The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(33)

If Pandemonium is a city of silk and soft cloth, Tain is a city of stone.

The frothing tear-tracks of the Weeping Eel still trickled and eddied in the main station long after Bertram and Gleam had surged away. The station glimmered empty and clean, a fragile-looking building of a pale-blue cream stuff that might have been spun sugar, but A-Through-L knew better.

“That’s lace agate—that’s what it is. There’s brothers, up northways, in the Pillow Bobbin Alps—they spin it out from the raw stone on great diamond wheels, just like it’s wool. Spin it so fine you can pass the agate through a needle or so thick you can build a cottage out of it for wintering. Nothing like it. They say the brothers met the Fates once, and they had a spinning contest.”

“Who won?” asked Saturday, lighting off the swirling stone pattern of the station platform with his shadowy feet.

“It’s still going,” shrugged Ell, and floated off of the platform on his shadowy wings. “Shall I tell you about Tain, September, before we go in?” The gates stood open and inviting, and they could see a long silver road leading into a lane full of shops, packed with people in red silk and high feathered hats. Masks of long bony noses and arched black eyes peeked around the corners. Bronze-beaked bird masks glittered; hard-cheeked tragedy masks glowed. Some had long horns like unicorns or antelopes; some boasted wild straw hair knotted through with black stones. Yet though a sweet dark music played from some unseen tower, though the air fairly fogged with excitement, the place seemed oddly quiet.

The moon showed a pale, barely visible IX.

“It begins with T, though!” September protested. She touched her hair self-consciously, suddenly reminded how black and streaked with electric colors it had become. What must she look like among all these wild folk? The red coat pulled close around her, as if to say, We look just fine, thank you very much.

“Cross-reference!” A-Through-L said happily. “You taught me, remember? Fairyland-Below is F and B, and Capital is C, and I’ve got it: Tain!” His black face and violet whiskers and big dark eyes shone, so eager to have this moment with her just as it had been before, to experience it again, but this time for himself and not as a silent shadow, to wrap it up and hold it to his heart the way he imagined the other Ell had. He didn’t even wait for an answer. “The Capital of Fairyland-Below is fed by two rivers, the Amaranthine and the Gingerfog, both of which roll down from the Phlegethon in the Firehorse Wastes. It consists of four districts, Glassgarlic, Anisegloam, Gallopgrue, and Nightonion. Population estimate: unstable and unavailable. The highest point is Shearcoil, a hollow narwhal horn which houses the Physickists’ Rookery, the lowest is the Nuno’s Hollow, and mind your feet around their grave-mounds, no matter how easy you might think it to steal black honey from their hives. Common imports: rice, lodestones, rain, spare engines, unwanted children, spring maidens, heroes with something to prove, ghosts, and shadows. Common exports: magic, tea, coffee, and pomegranates. The two rivers cross in the center of the city, where the royal residence, called the Trefoil, stands on high amarine legs (that’s a gem that looks like an ice-cream cone, September, all pinkish purple and yellow) and tapers into a sharp-pointed tower, a patchwork of every sort of metal except iron: bronze and copper and gold and silver and embertin and beetlelead besides. Two great pearl leaves, one white, one black, open forth from it, descending into staircases that end in the great Floatstone Pavilion. Hard to miss!”

“Thank you, Ell,” said September simply. It was too much to think, how different and yet alike this place could be from Pandemonium! Her mind spun, and she wanted Gleam’s pale green arms to hold her.

But the shadow of A-Through-L fretted. “You’re supposed to say ‘skip to the part where it says I am this many miles from a girl named September.’ Or at least, ‘skip to some part since it’s zero miles and we’re here.’ You let me get through so much of it without interrupting! That’s not right at all!”

“I shall interrupt more in the future, just to make you happy, Ell.” September smiled and wanted to hug him and comfort him, because he was not so unlike the Wyverary she adored. She did not, then thought better of it and did. His shadowy skin beamed warmth. All four of them stepped together under the filigree agate gate into Tain.

Just as they did, a grinding, jingling noise erupted from the crowd ahead of them. A weird, dreadful sort of concertina played—not badly or without skill, but with so much dread in every note that Ell hid his face behind September, which did not hide him in the least, and Saturday grabbed her hand. Aubergine stood very still, so terribly, awfully still that when September turned to include her in their family embrace, the Night-Dodo had disappeared.

The crowd parted. Feathers and hats and even shoes were left where they lay as a great dark truck came creaking up the silver road of the capital. It was a Fairy truck, no doubt, covered in mad rainbows of lights, some colors September could not even put a name to—perhaps viollow, or crimsilver, or oreen. Brambles, their vines speckled with glow-worms, and vast dark flowers wrapped over the bed like the canvases on army trucks. The headlights were glass globes with flickering gray candles floating in them. The engine, if it had one, made no sound, but the dark-green squash-rind wheels made wet crunching sounds on the street, and the terrible concertina played on.

“Whoever is driving that cannot be here for the Revel,” said September. “I don’t believe whoever is driving that could Revel about anything, ever.” And indeed, when she peered with all her might, September could not see a driver in the cab of the Fairy truck, only a strange pointed red hat with two long striped feathers in it, floating where a head should be.