Just before dawn, September spied the shark’s fin. Something deep in the ancestral memories of humans quakes in sight of a shark’s fin, even if that human grew up in Omaha and never saw a shark in all her days. It rose dark and sharp in the pearly gloaming just before the sun peeked up. The fin made a long, lazy circle around September’s raft. The wind was utterly calm. September’s dress hung slack on the Spoon-mast. Little ripples glinted in the water, and the current moved her along, but it had been slow going for several hours, and September had slept. But now she was awake, and the stars were winking out one by one, and in the distance, the unmistakable triangle of a shark’s head circled slowly, unconcerned.
This sort of thing happens in pirate stories, September remembered. As soon as someone goes overboard, voilà! Sharks. But I am not a pirate. But then, pirates are often eaten by sharks. So perhaps I shall not have a pirate’s luck with them if I do not have a cutlass or a feathered hat?
It circled closer, and September could see its shadow in the water. It did not seem huge, but certainly big enough. Perhaps it was a baby and would leave her alone.
It circled still closer. September scrunched up into the center of the raft, as far as she could get from water on all sides, which was not very far at all. Finally, it circled so close to the raft that it jostled the sceptres, and September cried out fearfully. She held the wrench ready to whack the shark as hard as she might, her knuckles white on the handle. If they all want to call it a sword, she thought, I’ll use it as one! She was quite wild with terror.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t eat me. I’m sorry I ate the fish.”
The shark swam lazily around the raft. It rolled up a little, showing its black belly—for the shark was all black, with a few wild golden stripes running down the side, and its eyes were golden, too, rolling up out of the water to stare mercilessly at September.
“Why are you sorry?” it said softly, its voice rasping and rough. “I eat fish. That’s what fish are for.”
“I daresay you think that’s what little girls are for, too.”
The shark blinked. “Some of them.”
“And who eats you?”
“Bigger fish.”
The shark kept swimming around the raft, rolling up toward the breaking surf to speak.
“Are you going to eat me?”
“You ought to stop talking about eating. It’s making me hungry.”
September shut her mouth with a little snap. “You’re making me dizzy with all your swimming in circles,” she whispered.
“I can’t stop,” the shark rasped. “If I stop, I shall sink and die. That’s the way I’m made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I’m going, I’ll have to keep on. That’s living.”
“Is it?”
“If you’re a shark.”
September rubbed at the blood on her knee. “Am I a shark?” she said faintly.
“You don’t look like one, but I’m not a scientist.”
“Am I dreaming? This feels like a dream.”
“I don’t think so. I could bite you, to see if it hurts.”
“No, thank you.” September looked out at the flat gray water, all severe and stark in the sunrise. “I have to keep going,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“I have to keep going, so that I can keep going after that, forever and ever.”
“Not forever.”
“Why haven’t you eaten me, shark? I ate the fish; I ought to be eaten.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“But you’re a shark. Eating is what you do.”
“No. I swim. I roar. I race. I sleep. I dream. I know what Fairyland looks like from underneath, all her dark places. And I have a daughter. Who might have died, but for a girl in an orange dress who traded away her shadow. A shadow who might have known not to mourn over fish.”
September stared. “The Pooka girl?”
The shark rolled over entirely in the water, her huge fin rearing up out of the waves and slicing down again. “We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.” The shark broke off and plowed through a sudden, heavy swell that soaked September in its crashing. Just as she dove under the surf, September could see the great black tail shiver into legs, disappearing beneath the violet sea.
CHAPTER XVII
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD
In Which September Discovers a Great Amount of Old Furniture and Finds Herself in a Very Dark Place with Only a Little Light
This time, September saw the island coming. It glimmered on the edge of the horizon, fitfully green and golden. In the evening of her fifth day at sea, September steered her raft toward it. She longed to feel land beneath her again, to drink real water, to eat bread. She fell gratefully onto warm sand, rolling in it like a puppy for pleasure. She found several coconuts strewn over the beach and cracked one in a single blow against a stone.
