The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

CHAPTER XIX
TIME IS THE ONLY MAGIC

In Which One Becomes Two, Two Become One, a Half Truth Becomes a Whole, Everything Is Transitive, and Everyone Was Mistaken

The red dome in the great pavilion of Patience began to move.

It twisted, slowly, straining. It swelled, and shrunk, and swelled again. It made strange, soft noises as it stretched toward the empty sky. Under the skin of it, shadows blossomed.

“It’s nearly time,” growled the black dog. And as soon as he did, they were no longer five but six. A tall man with blue skin and black tattoos clouded into being-clouded, because he came in a thundercloud as gray and dark as summer storms, and when the cloud had cleared he stood there, wet and bright and strong. And holding a pair of shears made all of bone, long and white and sharp. He looked at September for a long moment, and not less long at Saturday, his younger self, whose eyes were filling with gray and cloudy tears.

“Why?” the younger Saturday whispered. But the older did not answer.

September watched the tall Marid as though from somewhere very far away. She knew she ought to holler at him-he would listen to her, probably. Her own Saturday did, usually. But once again she felt a terrible paralyzing stillness flow over her. This Saturday was the future. Didn’t that mean it had all already happened? Didn’t that mean there was nothing to be done? How could she argue with all the Saturdays ahead? She had smashed her fate with a hammer-didn’t that mean something?

The elder Saturday moved swift and sure. Ciderskin moved his fingers in the pearly soil, and once again the stars wheeled as though on a racetrack, dashing after some poor, hopeless rabbit. The sun rose and set in flashes like photographs, faster and faster. Time spasmed and dragged them with it. And in the flashbulb dawns, September saw Saturday open the shears and slice into the Moon itself. He cut in long lines away from the horrible red boil, using all his weight to lever the handles up and down. The black dog capered behind him, biting the edges of his cuts and peeling them back.

The red blister began to rise.

A final, profound, spine-severing quake shivered up under them. It seemed to begin in the back of their minds-and bloom forward, crumbling and convulsing. September fell to the ground, catching herself at the last moment so as not to crush Ell beneath her. Saturday caught her up, put her on her feet. But then he dashed off, trying to catch his future self, vanishing into his own stormclouds and out again after him.

Out of the wounds made by the Bone Shears, the black blood of the Moon seeped up like deep oil. It shimmered, hot gold and crimson and violet patterns over the dark of it. And still the red dome rose up out of the wreckage of the Moon.

September screamed, clutching Ell’s basket. She tried to crawl to Aroostook-but she no longer recognized the Model A at all. She seemed to have turned wholly to stained glass and striped, wild pelts, no longer a car but a creature, her sunflower wheel glinting within, her ebony and mushroom lever, her scrimshaw dash. Only the Aroostook Potato Company burlap sack still flapped over her spare wheel-no longer a wheel but a long feline tail coiled around itself. The Model A’s horn sounded, and it was no longer a squwonk or an ah-ooga but a voice, a thin and thready voice like a trumpeter blowing with his mouth only half fixed to his instrument. A voice saying that other word an alive thing must learn, that other word as necessary to living as taking in fuel and making of it movement, music, leaves, roots, dimetrodon spikes, dancing, libraries, children:

Yes! Yes! Yes!

The curving, swirling, swollen red dome burst free of the Moon. It tore away with a sound like a thousand bones shattering-and floated up into the dark, the dark flashing into day and out again as the sped-up world stuttered forward. The red dome drifted free like a great balloon.

But it was not a dome, nor an orb, nor a blister, nor a boil.

It was a crescent.

A tiny version of the great pale Moon, dark red and new, wafting up and up and up. A long, pulsing rope of stone, shimmering quartz and opal, connected it to the bubbling sea of Moon-blood below. The scarlet crescent seemed to twist and tug but could not get free of the rope, the thick braid connecting the little Moon to its mother.

September had seen dogs get born, and sheep and cows as well. She could not mistake what was happening for any other thing.

The Moon was having a baby.

The Black Cosmic Dog gave a great leap, arching in the air like a perfectly fired arrow. He caught the marbled rope as he passed it and caught it with one savage snap of his powerful jaw. The little Moon rocked onto its side, the points of its ruby horns tillting upward, making the shape of a smile, or a cradle. But the cord did not break. The dog fell back with a yelp.

