“I thought you said you come out the other side on the quick,” interrupted Ell, searching for a hole in the logic of the tale.
“Oh, most all of you does. You’d never notice the difference. But some of you stays and lives in the Country of Photography forever and ever. That’s why you never look quite like your picture—when you’re done being pictured you’re a new person. Part of you is living in the Country of Photography and not in you anymore. It’s lovely here—all kinds of people and houses and trains and horses and apple orchards and smiling people and frowning people and old people and young people all together, everything that’s ever been filmed or photographed. If you sat for a great lot of pictures, there’ll be heaps of you running around, if not, maybe only an out-of-focus background shot. And Azimuth, photographed Azimuth, is a metropolis. Packed full—the biggest city in all of Fairyland, except that no one counts us in the census. The Glasshobs had a lens for everything, and lenses are for capturing, and they took more pictures like blinking before they bolted off at the first sign of worry. As I said, subjects are cowards.”
“But your house isn’t a camera; it’s only plates,” said September, her hair beginning to drip.
“The inside of this house is a darkroom, and that’s the same as saying a tunnel from one Country to another. I come to look at the scenery in the mornings. Though it’s been ever so lonely lately. I don’t know what the fuss is about. We’ve got eleven Ciderskins in Country. They’re harmless! Still, if you came in I couldn’t vouch for your safety. A photograph doesn’t die; it only fades a little—we don’t fear much. But you are very fragile.”
“Do you mean to say you’re not…well, not quite alive?” asked September, who thought better of the question as soon as she had said it.
“That’s very interesting, you know!” The Tyguerrotype scratched under his cravat with one claw. “I suppose it depends on what you mean by alive. Do I seem alive?”
“Oh, yes!”
“If I were not alive, do you suppose I would sound or seem or behave very differently than I am doing?”
“I don’t think so…”
“If you shut your eyes and only listened to my voice and didn’t know that I was a Tyguerrotype and not a Tiger, if you couldn’t see that I am an image on a silvered plate and not a fat, roly, orange and black gentleman with an advanced degree, would you assume that before you stood a real and living Great Feline? With a noble constitution and an eye for composition?”
“Yes, I expect so…”
“Then I am as alive as makes no difference. I do all the things an alive thing does,” said Turing. “Do you know another test for living?”
September could not help looking at Aroostook. She changed by herself, into sunflowers and golden hands and phonograph bells. Only living things could change without someone changing them. She drove himself when he saw fit and she had said no to the Blue Winds (though that might have been a jammed lever) and she had to eat or else she would stop, just like her. She Had Rights, if the King was to be believed. But September could believe a photograph of a tiger was alive more readily than that her car was.
“It’s a handsome machine,” said Turing, following her gaze.
“Do you think—” September cleared her throat. She had said nothing to her friends about Aroostook and his changes. “Do you think it might be alive as well? You seem to know something about the business, is why I ask.”
The Tyguerrotype roared laughter.
“Do I know about living? Do I know about Alive? I know about seeming, little primate. I know about how a thing looks. It looks like a handsome machine. But then, so do you. And I wouldn’t, I really wouldn’t come into the house. I’m sorry you’re wet and hungry but if you stood where I stand and ate my strawberries you’d come down with a fantastic case of mercury poisoning at the very least. If you came into the house you’d end up in my Country, backwards and upside down and black and white.”
“You said when a picture’s taken a body goes all the way through the Country of Photography,” said September slowly, trying to figure out where her mind was tugging her. “As fast as a shutterclick. But that country has to be as big as anything that’s ever stood in front of a camera. How long have folk been taking pictures in Fairyland? They’ve been at it for quite a while in my world. Have you seen a Fairy city in there? With a great giant paw on display in the middle of it?”
The Tyguerrotype stroked his striped cheeks. “It’s possible. I can’t be sure. There are ever so many cities in Country. But I think I saw a place like that when I was first developed.”
“Don’t you see?” cried September to her friends. “We can do better than the Glasshobs’ lenses! It all has to be in there—the Paw, Patience, even the Fairies! If we are lucky, we can see what happened to it. When you live as fast as the Fairies did when they could Yeti away anything they didn’t like you’d just have to take pictures! Their lives outraced memory, kicked it, and jumped on its head.”
“But we couldn’t really,” protested Ell. “You go through in a blink. The tiger said so. There’d be no time to look around.”
The Tyguerrotype shoved his paws in his pockets. “I suppose you know about Physicks, little one. They don’t work the same way in Country. Seeing is magic. A lion I once knew called Werner, photographed in a zoo for chessmasters and scavengers, well, he told anyone who would listen—but no one would. Seeing is magic. When you look at something you change it, just by looking. It’s not an apple anymore, it’s an apple your friend Turing saw and thought about and finally ate. And it’s worse than that—anything you look at changes you, too. A camera takes a picture—but the photographer can’t escape the picture. She’s there, even if you can’t see her. She’s the one holding the box.”
“It’s like what Candlestick said about Pluto. People see my clothes and they say I’m a Criminal,” September said, chewing over the Physicks of it. “And I know I’ve acted like one—but only when I had to!” Or when I desperately wanted to, she thought, a flash of guilt bursting in her stomach over what she’d done.
