“No,” whispered the shadow of the Marquess. “It’s my house. There’s Father’s broken rocking chair, and his liquor cabinet still full up, and tomato soup still on the stove.”
September looked where the shadow pointed, but she did not see any rocking chair, nor any liquor cabinet, nor any pot of soup.
“But look, here’s Mother’s umbrella in the stand, and still wet! And my own books on the table. I’m sure the sunflowers I planted will be just coming up outside the window, you’ll see—”
But when September went to the window she didn’t see her baby sunflowers peeking up their little heads. She saw a yawning, endless cavern full of glittering stalactites, such a profound red that they might have been black, but for a strange torchlight that showed the bloody color within. A narrow, milky river rippled through a colossal cavern, spilling down in waterfalls where rocks had sheared off or worn away. Gnarled, leafless trees bent and groaned over its current, bearing pomegranates so big you could hardly put your arms around them if you tried.
September gasped, and ran to the kitchen window—there, there she would see her own long prairie, the one she’d stared at so often in the evenings that she knew every furry head of wheat. Where the Green Wind had come for her, and asked her if she wanted to go to Fairyland. But outside that window roared a black and shoreless sea, its waves thundering so tall that should they ever break, September had no doubt the whole world would drown. But they never did break, only rolled on forever.
September dashed upstairs to her own bedroom, where her own bed lay neatly made and her own clothes hung in the closet. Outside the window was nothing but a field of stars dropping down into nothing, no land, no moon, no sun, just stars flaming on as far as any eye could see.
“You’re both wrong,” Iago said behind her. The pair had followed her up into her room, just as hushed as air. The Marquess looked as though she might cry. She held her arms tight to her chest. “It’s my old house in Nephelo, where I was a kitten before I took up with the Red Wind and became a more cosmopolitan cat. There’s my cloud-bed with all the nice little cumulus pillows I loved, and my mist-mirror where I groomed myself to be so handsome, and I don’t know how either of you can have missed the lightning-hearth downstairs, with a nice fat cloud-roast turning over it.”
“Father will be home,” the Marquess said, and she sounded so small and afraid September could not believe this was the same girl who had ruled Fairyland with her gloved fists.
But September thought she had the puzzle licked. “If you see your own room, and I see mine, and Iago sees his, perhaps we are not really at home, any of us. There’s lizards in Africa that can change color whenever they like, to hide or to make other lizards like them better. Maybe this house is trying to get us to like it—or hiding from us what it really looks like. Maybe…maybe we’ve got here at last, and at the bottom of the world there’s a place that looks like everyone’s house all at once, because the world has got to have a house just like a person. And the house the world lives in would have to have every other house inside it! And outside…” September refused to look at the dizzying plain of stars again. “Outside all the bits of Fairyland-Below crowd in on top of it, because we’re under everything. Or maybe they’re not even Fairyland-Below, but other underworlds, like A-Through-L said. Underworlds all the way down.”
But the shadow of the Marquess was not listening to her. She looked out the bedroom door toward the stairs they’d come up, and before September had finished being very clever if she said so herself, Maud had started down the steps again. The Marquess said nothing, just went down the stairs and around the bannister and through the kitchen to the cellar door. September hurried after her, shivering with an eerie sort of familiarness. Even if she believed all the things she’d thought about the place, it was her house. She’d put up pickles with her mother in that cellar last fall. She’d left that pan soaking in the sink, and that teakettle ready for a nice pot. But it stood so empty and awfully dark, with no one inside and no sound, not even of the little dog scrabbling about looking for treats.
The Marquess put her hand on the doorknob. The radio crackled to life, and all of them jumped, startled, their hearts beating wildly. A voice crackled and popped from within.
“…missing in France after hostilities erupted outside Strasbourg. Early casualty reports are grim—”
September snapped it off. She barely heard the words, the blood in her face beat so hard and hot. No one said this was a bad place, she told herself. No one said the bottom of the world was somewhere terrible. It’s only dark, and dark’s not so frightening. Everything’s dark in Fairyland-Below. That doesn’t mean it’s wicked.
