She opened her eyes—and she had eyes! She had skin! She could even shiver! September lay on a makeshift stretcher, a piece of piebald hide stretched between long poles. Her hands—and she had hands!—were folded neatly over her chest, and her hair flowed over her shoulders and down to the sash of the exultant green smoking jacket, dark brown and familiar and dry and clean. She was well again, and whole.

And alone. It all came rushing back to her, the sleeping blue lions, Saturday and A-Through-L, all of it. And the dream, too, still clinging to her like old clothes.

Mary, Mary, Morning Bell.

In a panic, she reached for her sword—and felt the copper wrench safely beside her on the piebald hide. The Spoon still rested snugly in her sash. Saturday’s favor was gone, though, lost to the woods. September sat up, her head heavy and sick. A wood spread out around her, long past autumn, the trees black and stark, snow glittering on everything, softening every edge to exquisite, perfect white. The green smoking jacket busily puffed up to keep out the gently blowing snow.

“You see? You’re quite well again. I promised you would be.” Citrinitas sat a little ways away, as though afraid to come too near. The little spriggan clutched her three-fingered hands together miserably. She scratched her long yellow nose and pulled up a long yellow hood over her head. She snapped her fingers and a little golden fire burned before her, floating above the snow. Citrinitas sheepishly fished a marshmallow out of her pocket and speared it on her thumbnail to roast.

“Where are my friends?” September demanded, happy to find she had her voice back, strong and loud, echoing in the empy wood.

“I didn’t have to bring you out, you know. I could have left you there and it would have been a good bit less trouble than dragging you out across the Winter Treaty. So close to Spring! It doesn’t sit right with the stomach. Rubedo didn’t even want to come. And he so longs to travel! Doctor Fallow is a bit of a coward, he hid when the lions came. Eventually we’ll find him, though. I think he’s angry with you—you might have at least matriculated before turning all…tree-ish. And now I’ve missed our wedding, thank you very much.“

“You’ll have another tomorrow! And anyway if it’s so much bother, why didn’t you just grow and cover the distance in three steps?”

“Well,” Citrinitas blushed deep ochre. “I did. But that’s not the point. The point is gratitude, and how you ought to have it.”

September gritted her teeth. She liked the feeling of it—of having teeth. “Where are my friends?” she repeated icily.

“Oh, how should I know? We were only told to feed you up and send you into the woods, no one tells us anything unless it’s ‘Mix up Life-in-a-Flask for me, Citrinitas!’ ‘Bake me a Cake-of-Youth, Trinny!’ ‘Grade these papers!’ ‘Watch that beaker!’ ‘A monograph on the nature of goblins’ riddles, Ci-ci!’ I swear to you, I am finished with post-doctoral work!”

The golden spriggan struck her bony knee with her fist. As she spoke her voice got higher and higher until it squeaked like a tea-kettle.

“Anyway it’s no use interrogating me. I don’t know. But I’ve brought you to the snow and the snow is the beginning and the end of everything, everyone knows that. I’ve brought you to the snow and the Ministry, and the clerk will…well, mainly he’ll say: Ffitthit at you, but I expect they’re in the Lonely Gaol, you know, since that’s where the lions take people, usually, and that’s far, oh so awfully far, and it won’t do you any good any way. Parole was outlawed years ago. And the Gaol is guarded by the Very Unpleasant Man and you’re just a little girl.”

September’s face burned. She got up and marched over to Citrinitas and crouched next to her. And maybe Lye’s bath, oh so terribly long ago now, really had given her a red, frothy draught of courage, because otherwise she could not imagine where she might have found the gall to hiss at the miserable spriggan:

“I am not just a little girl.” September straightened up, scowling at the spriggan. “I can get bigger, just like you. Only…it just takes me a little longer.” She turned on her heel, seized her copper wrench, and began to walk over the crystal snow drifts to a little hut nestled between two great yew trees, which could only be the Ministry, or at least, she hoped it was the Ministry, because otherwise she would suddenly look very foolish. She did not look back.

“I’m sorry!” cried Citrinitas after her. “I am! Alchemy really is lovely…once you get past the alchemists…”

September ignored her, and walked up the hill, the snow swallowing up the spriggan’s voice.

September breathed relief. The Marquess’s lovely black shoes had gotten soaked with snowmelt. A pleasant sign, freshly painted black and red, rose up out of a snow drift:

The Marvelous Ministry of Mr. Map (Yuletide Division)

The hut was covered in white furs and bits of holly, but the bits were rather haphazard, as if someone meant to be festive but got bored and gave up instead. The door was a sturdy thing with a compass rose stamped rudely into the wood. September knocked politely.

“Fftthit!” came the answer from within. It was an odd sound, like someone spitting and coughing and growling and asking after one’s relations all at once.

“Excuse me! Citrinitas sent me! Please let me in, Sir Map!”

The door cracked.

“It’s mister, kitten. MISTER. Do you see an Order of the Green Kirtle on my chest? Eh? A Crystal Cross? It’d be news to me. Call me by my proper name, good grief and all gallows!”

An old man peered down at her, the bags under his eyes wrinkled like old paper, his hair and long, corkscrewed mustache not even white, but the color of old, stained parchment. His skin was lined and brown, and his neatly brushed hair curled in a stately fashion, tied up in a black ribbon like the old portraits of Presidents in September’s schoolbooks. He had a pleasant, jolly belly and broad cheeks—and fat, furry wolf’s ears with a great deal of grey fur in them. He wore a bright blue suit with the cuffs rolled up over impressive forearms, so bright it startled in the midst of the white wood. His forearms were covered in sailors’ tattoos. For a moment, the two of them just stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak first.

“You suit…its lovely…” murmured September, suddenly shy.

Mr. Map shrugged. “Well,” he said, as though it were perfectly logical. “World’s mostly water. Why pretend it’s not?”

September leaned in close, rather closer than is courteous. She saw that his suit was a map, with little lines and bits of writing on it. The buttons of his blazer were green islands, and his cufflinks, and his belt buckle was an enormous, sparkling gem, the biggest island of all. September recognized the shape. She had seen it, oh, so briefly, as she fell from the customs office in the sky. That’s Fairyland, she thought.

Mr. Map left the doorway and went back to his work. September followed. A great easel dominated the little room, on which Mr. Map had been busy painting a sea serpent in a wild ocean bordering a small island chain. Maps covered and cluttered every surface of the hut, topographical maps, geological maps, submarine maps, population density maps, artistic maps and scribbled-over wartime maps. The maps left room for only a single chair, an easel, and a table groaning with paints and pens. September shut the door gently behind her. It latched, and somewhere deep in the wood, a lock spun.

“Excuse me, Mr. Map, but the lady alchemist said you’d know where to find my friends?”

“Now why would I know that?” Mr. Map licked his pen—his tongue was all black with ink, and the pen’s bristles filled up with it. He returned to his map. “Seems to me a friend knows best where friends are.”

“They…were taken. By two lions, the Marquess’s lions. She said their strength came from sleeping, but I didn’t understand…I guess I understand now.”

“Do you know where I learned my Art?” Mr. Map said nonchalantly, sipping a hot brandy which seemed to materialize in his hand. September could swear she had not seen him pick up a snifter from his side-table. “Fftthiiit!” sighed Mr. Map slowly, smacking his lips. “I promise, I waste nothing in asking. Like a ship, I always come round again to where I started.”

“No, Mister. I don’t know.”

“In prison, my kit, my cub! Where one learns anything worth knowing. In prison there is nothing but time, time, time. Time goes on just positively forever. You could master Wrackglummer, or learn Sanskrit, or memorize every poem ever written about ravens (there are exactly seven thousand ninety four at current count, but a no-talent rat down in the city keeps spoiling my count) and still you’d have so much time on your hands you’d be bored sleepless.”

“Why were you in prison?”

Mr. Map sipped his brandy again. He shut his eyes and shook his glossy curls. He offered it to September, who, having given up all pretense of carefulness, took a big gulp. It tasted like burnt walnuts and hot sugar and she coughed.

“That’s what happens to the old guard, my pup. You can always count on it. We who serve, we who make the world run. When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can’t make it run the other way again.”

Mr. Map opened his eyes. He smiled sadly. “Which is to say I once stood at the side of Queen Mallow, and loved her.”

“You were a soldier?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I stood at her side.” Mr. Map blushed. It looked like ink spreading under his skin. His wolfy ears flicked back and forth in embarrassment. “You’re young, little fawn, but surely you catch my meaning. Once, you might have called me Sir and no one would have corrected you.”

“Oh!” breathed September.

“Fftthit!” spat Mr. Map. “All done now, and gone, gone to old songs and older wine. History. She’s just another in a list of Queens to be memorized, now.”

“My friend the Wyverar—the Wyvern said some people think she’s still alive, down in the cellars, or wherever the Marquess keeps folk…”

Mr. Map glanced at her, and his eyes drooped sadly. He tried a smile, but it did not quite work out.

“I met a lady in prison,” he went on, as though September hadn’t spoken. “A Järlhopp. They keep their memories in a necklace, and wear it always and forever. Since her memory is so safe, she never forgets anything she’s seen, and the Järlhopp—her name was Leef, and how furry and sleek were her long ears!—Leef taught me to copy out my own memory onto parchment, to paint a perfect path…a path back to the things I loved, the things I knew when I was young. That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home, someday, somehow. Leef kept hers in that jewel at her throat, I kept mine on paper, endless paper, endless time, until the Marquess had need of me, until she sent me away to the wilds of the Winter Treaty, where nothing happens, where I cannot possibly cause trouble, where no one lives. And where there are no kind Järlhoppes to comfort me, or folk who might need maps to find their way.”

September looked at her feet. At the elegant, glittering shoes. The brandy warmed her all over. “I…I need to find my way,” she said.

“I know, little colt. And I’m telling you your way. The way to the bottom of the world, to the Lonely Gaol where the lions take all the souls the Marquess hates.” Mr. Map leaned forward, licked his pen until it was full of ink, and wedged a jeweler’s glass into his eye so that he could brush in tiny details of the little island map. “You see, September, Fairyland is an island, and the sea that borders it only flows one way. It has always been so, and must always be. The sea cannot be changed in its course. If the Gaol were but offshore from us here in this land, you could not get there by sailing straight. The current does not move that way. You can only reach it by circumnavigating Fairyland entire, and that is not a small task.”

“You know my name.”

“I know quite a number of things, you’ll find.”

“But surely there is some place from which it is a short distance! If one could only get on the right side of it.”

“Surely. But I will not take you there.”

“Whyever not?”

Mr. Map looked grieved again.

“Fftthit,” he said softly. “We all have our masters.”

September clenched her fists. She could not bear to think of her friends in a wet, dreary prison. “It’s not fair! I could have gotten her this wretched thing in seven days! She didn’t even give me a chance!”

“September, my calf, my chick, seven days were never seven. They were three, or eight, or one, or whatever she wished them to be. If she wants you at the Lonely Gaol, she has a reason, and you could never have gone anywhere else. And I suspect,” he looked at the copper wrench, twisting his mustache in one great hand, “that she has devised some work for you to do there, with your fell blade. Hello, old friend,” he greeted it, “how strange for us to meet again, like this, with the snow blowing so outside.”

“You know my…my wrench?”

“Of course I know it. It was not a wrench when we were last acquainted, but one’s friends may change clothes and still one knows them.”

“Why does she need me to go all the way to her horrid old Gaol? I had the sword! The lions could have taken it and left us alone!”

“September, these things have their rhythms, their ways. Once the sword is taken up, none but the hand that won it can brandish it true. She cannot touch the sword, not for all the power in both her hands. But you can. And both your hands called it forth, gave it shape, gave it life.”

“I’m really very tired, Mr. Map. Ever so much more tired than I thought I could be.”

Mr. Map signed his parchment with a flourish.

“Fftthit, sweet kitten. So it always goes.”

September turned to go. Her feet felt heavy. She turned the knob of the great door and listened to the lock whirr in the wood. When she opened it, no winter wood glittered outside, but a long shore and a bright sea. Gillybirds cried over head, wrestling over bits of fish. The tide flowed out foamily from a silver beach, the very opposite from the one she had arrived on. Here the sand was all manner of silver coins and crowns and sceptres and bars, filigreed diadems and long necklaces set with pearls and chandeliers glittering with glass. The violet-green sea—The Perverse and Perilous Sea, she reminded herself—beat huge waves against the strand.

“What is a map,” said Mr. Map, “but a thing that gets you where you’re going?”

“The sword,” September whispered, her eyes all full of the sea. “Who had it before me?”

“I think you know. My Lady Mallow kept it.”

“And what was it, when she had it?”

Mr. Map cocked his head to one side. He drank off the last of his hot brandy.

“A needle,” he said softly.

September stepped out of the hut and onto the silver beach.

September could see the current Mr. Map meant. It flowed just offshore, a deeper violet amidst the violet waves, fast and cold and deep. She could see it—but she was still only September, and she could not swim all the way around Fairyland. The empty beach stretched far and long, and nowhere hulked a broken ship or raft for her to climb aboard. She had come so far, and for lack of a boat her friends suffered in who knew what dark place. And Saturday, especially, had such a horror of being closed up and trapped. And Ell! Sweet, enormous Ell! At least Gaol begins with G—or J, she was not exactly sure. What awful cell could they devise to contain her beast?

She could not leave them there to wait for the Marquess to get angry enough to deal with them. She did not think they would get cozy government posts in the winter wilds. She would simply have to think, and think quickly.

September began to walk through the jeweled, silver beach, searching desperately for real wood, something that might float. But, she thought suddenly, it was all wood, once, on the other beach! Wood and flowers and chestnuts and acorns! It’s not really silver or gold at all! The wairwulf said it was Fairy gold! Like in stories, when you wake up after selling your soul for a chest of pearls and it’s all full of mud and sticks! September scrabbled in the flotsam and drew up a huge silver rod tipped in sapphire, something like her old long-spent sceptre, if it had been made of a giant’s hand. She tugged it down to the shoreline and tossed it onto the waves experimentally.

It floated, bobbing happily in the surf.

September yelped in victory and set about hauling several of the log-sized sceptres together and lining them up, side by side. By the time she had finished, the sun was very high, and she was all sweat from scalp to sole. But how shall I ever lash it together? She despaired. There was no silver rope or filigree wire to be had on all the beach. The distant dune grasses were short and sharp and furry, and would never do. Oh, but I’ve just had it back, September thought. Surely I could use something else. As if to answer her, September’s hand fell upon the handles of a pair of silver scissors.

Well. If that’s the way of it, that’s the way of it.

She held out the length of her hair, heavy and thick and not red at all, not falling away bit by bit. She did not want to sniffle—what was a little hair? And yet, as the scissors sliced smoothly through her hair, she cried a little. Just a tear or two, rolling slowly down her cheek. Somehow, she had thought it would hurt, even though that was silly. She wiped her face clean. September braided her hair into many thin, strong ropes, and knotted the sceptres together into a very serviceable raft. She wedged the witch’s Spoon into the center of it as a makeshift mast.

“Now, I really am terribly sorry, Smoking Jacket. You’ve been a loyal friend to me, but I’m afraid you’ll get quite wet, and I must ask you to excuse my using you so.” September sadly secured the mast with the long green sash, and stuffed the jacket into a gap where seawater might come in. The jacket did not mind. It had been wet before. And it liked very much being asked pardon.

Finally, it was all finished. September was quite proud of herself, and we may be proud of her too, for certainly I have never made a boat so quickly, and I daresay only one or two of you have pulled the trick. All she lacked was a sail. September thought for a good while, considering what Lye, the soap-golem, had said: even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin. And foxes and bears have skin too, so I shan’t be ashamed if they’re not.

“Well, I shan’t be! My dress; my sail!” cried September aloud, and wriggled out of her orange dress. She tied the sleeves to the top of the mast and the tips of the skirt to the bottom. The wind puffed it out obligingly. She took off the Marquess’s dreadful shoes and wedged them between the sceptres. There she stood, her newly-shorn hair flying in every direction, naked and fierce, with the tide coming in. She shoved the raft out to sea and leapt on, nearly tipping the thing over, clutching her wrench and using it as a rudder to steer her way. She would not have known to call it a rudder, really, but she needed something to push on and direct herself, and the wrench was all she had left. The wind caught her little orange sail and the current caught the little ship, and soon enough she was sweeping along the shoreline in a whipping breeze.

I did it! I figured it out myself, with no Fairy or spriggan or even a Wyverary to tell me how! Of course she would have preferred to have a Wyverary to show her, to be a great red ship for her to whoop and ride upon. She felt a bit guilty for including him in the list. But he was not here, and she was hoisted on the bursting, splashing waves by a ship of her own making, her hair, her Spoon, her dress, and her loyal jacket, who rejoiced, quietly, with her as the Gillybirds shrieked and sang.

The moon rose slim and horned that night. All the stars flashed and wiggled in the sky, so many constellations September could not name. One looked a bit like a book, and she named it: Ell’s Father. Another looked something like a spotted cat with big glowing red stars for eyes. She named that one: My Leopard. Still another looked like a rainstorm, and as she watched falling stars twinkled through it, like real rain.

“And that’s Saturday’s Home,” September whispered to herself.

The night wind blew warm and she stretched out beneath the orange sail, watching the distant, shadowy shore slowly slip by. She had not really considered the problem of food—silly girl, after all the trouble over it! And in the dark, she loosened seven or eight strands of hair from the raft and tied them to the wrench, hoping to catch a fish for her supper. Even September did not quite think this was going to work. She had some idea about fishing, since her mother and grandfather had taken her to catch minnows in the pond one summer or another. But they always cast for her, and baited the hook—ah, a hook. That was a bother. And no bait, either. Still, she had little enough choice, and sunk the length of hair into the lapping sea.

Despite everything, despite being terribly afraid for her friends and not having the first idea how far the Gaol might be, September had to admit that sailing at night, by one’s lonesome, was so awfully pleasant she could hardly bear it. That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead.

Somewhere towards dawn, September fell asleep, her wrench curled tightly against her, her hair still trailing in the surf, catching no fish at all.

September ran.

