The little Pooka girl screamed in utter, animal terror. She shivered into a jackal and clambered around September’s legs, clawed up her back and onto her shoulders, wrapping her tail around her throat.
“No! No!” the Pooka wept, shrieking and clinging to September.
“What’s happening?” September choked, stumbling under the weight of the panicked jackal-girl.
“She’s the tithe-and nothing to be done,” said the ferryman Charlie Crunchcrab. “Might as well be grown-up and dignified about it. The ferry pulls on through Glashtyn territory. They have a right to their fare, too. No one knows what day it will come, or who they will choose, but, well, you all have to get to the City, one way or any way, is true?”
“No! Not me! I don’t want to go! Mama, please! Where’s my mama?”
But September could see her mother, near one of the chaises, a long black jackal with golden ears, lying on her side, paws over her face in grief.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard!” The girl clung to September.
“That’s evolution, love. Take as taking can.”
“What are they going to do to her?”
“None of your business,” snapped the Glashtyn leader.
The Pooka wailed, “They’ll eat me! And drown me! And lash me to the ferry and make me pull it back and forth under the river!”
“It’s good enough for us,” growled one of the other Glashtyn. September saw for the first time that each of them clutched reins and ugly, cruel bits in their fists.
“Please, please, please,” sobbed the child. She shivered back and forth from girl to jackal to girl with alarming speed, the whites of her eyes showing. September reached up to pet her and pried her slowly loose, the claws from her hair, the tail from her throat. She cradled the jackal pup awkwardly, for she was not a very little creature. Her snout flashed into a mouth and back into a muzzle as she wept.
“Isn’t there anything else you could take?” September said wretchedly. “Does it have to be a child?”
“There must be blood,” answered the Glashtyn quietly. “Do you offer yourself as replacement? That is certainly traditional.”
To her credit, September considered this for a moment. She was a strong swimmer and would likely not drown, and they hadn’t said, exactly, that they meant to eat anyone. Being only Somewhat Heartless, she could not cradle a trembling child in her arms and not feel sorry for it and want to keep it from being tossed overboard. But she did not want to be a tithe, and she did not want to die, even a little bit, and she did not even want to brush shoulders with the smallest chance of it.
“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. Isn’t there anything else? I have rubies…”
The horse-man snorted. “Dead rocks.”
“I have a jacket and a shoe.”
They stared at her.
“Well, I haven’t anything else! But I can’t let you have her-she’s just a kid, poor thing! How can you frighten her like this?”
The Glashtyn’s stare bored into her. The blue fire in his eyes was calculating.
“You have a voice,” he said slowly, “and a shadow. Choose one, and I will take it instead of the skin-shrugger.”
You might think that is no kind of choice. But September was suspicious. No bargain in Fairyland could be that easy. And yet-she could not lose her voice, she could not! How would she talk to Ell? How would she sing? How would she explain to her mother where she had gone? And she could not let the girl, whose arms were clutched even now around her neck, go down into the dark river. Even if they did not drown her and eat her, the girl didn’t want to go, and September could get very cross about that sort of thing.
“My shadow,” she said. “Take it. Though it hasn’t any blood, you know.”
She set the Pooka down. And the child bolted to her mother, shivering fully into a pup midway across the ferry deck. The two jackals licked each other’s faces and whined. The Glashtyn held out his hand to Charlie Crunchcrab. The Fairy unbuckled an ugly, rusted, serrated knife from his belt and passed it over.
September had time to think, Oh, this will hurt, before the Glashtyn seized her, spun her around, and sawed the knife back and forth along her spine. She felt cold and faint. The knife made noises like shredding silk and grinding bone. She thought she might topple over, the pain was so terrible, running up and down her back. Still, she refused to cry. Finally, there was a sickening crack, and the Glashtyn pulled away with a scrap of something in his hand. A single drop of September’s blood dripped from the knife to the bleached wood of the deck.
The Glashtyn set the scrap of something down before him. It pooled darkly, shining a little, and then stood up in the shape of a girl just September’s height, with just September’s eyes and hair, all of black smoke and shadow. Slowly, the shadow-September smiled and pirouetted on one foot. It was not a gentle smile or a kind one. The shadow extended her hand to the Glashtyn, who took it, smiling himself.
“We shall take her below and love her and put her at the head of our parades,” he said. “For she was not taken but given-and thus our only true possession.”
The shadow curtsied. To September, the curtsy seemed somewhat vicious, if a curtsy could be vicious. September was unsure that she had done the right thing now-surely, she would miss her shadow, and surely, the Glashtyn meant to make mischief with it of some sort or another. But it was too late: The Glashtyn leapt overboard as one, with the shadow-September riding on the leader’s shoulders. The Fairy throng stared at her, amazed. No one would speak to her. A-through-L finally strode across the deck to gather her up. He smelled so good and familiar, and his skin was so warm. She hugged his knee.
“Did I do the right thing, Charlie?” September asked the ferryman softly.
He shook his mad gray head. “Right or blight, done is dusted.”
September looked across the water at the gleaming City rising up, all towers and shine. Then she looked down into the Barleybroom.
Six dark horse heads glided through the water at the head of the ferry, bits clamped in their teeth. Over their backs, a shadow girl leapt and danced, her ghostly laughter all but eaten up by the waves.
INTERLUDE
THE KEY AND ITS TRAVELS
In Which We Turn Our Attention to a Long-Forgotten and Much-Suffering Jeweled Key
Being careful and clever readers, you must now wonder if your woolgathering narrator has completely forgotten the jeweled key that so loyally followed September into Fairyland. Not so! But a key’s adventuring is of necessity a quieter thing than a girl’s, more single-minded and also more fraught with loneliness.
For the Key slipped between Latitude and Longitude and tumbled briefly-oh so briefly!-through the starry dark behind the screen of the world. It landed unceremoniously on the shimmering jacket of a hobgoblin in transit from Brocéliande to Atlantis. The Key blended into the other glittery bits of folly that bedecked the jacket and went unquestioned by Betsy Basilstalk or Rupert the Gargoyle.
Good-naturedly illiterate, the Key had no wish to visit the blue-crystal universities of Atlantis and unhooked its clasp just in time to tumble through the rooty, moldy, wormy passage to Fairyland. It caught an updraft of sea air and soared over the fleecy clouds, playing tag with the blue-necked gillybirds.
It passed over the witches and narrowly avoided a sucking vortex of the events of next week that threatened to pull it down into the cauldron.
It flew over the field full of little red flowers, but no Wyverary-or even a Wyvern-appeared to accompany it or explain how anything worked or was in the days before today.
The Key, too, found the House Without Warning, long after a nicely scrubbed September had passed through. Under Lye’s gentle eye, the Key primly dropped into a tiny tub and soaked until it gleamed.