September stared openmouthed as they slowly inched nearer to the gangplank. She tugged at the tip of A-Through-L’s wing.
“It’s a Fairy,” she whispered.
“Of course, it is, girl! What did I just say?”
“No, not a ferry, a Fairy.”
The toll man was ancient and hunched, his gray hair caught up in several wild pigtails around two barnacled goat horns. He had rheumy eyes and glasses as thick as beer-mug bottoms and three gold hoops in one ear. He wore a thick Navy peacoat with brass buttons and sailcloth trousers—and two iridescent wings jutted out of the back of his tailored coat, rimmed in gold, glittering as the sunlight made spinning violet prisms inside them. They were bound with a delicate iron chain, thin but enough to keep them flat and useless against the old ferryman’s back.
“Fare,” he growled as their turn came.
The Wyverary cleared his prodigious throat. September started. “Oh!” she cried. “I suppose I’m the one with the purse strings.” She pulled her sceptre from the links in Ell’s chain. I knew I might need such a thing! September felt quite pleased with herself for displaying such excellent foresight. With the end of one of Ell’s claws, she chipped two rubies from the bulb of the sceptre and held them out proudly.
“’E’s too big,” sniffed the ferryman. “Have to pay double for Excessive Baggage.”
“I am not baggage,” gasped the Wyverary.
“Dunno. She keeps her shiny whatnot on ya. Might be Baggage. Sure, and you’re Excessive. Double fare, anyhow.”
“It’s fine!” hushed September, and chipped a third gleaming red stone from the sceptre. All three glittered on her palm like pricks of blood. “Easy come, easy go. I certainly shan’t be going without you!”
“On with it,” gruffed the ferryman, waggling his caterpillary eyebrows and scooping up the gems.
The Wyverary gave one giant leap and settled gracefully on the top level of the great black ferry. September walked with her head straight, up the plank and around the spiral staircase to join him. Perhaps it was Lye’s bath, but she felt quite bold and intrepid and, having paid her own way, quite grown-up. This inevitably leads to disastrous decisions, but September could not know that, not then when the sun was so very bright and the river so blue. Let us allow her these new, strange pleasures.
No?
Very well, but I have tried to be a generous narrator and care for my girl as best I can. I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
Chaise longues in blue and gold dotted the sunny deck of the ferry. Lithe blue women and great pale trolls lay out, bathing in the light. A-Through-L snorted happily along with the creaking and groaning sounds of the ferry uncoupling from the pier.
“Isn’t it lovely to be on our way,” he said, sighing, “to be near the City? The great City, where everyone has some hope of becoming marvelous!”
September did not answer. A shadow fell over her as she thought of how often she had heard older girls in her school bathrooms talk about how they would go one day to a place called Los Angeles and be stars, be beautiful and rich, marry the men from the movies. A few said they might chuck California and go to New York, where they would also be beautiful and rich, but instead of movie stars, they would be dancers and photographers’ models and marry great writers. September had been dubious. She had not wanted to go to either city. They seemed awful and huge and too crammed with marriageable men. She did not want to think that Pandemonium could be like that. She did not want Fairyland to be full of older girls who wanted to be stars.
“Look sharp, girl,” grumbled the ferryman, who had come up to take his place at the pole. He did not take it up, however, and yet the ferry sailed smoothly through the water. He just leaned against it and squinted at the distant City. “Small’ns who daydream are like to fall off, and you’dn’t want that.”
“I can swim,” said September with mild indignation, recalling her adventure in the ocean.
“Sure, and you can. But the Glashtyn have run of the Barleybroom, and they swim better.”
September wanted to ask about the Glashtyn, but her mouth ran away from her.
“Are you a Fairy, Sir?”
The ferryman gave her a withering look.
“Well, I mean, I think you are one, but I’d rather ask. I wouldn’t like someone to assume I’m something I’m not! And what I mean to say is, if you are a Fairy, then could you tell me what a Fairy is, taxonomically speaking, and why you’re the only one I’ve seen?” September was glad for her pronunciation of taxonomically, which she had had as a spelling word not terribly far back.
