The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(38)

Halloween whistled, high and piercing, and a shadow fell over the tower-tips of Tain. Down swooped a huge creature, graceful and noble and ridiculous and beautiful: an orange parrot the size of a house, its round beak black and shining, its feathers soft and fiery. The very parrot September had seen in the pet store, oh, a hundred years ago now, it seemed. The one she had wanted so badly to take home and love and name Halloween. Oh. Oh. September’s throat got thick and hard. She did get everything she wanted. Everything they both wanted. The parrot had a saddle of dark wood and furs, spangled with golden tinsel and nuggets of some raw green gem. He cawed lovingly at September’s shadow, who climbed up onto his back and lifted her shadowy arms in the air.

“Let the Revel begin!” the Hollow Queen cried.

Behind her, fireworks exploded, pinwheels of orange and red and blue and purple, green rockets and golden pastilles, starry fountains raining light down on them all. The Queen rose up on her parrot and wheeled around the Revelers as they began their great parade. The wild folk of the underworld danced madly, singing a thousand songs that somehow became one, harmonizing and tying their melodies together, turning somersaults and bouncing high into the air, snapping their fingers until spells and sparks flew from them like rice at a wedding. An Ouphe juggled Pixies; Mermen spat streams of colored water in arcs over the heads of Dryads who drank it hungrily with their rough brown hands. Many folk kissed passionately, which made September try to look away politely, only to see others, an Ifrit embracing a shadow-Lamia, a Goblin courting a young Strega. Bells rang; drums thundered; fiddles sizzled through a million notes and more. September was lost in the crowd, looking up at her shadow disappearing into the night toward the crystal moon. The Revelers buffeted her; some tried to pull her into dancing or simply touch her, their bodies crackling with magic. Their masks swirled; their songs grew louder and louder until the bright cobblestones of the street shook.

And when September could no longer bear the crush of it all, she saw the wildest and most abandoned dancers stamping their feet together up on a steep rooftop: Ell and Saturday, their shadows burning with magic and an untamed, uncaring joy.





CHAPTER XI


QUESTING PHYSICKS

In Which September Hatches a Plan of Her Own, Sees a Girl About a Prince, Hears a Lecture Concerning a Most Unusual Science, and Learns What Everyone Knows

The crystal moon beamed a ghostly VII down onto the sleeping ramparts of Tain. Shadows slept in fountains and draped over statues of namelessly ancient Kings and Queens of the Fairyland-Below. In the Floatstone Pavilion stood a serene-looking man of green marble, holding a pair of scales in one hand, with a feather resting on one copper plate and the shadows of several hobgoblins and peris in the other. A centaur maid, her four legs tucked up underneath her, snoozed beneath the imploring alabaster gesture of a grieving young man with a lyre on his back. Balloons still floated ghostly through the streets, chasing their own exploits. The air smelled of spent fireworks, and bits of the marvelous feast dripped or slowly slid off the tables, pushed by the cool wind blowing from the twinned rivers.

September herself lay snugly in a marble basket held up by a statue of dark stone—a sly-eyed, canny lady with huge pomegranates tumbling through her thick hair. Saturday slept curled next to her; Aubergine roosted at the statue’s bare feet. A-Through-L had wrapped his body and tail about the whole business.

September woke before anyone. The whole city snored. She lay awake, looking up at the dim stars and the teetering tops of towers. Nothing had quite gone to plan. Perhaps if she hadn’t felt so sorry for her shadow, the Wanting Magic would have worked. But now … now she would have to do something else. Something slantways and sideways and upside down, like the Duke had said. September looked at Saturday as he slept, and at the great bulk of shadowy A-Through-L. Were they her friends, or Halloween’s? Her Saturday would stand between her and the world, but the shadows were strangers, really. New people with the same shapes and names. Her Saturday would never have stolen her first kiss without so much as a thank-you. Would never have turned her into a Fairy when she’d told him not to. But did she know that for certain? Some part of this Saturday must live in the other one, just as she saw flashes of her kind, gentle friend in the trickster child sleeping next to her.

September felt suddenly very secretive. The wine-colored coat approved. It closed in tight as if to say, Yes, tell no one anything. It isn’t safe out there. She must protect herself. There would be no one to do it for her. A plan started to prick up its ears inside her, slowly, but getting stronger.

September quietly pulled herself up out of the basket without waking the Marid. Careful not to wake anyone, she climbed up and out of the basket and scrambled down from the statue, stepping lightly on a hovering shard of frosted rosy-orange rock in the Floatstone Pavilion. Other shards floated here and there about her, making a very strange scene, as though the slabs were sleeping birds, waiting for sunrise to shake off their dreams. She knelt at the feet of the forest-green statue and in the cold morning of Tain and shook Aubergine awake.

The Night-Dodo yawned, showing pink at the back of her feathery throat. She started to squawk up at the day, but September shushed her.

“Hush! You mustn’t wake anyone else!”

Aubergine snapped her beak shut and looked up at September with large, soft eyes. Could she trust the bird any more than the others? Perhaps, because Aubergine had no one else, just like September. I will be right back, September thought, looking at the dear shadows of the Wyverary and the Marid. I will come back once I know what to do, and we will all go together.