The sky behind her had gone an icy lemony-cream color, pushing the deep blue night aside. Dew and frost sparkled on the Worsted Wood, clinging to the silken puffs like stitched diamonds. Her breath fogged and leaves crushed and rustled beneath her feet. She ran so fast, so terribly fast—but she feared not fast enough. With every step she could feel her legs getting skinnier and harder, like the trunks of saplings. With every step she thought they might break. In the Marquess’s shoes, her toes rasped and cracked. She had no hair left, and though she could not see it she knew her skull was turning into a thatch of bare, autumnal branches. Like Death’s skull. She had so little time.

When they are in a great hurry, little girls rarely look behind them. Especially those who are even a little Heartless, though we may be quite certain by now that September’s Heart had grown heavier than she expected when she climbed out of her window that long ago morning. September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see it bend in half until it cracked, and Death hop up again, quite well, quite awake, and quite small once more. She certainly did not see Death stand on her tiptoes and blow a kiss after her, a kiss that rushed through all the frosted leaves of the autumnal forest, but could not quite catch a child running as fast as she could. As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

Up ahead of her September could see the spriggans’ village, nestled in the flaming orange trees, loaf-chimneys smoking cozily, the smell of breakfast, pumpkin flapjacks and chestnut tea floating over the forest to her shriveled nose. September tried to call out. Red leaves burst from her mouth in a scarlet puff, and drifted away. She gasped, something between a sob and an exhausted wracking cough. I’ve lost my voice after all, she thought. She clutched the wrench to her chest, hooking it through her twiggy elbow, which had grown soft sticky buds, like rosehips. The wrench gleamed in the dawn, burnished copper, its head shaped and carved into a graceful hand, ready to clutch a bolt in its grip. Everything shimmered with morning wetness.

A-Through-L yawned in the town square, his huge neck shining as he stretched it up and out. As September burst into the square she could see that the Wyverary was playing some kind of checkers with Saturday, using raisiny cupcakes for pieces. Doctor Fallow sat back in a rich, padded chair, smoking a churchwarden with satisfaction. They looked up joyfully to greet her. She tried to smile and open up her arms to hug them. But September could not fault them for the shock and dismay on their faces as they saw her ruined body stumble onto the bread-bricks. She wondered if she still had her eyes left. If they were still brown and warm, or dried up seed pods. September could hardly breathe. Branches poked and stabbed at her as she gasped after her breath. The green smoking jacket despaired. If it had hands it would have wrung them, if a mouth, it would have wept. It cinched itself closer to her waist, which was only a cluster of maple branches, trying to stay close to her.

“September!” cried A-Through-L. Saturday leapt to his feet, upsetting the cupcake-checkers.

Saturday gasped: “Oh, no, no…are you all right?”

September sank to her knees, shaking her head. Saturday put his thin blue arms around her. He was not sure he ought to, but he could not bear not to. He held her, gingerly, much as she had held Death. Saturday had never had anyone to cradle and protect before, either.

Saturday, September tried to say. I understand now. Red leaves puffed from her mouth. Branches ground on branches in her throat, but no words came. Rubedo and Citrinitas peeked out of one of the low, round houses, clucking piteously. Rubedo stroked his wan crimson face. Citrinitas nervously tied knots in her golden hair. But Doctor Fallow kept smoking his pipe, smacking his lips and blowing rings.

Ell! The Marquess needed me! Because of my mother! Golden leaves dribbled onto the square. Saturday stroked her brow, and September had a moment, only a moment, to be amazed that he did not think her ugly, that he was not afraid to touch her.

Because she fixes engines, Ell. So this is her sword. Do you understand? If it had been anyone else, it would have been something else. Like, for you it might have been a book. For Saturday, a raincloud. If only I knew what she needed a magic wrench for! I am sure if we think hard on it, all three of us, we shall be able to figure it out. A torrent of orange leaves vomited up from her dry brown mouth. September laughed. More leaves flew. She was probably the only girl in all of Fairyland who could have pulled a wrench, of all the ridiculous things, out of that casket. Whose mother here could have wielded such a weapon? The Wyverary and the Marid exchanged wretched looks.

“We must get her out,” Citrinitas said. “How could this have happened so fast?”

“Does it happen often?” snapped Saturday, quite beside himself. A-Through-L’s eyes rimmed slowly with turquoise tears. One fell with a plop onto September’s poor bald head.

“Well, no…but then, we don’t have many human visitors…” Rubedo swallowed wretchedly.

“Autumn,” said Doctor Fallow, the Satrap, the Department Head, “changes everything. If she could only relax, she could be happy. She might even bear fruit, given a few years’ careful pruning. One must accept the way of the world, for it will always have its way, one way or another.”

“But everything doesn’t change,” said A-Through-L wretchedly. “They have their wedding, every night, just the same. Because every day is harvest and feasting I may not know Winter or Spring or Summer, but I know my Autumn, I know my Fall, that’s A and that’s F, Doctor Fallow! September is the only thing changing here! Winter never comes. It will never snow. The leaves never die and fall off, they stay red and golden forever. Why not her? Why must she wither all up? What have you done? We only have a few days left to get back to the Marquess…”

Saturday was shaking his head back and forth like a little bull. His face darkened, as though clouds moved beneath his skin. “Did the Marquess tell you to do this to her?” he said coldly.

“Oh, no!” cried Citrinitas. “No, it’s only that she’s Ravished and human and it’s all so unpredictable, the chymical processes that occur in Autumn…”

“But she probably knew,” mumbled Rubedo. “She could have guessed, what might happen. She could have hoped.”

Doctor Fallow smoked his pipe and sat back, his expression unreadable.

A terrible sound broke through the morning, like a tuba being crushed with iron hammers. The sound shook Doctor Fallow from his chair. Saturday laughed cruelly at him, but his laughter caught itself and crawled away as the sound grew only louder. September found she could not get up, her knees had locked into sapling-trunks. They no longer moved at all. Rubedo and Citrinitas shrieked together and dashed into their house, bolting the door. The three of them were left alone, clinging to each other, Ell trying to shelter the little ones with his bound wings, when the lions came.

They pounced with a horrible silence, their paws landing softly. There were two, and they were nearly as big as the Wyverary. Their fur shone deep blue, deeper than Saturday’s skin, the color of the loneliest winter night, and all in their manes and tails silver stars shone, burned. They roared together, and the terrible tuba-sound blared once more. Saturday screamed, and if she could have put out an arm to comfort him, September would have. But it all happened faster than she could understand—one lion snatched up Saturday in his jaws, and drops of Marid blood, the color of seawater, spilled onto the square. But he did not scream when the lion’s teeth cut him. The boy only closed his eyes and reached out for September, imploring, even though he knew it to be useless. The second lion slashed Ell’s face with his claws, leaving a long gash in his red scales. There must have been a treacley-dark poison in those claws, for the great red Wyverary tottered and fell with a crash down to the forest floor in a deep sleep. The starry lion grabbed Ell by the scruff and began dragging him away. Neither of them paid the slightest bit of attention to September.

No! cried September. But only leaves fell out of her mouth, and she could not move. No!

But even if she could have spoken loud and true, it would have been no help. The lions’ eyes were shut. The Marquess’s lions slept, and dreamed, even as they did their work, and carried off their prizes into the bright, clear day.

September screamed without a sound and cried bitterly and beat her twig-hands against the ground. Her heart ached as though a knife had quietly slipped between her ribs. She looked up to the cheerful sun, as ever unimpressed by little girls’ sorrows, and tears of amber maple-sap squeezed out of her eyes.

September finally fell backwards, quite out of herself, and the world slid away, for a little while.

September dreamed. She knew she was dreaming, but she could not help it. She was quite well and whole and sitting at a very fine table with a lace tablecloth draped over it. On the table lay several greasy, grimy iron gears and a great number of mismatched nuts and bolts. September did not know what they were for, but she felt certain that if she could fit them together as they were meant to go, everything would suddenly become clear.

“Shall I serve?” said Saturday. He sat primly across from her, dressed in a fine Sunday suit, with a high collar and cufflinks. His hair was neatly combed, his face scrubbed clean. The Marid took up one of the gears and scraped it with a butter knife. He handed it back to her.

“It’s getting very late, November,” said a young man. He sat very near to her and held her hand. September felt certain she had never seen him before. He had dark red hair and oddly golden skin. His eyes were big and blue. They swam with turquoise tears.

“My name is September…” she said softly. Her voice was weak, as it often is in dreams.

“Of course, October,” said the young man. “You must speak twice as loudly just to be heard in the land of dreams. It is something to do with physicks. But then, what isn’t? Dreams begin with D, and therefore I can help you. To be heard.”

“Ell? Where is your tail? Your wings?”

“It is mating season,” the Wyverary said, straightening his lapels. “We must all look our best, January.”

“She wouldn’t know a thing about that,” said Saturday reproachfully. September saw suddenly that he had a cat in his lap, purring. The cat’s fur was blue, and in his bushy tail was a single, glowing star. “Such a lazy girl. Lax in her studies. If only she’d kept up with her physicks homework, we’d all be safe and sound and eating pound cake.”

“I’m not lazy! I tried!”

September looked down at the buttered gear in her hand. It was smeared with Marid-blood, like seawater.

“Mary, Mary, Morning Bell,” sang a third voice. September turned to see a little girl sitting next to her, swinging her legs under her chair. The girl looked terribly familiar, but September could not think where she could have met her before. She had dull blondish hair bobbed short around her chin, and her face was a bit muddy. She had on a farmer’s daughter kind of dress, gray and dusty, with a yellowish lace at the hem. She rubbed at her nose.

“All praise and glory to the Marquess,” said Saturday reverentially, passing a thick iron gear to the girl. The child accepted it and allowed him to kiss her dusty hand.

“Dances in her garden dell!” she sang. The blonde child giggled and swung her legs harder.

“Please, oh, please, start making sense!” cried September.

“I always make perfect sense, December,” said Ell, smoothing pomade into his hair. “You know that.”

The dream-Saturday held up his hands. They were chained in ivory manacles. “Did it mean me, do you think?” he said. “When it said you’d lose your heart?”

“But when the night comes rushing on,” sang the girl, laughing uncontrollably. She took a bite out of her iron bolt. It crumbled like cake in her mouth. “Down falls Mary, dead and gone!” The girl smiled. Her teeth were full of black oil.

And for a moment, just a moment, September saw them all: Saturday, Ell, and the strange blonde girl, bound and bolted and chained in a dreary, wet cell, sleeping, skeletal, dead.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “We ate it too!”

“What’s happening to me?” September wept.

Her hair shone, bright red, curling up at the edges in pretty shapes. She had already lost much of it. The spriggans looked discomfited, but tried to be cheery.

“I think it’s rather nice!” chirped Doctor Fallow. “An improvement, I declare!”

“You do match me, now,” said Ell, trying to be helpful and optimistic.

September rolled back the sleeve of the green smoking jacket, which was terribly chagrined and tried to keep covering her, to protect her, but in the end, she wrestled the sleeve up to her elbow and waved her hand for the Doctor to see. The skin, once the same warm brown as her father’s, had gone hoary and rough, tinged with grey and green, like bark.

“Is this an improvement?” she cried.

“Well, this sort of thing happens. We must be adaptable. Autumn is the kingdom where everything changes. When you leave, it’ll be alright, probably. If you haven’t put down roots yet.”

“Still, about my syllabus…” insisted Rubedo. Citrinitas elbowed him roughly.

September rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands—which had begun to grow a healthy bit of silver moss. “Fine,” she said shortly. “Fine. I shall go now, then, to the wood, and get this awful business over with before I turn into an elm.”

“I think you’re a bit more birch-y,” said Doctor Fallow contemplatively.

“Not helping!” snapped Ell. “You could help, if you had some medicine for her in all of your weird, ugly tower.”

“Medicine’s not our business,” said Citrinitas helplessly. “And besides…change is the blessing of Autumn. She should feel lucky.”

Ell, as September had never seen him do before, spat a lick of fire at her. Not enough to scorch, but enough to singe her hair. He curled closer around September.

“Well, you can’t go with her, so you might as well stop smothering,” huffed Doctor Fallow. “This is strictly a lone-knight situation.”

“Then she isn’t going! I shan’t let her go anywhere without something large and fire-breathing and double-smart behind her! Since I don’t see a flaming burp between the three of you, I suggest you leave us alone!”

“Ell, if that’s how it’s done, you can’t bellow it into doing it differently,” sighed September. She stood up and disentangled herself from her friend. Blazing curls of her hair fluttered to the ground.

“I can try!” Ell insisted.

“No, I shall go alone. I always thought I would be going alone. I shall be back presently, I promise. Say you’ll wait for me, you and Saturday, that you won’t go anywhere without me, that when I come out of that wood I shall see a red face and a blue one smiling!”

Ell’s eyes filled with panicked turquoise tears. He promised, his wings jangling his chains fretfully.

Saturday did not say anything. He bent and tore the cuff from one leg of his trousers. The cuff was blue and ragged and not a bit muddy with velocipede-grease. The Marid tied it around September’s arm. His fingers trembled a bit. The green jacket introduced itself politely, but coolly, to the cuff. Just so long as the cuff knew who came first.

“What is this?” said September, confused.

“It’s…a favor,” answered Saturday. “My favor. In battle…knights oughtn’t be without one.”

September reached up to touch his face, gently, to thank him. Her fingers grazed his cheek. They had shriveled into thin, bare, dry branches, bundled together at the wrist.

As September walked through the starry, misty night, trying not to look at her ruined hand, she realized that she had not traveled alone in days. She missed Ell immediately, who would tell her all sorts of things to keep her from being afraid, and Saturday, who would be quiet and steadfast and dear at her side.

She shivered, and whispered to herself to keep from shivering: “Bathtub, Bathysphere, Barometer, Bear, Bliss, Bandit…”

Gradually, the trees turned from wood and leaf to something altogether stranger: tall black distaffs wound around with fuzzy silk and wool and fleeces September could not name. They were all colored as autumn woods are colored, red and gold and brown and pale white. They crowded close together, fat and full, shaped more or less like pine trees. She could just see the sharp distaff jutting out of the wispy top of one great red beast of a tree. This must be where they get the stuff to build Pandemonium! September thought suddenly. Instead of cutting down a forest, they weave it!

The moon peeked out of the clouds, too shy to show herself fully. September came, by and by, to a little clearing where several parchment-colored distaffs had left their fibers all over the forest floor like pine needles. In the corner of the clearing sat a lady. September brought her hand to her mouth, so surprised and shaken was she, forgetting that her fingers were only branches now.

The lady sat on a throne of mushrooms. Chanterelles and portobellos and oysters and wild crimson forest mushrooms piled up high around her, fanning out around her head—for the lady too was primarily made of mushrooms, lovely cream-yellow ones opening up like a dress-collar around her brown face, lacy bits of fungus trailing from her every finger and toe. She looked off into the distance, her pale eyes a pair of tiny button mushrooms.

“Good evening, my lady,” said September, curtseying as best she knew how.

The mushroom queen said nothing. Her expression did not change.

“I have come for the casket in the wood.”

A little wind picked up, ruffling the shiitakes at the lady’s feet.

“I do hope I’ve not offended, it’s only that I haven’t much time and I seem to be coming all over tree.”

The lady’s jaw sagged open. Bits of dirt fell out.

“Don’t mind her,” came a tiny, breathy voice behind her. September whirled.

A tiny brown creature stood at her feet, barely a finger high. She was brown all over, the color of a nut-husk. Only her lips were red. Her hair was long, covering most of her body like bark. She seemed very young. She wore a smart acorn cap.

“She’s just for show,” breathed the wee thing.

“Who are you?”

“I am Death,” said the creature. “I thought that was obvious.”

“But you’re so small!”

“Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off—very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.”

“Then who is she?”

“She is…” Death turned her head, considering. “She is like a party dress I wear when I want to impress visiting dignitaries. Like your friend Betsy, I too am a Terrible Engine. I too have occasional need of awe. But between us, I think, there is no need of finery.”

“But if we are so far apart, why are you here?”

“Because Autumn is the beginning of my country. And because there is a small chance that you may die sooner than I anticipated, that I shall need to grow very fast very soon.”

Death looked meaningfully at September’s hand. Within the green jacket, her arm had now shrunk into one long, knobbed branch from shoulder to fingertip.

“Is that why the Worsted Wood is forbidden? Because Death lives here?”

“And also hamadryads. They are very boring to listen to.”

“Then the Marquess sent me here to die.”

“I do not make such judgments, child. I only take what is offered me, in the dark, in the forest.”

September crumpled to the ground. She stared at the winter branches of her hand. A great orange tuft of her hair flew off—she was nearly bald now, only a few wisps of curls clinging to her head. She sniffed and cried—or tried to cry, but her eyes were dry as old seeds, and she could not.

“Death, I don’t know what to do.”

Death climbed up into her lap, sitting primly on her knee, which had already begun to darken and wither.

“It’s very brave of you to admit that. Most knightly folk I happen by bluster and force me to play chess with them. I don’t even like chess! For strategy Wrackglummer and even Go are much superior. And it’s the wrong metaphor entirely. Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.”

“I don’t know how to play chess.”

“I cheat, anyway. When their backs are turned, I move the pieces.”

Slowly, a hole opened up in September’s cheek, just a tiny one. She rubbed at it absently, and it widened. She felt it widening, and was so terribly afraid. She trembled, and her toes felt awfully cold in the mushroomy mud. Beneath her skin, twigs and leaves had begun to show. Death frowned.

“September, if you do not pay attention you will never get out of this wood! You are closer than you think, human girl. I guard the casket.” Death’s tiny eyes wrinkled kindly. “All caskets are within my power, of course they are.” September yawned. She didn’t mean to. She couldn’t help it. A twig in her cheek popped, turning to dust. “Are you sleepy? That’s to be expected. In Autumn, trees sleep like bears. The whole world pulls on its nightclothes and snuggles in to sleep through all of winter. Except for me. I never sleep.”

Death climbed up onto her knee, looking up at her with hard acorny eyes. September tried very hard to listen to her Death, instead of to the sound of her slowly opening cheek. “I have terrible nightmares, you know. Every night when I come home from a long day’s dying, I take off my skin and lay it nicely on my armoire. I take off my bones and hang them up on the hatstand. I set my scythe to washing on the old stove. I eat a nice supper of mouse-and-myrrh soup. Some nights I drink off a nice red wine. White does not agree with me. I lay myself down on a bed of lilies and still, I cannot sleep.”

September did not want to know. The moon moved silently overhead, making gape-faces at them.

