivet Gun and fire it straightaway. She didn’t do any of that. She just stood there and watched the girl who was the shadow of the Marquess. In the end, she waited too long and the Marquess saw her first.

“Oh!” said the Marquess, dropping her hands into her lap. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” said September.

Iago, the Panther of Rough Storms, turned his great head to look at her. His gaze was as unreadable as any cat’s. Even his shadow would never leave her, September thought, and it awed her a little.

“I’m only passing through,” September said finally. “I don’t want any trouble with you. I don’t want anything at all to do with you, really. I’ve had a very bad day, and you are just the last thing I can bother with right this second. I know you must feel poorly about how things went when we saw each other last, but you’re just going to have to keep feeling poorly.”

The Marquess stood suddenly.

“Did you come all the way here in those shoes?” she asked slowly, as if remembering something from long ago.

September looked down at her shoes. They were her plain school shoes, and she had to admit they had gotten rather shabby with all the Reveling and dancing in onion forests and tromping through mines and diving through an entire sea. Still, at least this time she had brought both shoes along.

“That must have been just awfully painful. How brave of you,” the Marquess said in the same slow voice-but it held no bitterness or cruel jokes. Rather, the Marquess’s voice seemed entirely genuine in its pity and sympathy. She shook her head to clear it. The shadow-feathers and shadow-jewels on her hat jingled and quivered.

“You said that to me before,” said September curtly.

“I did,” the Marquess agreed, but she did not seem happy about it.

“Listen, Mallow, I don’t mean to be rude, but whatever game you want to play, I don’t know the rules, and I’d really rather sit this round out.”

The Marquess’s head snapped up. Her thick sausage curls flushed lilac. “Don’t call me that,” she said, and the old power bloomed in her voice. “It’s not my name. I’m Maud. I was Maud.”

“Yes, when you lived on your father’s farm in Ontario.”

Maud started as if she’d been slapped. “I hate my father. I will never go back. You can’t make me go back.”

“I know,” said September, softening a little despite herself. At least back at home, her own mother loved her, and her father did, too, wherever he was.

“I’m sleeping,” Maud whispered, her dark shadow eyes large and worried.

“What do you mean? You’re wide awake. You oughtn’t to be, but you are.”

Iago’s shadow finally spoke, his rumbly thundering voice rolling over September like a shiver. “She means that she is sleeping, the Marquess up Above, on a bed of tourmaline in the Springtime Parish, where the plum blossoms are always falling. I’m there, too, only I’m not sleeping. Well, really I am sleeping a lot of the time. Springtime has a surplus of sunbeams, and I am only feline. But I’m not sleeping in an occupational way, whereas she has been working on a good sleep for a couple of years now, and it’ll go on a good while yet. When our shadows got Siphoned down, we woke up-I’d been napping, and don’t you dare judge me, it was four in the afternoon, and all cats know four in the afternoon is Twelfthnap, right after Teanap. The trouble is, with her Topside self in such a powerful unnatural sleep, it’s addled her a little. Sometimes she thinks she’s her old self, sometimes she remembers she’s a shadow and doesn’t have to be a Marquess anymore.”

“I’m a practical girl,” the Marquess whispered. Iago licked her cheek fondly.

Suddenly, as quickly as a knife in the ribs, the Marquess put her arms around September and buried her face in her neck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I only wanted to stay. You had it so easy.”

September stood stiff in the Marquess’s embrace. This girl had imprisoned her friends and twisted her like a rag doll and ruled Fairyland with the very hands which now held her. But she had been so wounded, too. September had wept for her, once. And this was the shadow of that girl. Had not Saturday and Ell and the Vicereine and Halloween and just everyone told her that shadows were not exactly the same as their owners? Hadn’t Halloween done things she herself would never do? Hadn’t Saturday?

September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.

Poor September! How much easier, to be hard and bright and heartless. Instead, a very adult thing was happening in that green, new heart. For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them. You, being sharp and clever, will have noticed that I said “practice.” Forgiveness always takes practice to get right, and September was very new at it. She had none of the first sort in her. But the shadow of the Marquess wept so bitterly against her shoulder. All creatures are sometimes wretched, and in need.

Slowly, September put her arms around the Marquess. The two girls stood together in the falling snow for a long moment. The Panther watched them, purring deeply.

“Are you doing something daring and clever now?” asked Maud when they pulled apart. Shadow-tears stood unashamed on her cheeks. “You were always so clever. Like me.”

“I am going to wake up the Sleeping Prince,” September said before she could think better of it.

A strange, canny look moved across the Marquess’s face. “It’s not always nice to wake up,” she said. “It’s better to dream. You don’t remember the things you’ve done in dreams.”

“You are not like I remember you.”

