“Is this all?” asked September urgently. “The only picture of Patience?”
The Tyguerrotype scrabbled at the air again. And suddenly, awfully, the eleven blurs howled. It was the selfsame bawl they had heard on the plain before Ciderskin came to batter them. It was muffled; if a sound could blur, this one did. But it sounded all the same. Several Patiences stripped away like birch bark. The Fairies’ blurs only thickened into a creamy stain that blotted out half the city. The light of them was so bright September shaded her eyes.
And then the blurs were gone. The paw was gone. Turing pulled up a Patience as crisp and clear as ever—and empty. The image settled around them, lines and shapes opening out to let them walk through. September dashed to the pavilion, but nothing remained of the paw or the Fairy girl about to bite it. A thin wind whistled through the gently growing and roughly abandoned place. Across the lawn-roads and toadstools and brambly, rooty palaces, nothing remained but rubbish, useless belongings left where they lay, as if a whole city’s pockets had been turned out onto the ground.
“That’s it?” September cried. “Where did it go?”
“We are all at the whimsy of those who observe us,” said the Tyguerrotype kindly. “We can never know what will move someone in your world to photograph something. Why was it worthy, and not this other thing? Folk choose what to observe, and what they observe, at last, becomes all there is.”
The eleven blurs bawled again, all together. Saturday shuddered. September shook her head. She opened and closed her hands.
“I don’t know what to do now,” she said helplessly. “I was so sure I was right, that the answer was here.” September put her hand on her cheek. Her skin felt hot—and somehow sour, if skin can feel sour. She pulled her hand away. Black paint smeared her palm, inky and bubbling. But it was not paint—it was her palm, dropping away into a burn of nothing. She looked at Saturday—his chest was a lightless bruise of nothingness. Ell’s tail splotched with dark holes.
Turing’s stripes wriggled in distress. “I did say. I did say it was dangerous for you. I couldn’t vouch for your safety. I was very clear! You aren’t meant to stay so long in Country—you aren’t meant to stay more than a second, half of a second, half of a half of a half of a second! I think…I think you’re overdeveloping.”
She felt something tug at her sleeve, but her mind was too busy trying to right itself, to find a new grip on the whole of it.
“What happened to the Fairies,” she whispered, “happened here. We just saw it happen—one moment here, the next gone. Abecedaria said that the Fairies came to the Moon by the thousands—it must have happened to them here. In Patience.” The tug came again. “And if it happened here, then no one could know where the paw is, because there’s no one left to know.”
September yanked her sleeve away in irritation.
And looked down into her own eyes.
CHAPTER XVII
LAST SEPTEMBER
In Which Two Septembers and Two Wyverns Reveal Two Paths Forward
September stared up at herself.
September stared down at herself.
Only it was not herself, quite. The small, flat, silver-faced September tugging at her sleeve was exactly five years old, wearing a puffy dress with lace on the skirt that she remembered very clearly had belonged to an older cousin and had a tear under the sash. It was meant to be a sunny Easter yellow. The sash had been light green. She remembered it because the edges of the tear scratched her skin when she had to sit still for a portrait with her mother and father at Christmastime. Now, the dress, all black and white like the photo that still sat on their mantle at home, had a black and white girl in it and the girl in it was looking up at her expectantly.
“Hello!” said little September.
The bigger September did not know what to say.
“Don’t we look just alike?” her younger self said. “I saw you running—you run very fast! If you don’t slow down you’ll fall!”
Ell looked at the child with delight. “Wherever did you come from?” he asked. “I see you have both shoes. Well done, you!”
Little September pointed back over her shoulder—through several gauzy layers of photos, September saw her parents as if through glass, her father’s arm around her mother, her mother’s hand outstretched to rest upon her daughter’s hair just as it did in the portrait at home in its brass frame on the mantle. She wanted to go to them, to run to them and tell them everything that had happened, to show them her silks and—and to have them see her, really see her, as she was when she was in Fairyland. Not a child in school. A Professional Revolutionary with a hammer on her hip and plans in her pocket.
