September stroked a huge head nestled against her. Even in the dark, she knew it was spotted. She could feel whiskers prickling her arms.
“How would you like to come away with me, September?” said a familiar voice. The scent of green things filled the well: mint and grass and rosemary and fresh water, frogs and leaves and hay. September threw up her arms in the dark, knowing they would settle on broad shoulders. Her tears wet the cheek of the Green Wind, and he chuckled in her embrace.
“Oh, my little rolling hazelnut, where have you lost yourself?”
“Green! Green! You came! It was all going so well, and then the Marquess said she’d turn Ell to glue and I stole her Marid and we rode bicycles and I tried so hard to be brave, and irascible, and ill-tempered, but then they were gone, all of them, and I had to build a raft and I cut my hair off and my shadow’s gone and I think my leg’s broken, and I’m so scared! And I got a wrench! But I don’t know what I’m meant to do with it and in the stories none of the heroes ever broke their legs and it’s all on account of my shoes somehow, but that means the Marquess must have known, all along, that I’d come here, and I just want to go home.”
“Really? That’s all? I can take you home just now,” murmured the Green Wind. “If that’s all you want. Nothing but a blink, and we’re in Omaha, no harm done, all well and ending well. There, there. No need of crying.”
September’s leg burned, and her arms felt so heavy. “No, but … my friends … they’re locked away and they need me…”
“Well, it’s all a dream, no worries about that. I’m sure it’ll all work itself out. Dreams have a way of doing that.”
“Is it a dream?”
“I don’t know, what do you think? It certainly seems like a dream. I mean, talking Leopards! My stars.”
September squeezed her fists in the dark.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not. Or if it is, I don’t care. They need me.”
“Good girl,” chuffed the Green Wind. “When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game and would like to start another.”
“Yes, please, I would like to start another.”
“That’s not a magic I have, love. You’re in this story. You must get out on your own if you are to get out at all.”
“But how does this story end?”
The Green Wind shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems familiar to me so far. A child whisked off to a foreign land beset by a wicked ruler, sent to find a sword…”
“Am I to save Fairyland, then? Did you choose me to do that? Am I a chosen one, like all those heroes whose legs were never broken?”
The Green Wind stroked her hair. She could not see his face, but she knew it was grave.
“Of course not. No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a Leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back and to make friends with a Wyvern. You chose to trade your shadow for a child’s life. You chose not to let the Marquess hurt your friend—you chose to smash her cages! You chose to face your own death, not to balk at a great sea to cross and no ship to cross it in. And twice now, you have chosen not to go home when you might have, if only you abandoned your friends. You are not the chosen one, September. Fairyland did not choose you—you chose yourself. You could have had a lovely holiday in Fairyland and never met the Marquess, never worried yourself with local politics, had a romp with a few brownies and gone home with enough memories for a lifetime’s worth of novels. But you didn’t. You chose. You chose it all. Just like you chose your path on the beach: to lose your heart is not a path for the faint and fainting.”
“I cannot just choose to get out of a well, though.”
The Green Wind laughed. “No, no, you can’t. But, September, my sparrow, my pigeon … I am still not allowed in Fairyland.”
“But you’re here!”
“Technically speaking, I am below Fairyland. It’s these little loopholes that make cheating so pleasurable. I mean to say, I can push you up—oh, any Wind can with half a mind. But I can’t go with you. I can’t help you anymore. Until the great doors swing open, I cannot enter.”
The Green Wind bent his head and blew gently upon September’s mangled leg. September grimaced—it was rather a horrid feeling, being forcibly healed all at once, bones shoving together, muscles righting themselves. She groaned as the Leopard of Little Breezes lifted her head and licked roughly at the wounds on her arms until they vanished.
But still, September clung to the Green Wind, her safety, her protector. “I had to kill a fish,” she whispered finally, as though confessing a great sin.
“I forgive you,” the Green Wind said softly, and dissolved in her arms with one great final purr from the Leopard. In his place, a whirlwind spun and spat, catching September up and pushing her into the air, up and out of the well.
It was night, and the stars were going about their shimmering business in the sky. The Tsukumogami slept in their warm field. The last of the Green Wind dissipated in a rustle of dry grass.
“Good-bye,” said September quietly. “I wish you could stay.”
September crept along the field as silently as she could. The Spoon-mast of her little ship bobbed into view, and she nearly whooped for joy, but caught herself in time—for the orange lantern floated expectantly next to the raft, her green tassel hanging still.
“Please don’t cry out,” whispered September. “You brought me food; I know you don’t think I’m wicked. Don’t give me away, please!”