The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(65)

The Marquess paid no attention to Nod. She walked slowly around the box as he spoke, prodding the wooden pallets with the toes of her black boots. Suddenly, she knelt and slipped her fingers into the lock. The gap where a key might fit yawned quite big enough to fit her hand. But though it was a good idea to pick that monstrous lock with her own deft fingers—one does not get to rule much of anything without good ideas—nothing happened.

“Not so fast, young lady,” snapped the Baku.

“I am not young,” shot back the Marquess.

“And not a lady, either, I expect. But I can’t let you do that.”

September frowned at him. “We have to get the box open, and the Prince waking, and I don’t mind telling you that sometimes I do manage to get my way, and when I do, I leave a big mess behind, as often as not.”

“I’m a guardian, girl. It’s my whole job to make sure no one harms or bothers the lad. I eat his dreams, yes, but he’s been down here a good long while, and I have to keep living so I can keep guarding. You wouldn’t have me eat what’s in these jars would you? What if the folks who put up all this rot came back and expected a nice mature bottle? I’d be stomped on, you can bet on it. And I keep him company, in his dreams. I dance with him, when he wants to dance. I shoot dream-pheasants with him, when he wants to see something beautiful fall apart. We talk about our troubles, and I tell him about the world. He’s my friend, even though he’s never once opened his eyes. You don’t even know him at all.”

“There has to be a key,” September said, ignoring the argument of the Baku.

“Don’t you have ears? It’s an unopenable box. The whole idea is you can’t open it.” Nod sneered.

September grinned. “It’s a riddle then! I mean, it must be. Everyone keeps saying unopenable—they never say locked or closed or shut. I shall figure it out, presently. I must only think slantwise and backward, as a proper Bishop should. How do you get something out of a box without opening it?”

“You frighten it until it gets out of the box on its own if it knows what’s good for it,” purred Iago.

“You outlaw all closed boxes,” said the Marquess.

September looked around the cellar. She felt sure that she had all the pieces of the puzzle, if only she could think of the solution. When she’d stood in the terrible, wonderful room full of clocks with the other Marquess, the real one, as she could not help but think of that cruel queen, everything she’d needed to defeat her had been lying around her. She’d only needed to think hard enough, and want it enough. Her eyes fell on more jars, more sacks, old, broken wagon wheels and spools and butter churns. Nothing useful, nothing that even looked like a key or a wedge or a hammer. Anansi’s No-Weight Silk Yarn. Erishkegal’s Black Label Whiskey.

And then her eyes fell to the earthen floor, illuminated by the ashen light of the hurricane lamp.

The steamer trunk cast a long, deep, dark shadow.

“Oh!” said September. “Oh. Marq … Maud, come here. You must come here.” She could still hardly call the shadow-girl in her shadow-petticoats by her poor, small human name. Nevertheless, the Marquess came. Her black hat jingled softly. September pointed at the shadow on the floor. “Don’t you see? You’ve got to open the shadow! It’s not opening the box at all. Whatever a thing does, its shadow does; but perhaps, here in the undermost of the underneath and the furthest down of the Upside-Down, it could work the other way, too, and whatever a shadow does, its thing must do, too.”

“Why can’t you open the shadow?” said Maud. She seemed suddenly reluctant, as though something in the box might hurt her, though only a moment ago she had had her hand inside the lock.

“You understand I don’t know how anything works. I only think it might be that this isn’t a shadow like you’re a shadow. It’s not alive. So a shadow has to touch it and move it, because no person can move a shadow, only a shadow can even touch another one. If this is to happen, it must happen all in shadow, or it would count as opening the box. But I’ve gotten very good at thinking these things out! I’ve got you to thank for that in a slantwise way. I wonder if thinking can become muscular, like your magic, if you train it up enough. My thinking has become muscular, like your magic used to be.”

Nod furrowed his brow. The scarlet stripes on his neck bunched together as he frowned deeper than any tapir has ever frowned.

“It’s not openable,” he said firmly. “Not any way under the sun. I was told. I was assured. This won’t work.” But his voice trembled, and when Maud, never taking her eyes from September, touched the lid of the box’s shadow, the dream-eating tapir bit her wrist to yank it away.

The Marquess screamed. All this time, she had been small and cowering, nothing like herself, a shadow of a shadow. But when Nod sunk his squarish teeth into her dark skin, she screamed and hissed—and then suddenly stood. She stared at the creature clamping down on her wrist. He shook his muzzle to get a better grip on her. Her spine straightened, and September saw her face settle into its old self, a face used to power, to getting her way, and never balking at any single thing.

“How dare you,” the Marquess snarled. “How dare you put your teeth on me?” She clamped her hand down on his snout and tore him free of her flesh. Shadow-blood welled up and fell. The tip of his elephant-like nose stretched far longer than September would have thought possible. It sought and found her wound as she held him fast. She threw him aside like a doll; his weight shattered a crate stamped with Pluto’s Fancy Mushrooms. Dark soil spilled out. The Marquess reached down and opened the shadow of the box, her eyes blazing. She opened it as herself, as the Marquess in all her fury and beauty and terror. And for a moment, nothing happened.