And fell back in again.
She felt it, she felt Fairyland push her out, away from Saturday, away from Ell, away from Aroostook, away from everything.
But the Fairy held her fast, and kept laughing, higher and louder until it became thunder, until it became a squall, and even Ciderskin quailed. The Blue Wind, her puffin vast beneath her, her shaggy blueberry-colored coat flapping in the lunar winds, flew merrily around the Yeti’s head, grinning like Christmas morning. She rested her brocade elbows on the puffin’s glossy dark head and rested her chin in her hands.
“You can cause ever so much more trouble by taking folk seriously,” she crowed, her blue eyes dancing. “And doing just as they ask.”
September was stuck fast in Fairyland, like a nail driven home.
CHAPTER XXI
THE GIRL WHO WAS GONE
Twilight made the rounds on the prairie, turning the lights on and sounding the bell for supper. The ruined fence was mended now and all well. A few strands of greyhound fur matted into the wire of the patch. The sun set over the main road, over to Mr. Albert’s farm, the Powells, September’s own small house. The night came on proper, full of familiar, happy stars. The moon, her own moon, our dear moon with its old face in it, came up in the south, full and bright as life.
In the Powell barn, the big roan groaned and sweated and pushed. A tangle of horse came tumbling free. Pure white against the red matted fur of her mother. The colt kicked wildly—and almost immediately tottered upright, her ghostly white body shining in the dim light, so bright against the red of blood and roan and barn.
The full moon rose passed the high barn windows, spilling in like milk.
But September was not there to see it. The next day’s sun will peer in on an empty bed, a woman with engine grease under her fingernails and yelling with panic in her voice like bright paint for her husband to wake up and call her sister, call her now, use Mr. Albert’s telephone and call her sister, stop asking questions—and a little dog nosing through the pillows for a girl who was gone.