“I cannot sleep because I have nightmares. I dream all the things the dead wish they had done differently. It is dreadful! Do all creatures dream so?”

“I don’t think so…I dream sometimes that my father has come home, or that I have done well on my math exams, or that my mother’s hair is all made of candy canes and we live on a river of cocoa on a marshmallow island. My mother sings me to sleep and only once in awhile do I dream of awful things.”

“Perhaps it is because I have no one to sing me to sleep. I am so tired. All the world earns its sleep but me.”

September felt sure that she was meant to do something. That, like Latitude and Longitude, the Worsted Wood was a kind of puzzle, and if she only knew how the pieces were shaped, she could manage the whole thing handily. Lost in thought and terror at her own nightmares, September’s Death curled, small and feral, on her knee, her cloak of barkish hair wrapping her like a blanket. With her good hand—a relative thing, really, since it was blackened and rough as a hawthorn branch already, and showing sap under the fingernails, September gathered up her Death and laid it in the crook of her arms. She did not quite know what to do. September had never had a brother or a sister to rock to sleep. She could only remember how her mother had sung to her. She felt as though she was in a dream. But she brushed Death’s hair gently from her face and sang from memory, softly, hoarsely, for her throat had gone rough and dry:

Go to sleep, little skylark,

Fly up to the moon

In a biplane of paper and ink

Your wings creak and croon, borne aloft by balloons

And your engine is singing for you.

Go to sleep, little skylark, do.

Go to sleep, little skylark,

Fly up past the stars

In a biplane of sunshine and ice

Past comets and cars, past Neptune and Mars

Still your engine is singing for you.

Go to sleep, little skylark, do.

Go to sleep, little skylark

Drift down through the night

In your biplane of silver and sighs

Slip under the light, come down from the heights

For your mother is singing for you.

Go to sleep, little skylark, do.

September reached the end of the song and began again, for Death’s eyes were sliding just the littlest bit closed. Her mother had sung that song, not since she was small, but since her father had left. When she sang it, she curled September in her arms just as September now curled Death, and sang it close to her ear so her long black hair fell over September’s brow, just as the remains of September’s hair now fell on Death’s brow. She remembered her mother’s smell, the comfort of it, even though she mainly smelled of diesel oil. She loved that smell. Had learned to love it, and settle into it like a blanket. When September got to the part about Neptune and Mars again, Death relaxed in her arms, her bark-brown hair falling delicately over September’s elbow. She kept singing, though it hurt her, her throat was so shriveled and sore. And as she sang, an extraordinary thing happened:

Death grew.

Death stretched and lengthened and got heavier and heavier. Her hair curled and spread, and her arms grew to the size of September’s own arms, and her legs grew to the size of September’s own legs, and in no time at all, Death was the size of a real child, and September held her still in her arms, slumped, sleeping, still.

Oh no! thought September. What have I done? If my Death has grown so big surely I am doomed!

But Death moaned in her sleep, and September saw, glinting in her mouth, something bright and hard. Death opened her mouth, yawning in her sleep. Be bold, September told herself. An irascible child should be bold. Gently, she put her blackened, sappy fingers into Death’s mouth.

“No!” cried Death dreaming. September snatched her hand back. “She loved you all those years, it was only that you couldn’t see it!”

September tried again, just grazing the thing with her fingertips.

“No!” cried Death dreaming. September snapped back. “If you had gone right instead of left you would have met an old man in overalls, and he would have taught you blacksmithing!”

September tried one more time, sneaking her fingers past Death’s teeth.

“No!” cried Death dreaming. September recoiled. “If you had only given your son pencils instead of swords!”

September stopped. She felt hot all over, and the hole in her cheek itched, as though there were leaves crinkling at its edges. She breathed deeply. September smoothed Death’s hair with her ruined hand, which was sprouting new branches even now. She bent and kissed Death’s burning brow. And then she began to sing again, softly:

“Go to sleep, little skylark…” She caught the edge of the thing.

“Fly up to the moon…” It was slippery and sharp, like glass.

“In a biplane of paper and ink…” September pulled. Death groaned. Birds flew up from the night forest, spooked.

“Your wings creak and croon, borne up by balloons…” There was a terrible creaking, crooning sound as the thing in Death’s throat came free. Death’s mouth opened horribly wide, bending back and back and back and her whole body folded strangely back around itself as the thing emerged, so that just as September pulled it out entirely, Death vanished with a little sound like the snapping of a twig.

“And your engine is singing for you,” September finished quietly, almost whispering. In her arms she cradled a smoky glass casket, just the size of a child. It was hung with red silk ropes and bells and on its face was a little gold plaque. It read:

Will hilt to hand yet be restored?

Take me up, thy mother’s sword.

September ran her hands over it. She did not understand. But given a magical box, no child will leave it shut. She fumbled with the knots and rang the bells a great many times with her twiggy hands, but finally, under all that blood-colored silk was a little glass latch. September wedged her woody thumb underneath it and all the forest echoed as it popped free. One by one, the mushrooms that made up the Lady’s face began to peel off and float away, until September was surrounded by a gentle whirlwind of delicate, lacy mushrooms and the last curls of her own hair, gone red as knots. She lifted the casket lid.

Inside was a long, sturdy wrench.

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood-fires burn at night so that everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two.

Autumn in Fairyland is all of that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland forest, or the morbidity of the Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces’ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half-burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland.

And so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly-cold air on their snorting, roaring highwheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gone gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September’s head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

September’s orange dress seemed suddenly drab; the Wyverary’s scarlet skin seemed a bit brown and dull. They could not compete—but they laughed all the same, as leaves drifted slowly from trees and fell into their hair. Penny balanced expertly on her highwheel seat and reached up to catch them out of the air, whooping and giggling.

“Ah, Penny, we’ll not go in, though,” sighed Calpurnia Farthing, raising her goggles to drink in the colors of the forest ahead of them, its shady paths, its mournful brown birds.

“Oh, why not, Cal? They’re sure to have flapjacks! I’m hungry!”

“We have to bring in the herd, love. The mating grounds are off further towards the sea, in the oil-tides and the nickel-pools. We’ll camp, and I’ll sing you The Nobell Lay of the Unicycle and the One-Legged Gyrl—you like that one! The rest of the velos will catch up and we’ll take them down to the water’s edge and I’ll let you have a puff of my pipe.”

“Can’t we just stay one night?” Penny pleaded, pulling her pigtails in earnestness.

Calpurnia shuddered. “It’s best…not to go in if you don’t have doings there. Autumn has a hungry heart—September is the beginning of death.” The fairy looked at the earnest girl in the orange dress and laughed shortly. “Well. Pan forgive all puns. Be glad autumn is brief, Penny, in our familiars. As for you, September, I feel a powerful urge to tell you to be careful, but I think you’ve lead ears for such advice. Just remember that autumn is also called fall, and some falling places are so deep there’s no climbing out.”

“Goodbye dragon!” chirped Penny, and A-Through-L, still panting from his great exertion across the plains, three days’ running with barely a break for napping, did not argue with her, but tolerated her smacking a kiss on his toes. “Goodbye Saturday!”

Calpurnia Farthing brusquely extended her hand to Saturday, but when he moved to shake it, she grabbed it up and kissed his fingers like a lord kissing a lady’s hand. She crouched down to look the boy in the eye.

“I have a thing to tell you, Marid.”

Saturday waited patiently.

“We’re not kin, but fey to fey, you’ll hark?”

He nodded. She leaned in, to whisper in his ear, so that September could not hear.

But we have special privileges. I shall tell you what Calpurnia Farthing said:

“The riddle of the Ravished,” she whispered, “is that they must always go down into the black naked and lonesome. But they cannot come back up into the light alone.”

The light in the Autumn Provinces is always late afternoon light, the golden, perfect kind that slants and sighs, that casts gentle shadows on the earth.

Of course, September had no shadow.

But the shadows of the others walked long and thin through the forest of bloody-bright trees. They were disturbed by their missing compatriot, and pulled away from the place where September’s shadow was not. Shadows have a kind of camaraderie. As folk become friends and have adventures, so too do their shadows frolic and quaver in fear and emerge triumphant from battles with enemies’ shadows, all unknown to us, who think we are the movers of our tales. And so the shadow of the Wyverary mourned the loss of his companion, and the shadow of the Marid caught its black mood.

And yet, none among them could keep from delight as many paths opened up wide and even before them, a bed of crisp brown leaves blowing up in little dervishes and settling again. A few mournful birds sang out. The wind smelled of smoke, and baking bread, and apples. Saturday closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth, like a cat, to take it all in. A-Through-L fairly skipped.

“Truly, Autumn is my season. Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.”

The three of them might have taken any path through the forest and come upon little but toadstools and acorns. However, on account of the tendencies of fairy towns to get quite firmly in one’s way, they did not. They found themselves striding into in the herald’s square of a place called Mercurio before they could discuss whether it was nightingales or sparrows who sang so prettily in the wood. That September’s shoes were dark and crafty and surely knew their way around the world can have had nothing to do with it, I am sure.

I wonder if every city in Fairyland is made of some strange thing? Thought September. For some mad baker had built the town of Mercurio from loaves of thick, moist bread shingled with sugar and mortared with butter. Heavy eaves of brown crust shaded sweet little dinner-bun doors. Many of the houses were small. September could reach up her hand and tear off a piece of their roofs to eat, if she had had a mind. But many more were enormous, towering up high, cakes piled upon cakes, baked dark and fragrant, up past the tops of the trees. The cobbles of the square were muffin-tops, and all the fountains gushed fresh, sweet milk. It was as though the witch who built the gingerbread house in the story had a great number of friends, and had decided to start up a collective.

In the center of the square stood a statue of a lady September knew well by now, patted together from cream-colored crumpets. Below her benevolent gaze a long table groaned with food: apple dumplings and apple tartlets and candied apples and apple chutney in big crystal bowls, huge roasted geese glistening brown and gold, huge potatoes and turnips split and steaming, rum cakes and blackberry pies, sheaves of toffee bundled together like wheat, squash soup in tureens shaped like stars, golden pancakes, slabs of gingerbread, piles of hazelnuts and walnuts, butter domes carved like pine cones, a huge and broiled boar with a pear in his mouth and parsley in his hoofs. And pumpkin, pumpkin everywhere: orange pumpkin soup bubbling in hollowed-out gourds, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, frothy pumpkin milk, pumpkin trifles piled up with whipped cream, pumpkin-stuffed quail, and pumpkin pies of every size, cooling on the clean tablecloth.

No one ate at the table, or guarded the feast. The Wyverary, the Marid, and the human stared in naked hunger, having had nothing but tire-jerky and axle-whiskey for days. Ell stepped forward, but hesitated.

“Surely it belongs to someone,” he fretted.

“Surely,” agreed Saturday.

“I oughtn’t to have any, anyway,” said September mournfully. “A feast out of nowhere and no one here who might have cooked it, or had it cooked for them? That’s fairy food, to be sure.”

A little man stepped deftly out from behind the pig, as if he had been there all along, though surely they had seen no feet under the table. His nose curved down: long, skinny, hooked like a bird’s beak, the kind meant for fishing beetles out of logs. A pair of square spectacles perched on it, showing large, orange, red-rimmed eyes, as if tired from too much reading. He rubbed his little hands together—they each had only three fingers, long and hooked like his nose. His skin was all over deep, baked brown, like good bread. Most odd of all, however, were his clothes—he wore a tweed jacket with velvet elbow patched, a caramel-colored waistcoat, toast-brown plaid trousers, and an ascot: an oak leaf fading from green to brown, full of wispy holes, pinned with an acorn button. Over all this, a white laboratory jacket, gone yellow with age, draped over his hunched shoulders.

“Of course it’s fairy food,” he chuckled. “Where do you think you are?”

“Well,” September answered, “I’m not to eat fairy food. I’ve been very careful, and only eaten witch food, dragon food, dryad food, that sort of thing.”

The little man laughed so loudly a few folk like him poked their heads out of the bread-house windows in curiosity. He held his small paunch and kept giggling.

“Oh, you were being serious!” He tried to look solemn. “This is Fairyland, girl! There is no dragon food or witch food or dryad food. There is only fairy food—it’s all fairy food. This is fairy earth that bears it, fairy hands that carve it and cook it and serve it. I daresay you have quite the belly full of the stuff. If there’s damage to be got from it, I promise it’s quite done by now.”

September’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes filled up with tears, and now, finally, they spilled over and dropped onto the muffin-stone square. Saturday put his hand on her arm, but did not know what to do to comfort her beyond that. This may seem like a silly thing to cry over, but September had suffered so very much in such a very short time, and she was so certain that she had been circumspect with regards to food. She had been careful! Even if the Marquess was frightening and Saturday so dear and broken and Ell so devoted—at least, she had thought, she had not eaten fairy food! At least she had managed better than most little girls in stories who are repeatedly told not to eat the food and do it anyway, being extravagantly silly and stupid!

“What will happen to me?” she wept.

A-Through-L waved his tail in distress. “We can’t say, September. We’re not Ravished.”

“But look on the bright side!” cried the little man. “Eat your fill and have no fear of it now. Fairy food is the best kind—or else no one would have to warn children off it. I think it’s very dear of you to have tried to be so…abstinent! My name is Doctor Fallow, and I am the Satrap of Autumn. We had word that guests were careening our way. ” He bowed at the waist, and caught his jacket in the act of slipping off. “This is a wedding feast for my graduate assistants, and you are most invited.”

September bowed as well. “These are my friends A-Through-L, who is a wyvern and not a dragon, and Saturday. My name is September.”

Doctor Fallow beamed. “What an excellent name,” he breathed.

A great, jubilant noise rose up from the southern end of the village, and it became clear in a moment why they had found the square so empty. Everyone who was anyone had been at the party. A throng of creatures like Doctor Fallow, with long skinny noses and dear little clothes came dancing in with crowns of leaves in their hair—for the leaves of the Autumn Provinces are brighter than any flower. Many wore glittery masks in black and gold and red and silver. Some played delicate twig pipes, some sang rude songs that greatly featured the words swelling, growing, and stretching in complicated puns.

“I…I think they must be spriggans,” said Ell, embarrassed. Naturally, he could offer no further illumination on anything that so rudely insisted on beginning with S.

At the head of the host came a pair of spriggans, looking at each other under the lashes of their eyes, blushing, smiling, laughing. One, a young man, was red from the tips of his hair to the tips of his feet, his skin glowing like an apple, his evening suit crimson from cuff to cufflink. The other, a young girl, was golden from lash to leg, her hair just the exact color of a yellow leaf, her gown butter-bright.

“The red fellow is Rubedo,” Doctor Fallow said jovially, “he specializes in the Gross Matter, quite a promising lad, a bit iffy on the mathematics, of course. The doe is Citrinitas, my star pupil. She’s at work on the highest alchemical mysteries, all of which must be solved, like a detective solves a dastardly crime. I’m so pleased for them both I could sprout!” He drew a faded orange kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes.

“Please,” called Citrinitas, her voice ringing out bright and clear as sunlight through the deepening evening, “Eat! We shall all have bad luck if a single soul goes hungry!”

Ell trod up to the table, happy as anything. “I don’t suppose you’ve any radishes, hm?” he asked—and no sooner than he had, a little spriggan-lad held up a plate of shining red radishes, so bright they must have been polished. Saturday inched toward the table, looking apologetically back at September.

“Well,” she said, “if the damage is already done…it certainly does look delicious. And I have a weakness for pumpkin.” Her mother often liked to say she had a weakness for things: for hot cocoa, for exciting novels, for mechanics’ magazines, for her father. September felt it quite a grown-up thing to say.

Let it be said that no other child has ever eaten as September did that night. She tasted some of everything—some more than others, for Fairy food is a most adventurous cuisine, complex and daring. She even sipped the hazelnut-beer and slurped at the cauliflower ice cream. Together, she and Saturday took on the challenge of a Gagana’s Egg, which was not really an egg at all, he explained, but a sugar-glazed shell of many colors containing a whole meal. Saturday deftly placed eight bone cups around a massive copper-rose globe. Saturday pierced the egg with an icepick (thoughtfully provided) in eight places, and let steaming liquid spill into the little cups in eight different colors. September delighted in each one, the violet brew that tasted of roasted chestnuts and honey, the bloody red one that tasted like fig pastry, the creamy pink one a kind of limey rosewater treacle. Saturday drank, too, always after her. His stomach was still weary from starving, and would have preferred a nice saltlick and a lump of schist. When September finished the cups, Saturday showed her how to pierce the top hemisphere of the egg four more times so that the shell could be lifted away whole and filled with water to steep into a sort of gooseberry-tasting tea. Inside the egg, a golden broiled bird nestled next to oil-soaked bread, brandied clams, and several fiery, spicy fruits September could not name, but which quite took her breath away.

Indeed, by the end of the feast she was only sorry to have waited so long to gorge herself on Fairy food.

Doctor Fallow belched loudly.

“Have you strength in you still to see my offices? I think you’d find them most interesting.” The spriggan’s eyes flashed like a wolf’s in the candlelight, for it was now quite dark. The stars of autumn wheeled overhead, hard and bright and cold. A lonely wind began to pick up outside the warm, ruddy village. “Rubedo and Citrinitas must come along, too, of course.”

“But it’s their wedding night!” protested September. “Surely they would like to retire… with milk and a nice book!”

Ell snorted. Bits of radish remained in his whiskers. In the firelight his eyes seemed crinkly and soft. September remembered what he said, that they belonged to each other. She rather liked to think that. She felt it was a thing she might take out and look at when all was dark and cold, and it might warm her.

Doctor Fallow waved his hand. “Rubbish. Every night is their wedding. Every night is their feast. Tomorrow, too, they will be married with just as much pomp and song, and we will eat just as well, and then go to my offices, for work must be done even on wedding nights. And then we will do it all over again. How wonderful is ritual, what a comfort, in dark times!”

September remembered what the Marquess said: A place where it is always autumn, where there is always cider and pumpkin pie, where leaves are always orange and fresh-cut wood is always burning and it is always, just always Halloween. So many of the spriggans wore masks, and danced wildly, and leaped out from the shadows to spook one another.

“You may as well come along, September. You were expected, and the expected ought to do what they’re told. It’s only manners.”

“But the casket in the wood…I don’t have much time…it took so long to get here!”

“All that tomorrow, my dear! You can’t worry on a full stomach!”

