The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There(73)

September rubbed her eyes, which ached from so much sunlight after walking in the gloam. Everything was so bright she might almost have thought Fairyland-Below was all a dream—except that in her hand she held a scrap of blackness that might have been a flag caught in the wind, but September knew was not.

It was her father’s shadow. She still held his hand.

Across the wheatfield, her familiar house waited, cozy and warm.

“Is that home?” her father’s shadow said. “Is it really home?”

“Yes, Papa. It’s home. Mother’s there, and good coffee, and our old dog by the fire. I’ve brought you all the way home.” She did so want him to be proud of her.

“It was worth it, then. All the things I’ve done.”

“Don’t think about that, Papa.”

Her father’s shadow looked sadly down at her. “You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war either.”

They began to walk toward the house, though September dragged her feet. She wanted to savor this last moment with her father, for of course this was only a shadow. Her father’s body was still fighting in France, and once they got to the house she’d be fatherless again.

Finally she stopped, and the shadow stopped with her. September fought her tears. She held up her arms as she’d done when she was just a little thing, to be held, to be safe and warm.

“I miss you so much,” she whispered. “Sometimes I dream that you’ve died, and I shall never see you again.”

September’s father turned back. He picked her up and held her as he had done long ago, his black eyes squeezed shut, his big, dark hand on her curly head. She buried her face in his shadowy shoulder and held on. If she let go, he’d just vanish, she knew it.

A light came on in the house. September saw it—and more, she saw two people moving and talking in the light. Her breath caught.

Could it be? Could it be true?

September scrambled down and took off running through the wheat, pulling her father’s shadow behind her. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

By the time she reached the stoop where the milkman had left his bottles, the shadow had dwindled to a scrap of dark hardly bigger than a blanket. September squeezed it to her chest and hoped as hard as she could, Wanted with all her might.

Her mother stood in the hall near the tall walnut-wood radio. Her face was streaked and puffy with tears as she held September’s father close, her real father, not a shadow but a man, in a soldier’s brown uniform and a hat with golden things on it. He leaned a little on a dark crutch, for his leg had a white cast on it.

When September’s mother saw her daughter coming in with the milk from the stoop, she smiled like the sun coming up and opened her arms to invite her little girl into their embrace. September’s father looked tired—but he smiled his old crooked smile and said her name. He could not pick her up in his arms as he would have liked to. But he held his daughter tight all the same, and the small, amiable dog leapt and jumped and yipped around the three of them.

September gently pressed the black cloth to her father’s side as he put his good arm around her. His shadow flowed into place, relieved, exhausted. She did not need a Rivet Gun in this world to keep them together. The shadow longed to be whole again. It would never speak of what happened, except with the shadow of his wife while their bodies slept. But shadows keep secrets better than anyone.

The three of them held each other for a long time.

When the tears and hugging and what shall we have for breakfasts were done and the cheerful, impossible, wonderful day was getting on with its business, September’s mother finally saw a strange thing. She did not say anything—who would, when her family was together again and there was so much to think about? But she could be almost certain that her daughter’s shadow had gone a deep, profound shade of green—just the color of the smoking jacket of a man she’d known long ago, when she was just a small girl.