“Scientifick’ly speaking, a Fairy—what I am—is not much different’n a human. Your lot evolved from monkeys. We evolved … well, it’s not talked on in polite circles, but there never was a polite circle with a human in it. Fairies started out as frogs. Amphibianderous, right? Well, being frogs was no kind of fun, so we went about and stole better bits—wings from dragonflies and faces from people and hearts from birds and horns from various goats and antelope-ish things and souls from ifrits and tails from cows—and we evolved over a million million minutes, just like you.”
“I … I don’t think that’s how evolution works…,” said September softly.
“Oh? Your name Charlie Darwin all sudden-true?”
“No, it’s just—”
“It’s Survival of Them Who’s Best at Nicking Things, girl!”
“I mean to say, humans didn’t evolve like that—”
“That’s your trouble, then. Don’t you go striping my facts with your daft babbling. I say, let them as wants to evolve do it and soak the rest. As for why we’re not exactly thick on the ground, that’s none of yours, and I’ll thank you not to pry into family business.” The ferryman fished a corncob pipe out of his pocket and snapped his fingers. Smoke began to trail out of the basket, smelling mostly like a wet cornfield. “’Course, if you want to keep evolving your own self, I’d advise you get stowing away down below.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not supposed to say. Whole point is your’n don’t know what day the tithe comes calling.” The ferryman winked, his eyes twinkling with a sudden dim glee, rather more like September expected from a Fairy. “Now, look there,” he said with a grin. “I’ve gone and spilt it.”
September might well have run, but she could not abandon her scaley red friend and, despite being quite able to use the word taxonomically in a sentence, was somewhat fuzzy on the meaning of tithe. Thus it was that September was caught with her mouth hanging open when the ferry ground splashily to a halt in the middle of the roaring river.
“Told you, but ears like a cow you’ve got,” sighed the ferryman, and stuck his pole to meet the six tall men climbing six ropes, pirate-like, over the top of the deck.
Each of the men stood naked but for silver gauntlets and greaves and had black regal horse’s heads where their human heads ought to have been. The leader, a big brass ring in his silky nose as if he were a bull, called out in a deep echoing voice, “Charlie Crunchcrab, the Glashtyn come to claim our tithe by Law and Right of Fair Trade!”
“I hear ya, old nag,” grumbled the ferryman. “Not so dense as all that. Got the summons this morning and everything. Needn’t be so formal.”
The Fairy folk gathered on the top deck and quailed and clung together in silent terror. They stared fixedly at the floor, trying desperately not to look the horse-men in the eye. September looked across the throng at Ell, who shook his great head and tried to hunker down and become, improbably, invisible.
“Bring the children up!” bellowed one of the horse-men.
Rough hands grabbed September’s arms and dragged her, along with dozens of other small ones, to stand before the Glashtyn, whose eyes flashed blue-and-green fire. September looked down and saw the little Pooka girl beside her, trembling, her jackal-ears appearing and disappearing nervously. Septem
ber took the child’s hand and squeezed it comfortingly.
“Not me,” the girl whispered. “Please let it not be me.”
The Glashtyn walked down the line, staring each of the children in the eye. The leader glared hard at September, and yanked her chin upward to check her teeth. But finally, he passed her by. The horse heads conferred.
“That one!” cried the leader, and a ripple of relief passed through the crowd. For a moment, September’s breath stopped, sure he was pointing directly at her.
But it was not her.
The little Pooka girl screamed in utter, animal terror. She shivered into a jackal and clambered around September’s legs, clawed up her back and onto her shoulders, wrapping her tail around her throat.
“No! No!” the Pooka wept, shrieking and clinging to September.
“What’s happening?” September choked, stumbling under the weight of the panicked jackal-girl.
