The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland 2)

THE REVEL

In Which September Learns a Great Deal, the Queen Engages, a Feast Is Demolished, and the Wild Revel Finally Begins, but Not Necessarily in that Order

I find it reasonable to suppose that some of you, dear readers, have been to a party or two in your young lives. Perhaps you were given a sparkly hat and a bag full of little toys. Perhaps cake was served, and ice cream, too. If you went to especially good parties, you might have played games and won prizes, or watched a fellow in funny clothes pull doves out of his sleeves or make a puppet dance or even play a song on a banjo or guitar or accordion. No doubt you had far too much to eat and drink and needed a good nap after the whole affair.

But you have never been to a Revel.

A Revel is to a party—even that very best party with the doves and the puppets and the accordion—as a tiny, gentle green lizard licking his eyeball on a hot stone is to the Queen of Dragons in full flight, wings out, breath ignited, singing the songs of her nation.

And before every Revel comes a Feast.

The central boulevard of Tain, which A-Through-L could have told them was called Fool’s Silver, erupted with long tables full of the delights of a dozen cuisines. Goblin tarts and Nuno honey in rock-crystal jars, steaming Spriggan pies of heartberry and blisspeach and pumpkin and moonkin that got bigger and smaller as you grasped for them, green and healthful Gnome soups overflowing with hexweed, passionpoppy leaves, thrallbulbs, memory-mums, and ropes of good, sweet basil and sage. Glashtyn oatcakes and hay-muffins with golden crusts, Dryad rain-stews and sunnydaise sauces, braided flame-bread for Ifrits and seastone pastries for Marids, genuine cloud-roasts and piles of grilled dunkel-fish and the Järlhoppes’ special feverblossom coffee. The Scotch-wights had been sav

ing their best Pining Peat for the occasion—and of course the Wyverns’ beloved radishes scattered here and there on the tables like drops of blood, among charm-tortes shaped just exactly like old books, brown and buttered and crackling.

September saw on the table nearest her a great orange-chiffon pumpkin soup with candied almonds, orange sauce in a moat around a castle of carrots and sweet potatoes, and a chocolate cake so rich and dense and moist it shone black and wet the crimson doily beneath it, and the pale plate. It shamed her mother’s cake and September blushed. The frosting sparkled in rosettes and ribbons. And all around the plate was written in very nice handwriting indeed: Everything Must Be Paid For, Sooner Or Later. September ran her fingers over the letters. Was it the same hand as the Duke’s tea-tag? She could not tell.

To say they ate well is to gloss over the hunger and glee with which the whole of Tain devoured their favorites and new delectables, not minding the mess they made, pitching crusts and rinds at one another, toasting everything they could think of. “Here’s to the life of a Gnome!” from one table, “Cheers for my Goblin love!” from another, “Hurrah for the health of all shadows!” from still a third. “So long as they don’t crowd my bogs!” bellowed back a teetering Scotch-wight. And from every table, every cup, “Long Live the Hollow Queen, All Hallow’s Girl!”

Mischief, too, was on the menu. The watery shadow of a Naiad touched the red clay cup belonging to the bald, golden-scaled girl next to her with the tip of her rippling finger. Blue sparks fountained out, and the wine foamed over, each bubble tipped with a tiny sapphire. The scaly maid yelped, giggled, and then drank it down in one gulp, whereupon her face vanished and blossomed into an elephant’s huge, trunked head—though still covered in golden scales, and her eyes flashed garnet flames. She trumpeted, and marigold petals flew from her trunk, becoming tiny scarlet sparrows as they fell onto the shoulders of the crowd. The sparrows sang riotously and disappeared altogether with a loud crash of unseen cymbals. The Revelers burst into applause, and the Naiad’s shadow blushed a pearly gray.

“Oh, I want to try!” cried Saturday.

“I’ve turned her into a Wyvern already,” said A-Through-L’s shadow, not without pride.

“I should have known,” said the Marid, his eyes large and sad. “You have always had the better part of the fun without me, even before. You met her first; you let her ride you—I came along too late to play, and everything went dark and awful so fast!”

“Not I,” said the Wyverary gently. “Never I myself, Saturday. I would never cut the line in front of you. And you came right quick anyhow! Don’t forget the velocipedes!” He nudged the shadowy Marid with his great head. “Go on, now! It’s a Revel! Anything is allowed!”

