The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home (35 page)

“The wyvern has it. He
stole
it. It's mine. Please,
please
give it back. You can do whatever you want to me, put me in a dungeon or put me back to sleep or drown me till I'm dead. I accept that I'm outnumbered. I won't struggle. Just give me my book back and you can have me.”

Ell glared at her through his sea-glass spectacles. He clutched
The Mystery of the Blue Train
in his claws. September hadn't seen it in the chaos. It had a silver arrow through the cover. “But it's not yours! Not everything in the world is yours just because you want it. My great-grandmother gave it to me because she loves me and it's how I know she loves me.”

Mallow sunk to her knees. Her shadow sank softly down behind her. “Wyvern, where do you think the library got it? A novel by Agatha Christie? Published in London and New York in 1928? Tell me, is Agatha a spriggan or a pooka? Or a dragon? It's
mine
. I had it in my satchel when I stumbled through into Fairyland from my father's attic. Most people don't think it's her best but I loved it. I used to sit up in bed in my little house in Winesap and read it over and over. I read my books of magic, too, and my neighbors' whole collection of Fairy romances, but I always came back to the jewel thief and the heiress and the wonderful train. I lost it when I moved to the Briary, after I cut down Goldmouth and sewed him up into a ball so he could never hurt anyone again. I searched for years, as Mallow, as the Marquess, but I could never find it. It was the only human thing I loved. It is the only human thing of mine left. If you don't give it back to me I shall start screaming and never stop.”

A-Through-L gripped the book so tightly its boards creaked. But he couldn't bear to see anyone cry, in the end. He put it on the tiled floor and scooted it over to Mallow with his long black claw, unwilling to get very close to her. She picked it up with such care, running her hands over the cover and holding it to her cheek before she opened it like a knight opening a chest of treasure. Good Queen Mallow flipped through the pages, touching the story with her fingertips, the words that described the greatest jewel thief in the world and how he stole a ruby called the Heart of Fire and almost, just almost, got away with it. Her hand hovered over the master thief's name, a name that, when she was young and afraid, always seemed to her so full of power and mystery and strength that the letters could hardly contain it:
The Marquis
.

“It's how we found her,” Blunderbuss grumbled. “The Marquis always tries to get off the train before the Inspector can figure out his game. We thought she'd try to head everyone off, too, and switch the Heart of Fairyland with a fake … well, assuming someone got it somewhere along the way and all trains end at Mummery … but she didn't have anything.”

“Mallow,” Lye said softly. “Mallow?” The Marquess did not look up from her book. “Mallow,” the soap golem begged. “Please hug me. Please hold me. Please, oh, please. I have waited so many years to be hugged by you again and you said you would come back but you didn't, you didn't come back and I got older and I waited and waited and I don't want to wait anymore and I know you wouldn't stop loving me just because you got really busy with being a villain I know that's an awful lot of work but I am lonely and awful too so please hold me I have earned it.”

Mallow looked up at the soap golem she had made when she wasn't much more than a girl, and everything was yet to happen to her. She held out her arms like a child and Lye fell into them. They sat that way for a long while.

“I don't understand,” Mallow said finally, tugging her hat back down. “What's the purpose of this? Why bring me here? Why not just let us fight it out? I'd have won, Lye, I promise. That one's just yarn. Besides, September won't last much longer. She's almost out of time.”

“What do you mean?” said Halloween sharply, hopping out of the water in the fountain. September jumped up guiltily and pulled out her Rivet Gun—in all the excitement she had forgotten their bargain.
You must let me free when it's done. No tricks. I won't be a shackled shadow again.
September held it behind her, against the place where she and her shadow joined. She thought of that day on the ferry with Charlie Crunchcrab and the Glashtyn when she lost her shadow the first time. It had hurt, then. September fired. Halloween leapt free, spinning on one toe with the joy of it. Saturday hopped up on a half-fallen wall. He chewed his nails, fascinated by all these strangers and their urgent whispers. It was better than the circus.