“Come play with me!” the child cried. “Come away with me to my room and we’ll play robbers. I’m a very good robber.”
At this, September smiled faintly. But she did not feel at all well. Speaking with oneself causes awful headaches.
“I can’t,” she said softly. “Though I am sure you are a good robber.”
The small September made a grimacing face. “Grown-ups are the worst people I know,” she said confidentially. “And you have something on your face.” September’s hands were almost gone now, lightless lumps at the ends of her wrists. She began to feel very thin and hot all over.
The child looked at Saturday with big black eyes. “Hullo,” she said shyly. The Marid smiled at her, ear to ear and not an inch less.
“This is what it’s like,” he said excitedly. “Looking at yourself, your younger self. I’ve done it. All Marids do. It makes you dizzy at first, that’s normal, don’t worry. But what you’re feeling now is what the other Saturday felt when he looked at me, or what I feel when I come upon a tiny me running around the shoreline laughing at the werewhales.” September frowned. Saturday spread his hands. “Just look at her. Look at her,” he begged.
A great shape flickered up behind the child September. A-Through-L stared, dumbfounded. He began to rock from side to side and September knew his flame would come before it did—forking out in hot white bursts, not truly fire but flashbulbs popping away.
Little September had a Wyvern, too.
Her scales shone dark and silver in graceful patterns; her chest the color of pearl, her wings black as fireplace pokers. All along her back, great plates bristled like a stegosaurus—and that is how one knows a female Wyvern from a male. Her great silver eyes danced and her claws scratched like paper tearing. Small September giggled and put up her arms; the Wyvern nuzzled her with her broad gray nose.
“Hullo, Tem!” The other Wyvern haroomed, and nuzzled the child with her enormous long muzzle.
A-Through-L looked up at both Septembers. He was the size of a strong, lithe fox—but even the strongest and lithest of foxes is not very big. Terrible dark holes opened up in his little wings, glowing at the edges like holes in film.
“I found her in a picture that said Fantastic Lizards from Around Fairyland Gather for Annual Picnic!” recited the younger September carefully. “Her name is Errata. Isn’t that a funny name?”
“It begins with E,” whispered A-Through-L. His voice was so awfully small and high now—nothing at all like the big deep voice September so loved. She couldn’t help it—September gathered A-Through-L up in her arms and snuggled him close, as she’d done with her small and amiable dog at home when a thunderstorm came and it was feared. But her blackened, sizzling hands went right through his splotched, scorched ribs, and she had to balance him on her forearms.
“You can’t stay,” the Tyguerrotype said. “You’ll burn away to nothing.” He opened his paw, which still held the squeezebulb of his camera.
“No wait!” squeaked Ell. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had my picture taken, so there won’t be any of me in here, but there’s her and I so rarely meet other Wyverns…”
“There’s quite a few in Country,” Errata said. Her voice thrummed deep and heavy. “People do like to snap photos of themselves standing in front of us, though I’m sure I have no i
dea why.”
“But there will be one of me here, when the picture’s done taking itself?” Ell said breathlessly.
Errata’s scales blushed a darker shade of charcoal. “I’d be happy to show him the Negative Gardens,” she said. “You have a very nice flame, though you’re quite small—but I don’t judge. It’s not my way.”
“I have a curse,” Ell sighed.
“Mating season can often feel that way,” agreed Errata, her silver tail coiling and uncoiling.
“Mating season?”
“Of course! Didn’t you know?”
“I was raised by a Library,” Ell squeaked, by way of apology.
The lady-Wyvern shrugged her massive shoulders. “Fire is always within us, but when the time comes for eggs and dancing, it isn’t content to roast our hearts. It must out.”
“We must out,” begged Saturday. His face had gone indistinct, his nose and eyes and cheeks swallowed up in a cloud of inky darkness.
