“I’m only passing through,” September said finally. “I don’t want any trouble with you. I don’t want anything at all to do with you, really. I’ve had a very bad day, and you are just the last thing I can bother with right this second. I know you must feel poorly about how things went when we saw each other last, but you’re just going to have to keep feeling poorly.”
The Marquess stood suddenly.
“Did you come all the way here in those shoes?” she asked slowly, as if remembering something from long ago.
September looked down at her shoes. They were her plain school shoes, and she had to admit they had gotten rather shabby with all the Reveling and dancing in onion forests and tromping through mines and diving through an entire sea. Still, at least this time she had brought both shoes along.
“That must have been just awfully painful. How brave of you,” the Marquess said in the same slow voice—but it held no bitterness or cruel jokes. Rather, the Marquess’s voice seemed entirely genuine in its pity and sympathy. She shook her head to clear it. The shadow-feathers and shadow-jewels on her hat jingled and quivered.
“You said that to me before,” said September curtly.
“I did,” the Marquess agreed, but she did not seem happy about it.
“Listen, Mallow, I don’t mean to be rude, but whatever game you want to play, I don’t know the rules, and I’d really rather sit this round out.”
The Marquess’s head snapped up. Her thick sausage curls flushed lilac. “Don’t call me that,” she said, and the old power bloomed in her voice. “It’s not my name. I’m Maud. I was Maud.”
“Yes, when you lived on your father’s farm in Ontario.”
Maud started as if she’d been slapped. “I hate my father. I will never go back. You can’t make me go back.”
“I know,” said September, softening a little despite herself. At least back at home, her own mother loved her, and her father did, too, wherever he was.
“I’m sleeping,” Maud whispered, her dark shadow eyes large and worried.
“What do you mean? You’re wide awake. You oughtn’t to be, but you are.”
Iago’s shadow finally spoke, his rumbly thundering voice rolling over September like a shiver. “She means that she is sleeping, the Marquess up Above, on a bed of tourmaline in the Springtime Parish, where the plum blossoms are always falling. I’m there, too, only I’m not sleeping. Well, really I am sleeping a lot of the time. Springtime has a surplus of sunbeams, and I am only feline. But I’m not sleeping in an occupational way, whereas she has been working on a good sleep for a couple of years now, and it’ll go on a good while yet. When our shadows got Siphoned down, we woke up—I’d been napping, and don’t you dare judge me, it was four in the afternoon, and all cats know four in the afternoon is Twelfthnap, right after Teanap. The trouble is, with her Topside self in such a powerful unnatural sleep, it’s addled her a little. Sometimes she thinks she’s her old self, sometimes she remembers she’s a shadow and doesn’t have to be a Marquess anymore.”
“I’m a practical girl,” the Marquess whispered. Iago licked her cheek fondly.
Suddenly, as quickly as a knife in the ribs, the Marquess put her arms around September and buried her face in her neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I only wanted to stay. You had it so easy.”
September stood stiff in the Marquess’s embrace. This girl had imprisoned her friends and twisted her like a rag doll and ruled Fairyland with the very hands which now held her. But she had been so wounded, too. September had wept for her, once. And this was the shadow of that girl. Had not Saturday and Ell and the Vicereine and Halloween and just everyone told her that shadows were not exactly the same as their owners? Hadn’t Halloween done things she herself would never do? Hadn’t Saturday?
September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.
Poor September! How much easier, to be hard and bright and heartless. Instead, a very adult thing was happening in that green, new heart. For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them. You, being sharp and clever, will have noticed that I said “practice.” Forgiveness always takes practice to get right, and September was very new at it. She had none of the first sort in her. But the shadow of the Marquess wept so bitterly against her shoulder. All creatures are sometimes wretched, an
d in need.
Slowly, September put her arms around the Marquess. The two girls stood together in the falling snow for a long moment. The Panther watched them, purring deeply.
“Are you doing something daring and clever now?” asked Maud when they pulled apart. Shadow-tears stood unashamed on her cheeks. “You were always so clever. Like me.”
“I am going to wake up the Sleeping Prince,” September said before she could think better of it.
A strange, canny look moved across the Marquess’s face. “It’s not always nice to wake up,” she said. “It’s better to dream. You don’t remember the things you’ve done in dreams.”
“You are not like I remember you.”
The Marquess shrugged. “I’m a shadow. I do know I am a shadow, Iago. I know most of the time. It’s only when I cannot bear how everyone looks at me down here that I make myself forget it. Shadows are the other side of yourself. I had longings to be good, even then. I was just stronger than my wanting. I’m stronger than anything, really, when I want to be.” The Marquess’s hair turned white as the snow. “Do you know, we’re right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the season. Just above us, the light shines golden on daffodils full of rainwine and heartgrass and a terrible, wicked, sad girl I can’t get back to. I don’t even know if I want to. Do I want to be her again? Or do I want to be free? I come here to think about that. To be near her and consider it. I think I shall never be free. I think I traded my freedom for a better story. It was a better story, even if the ending needed work.”
The shadow of the Marquess ran her fingers along the Panther’s back—once, she would have come up with something marvelous, a plate of Fairy food or a pair of magic shoes or a bow and a quiver of arrows wound around with icy leaves. But her hand rose up with nothing. She just petted him absently. “I don’t have my magic down here,” she said mournfully. “My beautiful, muscular, brute magic. I feel it there, like I’ve got it in my pocket, but when I reach for it I find only myself. I’m just Maud. Just a tomato farmer’s daughter. The shadow of Maud, not even Maud proper. But that’s really what you ought to call me.”
“What’s in a name?” rumbled Iago. “People will call you whatever they want. New owner, new name. If it bothers you, you oughtn’t come when you’re called. They’ll learn eventually. I rarely come trotting when someone hollers for me. That’s all a name’s for, in the end.”