The whole colorful throng of them, Rubedo and Citrinitas arm in arm, A-Through-L prickly and guarded, Saturday walking silently just behind September, his eyes huge and wary, September herself, and Doctor Fallow leading the way, crossed the square to one of the largest buildings. Thready clouds hid its roof, up above the crowns of the trees. It seemed far too big for the little folk.

Doctor Fallow waggled his bushy eyebrows, winked twice, pinched his long nose, puffed out his cheeks and spun around on one foot. Rubedo and Citrinitas did the same—and all three of them sprouted up like nothing you’ve seen: swelled, grew, stretched, until they were taller than A-Through-L, and of a perfect size to enter the huge building.

“I…don’t think I’m of a girth to walk comfortably in there,” sighed Ell. “though I’m certainly of a height. I shall wait outside. If anything wonderful is there, do yell out the window.” He settled down, heavy with radishes, to nap in the courtyard of Doctor Fallow’s office.

As they passed through doors and down hallways, the spriggans swelled up and shrunk down to fit each passage. September and Saturday sometimes had to crawl on their bellies, and sometimes could not even see the top of the doorframes above them, and had to scale the staircases like mountain climbers. The building could only be comfortable to a spriggan. Finally, the spriggans settled into something smaller than they had been when they entered, but taller than they had been at the feast, and opened the door to a great laboratory full of bubbling things.

“The heart of our university,” said Doctor Fallow expansively. “Only broadly speaking a university, of course.”

“We don’t have classes, really,” said Rubedo.

“Or exams,” said Citrinitas.

“And we’re the only students,” they said together.

“But no work is more important than ours.”

“You’re…alchemists, right?” said September shyly. The practice of alchemy is forbidden to all except young ladies born on Tuesdays—and spriggans, who were exempt from everything, if the Green Wind was to be believed.

“Exact as an equation!” crowed Doctor Fallow.

“Then I should tell you, I was born on a Tuesday.”

“How marvelous!” sighed Citrinitas. “I am so weary of running all the student committees myself.”

“And what use I could make of an assistant! The volume of papers is monstrous,” said Rubedo ruefully.

“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” said Doctor Fallow, raising his hands for silence. “The young lady can have no more than the most rudimentary understanding of the Noble Science. Perhaps she would rather be a rutabaga farmer. I hear the market is very good this year.”

“It’s…turning lead to gold, right?” said September.

All three spriggans laughed uproariously. Saturday flinched—he did not like people laughing at September.

“Oh, we solved that long ago!” chuckled Rubedo. “I believe that was Greengallows, Henrik Greengallows? Is that right, my love? Ancient history has never been my subject. A famous case study even reported a method for turning straw into gold! The young lady who discovered it wrote a really rather thin paper—but she toured the lecture circuit for years! Her firstborn refined it, so that she could make straw from gold, and solve the terrible problem of housing for destitute brownies.”

“Hedwig Greengallows, my dear,” mused Citrinitas. “Henrik was just her mercurer. Men are so awfully fond of attributing women’s work to their brothers! But September, you have no idea how freed we all felt by Hedwig’s breakthrough. It is tedious to spend centuries on one problem. Now, we have several departments. Rubedo labors at the task of turning gold to bread, so that we may eat our abundance, while I am writing my dissertation on the Elixir Mortis—the Elixir of Death.”

“It seems to me,” said Saturday shyly, “that the country of Autumn is a strange place to conduct experiments. Nothing here changes, yet alchemy is the science of change.”

“What a well-spoken boy!” exclaimed Doctor Fallow. “But truly, the Autumn Provinces provide the most ideal situation for our program. Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter—which is the door of Death—but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty, but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise, but not yet decrepit or senile. If you wrote a letter of requisition you could ask for no better place to practice alchemy.”

“What is the Elixir of Death?” asked September, running her fingers along several strange instruments: a scalpel with a bit of mercury clinging to it, scissors with a great mass of golden hair caught in the shears, a jar full of thick liquid that shifted back and forth from yellow to red.

Citrinitas brightened, if that was possible. She clutched her three-fingered hands to her breast. “Oh, nothing could be more fascinating! The Elixir of Life, as you will certainly know, is produced via the Chymical Wedding, a most secret process. The resulting stuff makes one immortal. The Elixir of Death, more rare by far, returns the dead to life. I expect you’ve heard the tale of the boy and the wolf? No? Well, it was terrible, the boy’s brothers betrayed him and cut him all up, but his friend the wolf got himself a vial of the water of Death and fixed him right up. It’s quite a famous story. Death herself produces the Elixir, when she is moved to weep—not a frequent occurrence, I assure you! I am trying to synthesize it from less…esoteric ingredients.”

“And the casket in the Worsted Wood? Where does that fit in to all these strange studies?” said September shrewdly.

“Well,” said Rubedo uncertainly. “The Worsted Wood lies at the heart of the Autumn country. None of us go in. The geese here, they migrate each evening, and one of them said a girl was on her way who would want to enter the wood, and we felt sorry for her.”

“You are certainly welcome to, though none of us can truly recommend it,” rushed Doctor Fallow. “We confess—we made the casket. One of my undergraduate projects, I’m afraid! Quite a long time ago. you’re the first to show any interest in it since, oh, since Queen Mallow claimed her sword here, I expect.”

September started. “It’s Queen Mallow’s sword?”

“No, no, I didn’t say that, did I, girl? I said she claimed it. You can’t claim something that’s already yours, if it’s yours it’s yours, eh? The casket is really quite clever. I received first marks for it. How shall I explain? It is both empty and full, until one opens it. For when a box is shut, you cannot tell what it might contain, so you might as well say it contains everything, because, really, it could contain anything, see? But when you open it, you affect what is inside. Observing something changes it, that’s a law, nothing to be done. Oh, you’ll see in the morning! How splendid you will find it!”

“But September,” said Citrinitas sadly, “these sorts of things, well…they’re always guarded, aren’t they? It might be best to enroll with us now and worry about the casket when you’ve progressed in your studies a bit.”

“I can’t! I haven’t time, I must open the casket tomorrow, or I shan’t have time to get back before the Marquess has my head!”

“September,” whispered Saturday.

“Perhaps you’d like to decide on your class schedule now, then? I have room in my morning Hermetics lecture, and I expect Citrinitas will be happy to get you up to speed in Elemental Affinities.”

“September!” Saturday said, more loudly, but the spriggans were exclaiming and pulling at her, and she could not hear him.

“We’ve even a free space on the squash team! How fortunate!” cried Rubedo, clapping his ruddy hands.

“September!” wailed Saturday, tugging at her sleeve. Finally, she turned to him, flustered by all the yelling.

“What?” she said, shaken.

“Your hair is turning red,” Saturday said softly, embarrassed to have all the attention suddenly on him.

September looked down at her long, dark hair. One curl had indeed turned blazing scarlet, terribly bright against the rest of her. She touched it, amazed, and as her fingers brushed the red lock, it broke off and drifted off on an unseen wind, for all the world like an autumn leaf wafting away.

September stopped in a shadowy alley. On one side of the street rose the toasty brown woolen wall of a bakery, on the other the gold lamé of a bank. A Switchpoint on the corner readied its hands, flexing and cracking its hundred bronze fingers.

“Ell, aren’t you ashamed of me?” cried September miserably. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’m awful?”

The Wyverary scrunched up his face uncomfortably and hurried on. “Do you remember where I found you? By the sea? Well, the Autumn Provinces are all the way over by the other sea, on the other side of Fairyland. If I ran dead fast, stopping only to nap and drink, I might make it in something like good time. But you wouldn’t. You’d fly right off, or break your bones on my spine as I bounced you!”

“Ell! I’m working for the Marquess! I didn’t even stand up to her a little bit! I met the villain—surely it’s obvious she’s a villain—and I wasn’t brave, I wasn’t!”

Ell nuzzled her gently with his enormous head. “Well, no one expected you to, love. She’s a Queen, and Queens have to be obeyed, and even the very bravest aren’t brave at all when a Queen tells them they ought to do something. When the lions came to put on my chains, I just sort of lay there and cried. At least you stood on your feet, wee as they are. You said no once—that’s more than I’ve ever done! And for me! To save me! A silly half-library lizard. What kind of friend would I be if I scolded you for saving me?” He made a little, weird, wild sound deep in his throat, something like cluork. “When I am weak, when I am poorly, I cannot bear to be scolded. But if it will make you feel loved, I will scold you right proper, I will.”

“And you broke my cage,” added Saturday. His voice was strange and slushing, as if a crashing wave had stood up and asked after tea. “The Marquess likes it best when you don’t want to do as she says, but you have to do it anyway. That’s like…a big bowl of soft cream and jam to her.”

“Besides, what’s the difference really, between fetching a Spoon for the witch and fetching a sword for the Marquess? Not much, I’d say.”

September thought about it. “I suppose it’s because I offered to get Goodbye’s Spoon for her. I wanted to do it. To make her happy, and to do something grand, so that, maybe, I could be a little grand, too. But the Marquess demanded that I do it, and then she said she’d kill you if I didn’t, and me if I didn’t do it fast enough. That’s not the same thing at all.”

“It’s service, though, either way,” said Saturday softly.

“It’s slavery, when you can’t say no,” said September, quite sure she was right.

“It’s still very far away,” insisted the Wyverary. “And we haven’t any more time than we did a moment ago, indeed, a fair bit less.”

“Why do you keep speaking as if you are coming, Ell? You’re here, in Pandemonium! You ought to go to your Grandfather, and be happy, and learned, and careful of your fiery breath!”

“Don’t be silly, September. I am coming. How could I face my Grandfather if he knew I had let a small one go off into dangerous places alone?”

“Not alone,” whispered Saturday.

“How much more lovely would it be to enter the Library with laurels, having accomplished a great deed involving a sword? My Grandfather must have hundreds of books praising the deeds of such knights. And we shall all be knights, all three of us! And not punished at all!”

September looked dubiously at him. She neatly tucked her long dark hair behind her ears.

“Please, small friend. Now that I’m here, so close I can smell the glue of his bindings, I am not sure, I am afraid he will not love me. I should feel much better if I had a dashing story to tell him. I should feel much better if I knew you were safe, and not crowning the topiaries in the Marquess’s garden. I should feel much better if no one could call me a coward. I don’t want to be a coward. It is not a nice thing to be.”

September reached up and the Wyverary dropped his long, curved snout into her hands. She kissed it gently.

“I shall be ever so much more glad if you are with me, Ell.”

Saturday looked away from them, to give them privacy. You could not ask for a more polite Marid, even then, when he was so feral he could only remember to breathe every third breath. Polite, and eager to be helpful.

“You’re right, of course, the velocipedes are running,” he said meekly, as though someone else had suggested it. He was still too shy to suggest anything without wrapping it up tight, to keep it safe.

“What a funny, old-fashioned word!” said September, placing her hand on the hilt of the Spoon stuck into her belt. She felt stronger just holding onto it.

“I’m sure you know it means bicycle,” Saturday shifted from one foot to another. September had not thought to find someone more unsure of the world than she. “I didn’t mean to say you didn’t know.”

“Oh!” cried Ell. “Bicycle! Yes, well, now we’re in my section of the alphabet! It’s high summer, September! That means the running of the bicycles, and that means Lickety-Split Transportation!”

September looked uncertainly at her denuded sceptre, hanging sadly from Ell’s bronze chain. “I don’t think I’ve anything like enough rubies left to buy bicycles for both of us.”

“Pish! We don’t buy, we catch! September, the bicycle herds, well, I suppose they’re called voleries, not herds, right, Saturday? Voleries. Anyhow, their migration path runs though the meadowflats just east of the City, and if we are lucky, and have a bit of rope with us, we can hitch on with them all the way to the Provinces. Or nearly all the way. It’s difficult, they’re wild beasts, you know. And if I run just as hard as I can I shall be able to keep up with you and no one’s bones need be smashed or jangled. It goes without saying, I think, that it would be a bit ridiculous for me to ride a highwheel, even a big, brawny bull. Let us go now, right away! I shouldn’t want to miss it, we would feel much chagrined, and stuck.”

“September,” pleaded Saturday, his blue eyes growing even wider and darker. “I have to eat. If I don’t eat, I will fall, soon, and not ever get up.”

“Oh, how rude of me!” September had forgotten her own hunger in all the excitement, but now it was back, in force. And so, quite without thinking about it, September spent the last of her chipped rubies at a public house called The Toad and the Tabernacle, where the tables and chairs and walls were a deep black widow’s weeds, and the milky yellow light from the candelabra made Saturday’s skin just as black as the ceiling.

“Salt,” whispered the boy regretfully. “I need salt, and stone.”

“Is that what you eat?” September wrinkled her nose. Saturday drooped in shame.

“It’s what the sea eats. When I have been starved, no other food will sustain me. When I am well I shall have goose-foot tarts and hawthorn custard with you, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings! Please, you mustn’t slump so! Besides, I’m not certain I can eat anything here. It’s all sure to be fairy food and I think I’ve been reasonable enough about that so far, and safe, but surely eating in a Fairy public house is right out.”

A-Through-L’s lips quirked, as if he knew a bit about both Fairy and Food, beginning as they both did with F. But he said nothing. September sat politely and drank a glass of clear water which was not food in the least and so obviously innocent. She tried to bargain with her stomach not to growl as A-Through-L demolished three plates of radishes and a flagon of genuine Morrowmoss well-water. Saturday gnawed a slab of blue sea-stone and daintily licked a joint of salt. He offered some to her uncertainly, and she demurred politely.

“I have a delicate digestion,” she said. “I don’t think it would bear much stone.”

A platter of painted duck eggs, sweet, dense bread, and marshmallow-fondue passed by on the shoulders of a waiter who might well have been a dwarf. September drank her water vigorously, trying not to look at it. And when all was done and swallowed and September still hungry but pleased with herself for avoiding temptation, the last of the sceptre went into the toll-chest of a much smaller, less splendid ferry. Without incident, its paddlewheel splashed through the Barleybroom, taking the three of them, away from the soft, gleaming spires of Pandemonium and deposited them on a grassy, empty shore.

“It seems so sad to leave,” September remarked mournfully as she stepped onto the muddy shore, “when we have only just arrived. How I wish I could get to know Pandemonium a little better!”

September tucked the green smoking jacket under the Wyverary’s bronze chain, knotting the sleeves together. The jacket mourned, crying out in silent, emerald-colored consternation, but alas, the ears of folk with legs and noses and eyebrows are not made to hearken to the weeping of those with inseams and buttonholes and lapels. Already September could hear a kind of thunder in the distance. The Meadowflats stretched long and far around them, even, well-tempered grass, without tree or welcoming shade or the smallest white flower. If the grass were not so rich and green, she would have called it desolate.

“Remember, they are fast and tall and vicious! Many have perished or at least been roundly dumped off and bruised in the attempt to travel by wild bicycle.” A-Through-L fretted and stamped his great feet in the grass.

September tied the green sash of the smoking jacket around the hilt of the Spoon. No money had remained for proper adventuring equipment, but she was her mother’s daughter, always and forever, and felt sure whatever she set her hands to would work. Once, they had spent a whole afternoon fixing Mr. Albert’s broken-up Model A so that September would not have to walk every day to school, which was several miles away. September would have been happy to watch her mother shoulder-deep in engine grease, but her mother wasn’t like that. She made September learn very well how a clutch worked, and what to tighten, and what to bend, and in the end September had been so tired, but the car hummed and coughed just like a car ought to. That was what September liked best, now that her mother was not about and she had the freedom to think about her from time to time. She liked best to learn things, and that her mother knew a great number of them, and never said anything was too hard or too dirty, and had never once told her that she would understand when she was older. On account of all of this, September could make a very respectable knot in the sash, and the sash, being part of the jacket, dutifully tightened itself even further and prepared for what was sure to be great discomfort to come. Saturday watched it all with vivid interest, but said nothing.

A long, loud horn sounded, and several answering hoots honked into the blazing day.

“They’re coming!” shouted Ell excitedly, his wings wobbling under the chains as he leapt up, his tongue lolling like a puppy’s. Really, he needn’t have said anything. The velocipede volery sent up a choking cloud of dust. Saturday and September could see it quite clearly, full of flying grass and dirt. And as soon as they heard the horns the bicycles were nearly upon them, a great throng of old-fashioned highwheels. The front wheels of the beasts were tall and enormous, the wheel behind tiny—though tiny in this case being somewhat larger than Saturday’s whole body. Their seats, borne loftily into the sky, were battered velvet of various motley, dappled shades, their tires spotted like hyenas, their spokes glittering in the naked meadowflat sun.

“Hold onto me, Saturday!” yelled September. He tucked his arms around her waist, and again she was struck by how heavy he was, when he seemed so small. The horns sqwonked again and as a great, soaring highwheel came roaring by, September threw the Spoon as hard as she could. It flew, far and true, and she clutched the end of the sash, which extended much further than you might think, so eager was the sash to please its mistress. The Spoon tangled in the spokes of the large wheel and up they shot into the air, the turning of the wheel pulling them forward. Saturday shut his eyes—but September did not. She laughed as she flew nearer and nearer to the broad speckled orange-and-black seat. She reached out to catch it and just caught her fingers in the copper springs beneath. Her knees banged against the tire and burned against the spinning, bloody and painful—but still September scrambled up as best she could.

“September! I can’t!” Saturday called after her, his blue face contorted in fear and strain as he tried to hold onto her and slipped, more by each minute, until he was only barely clutching her ankle. “I’ll fall!”

September tried to raise her leg and pull him up, but she could not fight the the jostling and honking of the velocipede as it angrily tried to dislodge its would-be rider. She hooked her elbow around the musky-smelling seat and reached down as far as she could, her fingers stretched to their limit, to catch him up. It was not enough. He could not get hold, and he was so terribly, awfully heavy. September cried out wordlessly as the highwheel reared up, determined to dash her bones against the meadow.

Saturday fell.

He did not shriek. He just looked at September as she rushed upward, away from him, his dark eyes terribly sad and sorry.

September screamed for him, and the honking horns seemed to laugh in wild victory—at least one child they could trample underfoot! But Ell came thumping up behind them, his powerful legs knocking weaker, younger velocipedes aside. He caught Saturday by the hair as he fell and tossed the Marid up as though he weighed not a thing, bumping him at the last with the tip of his nose so that September could catch his elbow and haul him onto the speckled seat beside her.