The Marquess shrugged. “I’m a shadow. I do know I am a shadow, Iago. I know most of the time. It’s only when I cannot bear how everyone looks at me down here that I make myself forget it. Shadows are the other side of yourself. I had longings to be good, even then. I was just stronger than my wanting. I’m stronger than anything, really, when I want to be.” The Marquess’s hair turned white as the snow. “Do you know, we’re right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the season. Just above us, the light shines golden on daffodils full of rainwine and heartgrass and a terrible, wicked, sad girl I can’t get back to. I don’t even know if I want to. Do I want to be her again? Or do I want to be free? I come here to think about that. To be near her and consider it. I think I shall never be free. I think I traded my freedom for a better story. It was a better story, even if the ending needed work.”

The shadow of the Marquess ran her fingers along the Panther’s back-once, she would have come up with something marvelous, a plate of Fairy food or a pair of magic shoes or a bow and a quiver of arrows wound around with icy leaves. But her hand rose up with nothing. She just petted him absently. “I don’t have my magic down here,” she said mournfully. “My beautiful, muscular, brute magic. I feel it there, like I’ve got it in my pocket, but when I reach for it I find only myself. I’m just Maud. Just a tomato farmer’s daughter. The shadow of Maud, not even Maud proper. But that’s really what you ought to call me.”

“What’s in a name?” rumbled Iago. “People will call you whatever they want. New owner, new name. If it bothers you, you oughtn’t come when you’re called. They’ll learn eventually. I rarely come trotting when someone hollers for me. That’s all a name’s for, in the end.”

“You seem very much the same, Iago, though you’re Iago’s shadow and not the Panther himself,” observed September with some concern, for if Iago was the same, the Marquess might be the same, and Saturday, and Ell.

Iago yawned so wide his eyes bulged and his white teeth showed sharp. He licked his dark muzzle. “Cats don’t have dark sides. That’s all a shadow is-and though you might be prejudiced against the dark, you ought to remember that that’s where stars live, and the moon and raccoons and owls and fireflies and mushrooms and cats and enchantments and a rather lot of good, necessary things. Thieving, too, and conspiracies, sneaking, secrets, and desire so strong you might faint dead away with the punch of it. But your light side isn’t a perfectly pretty picture, either, I promise you. You couldn’t dream without the dark. You couldn’t rest. You couldn’t even meet a lover on a balcony by moonlight. And what would the world be worth without that? You need your dark side, because without it, you’re half gone. Cats, on the other hand, have a more sensible setup. We just have the one side, and it’s mostly the sneaking and sleeping side anyway. So the other Iago and I feel very companionable toward each other. Whereas I expect my drowsy mistress Above would loathe this version of herself, who is kind and quiet and lonely and rather dear, all the things the original is not. My love stands for both. This one pets me more; that one let me pounce on anything I wanted.”

“I am nice,” Maud said softly. “I can be nice, September. I can help you and pet you and give you lovely presents. I can be a faithful guide.”

“But not for nothing,” said September. She felt as if she were in a dream, repeating the words she had said so long ago. As if she were a shadow of her old self, as if being here now, speaking with the Marquess, were a shadow of every other time she had spoken with the Marquess. “Never for nothing,” she finished.

“Not for nothing. Take me with you. I am not really wicked at all. I can be so terribly kind, September. I feel very warmly toward you, and I only want to protect you, as I wish someone had protected me.” Maud shook her head again. She covered her face in her hands for a moment, and then dropped them again. “Take me with you. Where is your Wyvern? Your Marid? You need someone. I should know-a Knight always needs a companion.”

“I’m not a Knight. I’m a Bishop. Or at least I am trying to be. And traveling with you is the most slantwise, backward thing I can possibly think of, which in this place probably means it’s the right thing to do.”

Iago crouched down low so that the girls could climb up on his back. Perhaps the most astonishing thing to happen in that lonely courtyard was this: The Marquess demurred the seat of honor and let September ride in front of her. She put her arms around September’s waist and did not once reach for the Rivet Gun or slide an arrow up into her heart. September took a deep, nervous breath.

“Up till now I’ve found a door everywhere I’ve gone. But there are a hundred doors here. I wish I had Belinda Cabbage’s Barometer! But I haven’t, so I will have to choose, and hope I have chosen right. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, and just passing through a door is enough to keep following the tunnel in Avogadra’s book. Perhaps we shall go through a door and find only a pastry shop. I suppose I could use my last ration card, but the last one didn’t do me much good, and there may be a long ways to go yet. I shall try to be…practical. As you said, Maud.”

Maud said nothing. She held September a little tighter and rested her head against her back.

“That one has a sign over it, and it talks about ‘Anything Important,’ so I’ll cast my lot with it.”

Iago padded over to the sagging door frame. It had a glass revolving door set into it. A few of the panes had gotten shattered in some long ago robbery or escape. As they approached, it creaked, screeched, and began to turn.