The sea makes a girl strong, you know.
Slurping the watery juice and crunching the meat of it, September dismantled her raft and dressed, making sure to tie the sash of the smoking jacket tight around her waist. She began to walk inland in hopes of better food. Surely she was near the Lonely Gaol by now. Surely she could spare a moment for lunch if it meant not having to go through the dreadful ordeal of fishing again.
But there was no village in the interior of that grassy little island. No sweet houses, their chimneys smoking away. No herald’s square, no ringing churchbell. All she found was junk.
The beach sand gave way to long, whispering sea grass and in that long meadow lay a tremendous number of odd things, as though it were a garbage yard. Old sandals, teakettles, broken umbrellas, clay jars, torn silk screens, cowboy spurs, smashed clocks, lanterns, rosaries, rusted swords.
“Hello?” September called. The wind answered, buffeting the grass, but no one else.
“What a lonely place! I believe someone has forgotten to clean up after himself … for a good while, I suppose. Ah, well, perhaps I shall find a new pair of shoes…”
“I think not!”
September jumped half out of her skin, quite ready to run back to her raft and never make eyes at an island again. But her curiosity defeated her good sense. She peered over the grass to see who the voice might belong to. All she could see was an old pair of straw sandals with a bit of leather wrapped around the sole.
As she tiptoed over to get a better look, two old yellow eyes opened in the heels of the shoes.
“Who said you could have me? Not me, and I say whose feet I have to smush up against all day, I should rightly think!”
“I … I beg your pardon! I didn’t know you were alive!”
“Well, that’s folk with feet for you. Always thinking of themselves.”
Some of the other bits of junk crept closer to September: the swords unfolded long steely arms, and the jars sprouted thick, muscled feet. The silk screens accordioned their way to her, the teakettles turned their spouts toward the earth and spat steam until they popped upward. A great orange lantern floated on the wind, glowing slightly, and from beneath it, a green tassel hung, fluttering. A great clatter sounded as the garbage gathered around.
“Mr. Shoes…”
“My name is Hannibal, if you don’t mind.”
“Hannibal … I have read a great many books, and I have met spriggans and Pookas and even a Wyverary, but I cannot begin to imagine what you are!”
“WHO!” bellowed the shoes, hopping upright, straps flapping in indignation. “What is an indirect dative reserved for things. I am alive! I am a WHO. Or a whom, if you must. And we are Tsukumogami.”
September smiled uncertainly. The word meant no more to her than Mr. Map’s ffitthit. A pair of spurs whirred and clicked on spindly spidery legs.
“We’re a hundred years old,” they said, as though that explained it all.
The great orange lantern, which September could not help comparing to a pumpkin, flashed briefly for attention. Slowly, gracefull
y, golden, fiery letters began to write themselves on the papery surface of the lamp:
You use the things in your house
and think nothing of them. It leaves us bitter.
September put her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know! If a couch just sits there, looking like a couch, I can’t be expected to know it isn’t one.”
That’s the trouble.
But when a household object turns one hundred years old, it wakes up. It becomes alive. It gets a name and griefs and ambitions and unhappy love affairs. It is not always a good bargain. Sometimes, we cannot forget the sorrows and joys of the house we lived in. Sometimes, we cannot remember them. Tsukumogami are one hundred years old. They are awake.
“All my house … just sleeping until their birthdays?” September bit her lip and looked out at the lonely grass. “That’s strange and sad. I often lose things, and break them, long before they turn one hundred. But … why haven’t you any houses of your own? Or a village?”
We spent a century closed up within four walls and a roof.
We are claustrophobic.
We prefer the sun and the wind and the sea,
though it bites some of us,
who are made of metal, and tears papery hearts.
“How old are you?” snorted Hannibal, the pair of straw sandals.
“I’m twelve, Sir.”
A great consternation went up: kettles shrieked, swords rattled, shoes stomped.
