The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(57)

“Oh!” said the Marquess, dropping her hands into her lap. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” said September.

Iago, the Panther of Rough Storms, turned his great head to look at her. His gaze was as unreadable as any cat’s. Even his shadow would never leave her, September thought, and it awed her a little.

“I’m only passing through,” September said finally. “I don’t want any trouble with you. I don’t want anything at all to do with you, really. I’ve had a very bad day, and you are just the last thing I can bother with right this second. I know you must feel poorly about how things went when we saw each other last, but you’re just going to have to keep feeling poorly.”

The Marquess stood suddenly.

“Did you come all the way here in those shoes?” she asked slowly, as if remembering something from long ago.

September looked down at her shoes. They were her plain school shoes, and she had to admit they had gotten rather shabby with all the Reveling and dancing in onion forests and tromping through mines and diving through an entire sea. Still, at least this time she had brought both shoes along.

“That must have been just awfully painful. How brave of you,” the Marquess said in the same slow voice—but it held no bitterness or cruel jokes. Rather, the Marquess’s voice seemed entirely genuine in its pity and sympathy. She shook her head to clear it. The shadow-feathers and shadow-jewels on her hat jingled and quivered.

“You said that to me before,” said September curtly.

“I did,” the Marquess agreed, but she did not seem happy about it.

“Listen, Mallow, I don’t mean to be rude, but whatever game you want to play, I don’t know the rules, and I’d really rather sit this round out.”

The Marquess’s head snapped up. Her thick sausage curls flushed lilac. “Don’t call me that,” she said, and the old power bloomed in her voice. “It’s not my name. I’m Maud. I was Maud.”

“Yes, when you lived on your father’s farm in Ontario.”

Maud started as if she’d been slapped. “I hate my father. I will never go back. You can’t make me go back.”

“I know,” said September, softening a little despite herself. At least back at home, her own mother loved her, and her father did, too, wherever he was.

“I’m sleeping,” Maud whispered, her dark shadow eyes large and worried.

“What do you mean? You’re wide awake. You oughtn’t to be, but you are.”


Iago’s shadow finally spoke, his rumbly thundering voice rolling over September like a shiver. “She means that she is sleeping, the Marquess up Above, on a bed of tourmaline in the Springtime Parish, where the plum blossoms are always falling. I’m there, too, only I’m not sleeping. Well, really I am sleeping a lot of the time. Springtime has a surplus of sunbeams, and I am only feline. But I’m not sleeping in an occupational way, whereas she has been working on a good sleep for a couple of years now, and it’ll go on a good while yet. When our shadows got Siphoned down, we woke up—I’d been napping, and don’t you dare judge me, it was four in the afternoon, and all cats know four in the afternoon is Twelfthnap, right after Teanap. The trouble is, with her Topside self in such a powerful unnatural sleep, it’s addled her a little. Sometimes she thinks she’s her old self, sometimes she remembers she’s a shadow and doesn’t have to be a Marquess anymore.”

“I’m a practical girl,” the Marquess whispered. Iago licked her cheek fondly.

Suddenly, as quickly as a knife in the ribs, the Marquess put her arms around September and buried her face in her neck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I only wanted to stay. You had it so easy.”

September stood stiff in the Marquess’s embrace. This girl had imprisoned her friends and twisted her like a rag doll and ruled Fairyland with the very hands which now held her. But she had been so wounded, too. September had wept for her, once. And this was the shadow of that girl. Had not Saturday and Ell and the Vicereine and Halloween and just everyone told her that shadows were not exactly the same as their owners? Hadn’t Halloween done things she herself would never do? Hadn’t Saturday?

September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.

Poor September! How much easier, to be hard and bright and heartless. Instead, a very adult thing was happening in that green, new heart. For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them. You, being sharp and clever, will have noticed that I said “practice.” Forgiveness always takes practice to get right, and September was very new at it. She had none of the first sort in her. But the shadow of the Marquess wept so bitterly against her shoulder. All creatures are sometimes wretched, and in need.

Slowly, September put her arms around the Marquess. The two girls stood together in the falling snow for a long moment. The Panther watched them, purring deeply.