“I am not a villain,” said Ciderskin when the quaking had stilled. He watched the red Moon kick and gambol at the night, learning to turn and phase as fast as a just-born deer. Already it had grown bigger. Perhaps two people together could fit on its surface now and make a house there. “I am a midwife,” he finished. “I told you, the Moon is alive. No different than your mother. It takes a long time for a Moon to come to term. Longer than many quick lives down below. And who will help a planet in her birthing bed but a nurse who can hold time in the palm of his hand? All I have done has been for this little one, to bring her out of her mother safely. The Moon quaked-but I did not shake her. She was in her labor.”

“But Abecedaria said-”

“I should have paused in my duties to explain to a wig that I needed the Sapphire Stethoscope to listen to the heart of the new Moon? It was good that they left! She needed her privacy. The Moon couldn’t worry that her contractions would hurt her folk, terrify them, even shake them off into the black! I couldn’t do my work with the Moon crowded full. I’d be no better than a Fairy, kicking time forward so that the little one can get big fast enough so that the first comet by doesn’t kill her. So I let them look at me and say what they pleased. Call me a monster, call me a menace. Call me a villain. It doesn’t pain me. I’ve been to Pluto. I learned my lesson.”

“What others call you, you become,” said September worriedly. “So you are a monster. A villain.”

The Yeti stared at her. “That’s just the first part. What others call you, you become. It’s a terrible magic that everyone can do-so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become. I’ll have to have a word with the Undercamel, he’s clearly gotten lazy.”

September’s breath caught. Her heart flooded with words, with callings: Knight, Bishop, irascible, ill-tempered, wicked little thief, Criminal, Revolutionary, child, autumnal acquisition, small fey, jaded little tart-and more, worse, whispered names behind brick school buildings, in the backs of classrooms, in the halls. Each one of them like a spell cast on her. What would she call herself? September reached inside for a new word, for her own word. She found nothing. She just didn’t know.

But A-Through-L had listened, too. He peered out of his little silk basket at the infant Moon, pulling at her cord pitifully. He, too, looked into his many-chambered lizard-heart for something to become. He saw the Black Cosmic Dog worrying his muzzle, his teeth broken where the cord that bound the Moon to her child had rebuffed him. And he looked down into the Moon, the great cracks that the Shears opened in her. The red crescent had stopped growing. It twisted and writhed in whatever pain a Moon feels, bruises forming where the long tether vanished within it.

Ell said nothing. If he said anything at all September would stop him. The Wyverary flapped his tiny wings and darted away from September. Even if he ended up no bigger than a dragonfly, well, at least the little Moon would live and grow up and people would make a home on it and build cities and libraries and circuses and make it feel Necessary. He would not let a whole Moon go wondering why no Papa came to help it, as he had once done when he was small and did not understand that his father was the Library all around him.

Ell took a deep breath. He let the violet flame build within him, caretaking it, stoking it, holding it till he was close to the cord and ready. Till he chose to let it free and use it as he wished. The ropy, glistening stone that connected the two Moons hung much bigger and thicker than he. But he would try. The Wyverary opened his small scarlet mouth and bellowed out a long, glorious, rich stream of fire, steady and controlled and hotter than any he’d made before. It seared into the cord, broiling and scorching it. Ell did not know how long he could keep it up. He steeled himself and roared louder. The flame bubbled and flared and sang-and the cord snapped. The red Moon floated free, rolling up into the shape of a smile, sidling through the sky.

Ell gasped, empty and exhausted.

And very, very big.

The Wyverary swelled up like the red moon itself, the size flowing back into his body, his neck, his wings, his claws, his dear, sweet eyes, his great nostrils, his snapping, waving, splendid orange whiskers. He was already harooming with joy when he felt his basket burst, and the haroom grew with him until they were both their old size once more. A-Through-L roared with glee-and no fire came. He felt the curse snap in him like a bone.

“Fire begins with F and Child begins with C and I begin with A!” he called from his height, but they could not hear him. “I seized my fire and it didn’t seize me and I am myself again and that starts with B and that is Big! And look! Mating season ends when the hatchlings break their shells and just look at that pretty red kid with her horns on straight!”

The Wyverary landed next to September, towering over her as he loved to do. “Family is a transitive property,” he laughed, and his laugh rolled rich and full from his enormous throat.

September stared up at her friend’s laugh and his height and his joy. She reached up and he put his warm, huge cheek into her little hand, just as Errata and Tem had done. September’s heart eased, just the tiniest bit. Just enough to let the rest happen.

For Saturday had returned.

Both of them.

