September reeled. She had thought she was done with crying, but she could not bear the Marquess’s tale. Tears flowed hot and frightened and bitter. Iago howled, mourning for Mallow or the Marquess or Fairyland, September could not be sure.
“I’m sorry, Mallow…”
“Don’t call me that,” the Marquess snapped.
“Maud, then. I’m so sorry.”
“Are you going to tell me how wicked I am?”
“No.”
“Good. Now do as I say, little girl, or I shall throttle your friends in front of you and let Iago have the meat of them.”
Iago grimaced a little.
September still clutched the pearly clock to her breast. She could not imagine it—living a whole life here and then, suddenly, horribly, being a lost child again, all of everything gone. It was too awful to think of. Gently, September turned the clock over in her hands. But the Marquess, poor Maud, was broken now, and she wanted to break Fairyland, too, to make it like her, sad and bitter and coiled up like a snake, ready to strike at anyone, friend or foe. September slid her fingernail under the latch. The door of the clock’s workings sprang free. What if it had been September, and she had lived here so long that she forgot home?
September’s hands found the stopped gears. She knew she could do it. Clocks were easy. Her mother had taught her about clocks ages ago. Even if it were me, she thought, I could not chain Ell’s wings like that.
September drew the Wrench from her side. It was huge and long, its copper hand shining brightly.
“It will be as big as I need it to be,” she murmured.
And the Wrench sighed. It melted in her hand like a popsicle in the summertime, until it was delicate and tiny, a jeweler’s tool. Before the Marquess could tell her not to, September gripped the offending wheel within the heart of Maud Elizabeth Smythe’s clock with her Wrench and pulled at it.
“Don’t you dare!” cried the Marquess. She ran her hand along Iago’s black spine. He just looked up at her, his emerald eyes sad.
“Mallow…,” he whispered. “I’m tired.”
“Please! I can’t go back!” The Marquess snatched September’s hand, squeezing it horribly tight.
“Don’t you touch me!” cried September. “I’m not like you!”
The Marquess laughed her knifelike laugh again. “Do you think Fairyland loves you? That it will keep you close and dear, because you are a good girl and I am not? Fairyland loves no one. It has no heart. It doesn’t care. It will spit you back out just like it did me.”
September nodded miserably. They were both crying, struggling with the Wrench. September plunged her fingers into the clock, desperately trying to turn the wheel on her own. The gears cut her chilled hands and soaked the clock’s innards with blood.
“No, no, I won’t let you! I won’t go home!” The Marquess sobbed. And then she did an extraordinary thing.
She let September go. The Marquess took a step back, as big a step as she could manage in that tiny place. The storm flashed lightning and rain behind her. “I won’t let you. Either of you. Not you, not Fairyland. I won’t let you win.” She put her hand on her chest. “I have magic yet. If you will set the clock working again, then I must be still. I have read quite as many stories as you, September. More, no doubt. And I know a secret you do not: I am not the villain. I am no dark lord. I am the princess in this tale. I am the maiden with her kingdom stolen away. And how may a princess remain safe and protected through centuries, no matter who may assail her? She sleeps. For a hundred years, for a thousand. Until her enemies have all perished and the sun rises over her perfect, innocent face once more.”
The Marquess fell down. It was so fast—one moment, she stood; the next, she had dropped like a flower snapped in half. She lay perfectly still on the floor, her eyes shut, serene.
September turned the wheel with her tiny wrench. The hands moved, slowly at first, and then whirred faster and faster.
In the room, suddenly, a soft alarm bell began to ring.
CHAPTER XX
SATURDAY’S WISH
In Which Escapes Are Made, a Great Wrestling Match Occurs, and a Stranger Appears
“Is she dead?” whispered Iago.
The Marquess breathed deep and even. The Panther of Rough Storms bent his ponderous black head and bit her experimentally, the way one pinches oneself to test whether one is dreaming. She did not move.
“I don’t think so…,” said September fearfully.
“I ought to take her away somewhere. Somewhere quiet. I think a bier of some kind is traditional in these cases.”
“Shouldn’t she … go back now? That the clock is working?”
“I’m not an expert. Maybe she is back. Maybe she is dreaming of tomatoes and her father. I hope not.” The Panther meowed horribly. “I did love her. In her sleep, she looked so like Mallow. I kept thinking, One day, she’ll wake up, and it’ll be like it once was, and we shall all have a nice cake and laugh about how silly things got.”
A distant shatter and crash echoed through the Lonely Gaol.
Iago looked up, unconcerned. “She held half this world together with her will. It will all come apart now. I wonder what we shall all look like without her?”
“I have to get my friends out! Help me, Iago, please, I can’t get to them by myself!”
“Oh … well, I suppose someone ought to have a good ending, out of all of us.” The Panther’s eyes were glassy and faraway. “She fed me fish,” he whispered. “And blackberry jam.”
“Not together, I hope,” said September, trying to make him laugh as she climbed into his saddle. A great tear splashed onto the Marquess’s sleeping cheek as Iago rose up and away from his still, cold mistress.