He clung to her, shaking a little. September could not make herself let go of the long brass handlebars. Her grip tightened until she could hardly feel her hands, but she bent her head and rubbed her cheek against Saturday’s forehead, the way Ell had done with her when she was frightened. He seemed to calm a little. Yet still, the noise and dust was awful, all around them. Ell ran alongside, whooping and lolling and laughing as little velocipedes took him for a bull and tried to roll up to ride on his shoulders.

“Excellent save, chickie-dear!” came a hollering voice over the pounding bicycle herd. September looked around—and saw on a nearby highwheel a handsome woman with lovely dark brown skin and wild curly hair. She wore something like a leather bomber’s jacket, with a fleecy collar and a hat with big, flopping earflaps. She had on big goggles to keep the dust out of her eyes, and thick boots with dozens of buckles over the kind of funny riding pants September had only seen in movies, the kind that bow out on the sides and make one look like one has squirreled away watermelons in one’s pockets. Behind her were two delightful things: a little girl dressed just the same, and a pair of iridescent coppery-black wings bound up in a thin chain.

The woman deftly steered her velocipede in and out of the volery to come up alongside them.

“Calpurnia Farthing!” she hollered again over the din, “And that one’s my ward, Penny!” The little girl waved cheerfully. She was much younger than September, perhaps only four or five. Her blue-black hair stuck out in tangled pigtails, and she wore a necklace of several bicycle chains which left her neck quite greasy. She wore mary-janes like September’s old shoes, but the girl’s were golden, dirty and muddy, but golden all the same.

“H…hello!” answered September, barely holding on.

“You’ll get used to it! Gets to be pretty natural, after awhile, the banging and bedlam! That’s quite a cow you’ve lashed there, she’s an alpha and no joking! I’d have tried for one of the milking calves my first time.”

“Beggars can’t be—”

“Oh, yes, I’m just congratulating, you know! She’s a beaut!”

“Erm, right now, you understand, Miss Farthing, it’s hard to carry on a conversation…”

“Oh, well, it would be, if you’re not accustomed!” Calpurnia Farthing held out her hand. Penny spat a wad of beech-sap gum into it. Calpurnia reached down and wedged the gunk into a broken spoke. Her highwheel screeched, possibly in relief, possibly in indignation at her particular brand of field medicine. “Well,” she yelled, “they do stop to drink at night! They’ve a powerful thirst, you know. Takes hours to slurp their fill!”

“Till then?” said September politely.

“Ayup!” And Calpurnia veered off wildly, with Penny laughing all the way.

The campfire crackled and sparked, sending up smoke into a starry sky. September had never seen so many stars, and Nebraska was not poor in stars. There were so many unfamiliar constellations, spangled with milky galaxies and the occasional wispy comet.

“That’s the Lamp,” whispered Saturday, poking the fire with a long stick. He seemed to be most comfortable whispering. “Up there, with the loopy bit of stars in a circle—that’s the handle.”

“Is not,” humphed Ell. “That’s the Wolf’s Egg.”

“Wolves don’t lay eggs.” September looked up in surprised—Saturday had never contradicted anyone yet.

“Well, there’s a story. I read it when I was a lizard. There’s a wolf, a banshee, and a bird of prophecy, and they all make a bet—”

“And the wolf says: ain’t what’s strong, but what’s patient.” Calpurnia tossed a palm frond into the fire. Penny tossed a clump of grass.

“No, he says: give me that egg or I’ll eat your mother,” huffed A-Through-L.

“Regional folkloric differences,” Calpurnia shrugged.

The highwheel pilot opened her jacket and pulled out several long strips of dark meat. She passed them around, along with a fancy oakwood flask. Penny gnawed her jerky contentedly.

“What…is it?” asked September dubiously.

“What do you think? Dried tire. I share and share alike with fellow velocipeders. Only fair, it’s a hard life. Don’t turn up your nose at it! It’s as good as any other meat. A little gamey, sure, but they’re wild. Not all fattened up like mutton. Go on, eat. And drink—that’s good axle grease in there. Just as nice as yak blood.”

Ell chomped his and swallowed it right quick. September chewed slowly. This could hardly qualify as food at all, let alone fairy food. But it wasn’t awful, not nearly. And not rubber in the least. It was as though someone had found an extremely skinny, tough old turkey and burnt it thoroughly in the oven. The flask smelled rich and salty, and when she drank she came near to spitting it out—or throwing it up—for it was indeed the closest thing to raw blood she had ever tasted. But she felt strength in her afterward, sinewy and springy and warm. Saturday ventured a little tire and a sip of grease, but could not stomach it. He nursed a bit of stone he had dug up from the earth instead. Penny stuck out her tongue in disgust.

“That’s not nice, love,” admonished Calpurnia. “Changelings, you know? No manners at all.”

“Is she? Really?”

Penny picked at her golden shoes. All changelings must wear identifying footwear, September remembered, as though from a hundred years ago. “Didn’t like the ‘chestra,” Penny mumbled. “Can’t play nothin’.”

“She’s right. I went to a recital and the poor thing was playing her grummellphone upside-down. Fortunate-like, I keep my pockets full of oilcan-candy in case I’m in need of bait. I offered her a handful and she jumped right into my arms. Took to the velos much better—practically born to it, you might say!”

“But a changeling,” said September, “that’s when a fairy takes a baby and leaves a fairy in the crib.”

“It’s more like…a cultural exchange program,” Calpurnia said, ripping off a chunk of tire in her teeth. Her eyes were wild and golden, and the starlight was all caught up in her wings. September tried not to stare. “Well, unless they leave a poppet. That’s just a bit of a joke. But usually, we swap them out again when they grow up, and everyone’s the wiser for solid communication between realms. It’s nice. Well, not nice, but fun. I’m not having that for my Penny, though! Princess of the Highwheels, I’ll have her up to be!”

“I talk to the little velos,” whispered the child. “They say: Penny, where’s your seat?”

“I don’t approve of the changeling orchestra. It’s not pretty, it’s just a zoo, really. For rich fairies who are in good with Miss Fancy-Curls herself to peer at. Couldn’t bear that for such a sweet thing as Penny. Time was, changelings were the toast of the town, fed with biscuits and new cream and got to dance at the Thistleballs in the spring, dance until their shoes wore through and then dance some more—”

“That doesn’t sound quite nice either…” said September uncertainly.

“Well, it’s a certain sight better than being strapped to a grummellphone until your spine grows W-shaped!”

“Grum’phone sounds like a cow chucking, anyway,” Penny groused.

“That’s right, chickie-love. And you never have to play one again. Anyway, I don’t approve of chamber music in general. It’s stuck-up on itself. Much prefer the velo horns.”

“What was her name before?” asked September.

“That’s private, no one needs to know that but her.”

“Molly!” piped Penny. “I was a Molly! And I had a Sarah and a Donald, and they were a sister and a brother. And I had a velo of my own! Only it wasn’t wild, and it didn’t talk. It was pink, and it had a little bell, and three wheels instead of two. But I didn’t have a Calpurnia, so I must have been sad. I don’t remember, really.”

They were all silent for awhile, staring into the fire as those not possessing tires and spokes have done since the dawn of the world. The Wyverary drifted helplessly to sleep, sitting up. He snored lightly. It sounded like pages turning. Calpurnia scratched under her hat.

“Where are you lot off to, then? You’ll pardon, you don’t seem like the lifestyle type. Short-term transport, am I right?”

“The Autumn Provinces,” answered Saturday, his voice echoing low among the snorting, snuffling highwheels as they teemed around their watering hole and spun their spokes in antique mating dances.

September found she did not want to say why they were going. She wrapped the sash around her recovered Spoon delicately. Calpurnia whistled.

“Ayup, that’s a respectable haul! We ought to make that in a week or two. Hope you brought comestibles of your own!”

“A week or two!” cried September. “But that’s not fast enough! We need to get there and back in seven days.”

Penny laughed. “Can’t do it!” she giggled.

But Calpurnia was thinking. She scratched her chin with three long brown fingers, then licked them and held them up to the wind. “Aye but we might…if you think you can handle your alpha. I don’t like to do it, but I’m not so dense as to miss that you’re running hard, and that almost always means there’s a beast behind you.”

September nodded miserably.

“Well, a velo is a lazy thing, in the end. They don’t like to go as fast as they can go. It suits them just as well to roll along leisurely-like. This is the Great Migration—they’re all homebound, to the spoke-nests, to mate and die. Some of them feel the mating drive stronger than others. Some only feel the dying drive. Makes them lag. But if you and I apply a bit of encouragement, they’ll bear down on the road like it’s dinner. And by encouragement I mean whipping of course and I know it’s not civilized and I cringe to think of it but sometimes with steeds it’s all you can do.”

“Don’t want to whip my velos,” Penny whimpered.

“They forget, chickie. They’ll all forget.”

“No they won’t! They’ll whisper: that Penny, she’s naughty and nasty!”

“Penny, you don’t have to do a thing,” said Saturday gently, who knew a thing or two about whipping.

“But Saturday, we’ve so little time…”

Saturday looked at her for a moment, his expression, as always, unreadable. Then he leaned over and rubbed his cheek against September’s forehead just as she had done to him. The Marid got up and walked away from the fire, into the dark and the wavering grass and the volery of snorting, spinning. velocipedes.

“Is he yours, then?” Calpurnia asked, draining her wooden flask with relish. She spat into her goggles and rubbed them clean with her fingers.

“Mine? No, he’s his own. “

Calpurnia grunted doubtfully and squinted at the dark.

“Miss Farthing, may I ask you a question?”

“How can a deny such a nicely-wrapped request?”

“Are you helping us because you want to? Because you like us, because you’re friendly and good-hearted? Or because the Marquess wants you to be nice? Because she’ll Greenlist you if you don’t?”

Calpurnia Farthing looked long and deep into September’s eyes. The young girl felt as though she was naked again, in the bath-house. Her golden gaze seemed heavy and hot.

“What makes you think I’m not already Greenlisted, girl? Do you think taking a changeling out of the orchestra comes at no price at all?” She tugged on the flaps of her hat. “If it will make you feel better I can lead you to a pit in the forest or steal your breath or whatever it is I might—and I’m not admitting to anything—have done in my profligate youth. These days, I have my highwheels and my girl to look after. Hardly time to go spoiling the barley for beer. Maybe when I retire, I’ll go back to it. But if it pleases the Marquess to think that her hoofing List is all that’s keeping me in my place, then let her think it. Mainly, I’ll help you because lost little human girls are a hobby of mine.” Penny snuggled up to Calpurnia and laid her head on her lap. The fairy-woman stroked the changeling’s matted hair. September smiled. She liked them. She felt safe with them near.

Out of the dark, Saturday returned amid much grinding and crushing noises, leading two huge highwheels behind him. They rolled along docilely, leaning in to nuzzle the other’s handlebars occasionally.

“They’ll take us, as fast as they can, faster, even,” said Saturday firmly. “They’re ready to mate, they don’t want to wait. They’ll leave right now if we want, they’ve drunk enough.”

“Hey! Only I talk to them!” said Penny, hands on her little hips.

Saturday shook his head and crouched next to her, his wild blue hair catching the firelight and blazing orange. “There’s not a creature living that doesn’t have wishes, Penny. And I can always hear wishing, even the very quietest kind.” The Marid stood up. “No whipping,” he said softly, almost embarrassed. “Not ever. Not even if the whipping would make them do your will as fast as blinking. Especially if.”

Calpurnia Farthing held out her hand. Saturday shook it, thought better, and then kissed it in a very courtly way. “I said I didn’t like to. They’d have forgiven me. Probably not you, but me, they would have loved again.”

“I know.”

“Let’s off, then. I’ll see you to the edge of the equinox. Leastaways I can do, for such raw wheelers as you and yours.”

Into the silver-spangled night, two great bicycles rolled silently, bearing them all into the dark. A-Through-L ran beside them, his tongue clamped between his teeth, willing his legs to pump faster.

“Calpurnia,” said September, when they had left the last ruddy light of the campfire behind them, “I thought fairies danced in reels together, and had big families.”

“Ayup, we do.”

“Then why are you alone? And Charlie Crunchcrab, too? Where has everyone gone?”

Calpurnia turned her face away. Her wings fluttered weakly under their iron chain, and September could see where red hives had boiled up under the metal. It’s the iron, she though, fairies are allergic.

When Calpurnia Farthing, Queen of the Velocipedes, looked out across the flats again, her face was streaked with silent, stubborn tears.

“Good grief,” sighed Iago. “You oughtn’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I should have said no. A braver girl would have said no. An ill-tempered one.”

“Temperament, you’ll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat. The Marquess gets what she wants, little girl. There’s no shame in being unable to defy her.” The Panther sniffed and scratched at his nose with a black paw. “And precious little satisfaction in denying her, well do I know.”

“Oh, ho! September!” called a deep, familiar, rolling voice. September leapt up and ran towards it, wheeling around the bramble-wall of the Briary with Iago close behind. The Wyverary stood by the moat-bank in a kind of pen, his tail waving back and forth like a dog who has found a stash of bones. A high fence of kimono-silk posts came up to his knee. A-Through-L waved with one foot, and then bent to peer into a cage.

The cage was wooden, shabby—a lobster cage, September recognized.The kind lobstermen from far east where Aunt Margaret lived used to drag the creatures off the sea floor. A great many of them lay about, empty, some shattered and broken. Only in one of them, a boy crouched, shivering, his eyes downcast. A boy with dark blue skin, and black swirling patterns on his back, curling like waves. He looked up at her, his face drawn and thin, greasy hair tied up in a knot on the top of his head. His eyes were huge, and black, and full of tears.

“Don’t let me out,” he whispered. “I know you’ll want to. All good souls want to. But she’ll never forgive you.”

Oh, September. Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless. But you are stubborn, and do not listen to your elders.

September fell to her knees before the lobster cage. “Oh! But you must be miserable in there!”

“I am,” answered the blue child, “but you mustn’t. I belong to her.”

“Too right he does,” warned Iago, batting at a little cotton beetle skittering through the dusty pen. “I wouldn’t even consider it, if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you’d do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.”

“Well,” September said slowly, burning to defy the Marquess in something, anything, and make up for her weakness in the Briary. “This Spoon belonged to her too, until a few minutes ago.”

“I’m different. I’m a Marid.”

September looked blank. The boy sighed, his tattooed shoulders slumping as if he always suspected the world would be a disappointment.

“Do you know what djinni are?” sighed Iago dramatically, as if he could not begin to hear her ignorance.

September shook her head.

“Like genies,” piped up the Wyverary, delighted that he could be helpful, as djinni began with D. “They grant wishes. And wreck things, but mostly grant wishes.”

“Well, he’s like a djinn, which is like a…genie, like he said.”

“Only I’m not,” said the boy. “I’m a Marid. Djinni are born in the air. They live in the air. They die in the air. They eat cloud-cakes and storm-roasts and drink lightning-beer. Marids live in the sea. They’re born in the sea. They die in the sea. Inside them, the sea is always roaring. Always at high tide. Inside me. And yes, we grant wishes. And so the Marquess loves us. She has her own burly magic, angry and old. But in the end she knows she is safe, even if her magic should fail, for she has her Marids. We can be made to parcel out her will in wishes.”

“Why don’t you just wish your way out of the cage?” asked September, very sensibly.

“It doesn’t work like that. I can only grant wishes if I am defeated in battle, if I am hurt nearly to death. I cannot change the rules. When she needs one of us, she beckons. She gives us wooden swords, she is at least sporting.”

“Oh, that’s ghastly,” breathed September.

“She sends the black cat after us, to the far north where we live. He pounced on my mother Rabab and held her still while her fishermen closed me up in a cage. I was small. I could not help her. I wished as hard as I could, but I cannot wrestle myself. I owned a scimitar of frozen salt, and I slashed at the cat with it, but he seized it in his jaws and splintered it, and I shall never see it again, or my mother, or my sisters, or my beautiful, lonely sea, which is so far off I cannot even hear her breathing.”

Iago licked his paw and looked mildly at September. Go on, little human, his gaze seemed to say, tell me I am wicked.

“But I’ve heard of Rabab!” said September suddenly. “I saw her on the newsreel! But she’s so young! She’s just been married!”

The boy fidgeted. “Marids…are not like others. Our lives are deep, like the sea. We flow in all directions. Everything happens at once, all on top of each other, from the seafloor to the surface. My mother knew it was time to marry because her children had begun to appear, wandering about, grinning at the moon. It’s complicated. A Marid might meet her son when she is only twelve and he is twenty-four, and spend years searching the deeps for the mate who looks like him, the right mate, the one who was always already her mate. My mother found Ghiyath because he had my eyes.”

“That sounds confusing.”

“Only if you’re not a Marid. I knew Rabab as soon as I saw her. She had my nose and her hair was just the same shade of black as mine. She was walking on the shore; a cloud of mist followed her like a dog. I brought her a flower, a dune-daisy. I held it out to her, and we stared at each other for a long time. She said: ‘Is it time, then?’ I said: ‘Now, we shall play hide and seek.’ And I ran off down the strand. She still has to have me, of course. It’s like a current, we have to go where where we’re going. There are a great number of us, since we are all forever growing up together and also already grown. As many as sparkles in the sea. We are solitary, though. So as to avoid awkward social situations. But it does mean the Marquess can wrestle us and still have us whole and healthy. We are her cake, and her having it. I think my older self is already dead.”

“Does that mean you’ll never have children or a mate then, if the older you is gone?”

“No, I shall be him presently. I need only wait.”

“You poor thing, how terribly strange your life is! What is your name?”

“Saturday,” the boy said. “And it is only strange to you.”

“Even so…my name is September. And I am not going to let you stay in there, Saturday. Not today, not after everything.”

Now, September might have left well enough alone if she did not feel so terribly guilty about accepting employment with the Marquess. If she were not already thinking of some way to tell the Wyverary while not looking at his blistered skin under his chain that they had to go and get a sword for the tyrant. If she did not want to leave some bit of mischief in her wake. She took a step back, drew the Spoon out of her sash, and with a great swing that nearly whacked into Ell’s kneecap behind her, brought the Spoon crashing down on the cage’s lock. Splinters flew in a most satisfying fashion.