The older Saturday put down the Bone Shears, blackened with Moon-blood. He looked very stern indeed. Very much like a Grown-up. Terrifying and huge and full of an impossible and unimaginable future. September raised her hand in the smallest possible hello. The younger Saturday clouded up before the other version of his life. He stared up at himself, his eyes hard and unreadable.

“Tell me,” he said. “You can tell me. If she’ll ever look at me again without seeing you.”

Saturday sighed, a sigh both weary and amused. “I am sorry. I am. I know I was frightening. But I was here when I was you, and I was frightened, so I had to be here when you were you. And because the Moon is our mother, too. The Mother of all the seas in Fairyland, our great-grandmother. We should always be happy when cousins arrive. We should always help. But I can’t help you, because I didn’t help me when I was you.”

“Does that mean nothing can change?” asked September. “If what you said is true then it’s all a circle and I’m stuck in it. And I’ll have a daughter with Saturday because I already had one that I haven’t had yet and the verbs are very difficult but they seem to add up to the future is a fist and it won’t let me go even if I put a hammer through it.”

“September,” the younger Saturday said. He lifted her chin so that he could see her eyes, see her hear him. “Listen to me. Listen. You can’t ignore me because you’re afraid of who I’ll be or who you’ll be or who we’ll be together or of something silly like predestination, which is only another way of saying you have certain appointments that must be kept. But appointments are nothing! You’re always late because you had such a lovely lunch or got lost down some sunny alley. And I have never thought it so awful to live knowing your future and your past, having them so familiar you set a place for them at dinner and give them gifts on holidays. It’s your present you’ve always got to be introduced to, over and over. I like being a Marid and that is what it means. You make me feel as though it is wicked, but it isn’t. Yes, he is here because he was always here-but the farther out you go, the less calm anything is. An ocean, September, you have to think of an ocean. The depth of it, and the waves. Storms spin up in the open sea, wrecks and pirates and doldrums and they come out of nowhere and go back to nowhere when they’ve done. There’s Saturdays out there like schools of fish, thousands and thousands, flashing and swarming, each leaping and turning and diving alone-but all together they look like one shape and that shape is me. A school of wishes and decisions and comings and goings and circuses and cages and shadows and kisses and we get where we’re going but none of us can see the whole shape at once. But you can’t be afraid of that, you can’t, because you’re just like me.”

September blinked. “I am not!”

“No, September, don’t you see?” Saturday smiled and it was like a blue flower opening. “You move through Fairyland backwards, forwards, and upside down. You come and go, vanish and appear. You miss years that go by for us, and we miss years that go by for you. We never know when we will find you again, or if we will! You meet us out of order, and sometimes we’re the same age and sometimes I’ll be older and sometimes you will because that’s the kind of story we’re in. It’s all jumbled up on the outside, but it all makes sense in your head. It all flows the right way in your heart.” Saturday grasped her hands. “And you saw her, you saw our daughter standing on the Gears of the World. You saw yourself, in the Country of Photography, wanting to play robbers. Just like a Marid sees. You are like me, you are like me, we are the same, and you have to understand.”

September saw the red book shattering in her mind, over and over, like a thousand photographs. She thought of her father disappearing and coming back older, more hurt, and how once he was back it seemed like he’d only been gone a minute-except there was the older version of him on the couch with the plaid blanket, the more hurt version. How when she came home from Fairyland, never more than an hour had passed in Nebraska. How Saturday was not a fish but a boy, a boy who could fly through the air like a long blue arrow, a boy who practiced so carefully that when he finally did a thing, it was perfect.

Ciderskin spoke up suddenly, as though he had all along been discussing fate with them. I forgot a Yeti, September thought. I was listening so hard I forgot a Yeti.

“Time is the only magic,” he said. “And Marids swim through time like the sea. Think: If you hurt yourself, and I bandage it, and after weeks and weeks it gets well and there’s no scar, that’s not magic at all. But if you hurt yourself and I touch you and it heals in a moment, you’d call me magic before your skin closed. It’s not magic to cook a feast, roasting and baking and frying for hours and hours, but if you blink and it’s steaming in front of you, it’s a spell. If you work for what you want and save for it and plan it out just as precisely as you possibly can, it’s not even surprising if you get it on the other side of a month or a year. But if you snap your fingers and it happens as soon as you want it, every wizard will want to know you socially. If you live straight through a hundred years and watch yourself unfold at one second per second, one hour per hour, that’s just being alive. If you go faster, you’re a time traveler. If you jump over your unfolding and see how it all comes out, that’s fate. But it’s all healing and cooking and planning and living, just the same. The only difference is time.”