“Oh, Saturday…”
The Marid lay on the floor of a cell, his hands bound behind his back, his mouth gagged. Terrible bruises bloomed purple and black where the lion had bitten him. His eyes were sunken and sallow.
“Wake up, Saturday…”
He groaned in his sleep. A savage crack appeared in the tower wall behind him, squeaking and shrieking as if about to burst.
“Saturday!” September cried. She took her Wrench by the hilt—it grew huge again in her hand. She swung it with all her might against the moss-slimed glass door of Saturday’s cell. The door shattered, shards tinkling to the floor. September pried the manacles open with the hooked hand of her Wrench and pulled Saturday’s gag away. She held him for a moment, stroking his hair. Slowly, his eyes opened.
“September!” he croaked.
“Can you walk? We have to go: The Gaol is breaking!”
“It will be all right—the dragon will build it up again…”
“What? We’re up so high, we’ll be killed!”
“Well, she’s not really a dragon, but…”
“Saturday! Pay attention! Where is Ell?”
The Marid gestured weakly toward the next cell. Iago glanced inside.
“He’s really rather poorly, that one. I don’t think you’ll get him out.”
September lay Saturday gently down and went to Ell’s cell. The Wyverary lay curled up on the floor, huge, crimson, and fast asleep. Ugly green gashes ripped through his scales, still oozing blood. Dried turquoise tears stained his dear face.
“Oh, Ell! No, no, don’t be dead, please!”
“Why not?” said Iago. “That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.”
September brought the Wrench crashing down on Ell’s door, but the beast did not move. Outside the glass walls, September saw the towers’ tips begin to break off and tumble toward the raging sea.
“Iago, I’ll never move him!”
“Probably not.”
“Help me!”
“I can fly. That’s all. I’m not omnipotent.”
The ceiling exploded in a shower of glass. Blood welled up along September’s arms. Rain poured in.
“Please!” she screamed.
; “Someone here is, though,” the great cat said. “Omnipotent. Or nearly so.”
September stared numbly for a moment and then scrambled away from Ell.
“Saturday!” she cried. “Saturday, wake up!”
“Hm? Sort of a fish, but not really…,” the Marid murmured.
“You have to wrestle me!” September laughed wildly as she said it, half out of her mind with terror.
“What? The dragon hates wrestling … and I … I couldn’t wrestle a mouse…”
“Good! Then it won’t be so hard for me to beat you.”
Saturday quailed.
“Don’t you see?” said September. “I can wish us all away and safe! Only you have to wrestle me. You told me how to do this. A Marid can grant any wish, so long as he’s beaten in a wrestling match.”
Saturday’s face colored and blanched as he slowly understood her. He rose up, shakily. The crack behind him grew, grinding, shrieking.
“I can’t hold back,” he warned.
“I know,” September said, and darted at him, meaning to tackle him by the knees, to take him by surprise.
Saturday stepped nimbly away. She lunged at him again and he caught her, thrown back against the glass wall, which shattered noisily, dropping them both into the night air. They landed with a shower of glass like snow several stories below. Saturday broke September’s fall, but suddenly, in her arms, his grip tightened. His eyes flashed feral in the storm light. The wish had woken in him the Marid blood, sea-bright and stormy. It would not let his wounded body lose, even now, even when he needed to lose most.
Saturday hit September’s chest with both fists. She held on—but just barely. Saturday snarled, his lips curling back. His face was unrecognizable. He tore away from her and scrambled up onto a glass staircase. September ran after him, knocking him down from behind. She shut her eyes as she struck out at him—she didn’t want to see herself hurt him. Her fists connected with the blue muscles of his back, and he howled in pain, turning on her and pulling her hair savagely. September screamed and whipped back around to claw him with her fingernails. They separated, panting, bloody, two feuding jackals. Saturday started after her, but the weight of them was too much for the staircase—it shivered and broke, and beneath it the floor. They fell again, this time onto hard stone as the cliffs began to mingle with the glass of the Lonely Gaol. Once again, Saturday took the worst of it. He moaned. September drew away.
“Are you all right?”
The Marid raked her face with his claws, his eyes gone narrow and dark with the strength of the wish in him, trying desperately not to get out. September grasped him around the waist and hurled him back with all her strength. They grappled, breathing hard and shoving each other, gaining an inch here, an inch there. September knew that if he were well, she would be no match. She bit him cruelly on the neck and he recoiled, knocking into a half-shattered wall and sprawling out onto the stone floor of one of the Gears of the World that the Marquess prized so. Rain poured over him. September threw herself against him once more, and they tumbled back over the stone.
Just a little farther, she thought. Just a little more.
She no longer even tried to hit him, though his great blows landed on her shoulders, her ribs. Blood trickled into her eye. Relentlessly, she threw herself against his body again and again, pushing him back, farther and farther, until suddenly, it happened.
Saturday fell off of the stone gear of Fairyland and onto the iron gear of her own world. He landed on his back and immediately howled in agony. Sores rose up on his arms as he touched the poisonous iron. Saturday wept and thrashed. September climbed down to him. She sat astride the sobbing Marid. She wanted to stop and hold him and make him well. Instead, she pinned his arms down and hit him again.