The Tyguerrotype nodded. “They see you and they change you and you change because you’ve been seen and you change them because they’ve changed you. I hope that sounds very confusing because it’s much worse in Country. There’s nothing but seeing and being seen in the Country of Photography.”
“That’s all very well. But you haven’t said there’s no point in it because we’d flit through in an instant. So there must be a way not to,” said Saturday shrewdly, tugging on his topknot.
Turing the Tyguerrotype furrowed his furry brow. “I should have to catch you as the flash goes off,” he said, “to stop you silvering right through. But I am very vivid. A strong image, clear and dynamic!”
Saturday looked longingly at the silver-plate house. “It sounds like home in there. Everyone all together, all of themselves round the supper table, baby pictures and holiday portraits and wedding albums.”
“And perhaps I will be safe in there—you can’t photograph a curse, after all,” added Ell softly. “But I do not like it. I do not want to be flat and colorless as well as small. I like my own country. I like being red in it, and warm, and round.”
“But photographic processes are caustic!” whispered Saturday. “We shall certainly be scorched, and what if we should come out a mile into space or back in the Jungle? Let’s not be reckless!”
Turing had already pulled an old studio camera out onto his silver plate. He positioned the tripod and peered through the lens, pulling a curtain over his striped ears.
“I am reckless,” said September to her friend. “You have to be, in my line of work.” She paused. “Our line of work.”
“Scoot together now,” called the Tyguerrotype. “Around our handsome machine. I’ve got to get you all in frame at once!”
Turing spread his great, wide arms as wide as he could. His fierce mouth opened, showing silver teeth and a silver tongue lined in black. In one paw he squashed th
e squeezebulb.
“Everybody say ‘Observer Effect’!” he roared.
At the last moment, Ell could bear it no longer. His flame burst out in fear and doubt and great lizardy distress. The violet jet arced over the silver-plate houses, sizzling and hissing through the raindrops.
The flash exploded like a star.
CHAPTER XVI
THE COUNTRY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
In Which September Is Observed and Observes Herself
September saw nothing but blackness.
Her feet stood in something warm and wet—at first she thought it was a puddle where they all dripped together out of the storm. But as the wetness rose up, past her knees, past her waist and her tummy and her chest, panic rushed up, faster than the wetness, clutching her throat so tight she could not cry out. Liquid flowed over her face in the dark, seeping into her eyes and her mouth. September thrashed and beat at the stuff, but she could see nothing, feel nothing, move nowhere.
And as suddenly as it had engulfed her, it left, draining away into nothing. September opened her eyes, wiping at them, coughing. And everything was full of light.
The Tyguerrotype’s house had no rear wall; it opened up onto another Azimuth, wide and silver and black and white, shade upon shade of charcoal and ash and pearl and oyster and gunpowder and smoke. Not just another Azimuth—many Azimuths, lying one on top of the other like the pages of a book. Everywhere September looked, she saw images wriggling together and apart. A Glasshob—she could not be anything else, her heavy lantern hanging down on a seaweed-wrapped stalk before her eyes, her goat-legs furry and gray—took one step toward them. But a dozen copies of her leapt out in every direction, bolting off in every direction. Houses vibrated, their images layered three and four and eight deep. Yet you could not really call it deep. Depth seemed to have fallen asleep and forgotten to set its alarm. The Tyguerrotype, the thirteen bouncing Glasshobs, the quivering houses—and September and Saturday, A-Through-L and Candlestick—had a little thickness, but no more than a thick sheet of paper. They were all black and white, the Marid swirling with dark and light like tarnished silver, September a floating pale face in the sea of her inky silks. September looked down at Ell. It took her a moment to realize what she’d done—looked down. Down, at a Wyvern. He was the size of a wolfhound now, just a hair below September’s own height. White tears welled up in his silver eyes—but did not fall. She put out her arms and pulled Ell into them, and in her heart she thrilled a little, for she had always wanted to be able to hold him all entire this way, snuggle him even though she knew very well he was not a dog. But the poor Wyverary turned his face away in terror and shame and the thrill died away in an instant.
“Don’t cry,” she said with a voice her mother used when September was disconsolate. “You have to teach me to be the bigger one, out of the two of us. I daresay I won’t be very good at it, at first.” Ell straightened a little at that, but not much.
Not all was black and white in the Country of Photography. September did see in the distance a sepia spriggan lecturing to a throng of brown-and-cream gnomes. And there, sitting against the wall of a shivering cafe, sat a single fat man all in the brightest blue, a brocade coat that fell to his toes, his bushy black beard swallowing up a round brown face with wide brown eyes. But he was the only colorful soul in that corner of the Country of Photography.
“They’ve been showing up here and there,” said the Tyguerrotype. “Someone somewhere knows the secret of color photography. I should very much like to meet them, whoever they may be.”
