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

“Yes.” September did not know what else to say. She realized all at once that she was alone—A-Through-L and Saturday and Aubergine had not made it through with her. Her skin prickled with cold.

“Are you a ruby? Or a tourmaline?” The kangaroo did not seem hopeful.

“Certainly not,” September said, and peeled herself up off the floor, brushing pebbles and torn bits of paper from her skirt. She pulled the wine-colored coat close around her, shivering a little. She felt safer with its thick sash tied tight.

“Well, if it’s work you want, I’m sure we could find you an ax and a shovel and a pan. But this is my seam, see, and you…well, you can’t have it. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s only that I’ve forgotten my mother, and peridot—that’s the pretty green spangly stuff you’re, er, sitting on—is frightfully good for motherly memories.”

“However could you forget your mother?” September asked.

The kangaroo adjusted the brown straps of his harness. His gold-pan reflected the pale green-yellow seam flowing fiery around them. “I’m a Järlhopp,” he said proudly. “We’re born without memories. They say all babies are innocent, but no one holds a candle to a wee Järlhopp. If not for my Clutch, I wouldn’t even remember my own name. Which is Gneiss, if you wondered.” Gneiss lifted up the pendant of his long necklace. Dozens of hundred candy-colored stones clung together in a spiky, glittering globe.

September smiled shyly. “But I know about Järlhoppes!” she said. “Mr. Map told me that they keep their memories on a chain around their necks. One called Leef taught him to make maps when they were in prison together. It seems so long ago now!”

“I don’t know a Leef, but that’s no shock. I might have known her, and forgotten all about it, if I didn’t have a bit of seam nearby to remember her for me.” Gneiss nodded his azure head toward the wall. “That’s a seam, there. A thick thread of peridot running through the black earth. It’s what keeps the world together, you know. That’s why they’re called seams. Stitches in stone, hemming up the underside of everything. Without them, everything would just fall apart. But down here, in the deep, the jewels are more than the pretty baubles you find near the surface. They’re memories—the memories of the earth, hardened and polished by centuries of brooding and dreaming and worrying. A Järlhopp’s memories are so small next to the memory of all the whole earth! Ours fill up only the tiniest cracks and flaws in the crystal. See, this here’s full of earthy memories of continental drift and megafauna—but the flaw there? That’s the first boomer who broke my heart, Märl.” The Järlhopp pointed to a sharp dark-red shard in his Clutch. It had a creamy pale flaw in its center. “He ran off with a centaur and threw away the girasol stone that meant me and all his family in the mines, our mushroom and sorrowgrass suppers on stone tables, under stone lanterns. So he’d never even think to come back, see. If you said my name to him he wouldn’t even know the G was silent. But I remember how to say his name. If I press his shard to my heart I can live it again as often as I like. But you have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy.”

“But what if someone took your necklace? It’s so fragile!”

“I don’t mind telling you we have to be careful—our Being-Careful stone is one of the first we get, a nice fat pearl. But mining is hard work, and sometimes the Clutch gets knocked about, like mine did when I forgot my mother. I know I forgot her because I have a topaz for my father and a bloodstone each for my brothers, and they all know I had a mother, so I must have. Now I’m after a good knuckle of peridot so I can recognize her again.”

“Gneiss, did anyone else come in before me? From the wall, I mean. One would look like a great black dragon, and one like a boy with black skin and blue swirls all over him, and one is a very quiet Dodo.”

Gneiss smiled, which looked very odd indeed on a kangaroo. “Little ruby, if I didn’t cut out a knob of onyx for Remembering Strangers, I wouldn’t know it to tell you if the Queen herself came parading through. You have to dig new stones for new memories, and that right quick. I try to only do it for the best ones—the times that please me the most or hurt me the most.”

September had been holding on to all three of them when she tripped into the Monaciello’s book, she was sure of it. Perhaps they were only late. They’d be along, wouldn’t they? She leaned into the rough stone wall, trying to listen for the footsteps of a Wyverary.

“I do wish that I could hold on to my memories like that,” September sighed into the flaming green seam. “I forget things all the time. But if I had a Clutch and I remembered to be careful, I’d never forget anything! I’d be able to look just once at my lessons and remember everything perfectly. When I’m lonesome, I’d just press it to my heart and live my mother singing me to sleep over again!”

Gneiss shrugged. “Well, there’s a good shallow vein of sunstone just down the way. I can smell the Topside on you—sunstone would be best for a young thing with not too many years to wedge in. And who knows? Maybe your friends fell out of a different bit of cavern! You never know. Let’s have a look on both accounts.”

September bit her lip and considered whether it was better to wait and hope they came kicking and hollering out of the wall as she had, or search for them deeper in the mine. The hard strange voice woke up inside her again, urging her to keep going, not to stop. This time she listened to it and ran skipping alongside the Järlhopp through the dark kaleidoscope of the mine, trying to keep up with his powerful hops. Other Järlhoppes waved as they went by, and the seams ran through the earth like fine colorful handwriting, but no Marid leapt out to kiss her, no gentle Dodo appeared next to her as if out of nowhere.

Finally they came to a gnarled, thick knot of deep orange stone with coppery sparks leaping hot and bright inside it. Gneiss looked down at her, shining his pearly miner’s lantern in her eyes.

“Halloo!” the blue kangaroo exclaimed. “Who are you? Are you a ruby or a tourmaline?”

“No, I’m September! You brought me here to find my friends and make me a Clutch!”

Gneiss looked dubious. “Was it a very long time ago that we set off? Have we had adventures on a wild rocky ocean? Have we fought alabaster octopi together, or crossed axes with the emerald ogre?”

“No! It was only few moments ago! We’ve not come half a mile!”

“Ah, my apologies, little ruby. I’ve only a little space after a thing happens to snatch up a gem for it and add it to the Clutch. If I forgot to do it, well, I’ve quite forgotten that I forgot to do it, not to mention forgetting the thing I should have remembered not to forget!”

September could not help herself. “Is there really an emerald ogre somewhere?”

“Oh, yes! Her name is Mathilda. She lives up in the north section of the mine and makes a lovely spinach stew. She’s a fierce thing for manners, though! If your please is out of place, she’ll thump you one. I was making you a Clutch? Well, let’s have at it. You’ve got to get your ore yourself, though. No good if I do it.” Gneiss handed over his pickaxe—it was heavy, but not so heavy September could not lift it. Gneiss waggled his huge tail experimentally.

“Be ready with the ax when I swing!”

Gneiss swung. His cerulean tail whacked hard into the cavern wall and a shower of dark rock and shimmering gemstone came bursting down on them both. September swung

her axe, breaking up the big pieces into smaller ones, and smaller still, until she’d uncovered a rough fist of sunstone of just the size to wear. Gneiss reached into his pouch and came up with a chain. He bit a hole in the jewel with an enormous sharp tooth and strung it onto the chain and around September’s neck.

“Now, that’ll hold only everything that’s happened to you till now. I’ll stick on a nice chunk of heliotrope to keep you going for the next few days. But if you want to remember more, you’ll have to get more seam for it, mind me?”

September nodded, trying to imagine where she’d get jewels back home. They didn’t make ration cards for diamonds. Gneiss licked an oblong scrap of green jewel with golden streaks and shoved it through the center of the sunstone. It pierced the gem as if it were a marshmallow and stuck solidly there.

“September!” cried a voice further down the mine shaft.