“Not yet!” cried Ell. His tail shriveled into darkness. “How long does it last?”
Errata flicked her thick tail back and forth. “As long as it takes to find a mate. That’s what the Annual Picnic is for, of course. Lizards are solitary sorts, by and large. Always sulking in lairs or brooding on hoards. Wyverns are quite the most social of the genus. Oh, we make our beds of bones but have you ever known one not to have radishes for company or a comfortable vertebra for lonesome travelers? No, and you never will. I met a very fine gentleman at the Picnic—bright gold with a blaze of green! He read me poetry, couplets like strong hind legs. And I knocked a tree down with my tail to impress him. But he fell asleep in the briars by the time the photograph was taken, and he isn’t here at all. But the rest of us have a nice time in Country, when those spoilsports feel they can leave their hoards to their own devices for the afternoon.”
September’s parents were getting closer. She could almost see them clearly now, moving through the layers of film like mist.
“Mom!” she cried. “Dad!” And waved her arms, which had started to sizzle away into silver fumes. Her father walked so straight. Her mother held his hand.
But little Tem was already skipping away through the photographic fields, laughing heartlessly as she burst through the blurred and motionless Yetis, beckoning the pale Wyvern behind her. September watched as her younger self leapt up into her parents’ arms, laughing as though she had never heard the words war or shift or hospital. Errata looked back and forth between the two Septembers. Her whiskers flicked and quivered—but she went with her girl, as any beast would. She waved her tail at Ell as she skipped after her Tem—and September saw her own mother, out of focus and black and white though she was, reach up to pat a Wyvern’s neck fondly. She saw her father lift her child self up onto his shoulders as he used to. Tem screamed with giggling and kissed Errata’s offered nose. Like a needle in her chest, September saw their ease, their smiles, and all of her leaned toward them, as if by wanting it she could be Tem again.
I have missed Saturday and I have missed Ell and I have missed Fairyland—but how can I miss myself? September clenched her fist against tears that longed to well up and spill out. Instead, drops of searing, mercurial fluid dripped down her face, burning her skin away as they fell.
Ell stretched his neck forward, straining after Errata in his own way, calling for her to stay even as his eyes darkened to nothingness. The little Wyverary shook his head from side to side wretchedly. He had already started to hiccup.
“Oh no, no, Ell, you must try not to! Hold your breath or try to swallow it…”
But A-Through-L’s fire burst forth in a long, glowing stream of longing and she could feel him wither up in her arms.
The Tyguerrotype closed his paw around his squeezebulb. “We can’t wait any longer. You came for Patience and you got what there was to get.”
“Wait!” cried September. Her cheek yawned inky wetness, flushing down over her chin even as she spoke. “Don’t! Couldn’t we somehow come out here, here, in Patience, the place in this photograph, and not in Azimuth? Couldn’t we punch through this very film here and now, and come out on the other side of the Moon? If you don’t take the picture, if you don’t finish taking it, we could go some other way?”
“I don’t see how,” said the Tyguerrotype.
“I do,” whispered Ell miserably. “After all, photographs are only light and light is only fire.”
“Ell, you can’t.” September clutched at him. He fit into the palm of her hand. All of him. His red snout, his whipping orange whiskers, his long scarlet tail, his broad chest the color of old peaches. Like a newborn kitten, his tail snaking over her thumb. How much smaller could he bear to get?
As A-Through-L shut his eyes, blackness swallowed up his snout.
“No,” September said, and her voice was deathly hard. She put her hand over his mouth and stopped him.
Instead, she pulled her hammer from her pocket once more. It was iron. Nothing in Fairyland could bear iron.
She turned to Saturday. His face diffused into darkness. She felt herself fading, fading, hardly able to stand.
September raised the hammer, teeth first, and brought it shredding down into the image of Patience. Slowly, sickeningly, the photographed city melted around them. The Tyguerrotype fell backward through crisping and peeling layers of Country, batting them out and scowling. A picture of a fire brigade bristling with ladders shuffled through the prints.