“Wait!” cried September. “Stop talking about me like I’m a toy you’ve got to share! I have work to do, I don’t want to be—”

But it was too late. Saturday was grinning like he knew a secret, and he had grabbed up both her hands. He kissed them—once, twice, three times. And there’s four kisses I’ve got in a day, thought September, who was not at all sure what to make of kissing and at that moment would be granted no time to consider it. Quite without warning, she felt something open up inside her like a balloon suddenly swelling up shiny and bright. She found herself floating lightly above her chair, her wine-colored coat and Goblin’s dress gone. September wore instead a delicate gown of grasshopper wings and the smallest spiderwebs, hazelnut shells, and lacy mushrooms, oak leaves and crow feathers and cornsilk, beaded with fireflies and raindrops. Her feet hung bare above her plush seat, and she felt two long, satiny wings beat slowly at her back, as natural as lifting her arms.

September was a Fairy.

September laughed at the same moment that tears came to her eyes—everyone was staring at her, their jaws slack, their gaze uncertain, as though they, too, did not know whether to laugh or cry. How long since any of them down here had seen a Fairy? But tears did not come—instead, she wept black pearls that shivered into luna moths as they fell, their long wings brushing the heads of every Reveling shadow and leaving licorice blossoms in their hair. September’s laughter rippled and echoed, spooling out into a bolt of sunshine-colored silk that flapped its seams like wings and spun around twice before winking out in a little swirl of light.

“It was so nice of you to dress up for my party, September,” came a sweet, throaty voice behind her, and suddenly the crowd did know what to do. They burst into hollering and ululating, into a long, loud cheer, thumping the table and toasting all over again. September tilted her wings and brought herself around, trying as best she could to neither blush nor look foolish, though she feared she could not avoid the latter. She did her best. Flared her wings wide and shook free her midnight hair. The fireflies on her dress helpfully blazed. Bluebells twined through her bare toes.

Halloween, the Hollow Queen, stared up at her. September stared back. Neither moved first as the Revelers went wild around them.

The shadow was September. A shadow-September still wearing the shadow of her old orange dress and worse—the shadow of her beloved green smoking jacket. She wore the shadow of one sweet little mary jane. The Queen’s face was just the same as her own, though shaded with azure and lavender and perhaps a little more canny, a little more used to getting her way. When September had watched her shadow go into the water with the Glashtyn, it had been flat and dark and featureless, but now it had weight, shape, dimension. Halloween was a person. Her gaze sparkled with mischief and a secretive glee. On her familiar head rested a wispy crown of autumn mist, and within that misty ring rode a small autumn moon like a crown jewel.

September did not feel shy or cowed. She could not—that was her wearing that crown, her own self, left behind and gone quite fey, but her self all the same. It was not like looking at the Marquess in her finery. She felt quite able to speak, and even a little impatient with herself. Had she really been so frightened? This was her own face in a mirror! Herself from a year past, still with only one shoe. No, she was not afraid. But she was not confident either. If only Saturday hadn’t turned her into a Fairy! She felt ridiculous. The other Saturday would never have done it, not without her permission.

“Hullo, shadow,” said September, and she tried a tiny, hesitant smile.

“Hullo, girl,” said Halloween, and smiled identically.

There was nothing for it but to try. September extended her hand, covered with faintly glowing Fairy tattoos. “Come home with me. Don’t you want to go home?”

The Hollow Queen laughed. She laughed so long and high and loud that her laughter began to echo around the towers of Tain and come back to her doubled and tripled. The scaly-girl’s elephant head shrunk back down, and the shadows all got very quiet. As Halloween laughed, everyone’s glasses filled up again, even those drained dry.

“Why would I ever want to go home?” September’s shadow sneered in her own voice. “Haven’t you noticed that home is terrible and boring and nothing ever happens there? Come on, September! Tell me you didn’t spend all year just waiting to come back to Fairyland, pining away and reading up on centaurs and looking out your window for our Green friend?” Halloween spread her shadowy hands. “Tell me you spent your days just basking in the wonderfulness of Nebraska and appreciating its simple joys, having just as many lovely adventures as you would have had here, happy as a clam not to be in a place where magic is real and everyone knows your name! Look me in the eye and tell me it’s true, and I’ll come back with you right now. I’ll tag along like a good little doggy!”

September’s heart flooded with shame, and Saturday’s magic chose just then to shrivel up. Her wings wrinkled away. Her heavy wine-colored coat and the hidden dress beneath came rushing back around her with an indignant snap, the rough leather brushing her ankles. She landed on her chair and stepped down from it hurriedly. She and Halloween were, naturally, the same height precisely. The shadow of the green smoking jacket reached out a curious sash to the red coat and stroked its sleeve hopefully. The wine-colored coat allowed its own sash to flow out, just a little, to meet it, and the two girls watched their clothes greet each other.

“I can’t say that,” September admitted.