Saturday crouched back, like an hound certain the dogcatcher is just around the corner. September reached out her hand. The blue boy hesitated.

“Will you beat me, if I say no?” he whispered fearfully.

September thought she might cry. “Oh…oh dear. Not all the world is like that. Well. I am not like that.”

The boy took her hand, after all. It was heavier than she expected, as though he were made of sea-stone. September was struck by how dark his eyes were, how wide in his thin face. It was like looking into the darkest possible sea, with strange fishes at the bottom of it. He stared at her, silent, wild.

“I suppose you fancy yourself brave now, hm? A knight?” Iago growled.

“Saturday,” said September, ignoring the Panther. She held the Marid gently around the shoulders. “Do you think, if I wanted to, could I wish us all away from here and someplace with a warm fire and cider for you and food for all of us and safe harbor and just everything?”

“I told you—”

“No, I know, but we could just pretend to wrestle. And you could give in. That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

Saturday straightened a little. He was taller than September, but not by much. The looping black patterns in his skin made whirpools on his skinny chest. He wore some sort of sealskin trousers, torn at the knees, worn at the cuffs. “I cannot cheat. I cannot pretend. And even now I am strong. I must be made to submit. Like the sea my grandmother, I cannot be changed—I can only be mastered.” His shoulders slumped. “But I would rather be gentle. And loved. And never wish for anything, ever.”

“Oh…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended. I’m sorry for you. You will be punished for freeing me. The cat will eat you, probably. Or me. Or both of us. He’s very hungry, most of the time.”

“He cannot eat Ell. Ell will whack him if he tries, I am sure. And possibly roast him. Come with us, Saturday, come away from Pandemonium. Into the forest, into the wild places where she does not want to go. I am not very tall, but I have a Spoon, and a sceptre, and I will protect you if I can.”

The Panther Iago regarded them in a vaguely bored way.

“But I hoped you’d stay to luncheon,” he purred. “I would have laid my head on your lap.”

“Thank you kindly,” said September brightly.

“You’re stealing her Marid,” the cat said tonelessly. “Do you want one of her cannons, too? They’re about the same: stupid, dangerous, and useful.”

“He doesn’t belong to her!”.

“Well, he certainly does.” Iago grinned. His pink tongue flopped out between sharp teeth. “But I won’t tell. Iago won’t, no.”

“Why wouldn’t you? She’s your mistress!”

“I’m a cat. A big one, the Panther of Rough Storms, in face. But still a cat. If there’s a saucer of milk to spill, I’d rather spill it than let it lie. If my mistress grows absent-minded and leaves a ball of yarn about, I’ll bat it between my paws, and unravel it. Because it’s fun. Because it’s what cats do best.” He tried to smile, but his teeth got in the way. “In fact, I could help. After all, it would be much more efficient…more modern…if you could fly to your destination instead of walking all that way. Being a Lieutenant has its small pleasures. Very small, sometimes. I could grant special dispensation to your Wyvern and remove his chains. Temporarily, of course. She would approve of that.”

A-Through-L slowly sat back on his haunches, sending up a cloud of dust.

“I could fly? Really fly? Like when I was small?”

Iago rolled his eyes. “Yes, like when you were small. Like when you were a wee lizard with nary a care in the world, licking your eyeballs and sucking crows’ eggs. Just like life was in that distant Eden of your scaley, wormy youth. How wonderful it will be, I’m sure. Shall I remove them for you?”

Ell looked down at his chains. With his claws he lifted them in awe and let them fall against his hide. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, but was overcome. Once, and only once, he allowed himself to look up into the forbidden sky. And at last, he shook his great head. The sun glinted on his horns. “I…I can’t,” he said wretchedly. “Not while my sister M-Through-S can’t fly. Not while my brother T-Through-Z can’t. Not while my mother wanders on foot. The Marquess is splendid—oh, she is so splendid! If she should appear right this second I would abase myself in gratitude. But I cannot take her beneficence. I cannot bargain for my own joy alone—no one else gets to fly. Why should I? I am not special, or worthy. If she should appear right this very second, I would beg her: let your magnanimousness find some other soul who longs to fly and unlock her chains. I will walk wherever it is I wish to go. I will walk to my grandfather the Municipal Library, and he will praise me for my unselfishness. I have walked my whole life. More will not hurt me.”

September’s eyes filled with tears. Why did I not just say no? She thought wretchedly. But her own voice answered her back: to save him, so that he could say no if he liked. Glue cannot say yes or no. I did the right thing, I did.

Iago shrugged his furry shoulders. “As you like. Saves me the work of picking the lock with my incisor.”

His almond-shaped eyes fixed suddenly on Saturday and narrowed. The Panther padded over to Saturday and sniffed at him. With slinky deliberateness, he licked the boy’s face. “Keep in touch, blueberry. And if you should see my sister again, September, lick her cheek for me.”

Iago strode away, tail held high. The three of them, Ell, September, and Saturday, leaning on September for strength, tried to look as though they belonged and were not doing a thing wrong as they walked quickly to the gate of the Briary, never looking back, not once.

“September,” said the Wyverary wonderingly when the brambles and golden flowers and babbling moat were behind them at last, “where did you get those shoes?”

Somewhere, under all those brambles, there was probably a building.

A palace, even. Certainly September could make out towers, a portcullis, even a moat of floating golden flowers. Not golden in the darling little way folk in our world call buttercups or certain girls’ hair golden: these flowers were genuinely gold, burnished, glowing, deep. Yet they were soft; pleasant winds crinkled the petals as they drifted along on a lazy current, spinning and colliding gently. But the briars tangled up everything else, great vines thicker around than September whose thorns were awfully sharp and angry looking. They braided each other, ran up and down the walls, snarled in great knots. Here and there were clutches of pale gold berries, their skin so thin September could see the juice sloshing inside. But neither she nor the Wyverary could glimpse even an inch of masonry. It was as though the Briary had just grown that way, and had never been any different.

No guards flanked the door—if it was a door. Large flowers bloomed aggressively through an arch in the brambles in a sort of door-like fashion. Their centers were clotted with glistening pollen. September reached out her hand to touch one—A-Through-L cried out a wordless warning! But the flower simply soaked her hand in pollen and closed its petals over her fingers, searching and suckling with its silken blossom. Satisfied, it wrinkled away and aside to allow September to duck into a hall hung with dim, sun-dappled shadows.

It drew closed again sharply, keeping the Wyverary outside. A-Through-L bellowed, and the bellowing of any Wyvern is terrible to hear. He struck the flower; it remained, tough and unyielding as bronze. The brambles writhed a little, as if in silent, viney laughter.

September walked through the grand hall, trying not to make noise on the beautiful polished floor. A giant, heart-shaped double staircase ran up to a bank of windows. There was a neat rack on which to place one’s shoes and umbrellas. A kind of light drifted in between the bramble-vines, falling on a grandiosely-framed painting of a tall, lovely woman with long golden hair tied back in a velvet bow. Her hand rested on a leopard’s head, and in her other she held a simple wooden hunter’s bow. She wore an ivory crown and a smile so wide and kind September felt she could love that lady all the days of her life and never feel cheated, even if she never looked twice at such a poor, shabby soul as September. Even in the painting, she seemed to glow. That is what a grown-up looks like, thought September. Not like the grown-ups in my world who look sad and disappointed and grimy with work and bored with everything. Like her. What do the storybooks say?

In the fullness of her strength.

“Did you come all the way here with only one shoe?” came a sweet, wondering voice.

September whirled away from the painting. In the center of the heart-shaped staircase sat a little girl, holding her chin in her hands. She had thick cherry-purple hair that hung in old-fashioned sausage-curls to her shoulders, and a magnificent, terrible hat poised on her head, like a cake tipping to one side. The hat was black, September could see now as she could not when this child shook hands with a bear onscreen. The feathers shone blue and green and red and cream-colored. The jewels glittered dark and violet. Next to her, a huge panther purred languidly and watched September out of one green eye.

“That must have been just awfully painful. How brave of you!”

The Marquess ran one hand luxuriously along the panther’s spine, winding her fingers in his fur—and drew up a pair of exquisite black shoes, like September’s, if September’s shoe had grown up, gone to a great many balls and theatrical to-dos, and found a dashing mate. They had little heels and black crystal lilies on the toes, with bits of ribbon looping and whorling all around, speckled with garnets and tiny black pearls. She held them out to September, whose bare foot, truthfully, ached and throbbed with cold and blisters. She wanted to take them, she did, but taking gifts from wicked Queens, even if they are called Marquesses, is a dangerous business, and September knew it.

She shook her head, with much sadness. The shoes were so beautiful.

“I am only trying to help you, child,” said the little girl. She set the shoes gently on the gleaming floor and ran her hand along the cat’s spine again. This time, the Marquess drew up a silver plate piled high with wet red cherries, a wedge of black bread crusted with sugar, swollen raspberries and strawberries, several lumps of dark, dusty chocolate, and a tall goblet of steaming hot wine.

“You must be so hungry. You’ve come so far!”

September swallowed. Her throat was dry, her stomach empty. But this was certainly fairy food. The worst kind, the kind that never let you go, if you even tasted it once. “Is that Queen Mallow?” she said, nodding toward the portrait and forcing her voice to be friendly.

The Marquess looked up at the great painting and scowled. Her curls shivered and went deep blue, the color of the sea. She sighed and snapped her fingers. The rich plate disappeared.

“You would think that new management would have the right to redecorate. But some magic never bends, not even if you tear at it with your own teeth. No matter how I tear, the portrait stays. She was never that beautiful, though. The painter must have been a loyalist.” The Marquess turned away from Queen Mallow’s sweet gaze and focused on September again. She smiled. “But she is dead, my child. I promise you that. Dead as autumn and last year’s apple jam. We haven’t come all this way to dish gossip about ancient history. How have you been enjoying Fairyland, September?”

“How do you know my name?”

“You filed papers, of course. You have a visa. What in the world do you think all that is for, if not to make certain that I know everything?”

September didn’t say anything.

“Well, I do hope everyone has been nice to you, and hospitable in every way they can think of. It’s important to me, September, that you’re treated well.”

“Oh, yes! Everyone has been terribly helpful and kind—except the Glashtyn, I suppose. I had heard that fairies were nasty and tricky and cruel, but they’re not, not really.”

“Oh?” said the Marquess with arch amusement. She stroked the panther. “But they are, truly, September. Just the worst sort of folk. You’d never believe how wicked! They’re nice because I make them nice. Because I punish them if they are not nice. Because I put them on the Greenlist if they are not nice. Before I came, Fairyland was a dangerous place, full of brownies spoiling milk and giants stomping on whomever they pleased and trolls telling awful, punning riddles. I fixed all that, September. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to invent bureaucracy in a world that didn’t even know what a ledger was? To earn their submission, even to having their wings locked down? But I did it. I fixed it for children like you, so that you could be safe here and have lovely adventures with no one troubling you and trying to steal your soul away. I do hope you didn’t think you had charmed them all with your sparkling personality, child.”

“Why do you keep calling me a child? You’re no older than I am.”

“Really, September. You’re going to have to be a bit more discerning than that if you expect to get along here. I suppose I shouldn’t expect any better from a Midwesterner. They teach you such frightful things about the world.” The Marquess paused. The tips of her hair grew silver and shining. “Do you like my Panther? He is called Iago. I love him very much, and he loves me. I used to have a Leopard, but she ran off some time ago. Could not change with the times, I suppose.” The Marquess nodded toward the portrait of Queen Mallow, whose hand still rested on a Leopard’s head. “That sort of thing is so tragic, don’t you think? I do so prize adaptability.” The Panther Iago growled at the mention of his predecessor.

Could she mean my Leopard? Thought September. The Leopard of Little Breezes? She did not like to think of the Marquess riding her Leopard, even for a little while.

“Cats are temperamental,” offered September softly. “I have heard you have lions, too.”

“Too true!” cried the Marquess, her hair wholly silver now, gleaming like true metal. “On both counts! Lions sleep a great deal, for it is from their dreams that their strength chiefly comes. They are closeted in their chambers, snoozing away on lacy coverlets. Now, I believe you wanted to steal a Spoon from me?”

September bit her lip. This was not precisely how she had thought her adventure would go. How could she be brave for the sake of the witch Goodbye if she was found out before she could even try?

“Don’t be ashamed, my love. I would not be a very good Marquess if I could not tell when troublesome little Ravished children are incoming with poor intentions towards me and my belongings. After all, the Ravished are always trouble. Any ruler of Fairyland must learn to watch out for them particularly, as they have a nasty habit of dethroning one, and undoing decades of hard work.”

“But…Miss Marquess. The Spoon is not one of your belongings. You took it from the witch Goodbye. That’s stealing. So it’s not really very wicked of me at all to want to steal it back—stealing things back is hardly stealing at all.”

The Marquess cocked her head to one side and smiled. Somehow her smile was worse than her frown. The Panther licked his black paws nonchalantly. “Is that what she told you? That I stole it? What a dreadful misunderstanding! I shall have her to tea immediately to apologize. You must appreciate my position, September, I was under the impression that all things in my realm belong to me, and Goodbye was under the impression that Good Queen Mallow would arrive at any moment to save her. You can see how things got terribly confused!”

“Where…” September cleared her throat. He hands shook. “Where I come from, if a person has a Spoon, no one can come and take it just because they’re the governor or something.”

“I think that’s very naive of you, September. Tell me, what does your father do?”

September felt her face flush. “Well, he was a teacher. But now he’s a soldier.”

“Oh! Iago, did you hear that? You mean to say that one day the governor or something came and took your father even though you were quite sure he was yours and yours alone? Well, that is certainly different. A father is nowhere near so valuable as a Spoon! I can see why you prefer your sensible, logical world.”

“Well, they didn’t kill anyone in the process!”

“No, September. They wait until little girls like you are out of sight first. War must always be done out of sight, or it shocks people and they stop immediately.” The Marquess’s hair slowly deepened to the color of blood.

September squeezed back tears. “Why did you kill Goodbye and Hello’s brothers?” she cried wretchedly.

“Because, child. They were not nice. They defied me. But I do not wish to talk about them, or anyone else dead and therefore not useful. We were speaking of your parents. I do wish children could pay attention!” Her voice got very hard all of the sudden, no longer bright and full of tea-time conversation, but keen and deadly interested. “What about your mother, September?”

“She…she builds engines.” September did not think she ought to mention airplanes in Fairyland—visions of fleets of bomber belonging to the Marquess flooded her mind.

The Marquess stood suddenly. She was wearing a short yellow dress with black stockings, all lace and stiff black petticoats. She rushed down the stairs to stare September directly in the eye—they were precisely the same height. The Marquess’s blue eyes were full of interest. The Panther slowly descended the stairs behing her, unconcerned.

“What if I told you that I would give you the Spoon? That thievery need never be mentioned between us? You can take it back to Goodbye and her silly sister or use it to stir soups of your own, whatever you like.” The Marquess was very close, as close as kissing. She smelled like beautiful, dying flowers. “I can be nice, September,” she whispered. “It is only right that I behave as I require my people to behave. I can help you and pet you and give you lovely presents. I can be a faithful guide.”

September felt much as she had when Goodbye had tried to convince her to be a witch. But there was no glamour. The Marquess was not a witch. It was only that she was so terribly strong, and so terrible close. “But not for nothing,” September whispered. “Never for nothing.”

“Never for nothing.” The Marquess wavered back and forth like a snake charmer. “But it is such a little thing, and such fun to get, that I’m sure you will leap at the chance. You want to have fun, don’t you? And marvelous adventures? That’s why you came to Fairyland, isn’t it? To have adventures?”

“Yes…”

“Well! What is the use of ruling Fairyland if one cannot make little children happy? There is a place, September, oh, very far from Pandemonium. A place where it is always autumn, where there is always cider and pumpkin pie, where leaves are always orange and fresh-cut wood is always burning and it is always, just always Halloween. Doesn’t that sound splendid, September?”

“Yes…”

“And in that place is a thing I need, closed up in a glass casket in the heart of the Worsted Wood.”

“But the Green Wind said the Worsted Wood was forbidden—”

“Government has its little privileges.”

“He said it was dangerous—”

“Posh! What does he know? He is not allowed here. And never will be, whatever he told you. The Worsted Wood is just wood. No more or less dangerous than any other wood. If there are ravening beasts, well, they have every right to live and eat, don’t they? All you must do is go there and eat candy and have a wonderful time with the spriggans, and jump in leaf piles and dance in the moonlight—and before you leave, with a full belly and the first whisper of snow blowing through your hair, open the casket and bring me whatever it is you find there. Even if it is ridiculous, even if it seems useless and small. That isn’t so much to ask, is it? In exchange for a Spoon that tells the future?”

“What…what is in the casket?”

“That’s none of your worry, beautiful child. Your pretty head needn’t trouble itself with that.”

September bit the inside of her cheek, but the Marquess was so close. She tried to think of the Green Wind, of his pleasant green smell and the clouds whisking by as they flew over Westerly. She felt calmer—a little calmer. Not terribly much calmer.

“Why can’t you get it yourself? You can go anywhere…”

The Marquess rolled her bright blue eyes. “If you must know, it’s a cranky casket, and if I were to go…well, let us say it would not give me the same gift it would give you, who are innocent and sweet and gentle of spirit.”

“I’m not…I’m ill-tempered and irascible…”

“Now, who told you that?” The Marquess caressed September’s face softly. Her hand was hot, like fire. “How rude of them. You are quite the sweetest child I’ve ever met.”

“I can’t, I just can’t do what you want unless I know what it is. Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.”

“I will never be cruel to you, September. You remind me so much of myself.”

“Still, I can’t.” September blinked several times, trying to clear her head. In her pocket, she clutched the glass ball the Green Wind had given her. “Unless you tell me the truth,” she said as firmly as she could. “And give me the Spoon now, not later, when I’ve returned.”

The Marquess looked at September appraisingly. Her blood-colored hair was slowly lightening to a gentle pink, like candy floss.

“How strong you are, child. You must have eaten your spinach and brussel sprouts all up and drunk all your milk, once upon a time. Now, let us think! What would a beautiful monarch send you for? Oh, I know! The glass casket contains a magical sword. It is so powerful that it doesn’t have a name. It is no spoiled, painted dilettante like Excalibur or Durendal. Naming a sword like this one would only cheapen it and make it tawdry. But the casket is also old, and also opinionated, and were I to stand in the forest and cut its fastenings…well. It would not give me the true sword.”