“Well, that’s no good at all!” Hannibal yelled. “Never trust anyone under one hundred!” The throng of Tsukumogami rustled agreement. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave. Folk under one hundred can’t be borne—they’re not mature enough. Not seasoned. They haven’t seen grandchildren come and go or been left to gather dust in the winter while their family swans off to the sea for holiday! They’re unpredictable! They could go off at any second! All caught up in walking around and doing things!”
“Twelve!” sniffed the spurs. “Why, that’s barely fifty!”
“It’s not fifty at all,” snapped a silk screen. “It’s not even twenty. She might be a revolutionary! Young people go in for that sort of thing.”
The orange lantern flashed:
If she were a revolutionary,
I think she would have a rifle …
No one paid the lantern any attention.
“I certainly don’t want to be a bother,” demurred September. “I’ll go, I will. Only, I wonder if you might have something I could eat? It is a harsh life at sea.”
“No!” snapped Hannibal, snapping his straps. “Get out! Young cretin!”
September knew when she was not wanted. At least, when someone hollered at her to get out, she could guess as much. But she was wounded—so many folk had been so kind to her in Fairyland. Her cheeks burned under the gaze of the cast-off furniture. But then, perhaps, in the hinterlands, in the wild islands, the Marquess had not yet had a chance to force niceness upon them. She turned to go—and oh, she oughtn’t to have turned her back on them! But perhaps it was not her fault. Perhaps it was the sudden trouble-making breeze that came along and drew aside the tall grass, just far enough that the flash of September’s black shoes shone through the blades.
Several broken bells clanged an alarm, and Hannibal stomped after her like a musk ox. He tackled her, the soft smack of straw sandals slapping her back and knocking her forward.
“Shoes!” he crowed from atop September’s body. “Black shoes, ahoy!”
“Get off me!” yelled September, struggling under the sandals and trying to grab at them.
“Told you, told you! Even ninety-niners are suspect. Twelve? Why, that’s as good as saying, ‘wicked and up to no good!’”
“I’m not up to no good! I’m trying to rescue my friends!”
“Don’t care, don’t care!” howled the sandals. “Grab her, Swords! Don’t be too careful with your blades, either! Down the well she goes!”
Cold, sharp hands grabbed her arms. Kettle steam scalded her feet until she screamed, scrambling to get up. The swords’ grip cut into her arms. They hauled her over the grass while Hannibal giggled and sang along with his compatriots.
“She’ll reward us, you’ll see!” he assured them. “We’ll have our own young kettles for tea and not have to brew up the Earl Grey in Mildred anymore!”
“She?” cried September. “Who told you to do this? Was it the Marquess?”
“We don’t share state secrets with youngsters!”
The throng stopped suddenly short as a black hole opened up in the earth. It was lined with stone, all the way down. September could not see its bottom, but she thought she could hear the sea down there, splashing darkly.
“No!” she wept, trying to tear away from that terrible darkness. The swords cut deeper, and pain flooded her vision. Her skin was slippery with blood.
The orange lantern bobbed in front of her, just over the pit. The lovely handwriting flowed over its face.
The Marquess said to look for a girl
wearing beautiful black shoes. I’m sorry.
“And do what?” shrieked September.
Kill her.
The swords threw September down into the black.
She fell a long way.
At first, September was not sure she was awake. She saw no difference, whether she opened her eyes or not. Slowly, she felt the cold wetness of sitting in several inches of seawater. Her bleeding, she thought, had stopped, at least, mostly stopped. But she could not move her arms, and she suspected her leg was broken. It surely was not supposed to bend that way beneath her. The cold water numbed her all over, and softly, quietly, September cried in the dark.
“I want to go home,” she said shakily to the dark. And she meant it, for the first time. Not as the lie that had gotten her into Fairyland, but the real and honest truth. Her lips trembled. Her teeth chattered. “It’s all so scary here, Mom,” she whispered. “I miss you.”