September took a step forward—and stopped short. When she moved, images scattered before her like autumn leaves. Layers of Azimuth peeled off—this one showing Glasshobs standing before the great telescope, straight-backed and dour-faced. That one showing a tired-looking witch waving in front of the same telescope, yet another showing a little boy with a bobcat’s face asleep in the telescope’s plush chair. Wherever September turned her feet, more of the city skittered out in front of her, separating into still frames and blowing out across the very streets they captured. It was like walking through autumn leaves—the leaves scattered before your feet, blowing into the forest where more leaves waited.
“Am I hurting them?” she whispered.
“Oh, no, my little soft-focus dear,” said the Tyguerrotype kindly. “That’s how it is here. The world is an album of pictures, with everyone flipping ahead to see what comes next. When you move, you move the world. Now, it was a Fairy city, wasn’t it? I know I saw one in here somewhere.”
Turing put up his tiger’s paw and tucked his claw into a bit of air. It peeled back like the corner of a stamp—and at the same time he strode forward forcefully. As he flicked his claws and pounded the cobblestones, the city around them flipped and shuffled like pages. Turing walked right through the ruffling images of Azimuth—and then places that were not Azimuth—a wide lunar meadow, a silvery Pandemonium in the afternoon with pookas sipping ices near the Briary, sepia hamadryads picnicking in the Worsted Wood, Groangyre Physickists throwing their heads up into the air at a graduation ceremony. September and her friends hurried after the Tyguerrotype, for behind him the photographs drifted back up, layering on top of one another, shivering back into their shapes and becoming solid once more. Turing descended, or ascended, or dove through, the Country of Photography like a dolphin in water.
September halted, realizing that she had forgotten Aroostook, puttering away patiently behind her. Several images of identical horses grazed around her fenders, their hooves in mid-gallop, not touching the ground. September took a deep breath and decided to try something. She patted her hip. She gave a little whistle, like she would to her little dog when supper was ready. At first, nothing happened. The Model A idled without concern. She whistled again, more sharply.
And Aroostook bounced a little. She rolled forward, tagging along behind her, sticking close to her side. September gave her car a long, concerned look—then dashed after her friends. Aroostook’s horn squwonked joyfully. Photographs burst and riffled before them, blowing aside so fast they blurred together.
Suddenly Saturday cried out; September saw it, too, and without thinking they clutched each others’ hands, their hearts racing together away from the thing they saw.
“What?” yelped Ell. His voice had gotten higher in his shorter, thinner throat. The sound of it pierced September’s fear.
“Did you see that?” she hissed as they ran after the Tyguerrotype, through family portraits of Dodos in the safe mountain cubbies of Walghvogel and unfamiliar canyons draped with silk sails and garlands of drums and stranger still farmhouses and silos and men in stovepipe hats and stern-faced mothers with children on their knees that would have been unremarkable in the world September knew.
“Did we see what?” called Candlestick.
“There it is again!” Saturday gasped.
And then they all saw it—a huge blur passed before them as a photograph spun away. A mass of streaky gray with black bulges within it, a glimpse of teeth, a flash of horns.
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s only a Yeti,” Turing yelled back over his monochrome shoulder.
“How can we possibly not worry?” panted September, who, even though she had no more depth than a playing card, seemed still to possess lungs that could burn and ache. A tiny whelk shell next to a great dark sea floated past and away.
“I did say we have eleven of them in here! No details, though. They’re too bloody fast for that game. They hulk on through like stormclouds, but they’ve got no mouths to complain about the quality of breakfast or eyes to narrow at those they take an unkindness toward. They’re out of focus and that means out of everything.”
September turned her head to look at the blur, receding through the crinkling photographs behind them. She felt an instinct sit up inside her and set its jaw.
“I want to follow it!” she hollered after Turing. The Tyguerrotype stopped. Photos settled and drifted around him like seedpods. “Don’t you thin
k—don’t you think a Yeti, even a blurry one, might want to be near the paw we’re after? Like a magnet, they might be attracted, even if they were so out of focus they couldn’t think sharp.”
September tore off from her pack, dragging Saturday by the hand, bashing back through heavy frames and cellophane films of Ifrits firing meteors through thin silk zeppelins, straining toward the great white blur staining the Country of Photography like spilled ink. Finally, a sound like a shutter cracked, not in her ear but in her mind, in her bones. And September, Saturday, the Wyverary, and Turing the Tyguerrotype all tumbled forward, pitching into a silver-white photograph.
Eleven white blurs ringed a city of blooming, vine-tangled, thorny, lush spires. A gentle curve of land held towers of twisted white wood and black blossoms, boulevards of long gray lawn, pools like mirrors sunk into the streets. In the midst of it all lay a broad pavilion ringed with toadstools, and there, out of a tiered pedestal, rose a vast, withered, ancient, crooked paw, the great dark hand of an abominable snowman.
They had found Patience.
Fairies poured out of every house and turret and garret and hall. They, too, were too fast for a camera to catch—shimmering blurs whipping around the paw like veils in a strange dance, misty, sparkling. Only one had enough focus to show on the film: a young girl, something like the Fairies September had known, like Belinda and Calpurnia and Charlie, wings unfolded and full of prisms, smiling and strong, stretching up on tip-toe to bite the leathery skin of the paw. Her hair was bound up with rowan-berries and six knives hung from her willow-belt.