“She’s the tithe—and nothing to be done,” said the ferryman Charlie Crunchcrab. “Might as well be grown-up and dignified about it. The ferry pulls on through Glashtyn territory. They have a right to their fare, too. No one knows what day it will come, or who they will choose, but, well, you all have to get to the City, one way or any way, is true?”
“No! Not me! I don’t want to go! Mama, please! Where’s my mama?”
But September could see her mother, near one of the chaises, a long black jackal with golden ears, lying on her side, paws over her face in grief.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard!” The girl clung to September.
“That’s evolution, love. Take as taking can.”
“What are they going to do to her?”
“None of your business,” snapped the Glashtyn leader.
The Pooka wailed, “They’ll eat me! And drown me! And lash me to the ferry and make me pull it back and forth under the river!”
“It’s good enough for us,” growled one of the other Glashtyn. September saw for the first time that each of them clutched reins and ugly, cruel bits in their fists.
“Please, please, please,” sobbed the child. She shivered back and forth from girl to jackal to girl with alarming speed, the whites of her eyes showing. September reached up to pet her and pried her slowly loose, the claws from her hair, the tail from her throat. She cradled the jackal pup awkwardly, for she was not a very little creature. Her snout flashed into a mouth and back into a muzzle as she wept.
“Isn’t there anything else you could take?” September said wretchedly. “Does it have to be a child?”
“There must be blood,” answered the Glashtyn quietly. “Do you offer yourself as replacement? That is certainly traditional.”
To her credit, September considered this for a moment. She was a strong swimmer and would likely not drown, and they hadn’t said, exactly, that they meant to eat anyone. Being only Somewhat Heartless, she could not cradle a trembling child in her arms and not feel sorry for it and want to keep it from being tossed overboard. But she did not want to be a tithe, and she did not want to die, even a little bit, and she did not even want to brush shoulders with the smallest chance of it.
“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. Isn’t there anything else? I have rubies.…”
The horse-man snorted. “Dead rocks.”
“I have a jacket and a shoe.”
They stared at her.
“Well, I haven’t anything else! But I can’t let you have her—she’s just a kid, poor thing! How can you frighten her like this?”
The Glashtyn’s stare bored into her. The blue fire in his eyes was calculating.
“You have a voice,” he said slowly, “and a shadow. Choose one, and I will take it instead of the skin-shrugger.”
You might think that is no kind of choice. But September was suspicious. No bargain in Fairyland could be that easy. And yet—she could not lose her voice, she could not! How would she talk to Ell? How would she sing? How would she explain to her mother where she had gone? And she could not let the girl, whose arms were clutched even now around her neck, go down into the dark river. Even if they did not drown her and eat her, the girl didn’t want to go, and September could get very cross about that sort of thing.
“My shadow,” she said. “Take it. Though it hasn’t any blood, you know.”
She set the Pooka down. And the child bolted to her mother, shivering fully into a pup midway across the ferry deck. The two jackals licked each other’s faces and whined. The Glashtyn held out his hand to Charlie Crunchcrab. The Fairy unbuckled an ugly, rusted, serrated knife from his belt and passed it over.
September had time to think, Oh, this will hurt, before the Glashtyn seized her, spun her around, and sawed the knife back and forth along her spine. She felt cold and faint. The knife made noises like shredding silk and grinding bone. She thought she might topple over, the pain was so terrible, running up and down her back. Still, she refused to cry. Finally, there was a sickening crack, and the Glashtyn pulled away with a scrap of something in his hand. A single drop of September’s blood dripped from the knife to the bleached wood of the deck.
The Glashtyn set the scrap of something down before him. It pooled darkly, shining a little, and then stood up in the shape of a girl just September’s height, with just September’s eyes and hair, all of black smoke and shadow. Slowly, the shadow-September smiled and pirouetted on one foot. It was not a gentle smile or a kind one. The shadow extended her hand to the Glashtyn, who took it, smiling himself.
“We shall take her below and love her and put her at the head of our parades,” he said. “For she was not taken but given—and thus our only true possession.”
