The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(69)

“Papa, why? How can you be here? Why would you hurt all those people? I don’t understand, I just can’t understand!”

But he could not speak. Shadow-blood seeped from the Black Wind’s arrow. When she pushed open a great dark door and let her father collapse against a column, a sharp, sudden cry cut off her questions.

“Papa!” Halloween cried, and leapt up from her throne, a bright thing made all of pumpkin rinds and green gems. It rested beneath a chandelier hanging down into the chamber like a false sun, its curling bone arms holding bowls hollowed out of gourds and squashes and pumpkins and great huge eggs, all filled with liquid fire. Saturday’s and Ell’s shadows lounged nearby on their own plush cushions (rather a lot of cushions in Ell’s case). Aubergine stood a ways away, looking miserable, holding silent. “Who’s done this to you?”

The Hollow Queen put her hands on his wound and shut her eyes. The arrow snapped and the blood vanished. The Alleyman smiled weakly and brushed back Halloween’s shadowy hair. Then he saw September and groaned.

“Did I do it?” he whispered. “Am I home?”

“What are you talking about?” said September, horrified.

“Don’t you talk to him,” snapped Halloween. “He’s my father, I brought him here, you haven’t got any right!”

“What do you mean you brought him here?”

Halloween grinned. Her dark face glowed with triumph. “Government has its privileges. I’m sure that silly cow showed you her precious wall—well, a hole opened up in Tain long before it got all the way down there. Right in the current of the Gingerfog River. You could see all the way through. I figured it out—much faster than you! I started pushing—here, there—to see where I could get through, to see if I could…” September’s shadow broke off, throwing her arms around her father. “I just wanted everyone to be together and happy and to see how marvelous my kingdom is. I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to see Saturday and my Wyverary and how grown-up and good I could be. You want it, too. You just tell yourself to be patient and everything will be all right. Well, I knew it wouldn’t be all right! I saw him through the water. He was fighting, and his leg had broken—just like ours did, do you remember? I took a deep breath and I grabbed him. I just reached through the hole in the river and I grabbed his shadow and pulled him through. At first he was so confused, he kept shouting, ‘Les Allemands viennent! Les Allesmands viennent!’ Half the city heard it. They started calling him the Alleyman, because he said it so often. For weeks, he didn’t even know where he was.”

“Les Allemands viennent,” whispered September’s father weakly. “The Germans are coming.”

“Hush, Papa, it’s all right now. You’re safe. He didn’t even know where he was at first, September. I nursed him back to health. All by myself.”


“I know where I am,” said September’s father, his voice a little stronger, a little more like his old self. “I’d been reading the books we found in an old woman’s house near Strasbourg. All fairy stories and old tales. One was about a Lutin—an invisible spirit who wore a red hat with two feathers. A house-spirit, who protected a home and made it safe. When she pulled me through, I was still thinking about how nice it would be to be invisible, to be able to pass through the lines without being seen. Then all of a sudden, I was invisible, and I had a red hat. Everything had changed. And my daughter was here, as if by magic—at least, something like my daughter. A shadow, like I am a shadow. Like we are all shadows down here. But at least I could hold her, and talk to her. She said it happened because I wanted it so much my wanting turned into magic, only when she said want the word seemed so much bigger than I imagined it could be. And she told me to take everyone’s shadows. I thought she was mad, and so cruel—how could I have raised such a cruel girl as that? But she said if I took all the shadows, everything would come rushing together, this world and Nebraska. And I thought, Maybe then I could go home. I could go home to my real daughter and my wife. And no one would be hurt, they’d only live in a different place, and it’s beautiful back home. It really is.” He swooned against the pillar; his shadowy eyes slid shut.

“Stop that, Papa,” Halloween said. “I’m your daughter. I told you.” The Hollow Queen kissed his cheek and stood up. “Everything is nearly perfect now,” she said. “I’ve got my family, and I’ve got more magic than anyone’s ever had. It’ll keep us here while the ungrateful Topsiders float away. The shadows will have their country, and we will all be together. Soon I’ll be able to pull Mother’s shadow through, too, and then I won’t need anything else. I’ll have everyone and everything I could want—Saturday and Ell and Mother and Father. I don’t have to choose like you do.” Halloween grinned sweetly. “Saturday and Ell were always my dear ones and not yours, September. I mean, really. I told them to go with you and play along as long as they could bear it. I told Ell to go wait for you at the bottom of the stairs. I told the whole country to crouch down in the dark just to leap up and surprise you. But you must see that they’re shadows—they could never help you bind them into nothingness again. They want to live. I want to live.”

“We’re sorry, September,” said Saturday miserably. “We do love you, but you want us to go back. We can’t go back. If only you’d just forgotten like you ought to have we could have lived together so happily.”