September put her cheek to the cold stone wall. It was fuzzy and wet with slime. She tried to think of Saturday, pressing his cheek against a dire wall like this one, waiting for her, believing she would come for him and smash his cage as she had before. She tried to think of Ell’s warm bulk, curled against her in the dark.
“Help!” she yelled hoarsely. “Oh, help…”
But no help came. September saw the day come pale and blue over the rim of the well. It seemed very far away. But the thin sunlight gave some courage. She tried to fill her mind with the scent of Lye’s golden bath, fireplaces crackling and warm cinnamon and autumn leaves crunching underfoot. She put all of her weight onto her good leg, and pushed up out of the water—only her body buckled underneath her, and she fell back down, gasping for air.
Some time later, a soft thing brushed her face. September could not tell time at the bottom of the well, but it must have been night, because she could not see what it was. Blindly, she reached out. Orange light flooded the well. Sinking down to her came the lantern, beautiful and round as a pumpkin. Its tassel hung down below it and tied to the tassel was a huge green fruit. September snatched at it and tore it open with her teeth, slurping the pink juice and devouring the meat. She did not say thank you—she was quite beyond manners. The lantern watched her eat. When she had finished, September panted with the exertion of eating, looking wildly about.
Very slowly and gingerly, as though it was afraid to be caught at the deed, a slim hand rose up out of the top of the lantern. And then another. The pale greenish hands clutched the lantern sides and pulled up the orange globe—so that two girls’ legs could stretch out beneath it. September waited, but no head came.
“Please help me get out,” whispered September.
Golden writing spooled out across the surface of the lamp.
I cannot.
They would tear me in half.
But the orange lantern wrapped her arms around September, and her legs, too, and held the little girl in the dark, stroking her hair. If September had looked up, s
he might have seen a gentle lullaby writing itself across the Tsukumogami’s face.
Go to sleep, little firefly,
Float down to the earth …
But she did not look up, and very soon, September was asleep.
When she woke, the lantern had gone. The seawater had risen slightly. No day peeped through the top of the well. September screamed in frustration, kicking the wall with her good leg.
“I shan’t make it to one hundred, you know!” she hollered up angrily. “People don’t live that long with broken legs in the dark!”
September screamed again, wordlessly. The cold seeped in, unmoved. She shoved her hands in her apologetic smoking-jacket pockets to keep warm—and what was there but the glass globe the Green Wind had given her? September seized it and threw it hard against the opposite wall in a fit of rage and frustration. She felt a little better. Breaking things heals a great many hurts. This is why children do it so often.
The green leaf that had been caught inside the crystal drifted down to the stagnant seawater and spun a bit on the surface of it, like a camping compass.
September felt something heavy and furred settle to rest on her lap. The well filled with a deep, profound purring.
“Oh…,” choked September. “It can’t be. I must be dreaming. It just can’t.”
September stroked a huge head nestled against her. Even in the dark, she knew it was spotted. She could feel whiskers prickling her arms.
“How would you like to come away with me, September?” said a familiar voice. The scent of green things filled the well: mint and grass and rosemary and fresh water, frogs and leaves and hay. September threw up her arms in the dark, knowing they would settle on broad shoulders. Her tears wet the cheek of the Green Wind, and he chuckled in her embrace.
“Oh, my little rolling hazelnut, where have you lost yourself?”
“Green! Green! You came! It was all going so well, and then the Marquess said she’d turn Ell to glue and I stole her Marid and we rode bicycles and I tried so hard to be brave, and irascible, and ill-tempered, but then they were gone, all of them, and I had to build a raft and I cut my hair off and my shadow’s gone and I think my leg’s broken, and I’m so scared! And I got a wrench! But I don’t know what I’m meant to do with it and in the stories none of the heroes ever broke their legs and it’s all on account of my shoes somehow, but that means the Marquess must have known, all along, that I’d come here, and I just want to go home.”