The shadow curtsied. To September, the curtsy seemed somewhat vicious, if a curtsy could be vicious. September was unsure that she had done the right thing now—surely, she would miss her shadow, and surely, the Glashtyn meant to make mischief with it of some sort or another. But it was too late: The Glashtyn leapt overboard as one, with the shadow-September riding on the leader’s shoulders. The Fairy throng stared at her, amazed. No one would speak to her. A-through-L finally strode across the deck to gather her up. He smelled so good and familiar, and his skin was so warm. She hugged his knee.
“Did I do the right thing, Charlie?” September asked the ferryman softly.
He shook his mad gray head. “Right or blight, done is dusted.”
September looked across the water at the gleaming City rising up, all towers and shine. Then she looked down into the Barleybroom.
Six dark horse heads glided through the water at the head of the ferry, bits clamped in their teeth. Over their backs, a shadow girl leapt and danced, her ghostly laughter all but eaten up by the waves.
INTERLUDE
THE KEY AND ITS TRAVELS
In Which We Turn Our Attention to a Long-Forgotten and Much-Suffering Jeweled Key
Being careful and clever readers, you must now wonder if your woolgathering narrator has completely forgotten the jeweled key that so loyally followed September into Fairyland. Not so! But a key’s adventuring is of necessity a quieter thing than a girl’s, more single-minded and also more fraught with loneliness.
For the Key slipped between Latitude and Longitude and tumbled briefly—oh so briefly!—through the starry dark behind the screen of the world. It landed unceremoniously on the shimmering jacket of a hobgoblin in transit from Brocéliande to Atlantis. The Key blended into the other glittery bits of folly that bedecked the jacket and went unquestioned by Betsy Basilstalk or Rupert the Gargoyle.
Good-naturedly illiterate, the Key had no wish to visit the blue-crystal universities of Atlantis and unhooked its clasp just in time to tumble through the rooty, moldy, wormy passage to Fairyland. It caught an updraft of sea air and soared over the fleecy clouds, playing tag with the blue-necked gillybirds.
It passed over the witches and narrowly avoided a sucking vortex of the events of next week that threatened to pull it down into the cauldron.
It flew over the f
ield full of little red flowers, but no Wyverary—or even a Wyvern—appeared to accompany it or explain how anything worked or was in the days before today.
The Key, too, found the House Without Warning, long after a nicely scrubbed September had passed through. Under Lye’s gentle eye, the Key primly dropped into a tiny tub and soaked until it gleamed.
The Key missed the ferry September rode into Pandemonium and was forced to sleep on the grassy shore, where it was picked up by a delighted banshee child. The girl squealed piercingly and pinned the Key to her little green-gold breast. Her mother admonished her not to pick up strange treasures that surely were not hers, but no one can listen to a banshee shriek in indignation for long without giving in. So it was that the Key boarded the ferry and passed into Pandemonium, three days after September had left the city behind.
The Key cursed its slowness. It wept an orange tear, slightly rusted.
The Key remembered being part of a green smoking jacket. It remembered wanting to please. It remembered, a little, being born out of a lapel, the sudden rush of air over facets and gold. It recalled with sorrow being torn from its mother, the jacket, and the taste of a young girl’s blood under its needle. It shuddered at the memory of her blood, at night.
What the Key knew was that it was connected to September, that the purpose of its whole being was to be with her, just to rest near her skin. The Key had been created to make her smile. It could not stop wanting to make her smile, any more than you can stop walking on two legs or start breathing with your liver instead of your lungs. What if September needed the Key? What if the world became dark and frightening and it was not there to comfort her? The Key knew it must fly faster.
It was only that the girl kept running, so far and so fast, almost as if she didn’t know that the Key was trying as hard as it could to keep up.
CHAPTER VII
FAIRY REELS
In Which September Enters Pandemonium at Last and Is Discovered by the Marquess While A-Through-L Enjoys a Lemon Ice