The Marquess tried to smile her old wicked smile, her triumphant smile, her smile of knowing something no one else knows. But it would not come quite right. With her shadow's hand on her shoulder and Lye's fingers stroking her cheek, with Iago trotting over to rest his great black head on her knee, she could not find her devilish smile in the cabinets of her heart. Her hair flushed a confused deep purple. She ran her fingers along Iago's sleek dark spine and drew up September's hourglass. The bottom bell was nearly full. Only a few grains remained in the top.

“It started going again when you got out from under the Fairies' thumbs. They break everything they touch, you know. But I suppose you and I do, too. I'm sorry, I really am. I'm sure you wanted to see how it would all turn out.”

September gasped. Her hands clutched at each other, as though trying to keep herself where she was. “I'm not ready,” she whispered. She held out one hand to Saturday, but he didn't take it. He couldn't understand why she was so upset. What wasn't she ready for?

“One never is,” the Marquess answered wryly.

“No, no, no,” moaned Ell. “This always happens and I always hate it.” Blunderbuss bit his long neck comfortingly. She didn't really understand, either. She'd only known Changelings before.

The Marquess wanted to rub it in, to tell the girl the worst of it: that no one was waiting for her at home. Her house stood empty in the still-chill May wind, among the fields shorn bald. Her parents had gone, even her dog had gone, and there would be no kisses on the forehead and tuckings in this time. Mallow couldn't see where they'd gone, but she knew they would not come back for their girl. She wanted to gloat. She wanted to say:
You'll find out how it feels to lose everything. You'll know how I felt. You'll do just as I did because it's the only thing anyone could do. In a few years it'll be the Engineer who is the terror of Fairyland's folk.
But it would not come out. She laced her fingers through Lye's and the words died in her.

“You know,” Iago purred, “a real villainess doesn't do the expected thing. If the rules say she ought to grind her heel into the world and she straps on her best shoes, well, she might as well be a maidservant. So obedient. So mild-mannered. Coloring inside the lines. Doing the drudge work of the tale with no thanks from anyone. Every cat knows how to keep his owner feeding them: You may scratch and bite ninety-nine times, but the hundredth time, you must leap into a lap and press your nose to their nose. Rules are for dogs.”

“I am not a villain. Or an -ess,” murmured the Marquess. “I was a hero. I
am
a hero.”

“So save the maiden,” the Panther of Rough Storms rumbled contentedly.

Three pomegranate-colored grains of sand remained in the hourglass. Two quivered and tumbled down into the lower bell. The Marquess's eyes found September's. Her hair blossomed orange. The emerald-colored smoking jacket held tight to its mistress's shoulders—it meant to go with her, if she had to go.

“We are so alike,” the Marquess said. “It would break your heart how alike we are.”

Mallow smashed the hourglass against the floor of the House Without Warning. Red sand flew in every direction. The last grain skittered across the tiles and came to rest against the lip of the broken fountain.

And nothing else happened.

September remained, standing much taller than she ever thought she'd be when she was twelve, her feet firmly on Fairy ground.

And she could not breathe.
You are never going home.
Her heart felt as though it had vanished from her body and left nothing but a hole.
You will never see your parents again.
September shut her eyes against her tears.

The soap golem led them to the center of the House Without Warning, which was really and truly a house now, with all the people Lye cared about inside it. At least for the moment, everyone the golem loved was collected within its long tiled halls and courtyards. All the crumblings and cracks looked suddenly charming and busy, covered in soft mosses and green with age. They began to build themselves merrily up again stone by stone. The soft smacking sounds of the golem's soapy heels against the floor were light, cheerful. Everyone walked quietly in a long train brought up by the softly grumping engine of Aroostook. Everyone was afraid speaking would spoil it and bring back the brawling they'd only just escaped. Finally, they entered a large courtyard. In the midst of copper statues and fountains shaking off their verdigris rested a huge bathtub, hollowed out of a single rough stone. The floor showed two winged hippocamps rampant in cobalt and emerald. The tub covered one of their hooves like a great horseshoe.