The Marquess—Maud—started down the cellar stairs. The old wood creaked loudly under her feet, and louder still under Iago’s paws as he padded after her. September wanted to just let the Marquess go. If she was going to be rude and wander off when any fool could see they ought to stick together, well, what did she expect from a girl like that? But the cellar, even back at home, with a good lantern and her mother at her side, still scared her a bit. So terribly dark and full of dust and spiders! And they were not at home, no matter how home-like it looked. And so September went down into the blackness, because she could not let another girl go alone.
This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
The cellar of the house at the bottom of the world looked like any cellar you have ever seen. Full of old, forgotten things or else things put away for a cold, needful day. Jars of pickles and bottles of liquor and jams, each neatly labeled: Idun’s Apple Butter, Bacchus’s Best Blackberry Wine, Eve’s Blue Ribbon Fig Jelly, Kali’s Red-Hot Pickled Peppers. Stacks of old newspapers moldered away, their headlines growing dark moss. A hurricane lamp resting on a great sack of Coyote’s Extra-Fine Cornmeal Flour flickered, guttered, and flared up again, showing Brobdingnagian cobwebs and crowded shelves and the Marquess and her Panther—and a large, long steamer trunk in the middle of the floor. It sat up on wooden pallets, to keep it off the earthen floor in rains and snows. Brass studs stubbled all over it; a brass lock bigger than a hog’s head kept it locked tight.
“An unopenable box on an unbreakable bier,” September said softly. It just felt right, to whisper in such a cellar. “Though it doesn’t look very unbreakable to me, I must say.”
The Marquess stared at it. “I thought I heard something,” she said. “Something rustling down here. Something…chewing. But there’s no one here. Surely, we can’t get any lower than this. It’s the bottom of the bottom of the world.”
And then September heard it, too: a strange little mumbling chewing sound in the dark. Like a mouse gnawing at something far too big for it. Iago growled deep in his throat and wiggled down on his haunches, his eyes flashing. He crept forward on his belly, sniffing at a barrel labeled Ratatosk’s High-Yield World-Tree Seeds. His whiskers twitched; his tail snapped from side to side.
“Oh, lay off it,” came a low, chuckling voice from behind the barrel. “Call off your cat and I’ll come out. Don’t you growl at me that way, young Sir. I’ll have your ears.”
Iago stood up and returned to his mistress, flowing
around her and arching his back to rub against her shoulder. When he’d settled beside her, a large tapir emerged from behind the seed-store.
September, having grown up in farm country, could not be expected to know what a tapir was. The Marquess knew, as she knew all the creatures she had once ruled, though she thought of it by its proper name. For it was not only a tapir, which would be unusual enough, but a Baku. September thought it looked like a cross between a pig and an anteater. It had a long, velvety, double-barreled snout like a miniature elephant’s trunk, bright little eyes, dark purple fur with wild red stripes down its back, and round mousy ears.
“You interrupted my supper,” it complained. “Such a lovely one, too. He was dreaming of his mother. Those are always juicy meals, with all the fixings.”
“You eat dreams?” September said, and not without some wonder.
“Naturally,” said the tapir, licking its snout. “Everyone does.”
“I don’t!”
The tapir rubbed its cheek on the steamer trunk. “’Course you do. If you didn’t sleep and dream, you’d get sick and eventually you’d die. Dreams keep the heart alive, just like your boring old suppers keep your body alive. Just because you’re ignorant of how your own self works, doesn’t mean you ought to get snooty about how I make my way.”
“I never remember my dreams,” said the shadow of the Marquess quietly.
“You must have rich, tasty ones then. When you can’t remember a dream, it’s because a Baku ate it. We leave plenty for you to keep your health up, don’t worry. We’re very careful, just like a good farmer is careful how many cows he slaughters for meat and how many he keeps for milk. But people all look like cows to a Baku, just bursting with sweet cream.”