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

“Surely, we can think of some other way.”

Halloween hung back.

“Surely we are clever enough, the two of us,” September whispered. “There are two of us, after all.”

And the shadow-girl, with her need and her love and her terrible Want all held before her, flowed into September’s arms. They held each other. After a while, Saturday and Ell touched the girls’ shoulders, and hugged them, too, Ell’s tail snaking around them. At last, Aubergine nestled down beside them. September was completely covered in shadows.

She smiled in the dark.

The door of the throne room burst open. A creature came screaming into the room, greenish-silver, looking like a printing press with claws and teeth. It galloped around the room, startling the shadows apart. A woman stormed in after it, cursing and scolding.

It was Belinda Cabbage.

“Blasted thing! Slow down!” the Fairy hollered.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Halloween, adjusting her crown and wiping her eyes.

“The Sameness Engine bolted off in the night, horrid beast. It’s caught the scent of a Use and there’s no stopping it. Heel, Engine!” The Sameness Engine whined and bonked into a dark wall. “I don’t suppose you need the marauding old fool for something?”

The Sameness Engine whirled around and charged toward September. It clacked its claws at her and its moveable types spun. It bounded once, twice, and with a stroke had sliced off a hank of her hair in its teeth. It clicked and crunched and thrummed.

A moment later, a green, misty shadow spooled out of the face of the Sameness Engine, falling gently at September’s feet. A wisp touched her heel and a tiny warm crackling spark went up inside her, a fire beginning like the one she had never gotten to make in the glass forest. The fire flowed into her, a small ember of wildness and of boldness, of beastliness and magic. The hard, strange voice inside her twisted up together with the dark flowers blooming in her heart, and September at last knew what to do.

CHAPTER XXI

ALL AT ONCE

In Which September Sees the Sun Again,

Along with a Great Many Other Things

September climbed into the basket of the Alleyman’s truck. She held the hand of her father’s shadow, who looked unsure and faraway still—and faint, his knees buckling from time to time. The basket rose and rose.

Halloween flew up beside her. Behind her came shadow upon shadow upon shadow, hundreds and thousands of them, a long black train. They spiraled around the basket, up, up, up. They passed the crystal moon. A bold I glowed darkly there.

“What if you’re wrong?” said Halloween.

September smiled, and such wild, giddy hope was in that smile that Halloween smiled, too.

“What goes down must come up,” she said, and squeezed her shadow tight.

When the basket reached the ceiling of the world, September put her hand up to the earthen sky. It was warm. She could feel the sunlight on the other side. There was nothing for it—this was no time to worry about making a mess. September clawed at the earth, digging up and out, roots and worms and clay and dust spilling out over her head. She held her breath, stretching for the sun she knew was there. Every so often, she reached down to pull her father’s shadow up behind her, only to find Halloween helping him, pushing him upward and onward.

The work hurt her. Her fingernails ripped, and her arms ached. But on she dug, on and on. One finger broke up into the light, into a long field of green and waving grass, dotted with puffy nimbleflowers. Then a second. Then one arm, and the other. But September could not pull herself up, quite. She was so tired. She had been in the dark for so long.

It so happened that two stout crows with unusual names were flying over a bright field just then, on their way back from a most satisfying day by the sea. They saw something flash in the grass and darted toward it, for anything that flashes seems wonderful to a crow. A girl’s arms! With a brooch on one shoulder that sparkled like a star! The two crows clapped hold of her hands with their talons and tugged. They did not know what had gone wrong to get this poor child caught in the earth like that, but they’d get her out—they were strong, after all. Strong enough to leap into another world and feed themselves mightily there.

“Come on, girl!” Wit cawed.

“Just a little further now!” cawed Study.

And September came loose, her legs scrambling out, kicking dirt free, her skin streaked with mud, the Watchful Dress torn. Her hair lost its black and colored stripes as quickly as soap washing out, her curls fading into their own familiar chocolatey brown once more. The crows lifted her up into the air for a moment, but their strength was not quite up to Fairy standards yet. They set her down more or less gently and winged off to pursue their own corvid adventures.

“Good-bye, girl!” cawed Study.

“Be more careful next time!” cawed Wit.

Out of the hole in the earth, a fountain of shadows flowed up and into the sunlit air, where September stood blinking in the blaze of it all. All the shadows of Fairyland, fluttering darkly and singing and laughing, singing so loud that the folk they belonged to could not help but hear. They sang and sang, a song of beckoning, of like calling to like, of family calling their loved ones home.