The orange lantern glowed warmly, beaming reassurance. Golden writing looped and swooped over her face.
Take me with you.
“What? Why? Don’t you want to stay here? I’m only twelve, what am I to you?”
I’m only one hundred and twelve.
I wish to see the world. I am brave. I am strong.
They used to unpack me for festivals,
and I kept the night at bay.
When you get lost in dark places, I can show the way.
And you must admit, getting lost is likely,
and where one is lost, it is likely to be dark.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a tour guide. I’m going to rescue my friends from the Lonely Gaol, and very terrible things will almost certainly happen.”
I will not disappoint you, I promise.
My name is Gleam. Take me with you.
I held you in the dark.
I defied straw sandals to bring you sunfruit.
I am worth something.
One hundred and twelve years is worth something.
September shrugged off her jacket and dress. She looked down at her shoes, the beautiful, shining, glittering black shoes. Slowly, she took them off, one by one, and set them on the sand. September looked at them for a long time, shining blackly on the beach. Finally she picked them up and threw them as hard and as far as she could into the sea. They bobbed for a moment, then sank.
“There,” September said. “That’s better.” She smiled at the orange lantern. “Oh, Gleam, do you know? I forgot to tell the Leopard that I met her brother the Panther…”
September pushed her raft into the bouncing waves. Gleam followed quickly behind, lighting up the night like a tiny autumn moon.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LONELY GAOL
In Which September Arrives at Last at the Bottom of the World, but Is Unexpectedly Expected
A ring of blue storms dance around the Lonely Gaol. They are on social terms with one another—the storms hold cotillions in the spring and harvest dances in the fall. If one has the right wind speed and precipitation, one can attend storm weddings, storm funerals, storm christenings. It is a happy life for a storm. None think of travel, nor sailing the free ocean, nor venturing into foreign lands of any sort. They do not know why they stay, huddled up tight at the bottom of the world, only that they have always lived there. These were their parents’ and grandparents’ stomping grounds, too, all the way down to the single primordial storm that in days of old covered the whole of the continent.
But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.
The current of Fairyland circles the Lonely Gaol. It sluices in through holes in the base of the great towers and emerges on the other side, to begin once more its long journey around the horn of Fairyland. This unstoppable circulation kicks up storms the way you kick up dust when you run very fast down a dirt road. It cannot be helped. Somewhere deep down there in the roots of the Lonely Gaol lives a hoary old beast, something like a dragon, something like a fish, something like a mountain rill. She is older than the Gaol and the sluicing of the water—older, perhaps, than Fairyland. When she breathes in, she sucks up crystal from the stones of the earth. When she breathes out, she blows bubbles in the crystal, so that it swells up in great lumps and heaps. The sea splashes and cools the glass, and it grows and grows. Perhaps, she is sleeping. Perhaps, she is too big and too old to do much but breathe. But this is how the Lonely Gaol, which was not always a ga
ol at all, grew out of the sea in the first place. If you squint just so, you can see the red flares of her breath between the roaring waves, blinking on and off like a dock light.
September could see it. She did not know what it was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark. In the shrieking whirl of the storms, she clung to her copper wrench and steered toward the light. Rain slashed at her face. Her skin had long ago gone numb and half blue. Everything ached from wrestling the raft to stay on course. Gleam bobbed and floated up ahead, valiantly trying to show the way, but the storm air was so awfully dark and thick. Lightning turned the world white—when she could see again, September looked up and glimpsed huge holes tearing open in her orange dress. A whip of wind lashed out and finished the job: The dress ripped along the sleeves and shot off into the dark. The storm ate up September’s cry of despair, delighted at its mischief, as all storms are.
Gleam flashed several times up ahead, her orange paper soaked and ragged.
Look!