The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(42)

“Well!” September said defensively. “It’s not so odd a question. Halloween is my shadow! Everyone knows that. At least they seem to.”

“Quite so,” said the Monaciello, and put two of her fingers into her mouth. She whistled loud and sharp. A book flew off a shelf several feet away and shot toward her—a black one, with a cloudy-pale title. Rhymes of Knowing and Not-Knowing. It looked new, only just printed, or written, or however books were made in Fairyland. She flipped it open and licked her thumb as she hunted through the pages.

“Here! ‘Not thread nor glue, not nails nor screws, will ever self and shadow wed.’ Helpful, those poet-types. Perhaps this one: ‘Seek the grimy queen of dread machines, if you your errant shadow miss.’ Now that’s quite good! As a Prophetic Utterance, Third Class (Vague Hints and Mysterious Signs), you couldn’t ask for better. It’s downright plain-spoken!”

“It isn’t at all! I don’t know who it means or what. I’m hardly better off than before!” September cried.

“Well, that’s what you get with Third Class. But no book of ours would ever just tell you a thing. The Quest would spoil, just as if you added the wrong chemical to a medicine. It would turn poisonous and rancid. A Quest is not followed, it is engineered. Now, in you go.”

Avogadra turned several chapters at once and came to a frightening, hideous page: all black, from margin to margin.

“In?” September trembled.

“In. Didn’t you hear? You’re headed for the bottom of Fairyland-Below. This place is made up of layers like a thick, dark cake. You have to go down—you’ll have to sooner or later so might as well get a start. Just hop in—I know it looks dark. It is dark. It’s a mine, as a point of fact. But that’s where you need to go, and I’m opening the door for you.”

September peered into the utter blackness of the page. “I can’t go without my friends,” she whispered.

“No time,” the Monaciello said. “A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world. But this one is a real door, too. They float through all the books of the library. At noon, they’re in the Biographies, at teatime they flit into the Advanced Slaying section. Dally too long, and they’ll go winging off somewhere and it’ll take weeks to find one again.”

“But I can’t just leave them!”

“I’m here,” said Aubergine softly, and September started. Without a sound the Night-Dodo had slowly and doggedly climbed the ladders to where they stood peering at their book, hooking her beak over the rungs one by one by one.

But Saturday and Ell, still sleeping in the cold Tain morning! She couldn’t just let them wake up without her and no note or message to tell them where to find her. Could she? Can’t I? I snuck off without them just fine. Either I trust them or I don’t. A hard, brave, strange voice inside her stood up to have its say. But the voice was not very big yet.

“Then I shall have to get down some other way,” September said. “Even if this is easier. Anyway, it’s very black down there at the bottom of a book.”

Inside the bodice of the Watchful Dress, a little satiny door opened. A small, agitated pocket watch flew out, its chain looping up and around to make a pair of tiny wings. It darted off, buzzing so fast September could not see it at all, down the stacks of books and out of a great round window. A moment passed, then two, then three, as Avogadra glanced worriedly at the open book. The black page rippled, impatient to be on the move.

And then A-Through-L came rising up through the air, his powerful, shadowy wings beating the morning winds. He peered through the window. Saturday sat on his back, rubbing his sleepy eyes and batting at the pocket watch, which jangled alarms in his ear and buzzed all about the poor boy’s blue-black head.

“I will smash that thing—see if I don’t,” he growled.

“Oh, Ell!” cried September. “I wasn’t going to leave you, I promise! Hurry, hurry, fly up here!”

The Wyverary did, squeezing through the window with a groan. He marveled at all the hundreds and thousands of books along the way, books he could not stop to read or alphabetize. But finally, all four of them perched or hovered together, an unruly, motley crowd. September hugged them and Aubergine, too. She hooked her arm into Saturday’s elbow, and her other around Ell’s dark claw.

“You don’t have to go, Aubergine,” she said, realizing something she ought to have said before. “I know Groof said you had to, but you don’t. You don’t really belong to us at all. You are a free beast, and should do what you please. You can stay and study with the other Physickists and be happy.”

The Night-Dodo said nothing. Quietly, she moved closer to September, that was all.

“Everyone ready?” said Avogadra, beaming under her wide black hat. “I suggest jumping right now.”

“Are we going somewhere?” asked A-Through-L.

Before she could answer, the Monaciello gave September a shove, and all four of them tripped into the book. They seemed to fall terribly slowly, and the black page got bigger and bigger beneath them until it swallowed them up completely.





CHAPTER XII


THE MINES OF MEMORY

In Which September Gets Lost in a Book, Gets Some Help with Her Memory from a Large Blue Kangaroo, and Works a Shift in a Mine