“But you would use it…to kill more witches’ brothers, I think…”

“September, I swear to you, here and now, in the presence of Iago, Queen Mallow, and your single, solitary shoe, that I will never use that sword to harm a soul. Little unpleasantries are necessary, when one rules wicked, trickstery folk. But I would not soil such a sword by using it for simple, everyday murdering. I intend something much grander.”

September wanted to ask. She burned to ask.

“Ah, that I will not tell you, little one. You are not ready to know. And loose lips sink glorious new worlds. Fairyland is still so beautiful for you. You would not believe me if I told you how sour it can go. Suffice it to say that I shall find the source of this sourness, and with the blade of the sword you bring me I will cut it out. Will you get it for me? Will you take Goodbye’s Spoon and go to the Autumn Provinces in my name?”

September thought of the poor, angry, lost witches, peering into their cauldron while the sea pounded away. She thought of the wairwulf, and his kindness to her. She thought of her Wyverary, and his chafed, locked wings.

“No,” she squeaked. Blood beat against her brow. She felt dizzy. “I will do nothing in your name.”

The Marquess shrugged. She bent and kissed the Panther’s ears. “Well, then I shall have your deluded, ridiculous cut-rate dragon rendered into glue and perfume.”

“No!”

Iago growled softly. The Marquess seized September’s hand and crushed her fingers in her burning grip. “I think that’s just about enough nos out of you young lady,” she hissed. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Some country witch? I do not ask favors. I do not beg indulgences from spoiled brats. Only occasionally do I make bargains. I offered you a good one, a fair one! If you do not want to play fair, you cannot expect me to. Iago, go and fetch the Wyvern.”

“No! Please don’t! I’ll go! I’ll go. Just so long as you promise it’s not for hurting anyone.”

The Marquess’s hair flushed with pleasure, turning a deep pumpkiny orange, just September’s favorite shade. She pressed September’s hand to her lips—but still she squeezed it, painfully. “I just knew we would be friends!” she crooned. “Now that you’ve stopped being stubborn, let’s get that bedraggled old shoe off of you!”

Numbly, automatically, September let the Marquess toss away her loyal, honest mary-jane and slipped the black, be-ribboned shoes onto her feet. They fit perfectly. Of course they fit perfectly.

Patting her arm, the Marquess led her to the door of the Briary. September suddenly realized that she had seen nothing at all of the house, knew nothing of the Marquess’s powers, knew little more than when she had arrived. She had been handled, and with ease.

“Still,” she whispered, her small defiance. “I’ll take the Spoon now.”

“Of course. I can be so reasonable, when I am obeyed.” The Marquess stroked Iago again. The Panther arched his back, relishing her hand. She drew up a long wooden spoon, much stained, its handle wrapped in leather. September took it and stuck it through the sash of the green smoking jacket.

The Marquess stood on her toes and kissed September’s forehead. Her lips alone were cold. When she pulled away, her hair was a deep, dark green.

“Iago will show you out. When we meet again, things between us will have progressed very far, I think.”

Iago took September’s mashed hand gently in his mouth and tugged her toward the flower-door.

“Safe travels, September,” called the Marquess brightly. She smiled again, from the bottom of the heart-shaped stair, the sweetest smile September had ever seen on a child. “And if you do not bring my sword in seven nights’ time, I shall have that Spoon back, and your head on a thorn in my garden.”

“Go on,” said the Wyverary, nudging the girl in the orange dress with his great red nose. “Ask.”

September squinted dubiously. The brass face before her did not move.

In fact, it was a brass face hoisted up on a tower of tangled brass hands that seemed to be frozen in the acts of pleading, praying, beseeching, orating, pointing, prodding. They wound around each other until five of them fanned out in a kind of finger-fringed flower that held the face aloft. The burnished face had huge, puffy cheeks, a pursed mouth, and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Its ears were enormous, larger than its head. Behind the post rose a huge, bustling, and walled city. The sounds from within were indistinct, as bustle always is. The wall did not look terribly sturdy—it was patchwork, motley-colored, a dozen kinds of brocade and stiff silk and satin and broadcloth, all sewn together with gnarled, ropy yarn the color of squash, and thicker than tree trunks. They stood at a gate of goat-hide. The Switchpoint, for that’s what Ell called it, made a kissing face at them. All around them well-kept lawns wound down to the lapping Barleybroom, full of gentle little paths and sedate violets nodding pleasantly. A sundial spun its shadow slowly around cluster of yellow peonies. Not at all what you might expect from a place called Pandemonium, really, especially the bird baths and commemorative benches. It looked much more like Hanscom Park in Omaha than the outskirts of a Fairy City.

The Switchpoint still pursed its lips at them. A sparrow landed on one of its over sized ears and flew away again, as though the brass burned its feet. Ell insisted that this was the way in.

“What shall I ask?” said September, shuffling her feet.

“Well, where do you want to go?” Ell stretched his long neck, uncoiling it and yawning, then coiling it up again.

“I expect to wherever the Marquess lives.”

“That’s the Briary.”

“But then…thieves work at night, mostly, and I ought to start acting like a thief, if I mean to steal something. So we ought to wait, until nightfall, you know. It’s easier to be sneaky in the dark.”

“September, Queen Among Thieves, you will never get into Pandemonium this way. You must have a Purpose. You must have Business Here. Loiterers, Lackadaisicals, and other Menaces might do well in other cities, but they are allergic to Pandemonium, and it is allergic to them. If you do not have Business Here, you must at least pretend you do with a very firm expression, or else learn to eat violets and converse with sundials.”

“We could go to the Municipal Library, see your…grandfather.” September was still deeply unsure about Ell’s theory on his parentage.

A-Through-L blushed, going all orange in the face. “I…I’m not ready!” he quailed suddenly. “I haven’t had a brush-up on my studies! I haven’t had my horns waxed or my credentials calligraphed or anything! Tomorrow, we can go tomorrow, or maybe next week!”

“Oh, Ell, don’t worry,” September sighed. “I think you look fine as you are! And you’re quite the smartest beast I’ve ever known.”

“But how many beasts have you known?”

“Well, there’s you…and the Leopard, and the wairwulf. I’m only eleven! I think three is a very respectable number.”

“Not what you’d call a statistical sampling, though. But it’s no matter, today we ride on the rails of your quest, not mine. I’m not ready. I’m just not.” A-Through-L’s eyes turned pleading. Tears welled up, bright turquoise, glittering.

“Oh! It’s all right, Ell! Don’t cry!” September stroked his leathery knee. She turned to the Switchpoint and took a deep breath, speaking as loudly and sternly as she could.

“Listen, Mr. Brass-Ears! I should like to find a place that is cool and shady, somewhat near the Briary, but not too near, where we can rest and laugh and see something wonderful of Pandemonium while we wait for the sun to set.”

“And lemon ices,” whispered Ell.

“And where they serve lemon ices,” finished September firmly.

The Switchpoint exhaled with a long, high whistle, its cheeks deflating like spent balloons. Its eyes opened and its ears fluttered. All the hands of the post flexed, made fists, and relaxed again.

“Papers,” the Switchpoint said in a faint, airy voice. Its eyes were hard brass balls, glinting with judgment.

September fished the little green book Betsy Basilstalk had given her out of the inner pocket of the smoking jacket. The jacket was deeply pleased to have kept it safe for her. She held it up so the cherubic little face could examine it. It clucked imperiously.

“Ravished, eh? Haven’t seen one of you in awhile.” The Switchpoint looked dubiously at A-Through-L, who scratched at the grass with one enormous claw.

“He’s my…companion. My wyvern,” said September hurriedly. She hoped he would not be too offended at being called hers.

“Do you have a Deed for him?”

The Wyverary drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable. “True servitude,” he said gently, “can only be voluntary. Surely you know that, surely you once chose to stand here and frown at those who wish only to enter the city. Surely you once did something else, sold gloves or frightened children at festivals, and chose this instead.”

The Switchpoint squinted up at him. “Were a soldier, we were,” it grumbled.

The great goat hair gate drew back like a theatre curtain. Four of the hands at the base of the Switchpoint post began to work furiously, so fast the fingers blurred so that September could not even see them moving. Slowly, a deep scarlet scrap began to spread out from the post, weaving itself as it went, a little brass thumb sliding back and forth like a shuttle. It flowed on, raw, shimmering silk, under September’s shadowless feet and through the gate, stopping there, as if to beckon them onward.

September took a step forward. The hands blurred into industry again, and the scarlet path wove swiftly on, into Pandemonium.

“It’s all right,” said Ell confidentially as they passed through the gate. “I know you didn’t mean it, about my being yours.” The great beast flicked his red tail. “But I can be. And you can be mine! And what lovely games we shall have!”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” sighed A-Through-L happily as September gaped. “Queen Mallow built it this way, years and years ago.”

Pandemonium spread out around her, a city of cloth. Bright storefronts ran ahead of them, built with violet crinoline and crimson organdy. Towers wound up in wobbly twists of stiff, shining brocade. Memorial statues wore felt helmets over bombazine faces. High, thin, fuzzy houses puffed out angora doors; fancy taffeta offices glimmered under the gaze of black lace gargoyles. Even the broad avenue they stood on was a mass of ropy, pumpkin-colored grosgrain. And there! That crooked, creased, ancient leather obelisk must be Groangyre Tower! The warm wind filled a coppery satin balloon at the tip-top of the tower and blew it up into a fine cupola.

The woven scarlet path at their feet waited patiently, indulging their country gawking.

“She couldn’t have done it all by herself!” gasped September.

A-Through-L shrugged. “Fierce was her needle, and she wore it like a sword. Wielded it, too! Brandished, even! But all that was so terribly long ago. Maybe there’s one brickwight so old he cannot stand who might remember the days when Pandemonium was made of stone. But only while drunk on thistlesyrup, and no one would believe him.”

A little sound rustled up from the patient path, something like a cough, if fabric that wove itself could cough. In fact, September noticed, a great number of linen paths wound out in front of folk as they hurried past, all of different colors, cobalt and ochre and silver and rose, busily weaving through side streets and thoroughfares, dodging carriage-traffic, buskers squeezing accordions with four arms, barkers advertising roasted melons and fresh fennel-bouquets for the discerning lover. Pedestrians, hoofed and web-footed and eight-legged and more, confidently ran after their paths. And on each burlap street-corner, a smaller version of their own Switchpoint worked busily away.

Their little red path grew even redder as September and Ell embarrassed it by standing still.

September laughed and ran ahead, grinning into the Pandemonium sun. The path leapt up and wove swiftly on, barely missing a lavender crepe streetlight and barreling right through a pair of imps haggling over a bar of green algae. A-through-L thundered after her, squashing the linen as he bounded down the street (which possessed the name of Onionbore) while all and sundry hurried to get out of his way.

The scarlet path led them more or less north-ish, and though September loved the chase and the smell of broiling maple-blossoms and lime-liquor brewing, she could not help but notice that every alley and avenue they sped through seemed to point directly at a small, unassuming building covered in wide, fluttering golden flowers—not silk flowers, but real ones, that covered walls and fences of green briars and black thorns. The only citadel in Pandemonium that grew and lived and was not sewn. September did not like to look at it. Ell could not help looking, but mercifully the scarlet path stopped short and began unraveling itself backward, the way they had come, neatly balling up its excess thread as it went.

A rose-colored jacquard building leaned over them, its walls embossed with fine flowers and paisleys and curlicues. A great sign arched over the doorway. In flashing green lights it read:

THE SILVER SHUTTLE

NICKELODEON

One of the green bulbs guttered a little.

“Are those electric lights?” said September.

“Of course,” said Ell softly, as if in awe of the flickering glow. “Fairyland is a Scientifick place.”

“I suppose the Marquess did that, too.”

“No, in fact, she abhors electricity. The Inventors’ Guild did it. A terrible racket went up for days out of Groangyre. The lightning-sylphs were complicit, somehow. They made some kind of bargain with the glass-ghouls and voila—electricks! Modernity is certainly a fascinating thing. The Marquess said it was wicked, but if we wanted to engage in such un-Fairy-like behaviors, it was our funeral. This is a brave place, September. In the shadow of the Briary, it defies her.” Ell peered into the cool, shadowy lobby, rich with velvet and plush and brass banisters. “And they serve lemon ices.”

September chipped off another pair of her sceptre’s rubies to gain admission to The Ifrit and the Zeppelin and passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bell-hop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree, sticking out in bushily under her cap. Also because dryad begins with D, and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. Her eyes were also silver. She had very plump cheeks and smiled both when September asked for tickets and when she paid her rubies.

Shyly, September said: “If you are a dryad, where is your tree? Are you terribly unhappy here, so far from the forest?”

The ticket-dryad laughed, and the sound of it was a little like rain falling on leaves. “Didn’t you know, little love? Film is made with camphor, which is a tree. In the cinnamon family, to be exact, which is large and boisterous and gossipy. I run the projector, and my trees run through my fingers all day long! Just because a thing is transparent and silvery and comes in big reels doesn’t mean it’s not a tree.”

Thankfully, the theatre was generous and the ceiling was high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and licked his lemon ice daintily. The lights lowered. September leaned forward, munching popped pomegranate seeds from a little striped box. It’s dryad food, really, she thought. I shall certainly be all right.

At home, she loved the movies. She loved sitting in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to begin. Especially the tragic and frightening movies, where ladies fainted dead away and monsters roared up out of the dark. Like in that cartoon her mother had taken her to see when she was very small, where the dark-haired princess ran away into the terrible forest and the owls flew at her and pecked at her hands. That was wonderful—because the world was suddenly alive, and excited, and wanted things just the way September herself sometimes wanted things. Even if the world seemed mainly to not want a princess bothering it. September had not liked the princess so much, either, as she had a high, breathy voice she found terribly annoying. But the owls, and the mines, and the flashing eyes in the wood. That she liked. And now she was in the wood, really and truly, with the flashing eyes all around her. What could Fairy movies possibly be like?

“The Associated Pressed Fairy Moveable Gazette Proudly Presents: News from Around Fairyland!” announced a pleasant female voice as the screen flickered into life. Oh, geez, thought September. A newsreel. This is what happens when grown-ups run the movies. Can we not skip to a dark-haired princess being beset by things?

“The wedding of Ghiyath the Jann and Rabab the Marid was celebrated with much pomp on the magnetized Arctic shores Tuesday,” continued the smooth, sweet announcer. “Witches present brewed a bouilliabaise of a long and interesting marriage, five children, (one a mermaid), a friendly sort of unfaithfulness for all involved, and an early death for Ghiyath, followed by an extended and scandalous widowhood for Rabab.”

A huge man with golden skin like desert sand embraced a woman passionately, one frozen hand on her foaming hair, one arm around her sea-slick waist. She wore a dress of anenomes, opening and closing. A few similarly-wet folk reclined on clouds, applauding, polite and bored. The scene was in black and white, and September slumped back in her chair, impatient for the Ifrit and her zeppelin.

“An exhibit of artifacts from the moon opens Sunday at the Municipal Museum. Scientists have discovered the moon is in fact made of pearl, and are even now investigating the method by which it is attached to the firmament, and what benefit lunar research might reveal for Fairies like you.”

A proud-looking spriggan with a thin, curved nose demonstrated how a piece of moon-rock could be dissolved in a mysterious solution. He dropped the stone into a crystal beaker with a three-fingered claw and drank down the draught completely.

“The Changeling Recital at Dandydown Hall went off splendidly last week, featuring an orchestra of violins, oboes, one piano, a nickelstave, two tubas, a lorelei, and a full grumellphone section. The children played Agnes Buttercream’s famous Elegy for Reindeer and Roc’s Egg, in D Minor. The conductor unwisely chose a rousing encore of Ode to Queen Mallow’s Third Fingernail, however, and riot police were called to the scene.”

A host of children in prim black clothing played their instruments furiously on a stage shaped like a huge oak leaf. They all wore identical shoes, which seemed painfully small and tight on their little feet: mary janes very much like hers. A little piece of sad, gentle music played, sashaying into something brighter and livelier, before two unhappy-looking kobolds lifted the conductor unceremoniously off of the stage. The goblins seemed far too strong for their sleight height.

“The performance culminated in the righteous punishment of several Greenlisted musicians, who certainly deserved whatever they got.”

The same kobolds—or near cousins—hauled several terrified-lloking Satyrs onto the flickering silver stage and made to stomp their pan-pipes underfoot. A man in a top hat and mustache brandished a whip menacingly before the scene went dark.

“And finally, our beloved Marquess has concluded a treaty with the Island-Country of Buyan, bringing prosperity and order to both. We here at the AP extend our praise and adulation to the Lovely Monarch.”

Onscreen, a young girl vigorously shook hands with a large bear. She was tall—but she could have been a day older than September, and very possibly younger. She wore an ornate suit made for her small frame, an embroidered jacket over a fringed bustle. At her neck was a thin dark tie, like September’s father once wore. The girl’s hair was thick and silver in the flickering film, falling to her shoulders in great sausage curls. Most of all, however, September noticed her hat. It was black—or some color which seemed black on the old-fashioned film. It looked a bit like a cake that had fallen over to one side under the weight of peacock and pheasant feathers and chains of jewels that cascaded down from a silk rosette on its flat top. Ribbons, bows, and satin ropes made delicate tiers like icing on the body, and the brim was so crisp and perfect it seemed sharp.

The bear wrinkled her muzzle. She did not look pleased.

September trembled a little. The Marquess seemed so awfully real. She smiled broadly at the bear and laughed silently as the announcer nattered on about the treaty.

And suddenly, without warning, the Marquess onscreen turned toward the camera, her hand still clutched in the bear’s paw. She cocked her head to one side like a curious bird. She blinked and leaned forward, looking directly out into the theatre—at September.

“You,” said the Marquess in the announcer’s voice. The other patrons twisted to look at her. “It’s you.”

Ell moved his claw around September’s seat protectively.

“September,” said the movie-Marquess slowly, as if pulling each letter from a stubborn cabinet. “You shouldn’t be sitting in a theatre on such a lovely day. Why don’t you go out and play?”

“I…”

“Hush. Listening is tiresome for me. September, if you do not come to the Briary right this very instant I shall become cross with you. I am a very pleasant Marquess, if you are tractable and sweet.”