“Where are you going?” came a voice behind them.
September turned. Flickering and popping in silver and black stood the Marquess as she had seen her long ago, in a newsreel, her velvet and silk and flowered and jeweled hat tilting to one side.
“You wicked little thief,” she said slowly, her mouth forming the words as though she were swallowing cream.
The picture of Patience swallowed them up before September could answer.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HEART OF THE MOON
IS A MONTH
In Which Much Is Revealed
The edges of the world sizzled silver, then black, and then vanished. September’s eyes burned; suddenly everything had color again and depth, too. The Moon seemed so much brighter and harsher. Afternoon spilled out over the bowl-curve of the inside edge of the Moon, turning the pale soil to gold dust. She felt her face, her throat, her chest, her hands—all whole, all full of color. In her lap, A-Through-L sat shivering, tiny, helpless. September held him close. She did not know what to say—so she ripped a scrap of fabric from her blouse and another from the long leg of her trousers, knotting them into a necklace with a black silk basket for him to ride in. A-Through-L climbed in, his eyes round and frightened, hardly knowing his own body, coiling his tail up through the cord and gripping the rim of the pouch in his claws.
“See? I will hoist you up, when you are little,” she whispered. Ell put out his red paw. September lay her finger inside it, and his claws closed round.
Aroostook struck the edge of a rise in the land and sprayed earth before them like a splash of seawater. Saturday gripped the dash as they crashed through the moongrass and down into a long valley. His blue fingers clutched the rough loops of a vivid tangerine-colored scrimshaw that had taken over the whole of the dashboard, the sort of carving old whalers once did on the long baleen teeth of their catches. They nearly crashed before they saw the creature who had been waiting for them, looking up from a lunar sandbar with piercing, intelligent eyes.
A broad, polished, black and white checkered crab.
“Spoke!” cried September.
“That’s me,” the Taxicrab chuckled amiably.
“But you’re so far from Almanack! What are you doing out here?” September asked.
“Didn’t I tell you? Almanack takes care of all your needs before you know you have them.”
“But I’m not one of Almanack’s folk,” September protested.
The Taxicrab nodded at Saturday and little Ell in his silk pendant.
?
??They are. And you’re theirs. Family is a transitive property. Almanack wants you all safe in the shell. Even when Almanack’s given up and headed on down the road with the rest, to weather it out by some strangely named sea in Fairyland and who knows if it’ll be a kind one. Even when the shell is gone. ’Course, I knew you’d be needing an escort ages back. I’m right on time, as usual and I don’t mind saying! Follow me!”
Spoke skittered off in his madcap fashion, his ten legs scrabbling against the barren dunes of the Moon’s inner edge. Aroostook bounded down the rocky valleys after the Taxicrab. Sprays of fine pearly soil shot up around her wheels and September believed that if she could, the automobile would be whooping with joy. They wound through ashen crags and riverbeds hardened into hematite and wide, curving salt flats and finally, finally, out onto a scarred plain they had seen only in pictures.
Down below them lay a city.
Down below them lay something awful and red rising up out of the surface of the Moon. Its hump swelled into the sky like some terrible fish cresting in a sea of light. September touched the little basket around her neck where A-Through-L rode, stroking his tiny head with her thumb.
The city was Patience—it could hardly be anything else. The towers and clocks and halls and theaters had no leaves or blossoms, but the branches of them twisted into the same shapes, bare and brown and black. Dried grass flowed into streets where fresh, thick grass had done in the photographs. The awful red blister rose out of the place where a certain pedestal had once been, shattering the ground around it and buckling cobblestones and squares of ancient lawn in its rising. All around it rubbish lay in heaps and scatters, flotsam and jetsam and ruin.
Someone was moving down there. Patience was not wholly abandoned.
“Thank you, Spoke,” Saturday said. “Please give Valentine and Pentameter—and Almanack—my care.”