Lye pulled at Mallow's jacket and she wriggled out of it with a little laugh. She did not even seem to notice them watching her. She hesitated for a moment, then climbed into the stone tub, her skin flushing red with the heat. Her shadow eased in behind her, wrapping her long black arms around Mallow's thin, pale chest.

“Is this my punishment?” Mallow asked tremblingly. “Will you boil me alive?”

Lye snapped off her right hand at the wrist. It made a dull
chunking
sound, and September gasped. She had seen Lye break off her fingers before, but her hand was so much, so much!

“This is the bath for washing your anger,” the golem said solemnly. She dropped her hand into the water. It fizzed up in bruised purples and reds and yellows. It smelled of dusty attics and the Briary gardens and the walls of the Lonely Gaol, of blue lions and black panthers and wooden spoons.

Mallow shut her eyes and shook her head. “You can't wash my anger, Lye. It's too big. It'll never come out. Never.”

Maud, Mallow's shadow, dunked a bucket into the bath and poured the scalding water over her head. “When you are first hurt, your anger is fresh and bright and clean. It is hot and eager to defeat injustice. It makes you sharp and keen and quick, so that you can outrace your hurt and leave it lying on some faraway ground where it happened. This is why children cry so bitterly and scream until their faces go red at the smallest hunger or loneliness. They must get terribly, piercingly angry so that they can get out in front of all the little hurts of being new, or else they will never get free of them. But anger can go off like milk in the icebox. It can go hard and rotting and turn everything around it rotting, too. By the time you have made your peace, your anger has reeked up your whole heart, it's so gunked up with fuming. That's why you must wash your anger every now and again, or else you can't even move an inch.”

September took the bucket from Mallow's shadow, filled it, and poured it over the girl who had been the Marquess's head. The cuttlefish colors all ran out of her hair. She wept and was Maud again, blond and young and running away over and over again. The girl who was once the Marquess clung to Lye. September felt she ought to turn away, that such grief was not hers to comfort, and so she did.

She walked over to Aroostook and put her hand on its hood. “What adventures you must have had!” September said, and was very glad the Model A had come through without a dent or a prick in her windshield. The engine warmed under her hand with recognition and tired happiness.

And then September heard Aroostook's voice in her head, just as she had heard Fizzwilliam the Bathysphere's voice and Mrs. Frittershank the gas oven's. It told her all about how it had escaped from Madame Tanaquill's impound garage and gone wildly wandering through Fairyland, changing whenever some old part of it felt wrong in this new place. It wanted stripes and scales and tangerine scrimshaw and a sunflower steering wheel and great gryphon feet so very badly. It had always had those things, Aroostook told her, even when Mr. Albert first bought it from the lot, it was only that no one else could see them. When September drove it through to Fairyland, it woke up, just as September did the first time she soared across the worlds. It would wake anyone up! And the more the Model A wandered, the more it yearned, the more it began to look on the outside as it had always known it should. Aroostook was a Terrible, Wonderful, Splendid Engine now! It fought a valkyrie and won! That was her helmet, there, in the desert-stone backseat!
Be proud of me, September, be proud of your Splendid Engine. Lift my hood and look at what I've made of myself! And tell Mr. Albert I'm sorry but I shan't ever be coming back, ever, ever
.

September popped the clasp on the Model A's hood and raised it up. Inside lay an engine all of glass and wildflowers and stalactites and bright sapphire cogs wrapped round with striped fur, all turning gracefully and sipping from the fuel tank still brimming with Ballast Downbound's sunshine-gas. It was a cave of wonders. And she understood it, just as she understood how to drive Fizzwilliam and fix Mrs. Frittershank. She understood Aroostook's workings top to bottom, and so she knew that if she lifted that ring of toadstools there, she would find what Ballast Downbound, the stalwart Klabautermann who had helped her to the Moon, said lay inside ships and people and everything alive: ballast.
Anything that ever fascinated the ship, made it sail true, patched it or broke it, anything the ship loved or longed for, anything it could use,
B.D. had said.
It all just sort of sinks down and jumbles up together into something hot and heavy inside you, and the weight of everything you ever wanted in the world will keep you steady even when the worst winds blow.