The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(16)

September winced. She did not want to ask. She knew already. “Who is Halloween?” she whispered.

Shadow-Ell uncoiled his neck and turned in a circle, dancing a strange umbral dance. “Halloween, the Hollow Queen, Princess of Doing What You Please, and Night’s Best Girl.” The Wyverary stopped. “Why, she’s you, September. The shadow the Glashtyn took down below. She says when the parties are, and how to ride them true.”

September pressed her lips together. It is very hard to know what to do when your shadow has gotten loose in the world. Just think, if another version of you, who had not really listened when your parents tried to teach you things, or when you were punished, or when the rules were read out, decided to run off and take a holiday from being sweet and caring about anything at all? What could you possibly say to your wilder and more wicked self, to make your wanton half behave?

“Where do I live?” September said uncertainly. “I would like to talk to myself.”

Ell scrunched up his blue-black muzzle. His silvery whiskers quivered. “Well, she’s not your self anymore, you see. That’s the point. But she lives in Tain, which is the shadow of Pandemonium, in the Trefoil, which is the shadow of the Briary, all of which is right under the Moon-Below. But really, she’s so busy, September! She’s hasn’t got a moment for visitors. There’s a Revel tonight, and she’s hardly got a dress picked out, let alone balloons enough for all.”

“What’s a Revel?”

Ell smiled, and it was quite unlike any other smile September had seen on Ell’s dear, sweet face. The smile curved across his muzzle and his silver whiskers: sly and mysterious and secret. The kind of smile that has kept a froggy, dark sort of surprise in its back pocket, and won’t spoil it too soon.

“You’ll love it. It’s just the very best thing,” Ell said, and corkscrewed up his tail in delight, letting it uncoil languorously around September. Finally, this old, familiar gesture was too much for her. Perhaps she ought to have been more guarded and careful, but she missed her Wyverary so. She missed him being hers. She missed being his. And so she let the great violet swirling tail enfold her and gave it a great hug, shutting her eyes against Ell’s skin. He smelled like Ell. He looked like Ell, apart from the deep patterns of lavender and electric turquoise turning under his onyx skin. He knew everything Ell knew. That had to be good enough. What was a person, if not the things they knew and the face they wore?

“Let us go and do magic, September!” The Wyverary suddenly crowed, nearly howling up at the crystal moon with gladness that she had hugged him at last and not sent him away. “It’s such fun. I could never do it before! Apart from fire-breathing and book-sorting. And later you will come to the Revel, and wear the spangliest dress, and eat the spangliest trifles, and dance with a dashing Dwarf!”

September laughed a little. “Oh, Ell, I’ve never seen you like this!”

The shadow of A-Through-L grew serious. He dropped his kind face down next to hers. “It’s what comes of being Free, September. Free begins with F, and I am it. I like spangles, and I like to dance and fly and have Wild Doings, and I do not ever want to go to bed again, just because a great lug attached to me has gone to bed. I shall Stay Up forever!”

September twisted her hands. “But I can’t go to Revels and do frivolous magic! I’ve come to clean up my mess and restore Fairyland’s shadows, and that’s all. After it’s done, I shall go right back Above and put in a request for a proper Adventure, the kind with unicorns and big feasts at the end. I didn’t know you’d be here, and I’m glad for you, because you seem to be very happy about being your own Beast, but it doesn’t mean I can let Halloween keep on taking things that aren’t hers.”

Ell’s eyes narrowed a little. “Well, they aren’t yours, either. And anyway, don’t you want to see Saturday and Gleam? I thought you loved them. Not a very good love, that only grows in sunshine. And if, on the way, we happened to trip and stumble and just accidentally fall into magic, well, who could blame you? Come on, September. You didn’t used to be such a pinched little spinster about everything.”

September opened her mouth a little. She felt as though the Wyverary had actually stung her, and the slow poison of it spread coldly under her skin.

“You didn’t used to be cruel,” she snapped back.

A-Through-L’s eyes grew wide, and he shook his head vigorously, as if he were a shaggy dog shaking off water. “Was I cruel? Oh, I didn’t mean to be! Only I’m not used to being the one who talks! The other Ell took care of all that, and he was so good at it—why, he made friends with you in just an instant, without really even trying, that’s how sweet and clever and good at talking he is! I would have made a bumble of it, and you would have found some burly old Dragon with four proper limbs to have Adventures with. And now I have bumbled it! And you’ll never think I’m handsome or wise or worthy of walking about with you. I am wretched. I am woe! Those begin with W, but today I know what they mean, and they mean Hurting; they mean Gloomy and Disconsolate!” Huge orange tears spilled from the beast’s eyes like drops of fire.

A curious thing happened inside September, but she did not know its kind. Like a branch that seems one day to be bare and hard, and the next explodes with green buds and pink blossoms, her heart, which as we have said was very new and still growing, put out a long tendril of dark flowers. Hearts are such difficult creatures, which is why children are spared the trouble of them. But September was very nearly not a child anymore, and a heaviness pulled at her chest when she saw the poor shadow quivering with distress. Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.