“Yield!” she screamed over the storm.
Saturday screeched rage and defeat. September nearly let him go to clap hands over her ears, so piercing was the sound. But she held on. And Saturday went slack beneath her. Something had passed out of him, and he was quiet again.
“I yield to you, September.”
September collapsed against him, rain pounding at her, blood mingling between them. He gave a tiny sob, and shut his eyes against her skin.
“I wish that we were all of us away from here,” she whispered in his ear, “and Ell and Gleam and all of us were warm and safe.”
She let him up then, holding out her hand to help him. He took it. They stood together in the storm, smiling.
“Hello,” came a small voice.
September whirled around. Up on the stone gear, far above them, a small child stood, looking down, blinking in the rain. Her skin was blue, though not so blue as Saturday’s, and she had long, dark hair. She had a mole on her left cheek, and her feet were very large and ungainly. The child looked quite solemn—and then suddenly, she smiled.
“Now, we shall play hide-and-seek!” she yelled down at them.
Saturday’s eyes widened with understanding. He looked at September, dumbfounded.
Then, they both disappeared, quick as a thought.
CHAPTER XXI
DID YOU SEE HER?
In Which All Is Reasonably Well, but Time Is Short
The sun fell golden and warm onto a field of gleaming wheat—just a touch blue around the edges and rosy in the middle, as is the way with glowerwheat. Broad trees full of gleaming fruit shaded four bodies. They lay in the grass as though dreaming. A girl in a green smoking jacket with long, curling dark hair and a high, healthy blush in her cheeks rested with her hands closed over her chest. A boy with blue skin and rich, thick hair gathered up on top of his head slept curled next to her, with no bruises at all on his chest. A little ways away a great red Wyvern snored pleasantly, his red scales whole and unbroken.
Near his tail an orange lantern glowed dimly.
September rose up and stretched her arms, yawning. Then she touched her hair, and it all came back to her: the Marquess, the Lonely Gaol, the awful storm. She looked down at Saturday, sleeping sweetly. She moved over to him and lay very close, and then she cried, quietly, so that he couldn’t see. All the ache and horror of it, the sea and the fish and the sadness of Queen Mallow and Iago and all of them, poured out of her into the grass, into the day. Finally, she touched Saturday’s blue back ever so gently, with the tips of her fingers.
“Saturday,” she whispered, wiping her eyes. “It worked. I think it worked, anyway.”
His eyes slid open.
September pulled at her curls. “How did my hair grow back?”
Saturday rolled over in the long grass. “You wished for everyone to be whole and well again,” he said softly.
September crept over to Ell. She could hardly breathe for hope. Slowly, she touched his huge face, his broad cheeks, his soft nose.
“Oh, Ell, do wake up. Do be well.”
One great orange eye creaked open.
“Did I miss something?” A-Through-L yawned prodigiously.
September squealed delight and threw her arms around the Wyverary’s nose.
“And Gleam! Gleam, you’re back!”
Golden writing looped across her face:
Paper can be patched.
September hugged the lantern, though this was a bit of an awkward operation. Pale green arms reached up out of the paper and embraced September but vanished quickly, as though Gleam was embarrassed of her limbs, as if they were a secret, just between September and herself. Still, if she could have smiled, Gleam would have beamed like Christmas.
“Halllooooo!” came a bellowing, booming voice out of the sky. The four of them looked up to see a Leopard swooping and leaping down to them, and none on her back but the Green Wind, in his green jodhpurs and green snowshoes, his green-gold hair flying.
September thought she would burst. She lost count of the hugs and cat-lickings and tumbling about.
“But how can you be here? I thought you weren’t allowed!”
The Green Wind grinned broadly. “The Marquess’s ru
les are done with! No chain could keep me from you now, my little chestnut. And I have brought gifts!”
The Green Wind snapped off his green cape and lay it on the ground with a flourish. Immediately, it covered itself in every delightful green thing one can eat: pistachio ice cream and mint jelly and spinach pies and apples and olives and rich herby bread—and several huge, deep green radishes.
The Leopard paced nervously, however.
“Has my brother come with you?” she growled. “I do not see him.”
September’s face fell.
“You did not wish for him,” Saturday whispered fretfully.
The Leopard gave a little cry, quite like a kitten who has lost her litter mate. “It is all right. He would have gone back for her. I’m sure of it. For that which was Mallow still, whom we both loved. And he was always good in a storm.”
“She is only sleeping, Green,” said September slowly. “Might she come back someday?”
“One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for a while yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”
September looked at her hands. She did not know quite how to ask what she needed to know.
“Green,” she said, her voice trembling. “I know it was not my clock the Marquess showed me. But … where is my clock? How much time do I have left?”
The Green Wind laughed. A few fruit fell from the trees with the boom of it. “You don’t have one, love! The Marquess knew it, too, which is why she tried to trick you with hers. The Stumbled have clocks. It is their tragedy. But no one has quite the same tragedy. Changelings can’t leave without help. And the Ravished…” The Green Wind pulled an hourglass from his coat. It was filled with deep red sand, the color of wine. On its ebony base was a little brass plaque. It read,