“But that’s easy!”
“Mostly easy. But Fairyland is an old place, and old things have strange hungers. One of the last pieces is: There must be blood. The other is: Tell a lie.”
September bit her lip. She had never been fond of jigsaw puzzles, even though her grandmother loved them and had glued one thousand pieces all over her house as a kind of wallpaper. Slowly, trying to remember it all, she clapped one hand over her eye. She raised one foot and hopped in what she hoped was widdershins around the Leopard of Little Breezes. Her orange dress flapped against the green jacket shining in the sun. When she stopped, September unfastened the jeweled orange key from her lapel and pricked her finger sharply with its pin. Blood welled up and dripped onto the blue stones. She laid the key gently at the feet of the impassive Latitude and Longitude and drew a deep breath.
“I want to go home,” she lied softly.
Latitude and Longitude turned smoothly toward each other, as though they were on pedestals. They began to bend and fold like staircases, reaching out for each other and interlocking, hand into hand, foot onto knee, arms akimbo. They moved mechanically in their strange circus dance, jerkily, joints swinging like dolls’. The street shook a little and then was still. Ever so briefly, Latitude and Longitude kissed, and when they parted, there was a space between their mouths just large enough for a Leopard carrying a Harsh Air and a little girl. All September could see on the other side were clouds.
Solemnly, the Green Wind held out his gloved hand to the girl in orange.
“Well done, September,” he said, and lifted her onto the Leopard’s emerald saddle.
One can never see what happens after an exeunt on a Leopard. It is against the rules of theatre. But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs.
For, you see, when September and the Green Wind had gone through the puzzle of the world on their great cat, the jeweled key rose up and swooped in behind them, as quiet as you like.
CHAPTER II
THE CLOSET BETWEEN WORLDS
In Which September Passes Between Worlds, Asks Four Questions and Receives Twelve Answers, and Is Inspected by a Customs Officer
By the time a lady reaches the grand, golden evening of her life, she has accumulated a great number of things. You know this-when you visited your grandmother on the lake that summer you were surprised to see how many portraits of people you didn’t recognize hung on the walls and how many porcelain ducks and copper pans and books and collectible spoons and old mirrors and scrap wood and half-finished knitting and board games and fireplace pokers she had stuffed away in the corners of her house. You couldn’t think what use a person would have for all that junk, why they would keep it around for all this time, slowly fading in the sun and turning the same shade of parchmenty brown. You thought your grandmother was a bit crazy, to have such a collection of glass owls and china sugar bowls.
That is what the space between Fairyland and our world looks like. It is Grandmother’s big, dark closet, her shed out back, her basement, cluttered with the stuff and nonsense of millennia. The world didn’t really know where else to put it, you see. The earth is frugal; she doesn’t toss out perfectly good bronze helmets or spinning wheels or water clocks. She might need them one day. As for all the portraiture: When you’ve lived as long as she has, you’ll need help remembering your grandchildren, too.
September marveled at the heaps of oddities in the closet between worlds. The ceiling was very low, with roots coming through, and everything had a genteel fade to it, the old lace and code-breaking machines, the anchors and heavy picture frames, the dinosaur bones and orreries. As the Leopard proceeded through the dimly lit passageway, September looked into the painted eyes of pharaohs and blind poets, chemists and serene philosophers. September could tell they were philosophers because they had on drapey clothes, like curtains. But most of the portraits were just people, wearing whatever they had liked to wear when they were living, raking hay or writing diaries or baking bread.
“Sir Wind,” September said, when she had recovered herself and her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously and not call me any pretty names or tease me.”
“Of course, my… September. And you can call me Green. I feel we’re becoming very well acquainted.”
“Why did you take me out of Omaha? Do you take very many girls? Are they all from Nebraska? Why are you being so nice to me?”
September could not be sure, but she thought the Leopard of Little Breezes laughed. It might have been a snort.
“That’s rather more than one question. Therefore, I think it’s only fair I give you rather more than one set of answers.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “One: Omaha is no place for anybody. Two: No, my schedule keeps me quite busy enough. Three: See above. Four: So that you will like me and not be afraid.”
Up ahead, there was a line of folk in long, colorful coats, moving slowly, checking watches, smoothing hair under hats. The Leopard slowed.
“I said no teasing,” said September.
“One: I was lonely. Two: I have been known to spirit a child or two away, I shan’t lie. It is the nature of winds to Snatch and Grasp at things, and Blow Them Away. Three: Nebraska does not grow many of the kinds of girls who ought to go to Fairyland. Four: If I were not nice, and did not know the way to Fairyland, and did not have a rather spectacular cat, you would not smile at me or say amusing things. You would tell me politely that you like teacups and small dogs and to please be on my way.”
They came up short and took their place in line. Everyone towered above September-the line might have been long or short; she could not tell. September leapt off of the Leopard and onto the dry, compact dirt of the closet between worlds. The Green Wind hopped lightly down beside her.
“You said I was ill-tempered! Was that really why?”
“One: There is a department in Fairyland entirely devoted to spiriting off young boys and girls (mostly orphans, but we have become more liberal in this late age), so that we may have a ready supply of a certain kind of story to tell when winter comes and there is nothing to do but drink fennel beer and peer at the hearth. Two: See above. Three: Dry, brown places are prime real estate for children who want to escape them. It’s much harder to find wastrels in New York City to fly about on a Leopard. After all, they have the Metropolitan Museum to occupy them. Four: I am not being very nice at all. See how I lie to you and make you do things my way? That is so you will be ready to live in Fairyland, where this sort of thing is considered the height of manners.”
September curled her fists. She tried very hard not to cry.
“Green! Stop it! I just want to know-”
“One! Because you were born in-”
“If I am special,” finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it’s because she’s special, because she’s smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and… I don’t know that I’m any of those things. I don’t even know that I’m as ill-tempered as all that. I’m not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl’s house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn’t mean to choose me at all, because I’m not like storybook girls. I’m short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn’t even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.”