September could not move. Her hand clutched the bag of pomegranate seeds so tightly they began to spill out of the top. She felt as though she had been caught out doing something awful and black. But she hadn’t done anything! Not yet! How could the Marquess know her? Where could she hide?

“Right now,” hissed the Marquess, “you wicked little thief.” She beckoned horribly with her ringed finger. The screen crackled and flickered. Silver sparks flew for a moment, and then the Marquess’s face disappeared in a little burnt ring and the theatre went suddenly dark.

Being careful and clever readers, you must now wonder if your woolgathering narrator has completely forgotten the jeweled key that so loyally followed September into Fairyland. Not so! But a key’s adventuring is of necessity a quieter thing than a girl’s, more singleminded, and also more fraught with loneliness.

For the key slipped between Latitude and Longitude, and tumbled briefly—oh so briefly!—through the starry dark behind the screen of the world. It landed unceremoniously on the shimmering jacket of a hobgoblin in transit from Broceliande to Atlantis. The Key blended into the other glittery bits of folly which bedecked the jacket and went unquestioned by Betsy Basilstalk or Rupert the Gargoyle.

Good-naturedly illiterate, the Key had no wish to visit the blue crystal universities of Atlantis, and unhooked its clasp just in time to tumble through the rooty, moldy, wormy passage to Fairyland. It caught an updraft of sea-air and soared over the fleecy clouds, playing tag with the blue-necked gillybirds.

It passed over the witches and narrowly avoided a sucking vortex of the events of next week that threatened to pull it down into the cauldron.

It flew over the field full of little red flowers, but no Wyverary, or even a Wyvern, appeared to accompany it or explain how anything worked or was in the days before today.

The Key, too, found the House Without Warning, long after a nicely scrubbed September had passed on. Under Lye’s gentle eye, the Key primly dropped into a tiny tub and soaked until it gleamed.

The Key missed the ferry September rode into Pandemonium and was forced to sleep on the grassy shore, where it was picked up by a delighted banshee child. The girl squealed piercingly and pinned the Key to her little green-gold breast. Her mother admonished her not to pick up strange treasures which were surely not hers, but no one can listen to a banshee shriek in indignation for long without giving in. So it was that the Key boarded the ferry and passed into Pandemonium, three days after September had left the city behind.

The Key cursed its slowness. It wept an orange tear, slightly rusted.

The Key remembered being part of a green smoking jacket. It remembered wanting to please. It remembered, a little, being born out of a lapel, the sudden rush of air over facets and gold. It recalled with sorrow being torn from its mother, the jacket, and the taste of a young girl’s blood under its needle. It shuddered at the memory of her blood, at night.

What the Key knew was that it was connected to September, that the purpose of its whole being was to be with her, just to rest near her skin. The Key had been created to make her smile. It could not stop wanting to make her smile, any more than you can stop walking on two legs or start breathing with your liver instead of your lungs. What if September needed the Key? What if the world became dark and frightening and it was not there to comfort her? The Key knew it must fly faster.

It was only that the girl kept running, so far, and so fast, almost as if she didn’t know that the Key was trying as hard as it could to keep up.

(Click the wyvern for audio commentary)

The Barleybroom River roared and splashed as September and the Wyverary stepped through the bath-house door onto a rich, wet, green bank. At least, September presumed it was the Barleybroom. Something colorful and hazy floated in the center of the river as it foamed along round it in a great circle. September almost tripped for gawking. Folk surrounded them, pushing, laughing, shouting, all laden with every kind of suitcase and traveling pack, from brass-banded steamer trunks to green handkerchiefs tied around knotty sticks of hawthorn. September tried to look as though she belonged there, back straight, eyes ahead. Black river mud squelched between her toes. Every sort of creature jostled for position, trying gamely to get to a long, pale pier first: centaurs and satyrs and brownies and will o’ the wisps, birds with girls’ legs and girls with birds’ legs, trolls with splendid epaulets and dwarves in velvet trousers and waistcoats, hobgoblins plying violins as they walked, mice taller than September, and a great number of human-seeming ladies and lords and children. September caught the eye of one of them, a little girl in a neat hazelnut-husk dress. Red columbines were tangled up in her blonde hair. She danced around her mother, teasing and pulling at her skirt. The girl clapped her gaze on September in mid-leap. She winked wickedly and shivered her shoulders—and suddenly the girl was a sleek black jackal pup, with a gold stripe down her back. Now, jackals are not the wicked creatures some irresponsible folklorists would have children believe. They are quite sweet and soft, and their ears are clever and enormous. Such a lovely creature the little girl had become. Only her narrow blue eyes were the same. Her great tall ears twitched and she continued on pestering her mother with yips and nips.

“Did you know,” said the Wyverary happily, snuffling the fresh air with his huge nostrils, “that the Barleybroom used to be full of tea? There was an undertow of tea leaves, flowing in from some tributary. It used to be, oh, the color of brandy, with little bits of lemon peel floating in, and lumps of sugar like lily pads.”

“It’s not tea now, at least, I’ve never had tea colored indigo.”

“Well, the Marquess said that sort of thing was silly. Everyone knows what a river looks like, she said. She got the Glashtyn to dam the tributary and drag along nets to catch all the leaves, and eat up all the lemon peels and sugar cubes. They cried while they did it. But you see now, it’s a nice blue color.” The Wyverary scowled. “Proper, I guess,” he sighed. The jackal-girl chased her tail.

“What is that girl, Ell?”

“Mmm? Oh, just a Pooka, I suspect. Starts with P. None of mine, you know.”

Finally, the procession fanned out before a great, gnarled pier of driftwood and ropy yellow vines. A great barge moored there, tiered like a black cake. Green paper lanterns swung from its ledges and arches, fell designs had been long ago carved into its wood. All along the top were old men leaning against monstrous poles. Ribbons and lily-strands streamed from the pole-tips, and the wholy effect was very gay and festive, but the old men were haggard and salty and grim.

“The Barleybroom Ferry!” crowed the Wyverary. “Of course, never was a need for it before, when a body could fly into Pandemonium as quick as you like. But progress is the goal of all good souls.”

September stared open-mouthed as they slowly inched nearer to the gangplank. She tugged at the tip of A-Through-L’s wing.

“It’s a fairy,” she whispered.

“Of course it is, girl! What did I just say?”

“No, not a ferry, a fairy.”

The toll-man was ancient and hunched, his grey hair caught up in several wild pigtails around two barnacled goat-horns. He had rheumy eyes and glasses as thick as beer-mug bottoms and three gold hoops in one ear. He wore a thick Navy peacoat with brass buttons and sailcloth trousers. And two iridescent wings jutted out of the back of his tailored coat, rimmed in gold, glittering as the sunlight made spinning violet prisms inside them. They were bound with a thin iron chain, thin, but enough to keep them flat and useless against the old ferryman’s back.

“Fare,” he growled as their turn came.

The Wyverary cleared his prodigious throat. September started. “Oh!” she cried. “I suppose I’m the one with the purse strings.” She pulled her sceptre from the links in Ell’s chain. I knew I might need such a thing! September was quite pleased with herself for displaying such excellent foresight. With the end of one of Ell’s claws, she chipped two rubies from the bulb of the sceptre and held them out proudly.

“‘’E’s too big,” sniffed the ferryman. “Have to pay double for Excessive Baggage.”

“I am not baggage,” gasped the Wyverary.

“Dunno. She keeps her shiny whatnot on ye. Might be Baggage. Sure and you’re Excessive. Double fare, anyhow.”

“It’s fine!” hushed September, and chipped a third gleaming red stone from the sceptre. All three glittered on her palm like pricks of blood. “Easy come, easy go. I certainly shan’t be going without you!”

“On with it,” said the ferryman, waggling his caterpillary eyebrows and scooping up the gems.

The Wyverary gave one giant leap and settled gracefully on the top level of the great black ferry. September walked with her head straight, up the plank and around the spiral staircase to join him. Perhaps it was Lye’s bath, but she felt quite bold and intrepid, and having paid her own way, quite grown-up. This, inevitably, leads to disastrous decisions, but September could not know that, not then, when the sun was so very bright, and the river so blue. Let us allow her these new, strange pleasures.

No?

Very well, but I have tried to be a generous narrator, and care for my girl as best I could. I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.

Chaise lounges in blue and gold dotted the sunny deck of the fairy. Lithe blue women and great pale trolls lay out, bathing in the light. A-Through-L snorted happily along with the creaking and groaning sounds of the ferry uncoupling from the pier.

“Isn’t it lovely to be on our way,” he sighed, “to be near the City! The great City, where everyone has hope of becoming marvelous!”

September did not answer. A shadow fell over her, as she thought of how often she had heard older girls in her school bathrooms talk about how they would go one day to a place called Los Angeles and be stars, be beautiful and rich, marry the men from the movies. A few said they might chuck California and go to New York, where they would also be beautiful and rich, but instead of movie stars they would be dancers and photographers’ models and marry great writers. September had been dubious. She had not wanted to go to either city. They seemed awful and huge and too crammed with marriageable men. She did not want to think that Pandemonium could be like that. She did not want Fairyland to be full of older girls who wanted to be stars.

“Look sharp, girl,” gruffed the ferryman, who had come up to take his place at the pole. He did not take it up, however, and yet the ferry sailed smoothly through the water. He just leaned against it and squinted at the distant city. “Small’ns who daydream are like to fall off, and you’dn’t want that.”

“I can swim,” said September with mild indignation, recalling her adventure in the ocean.

“Sure and you can. But the Glashtyn have run of the Barleybroom, and they swim better.”

September wanted to ask about the Glashtyn, but her mouth ran away from her.

“Are you a fairy, sir?”

The ferryman gave her a withering look.

“Well, I mean, I think you are one, but I’d rather ask. I wouldn’t like someone to assume I’m something I’m not! And what I mean to say is, if you are a fairy, then could you tell me what a fairy is, taxonomically speaking, and why you’re the only one I’ve seen?” September was glad for her pronunciation of taxonomically, which she had had as a spelling word not terribly far back.

“Scientifick’ly speaking, a fairy, what I am, is not much different’n a human. Your lot evolved from monkeys. We evolved…well, it’s not talked on in polite circles, but there never was a polite circle with a human in it. Fairies started out as frogs. Amphibianderous, right? Well, being frogs was no kind of fun, so we went about and stole better bits—wings from dragonflies and faces from people and hearts from birds and horns from various goats and antelope-ish things and souls from ifrits and tails from cows and we evolved, over a million million minutes, just like you.”

“I…I don’t think that’s how evolution works…” said September softly.

“Oh? Your name Charlie Darwin all sudden-true?”

“No, it’s just—”

“It’s Survival of Them Who’s Best at Nicking Things, girl!

“I mean to say, humans didn’t evolve like that—”

“That’s your trouble, then. Don’t you go striping my facts with your daft babbling. I say: let them as wants to evolve do it, and soak the rest. As for why we’re not exactly thick on the ground, that’s none of yours and I’ll thank you not to pry into family business.” The ferryman fished a corncob pipe out of his pocket and snapped his fingers. Smoke began to trail out of the basket, smelling mostly like a wet cornfield. “Course, if you want to keep evolving your own self, I’d advise you get stowing away, down below.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not supposed to say. Whole point is your’n don’t know what day the tithe comes calling.” The ferryman winked, his eyes twinkling with a sudden, dim glee, rather more like September expected from a fairy. “Now, look there,” he grinned. “I’ve gone and spilt it.”

September might well have run, but she could not abandon her scaley red friend, and despite being quite able to use the word taxonomically in a sentence, was somewhat fuzzy on the meaning of tithe. This we may chalk up to the perils of Protestantism. Thus it was that September was caught with her mouth hanging open when the ferry ground splashily to a halt in the middle of the roaring river.

“Told you, but ears like a cow, you’ve got,” sighed the ferryman, and stuck his pole to meet the six tall men climbing six ropes, pirate-like, over the top of the deck.

Each of the men were naked but for silver gauntlets and greaves, and had black, regal horses’s heads where their boys’ heads ought to have been. The leader, a big brass ring in his silky nose as if he were a bull, called out in a deep, echoing voice:

“Charlie Crunchcrab, the Glashtyn come to claim our tithe by Law and Right of Fair Trade!”

“I hear ye, old nag,” grumbled the ferryman. “Not so dense as all that. Got the summons this morning and everything. Needn’t be so formal.”

The fairy folk gathered on the top deck quailed and clung together in silent terror. They stared fixedly at the floor, trying desperately not to look the horse-men in the eye. September looked across the throng at Ell, who shook his great head and tried to hunker down and become, improbably, invisible.

“Bring the children up!” bellowed the horse-man.

Rough hands grabbed September’s arms and dragged her, along with dozens of other small ones, to stand before the Glashtyn, whose eyes flashed blue and green fire. September looked down and saw the little Pooka girl beside her, trembling, her jackal-ears kept appearing and disappearing nervously. September took the child’s hand and squeezed it comfortingly.

“Not me,” the girl whispered. “Please let it not be me.”

The Glashtyn walked down the line, staring each of the children in the eye. The leader glared hard at September, and yanked her chin upward to check her teeth. But finally, he passed her by. The horses conferred.

“That one!” cried the leader, and a ripple of relief passed through the crowd. For a moment, September’s breath stopped, sure he was pointing directly at her.

But it was not her.

The little Pooka girl screamed in utter, animal terror. She shivered into a jackal and clambered around September’s legs, clawed up her back and onto her shoulders, wrapping her tail around her throat.

“No! No!” The Pooka wept, shrieking and clinging to September.

“What’s happening?” she choked, stumbling under the weight of panicked jackal-girl.

“She’s the tithe, isn’t she?” said the ferryman Charlie Crunchcrab. “Might as well be grown-up and dignified about it. The ferry pulls on through Glashtyn territory. They have a right to their fare, too. No one knows what day it will come, or who they will choose, but, well, ye all have to get to the City, one way or any way, is-true?”

“No! Not me! I don’t want to go! Mama, please! Where’s my mama?”

But September could see her mother, near one of the chaises, a long black jackal with golden ears, lying on her side, paws over her face in grief.

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard!”

“That’s evolution, love. Take as taking can.”

“What are they going to do to her?”

“None of your business,” snapped the Glashtyn leader.

“They’ll eat me! And drown me! And lash me to the ferry and make me pull it back and forth under the river!”

“It’s good enough for us,” growled one of the other Glashtyn. September saw for the first time that each of them clutched reigns and ugly, cruel bits in their fists.

“Please, please, please,” sobbed the Pooka. She shivered back and forth from girl to jackal to girl with alarming speed, the whites of her eyes showing. September reached up to pet her and pried her slowly loose, the claws from her hair, the tail from her throat. She cradled the jackal pup, awkwardly, for she was not a very little girl. Her snout flashed into a mouth and back into a muzzle as she wept.

“Isn’t there anything else you’d take?” September said wretchedly. “Does it have to be a child?”

“There must be blood,” answered the Glashtyn quietly. “Do you offer yourself as replacement? That is certainly traditional.”

To her credit, September considered this for a moment. She was a strong swimmer, and would likely not drown, and they hadn’t said, exactly, that they meant to eat anyone, and being only Somewhat Heartless she could not cradle a trembling child in her arms and not feel sorry for it, and want to keep it from being tossed overboard. But she did not want to be a tithe, and she did not want to die, even a little bit, she did not even want to brush shoulders with the smallest chance of it.

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. Isn’t there anything else? I have rubies…”

The horse-man snorted. “Dead rocks.”

“I have a jacket and a shoe.”

They stared at her.

“Well, I haven’t anything else! But I can’t let you have her, she’s just a kid, poor thing! How can you frighten her like this?”

The Glashtyn’s stare bored into her. The blue fire in his eyes was calculating.

“You have a voice,” he said slowly, “and a shadow. Choose one, and I will take it instead of the skin-shrugger.”

You might think that is no kind of choice. But September was suspicious. No bargain in Fairyland could be that easy. And yet—she could not lose her voice, she could not! How would she talk to Ell? How would she sing? How would she explain to her mother where she had gone? And she could not let the girl whose arms were clutched even now around her neck go down into the dark river. Even if they did not drown her and eat her, the girl didn’t want to go, and September could get very cross about that sort of thing.

“My shadow,” she said. “Take it. Though it hasn’t any blood, you know.”

She set the Pooka down and the child bolted to her mother, shivering fully into a pup midway across the ferry deck. The two jackals licked each other’s faces and whined. The Glashtyn held out his hand to Charlie Crunchcrab. The fairy unbuckled an ugly, rusted, serrated knife from his belt and passed it over.

September had time to think: oh, this will hurt before the Glashtyn seized her, spun her around, and sawed the knife back and forth along her spine. She felt cold and faint. The knife made noises like shredding silk and grinding bone. She thought she might topple over, the pain was so terrible, running up and down her back. Still, she refused to cry. Finally, there was a sickening crack, and the Glashtyn pulled away with a scrap of something in his hand. A single drop of September’s blood dripped from the knife to the bleached wood of the deck.

The Glashtyn set the scrap of something down before him. It pooled darkly, shining a little, and then stood up in the shape of a girl just September’s height, with just September’s eyes and hair, all of black smoke and shadow. Slowly, the shadow-September smiled and pirouetted on one foot. It was not a gentle smile, or a kind one. The shadow extended her hand to the Glashtyn, who took it, smiling himself.

“We shall take her below and love her and put her at the head of our parades,” he said. “For she was not taken, but given, and thus our only true possession.”

The shadow curtsied. To September, the curtsey seemed somewhat vicious, if a curtsey could be vicious. September was unsure that she had done the right thing now—surely she would miss her shadow, and surely the Glashtyn meant to make mischief with it, of some sort or another. But it was too late—the Glashtyn leapt over board as one, with the shadow-September riding on the leader’s shoulders. The fairy throng stared at her, amazed. No one would speak to her. A-through-L finally strode across the deck to gather her up. He smelled so good and familiar, and his skin was so warm. She hugged his knee.

“Did I do the right thing, Charlie?” September asked the ferryman softly.

He shook his mad grey head. “Right or blight, done is dusted.”

September looked across the water at the gleaming city rising up, all towers and shine. Then, she looked down into the Barleybroom.

Six dark horse heads glided through the water at the head of the ferry, bits clamped in their teeth. Over their backs, a shadow girl leapt and danced, her ghostly laughter all but eaten up by the waves.