September turned this over in her head. “But the trouble is, I do want to be surprised. I want to choose. I broke the heart of my fate so that I could choose. I never chose; I only saw a little girl who looked like me standing on a gear at the end of the world and laughing, and that’s not choosing, not really. Wouldn’t you rather I chose you? Wouldn’t you rather I picked our future out of all the others anyone could have?”

“I chose you,” he said simply. “All the fish of me turned toward you at once.”

September felt panic burn through her like gasoline. Why couldn’t he understand her? “But I didn’t! I have hardly had a chance to breathe since I got here and it’s always like that in Fairyland. Everything is always happening and all at once. And I am growing up, Saturday! I am growing up and I have read books, so many books, and I know that growing up means you can’t keep going to Fairyland the way you did when you were a child! Something happens to you and suddenly you have to keep a straight face and a straight line and I am afraid! I want something grand and I don’t want to know what it is before it happens!”

“There are grown-ups in Fairyland,” Saturday said. “Who told you you couldn’t come back when you’re grown? Was it the same person who told you grown-ups don’t cry or blush or clap their hands when they’re happy? Don’t try to say otherwise, I’ve seen you fighting like a boxer to change your face so that it never shows anything. Whoever told you that’s what growing up means is a villain, as true as a mustache. I am growing up, too, and look at me! I cry and I blush and I live in Fairyland always!”

And he was blushing, bright frost on his cheeks. She who blushes first loses, September thought. She put her hand on his cheek, the place where the Blue Wind had slapped her once. But what does she lose? What contest is on that I never even knew about before the Blue Wind said I’d lost?

September tried to pull on her sternness. It was becoming a habit. She could show her sternness and think about this another time, when it was quiet and no new red Moon turned somersaults in the sky. But when she reached for her sternness, all September found in her heart was the bar of a trapeze, swinging wild, inviting her to catch it.

The older Saturday fixed his dark eyes on her. They had kind little wrinkles at their edges, where smiles had gotten stuck and never left.

“It’s a terrible magic that everyone can do,” he said. “So do it. Breathe. Choose. Something, anything, whatever you want. Or don’t choose. Or choose and if you don’t like it later, it’ll be all right because when you were very young, you took a hammer and smashed your fate into a hundred pieces.”

September did not even look at the Saturday with kind wrinkles. She looked at her Saturday. The present she had to meet over and over. He was right. She lived out of order and upside down, a jumble of time and girl. He was right. September blushed. She blushed and she let herself blush. There was no losing in it, only feeling. Fairyland, she thought. Fairyland is what I have where a ship has ballast. In high seas it keeps me upright. And maybe growing up only means getting bigger. As big as Almanack, as a whelk on the moon who can hold a world inside it. September’s heart sat up inside her and spoke.

She leaned up and kissed her Marid and hoped it was the right thing. Her heart caught the bar and swung out, swung wild, over the lights and the gasps below, reaching for a pair of sure blue hands in the air and willing them to find hers.

When they separated, the older Saturday put his long blue arms around the child of himself. He beckoned to September and she went to him. He smelled of cold stones and the sea. It was a good smell. “Listen to me,” the older Saturday interrupted. His voice was Saturday’s voice, but deeper and roomier, with space inside to curl up in.

But he did not get to finish.

I have been many things in our time together. Sly and secret and full of tricks, cruel and heartless in my own way. But for now I shall be kind. Saturday, the Saturday who has seen how it all comes out, wanted to tell himself a thing, and September, too. You and I, as we get on in years together, will many times wish to take our past selves in our arms and stroke their hair and tell them how the world is, how it is made, what can be done about it. Saturday could not be allowed to do it, any more than we can, and that is why I caused the Moon to shudder just so. I do have some small privileges.

But I will tell you what he meant to say, because we are friends and the space before an epilogue is a sacred place, soft and full of possibilities.

Saturday wanted to say: Listen to me. Love is a Yeti. It is bigger than you and frightening and terrible. It makes loud and vicious noises. It is hungry all the time. It has horns and teeth and the fore of its fists is more than anyone can bear. It speeds up time and slows it down. And it has its own aims and missions that those who are lucky enough to see it cannot begin to guess. You might see a Yeti once in your life or never. You might live in a village of them. But in the end, no matter how fast you think you can go, the Yeti is always faster than you, and you can only choose how you say hello to it, and whether you shake its hand.