The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(48)

“I do believe everyone in Fairyland-Below is royalty!” September exclaimed. “Queens and Princes and Vicereines and Emperors—it’s like visiting Europe!”

Aubergine nodded. “That’s how it is in underworlds. And more so, the deeper you go. Even the flowers are Duchesses, in the deepest dells. Even the raspberries are Khans. In the beginning of the beginning, all the Kings and Queens of Fairyland came from Below. When they needed an Empress or a Tsar, they went to a certain frozen lake in the Hoarfrost Desert, cut a hole in the ice, and sunk a silver pole they called the Kingfisher into the frigid water. All through Fairyland-Below, we would see the great hook descending toward us, and the bait on the hook would tell us what sort of ruler they had in mind. A crown of rowan branches for a Fairy Queen, of obsidian for a Dark Lord, of iron for a Human Hero. It could be anything. So all of us had to be ready. Any day, someone could be called to duty. Everyone had to practice princely ways.”

The onion-dancer did not especially seem to care about Aubergine’s history lesson. He pulled at September’s hands, lifting his arm to twirl her underneath. He prodded her to dance with him, and extended one long arm to invite the others, too. Saturday was already sweeping his arms overhead and making the most curious shapes with his slender limbs, grinning with delight. His eyes flowed with tears, too—they all wept, and laughed at their weeping, for the onion-fumes grew stronger the more excitedly he danced. Ell rocked from hind leg to hind leg, curling and uncurling his tail in an elegant motion. Even Aubergine, her feathers blushing a frosty shade, fluffed up her feathers, flared her wings, and began to hop in an odd but not unlovely dance.

“Come on, September,” pleaded Saturday, and the Onion-Man pleaded, too, in his silent way. He was happy, she could see. He had been spared. And though she was deathly shy of dancing, though she could not bring herself to at the Revel, there in the dark, September joined the little tribe in a silent, joyful dance. They held hands and spun in circles, laughing and crying and jumping and somersaulting like little children. And everywhere the onion-dancer stepped, shoots came up out of the ground, growing and curlicuing and corkscrewing upward until the five of them danced in an onion forest, the tops of the trees unfurling strange leaves to catch the starlight.

And through the great onion-trunks, September thought she saw, only for a moment, a figure all in silver slipping through the wood. She called after it, but it did not pause, so pale and brief it might almost never have been there.

“Oh, tell me you know the way to the bottom of the world,” whispered September into what she guessed might be the Onion-Man’s ear as he lifted her up at the height of the dance, breathless and flushed, spinning her around and around. The lights of the underworld blurred in her vision.

He set her down and pointed with one long fleshless arm toward the weather-beaten cellar doors.





CHAPTER XIV


THE OAT KNIGHT’S APOLOGY

In Which September Encounters an Old Enemy, but Finds Him Rather Nice After All, Offers Aubergine Her Freedom, and Ends Up in a Bad Way

September climbed up onto a dune covered in salt-crusted pink grass. She pulled Aubergine by the talon out of the cellar passage and closed the door behind Ell as he shook his scales like a wet dog. On this side, the door was a slab of shining mahogany with a neat brass knocker. The roaring of the sea greeted them all, a sharp marine wind rippling through the coral-colored dune grass. Big, heavy silver bees buzzed sleepily around a few giant emerald-colored flowers clotted with black pollen. Holding her dark hair back from her face, September looked around for anyone or anything—and saw only a heaving, smoky, frost-colored sea below, a shade just like moonlight, its waves swelling up and rolling into shore, where they crashed against boulders and a long dark beach.

She shrugged and headed up over the dunes. I’m sure to find someone eventually, she told herself. Every patch of Fairyland-Below seems topful of folk! As they walked, September took Saturday’s hand in hers and squeezed. In a day or two, I may forgive you for the kiss, she wanted the squeeze to say. So long as you stand by me always as you did back there. I want to think you’re my Saturday just as much as the one aboveground. I want to believe it. So I shall, as best as I am able.

He squeezed back.

*

They saw the village as they slid and slipped down the face of a dune patchworked with wild licorice and wintergreen, the perfume of it all as heady as the onion-fumes had been. A ways off from the beach, where a few gentle hills protected it from the sea-wind, several bungalows crowded around a tremendous hearth full of flaming driftwood logs. As they drew closer, they got a better look at the bungalows, all built of braided leather like horses’ reins. On top of each, a great saddle perched as a stout roof, the pommel dappled with sea moss. The window frames were big silver stirrups tipped in spurs, and over each door a golden horseshoe shone like a piece of the sun.

No one moved between the houses or tended the fire, but as September and her gang stepped onto the sandy meadow, a creature leapt out from behind a wind-warped whitethorn tree and drew a rough bone knife from his belt.

It was a Glashtyn.

His soft black horse’s head gazed on them with limpid eyes, his mane wild, wind-tossed, decorated with sharp, jagged shells. The rest of him was naked—a fact September had long since ceased to be particularly embarrassed about—his knees and forearms only sheathed in silver armor. His skin matched the color of the sea.