Now, what, you have every right to ask, has happened to our erstwhile friend the jeweled Key all this while as such awful and marvelous events have befallen September?
I shall tell you. I live to please.
The Key finally entered Pandemonium and immediately knew the city to be beautiful, rich, delicious-and empty of a little girl named September. It drooped despondently and peeked through organdy alleys-abandoned, but not hopeless. It did not follow her scent, but her memory, which left a curling green trail visible only to lonely animated objects and a certain ophthalmologist’s patients, which doctor it would be poor form to mention here. Finally, the wreckage of Saturday’s lobster cage informed the Key in a breathy, splintered voice that the whole troupe had left for the Autumn Provinces some time back. The Key’s little jeweled breast swelled with renewed purpose, and it flew out over the Barleybroom and across the Meadowflats as fast as it could, a little blur of orange in the air, no more than a marigold petal.
It saw the dust cloud of the velocipedes running but could not catch them. The Key wheezed and cried sorrow to the heavens, but Keys have a certain upper speed limit, and even in love our gentle-hearted brooch could not exceed it. Calpurnia Farthing glimpsed the rushing Key on her return from the borders of Autumn and thought it curious. Penny squealed and begged to catch and keep it, but Calpurnia would not allow it, pets being a nuisance to traveling folk. Calpurnia squinted through her goggles and thought to herself, That is a Key. Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.
The Key entered the Autumn Provinces far too late but followed the trail of September’s memory into the Worsted Wood. There, it met with the Death of Keys, which is a thing I may not describe to you. It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.
Much shaken, the Key returned to see the ruined September, her wracked body all branches and leaves and buds, being carried by Citrinitas in three long strides so far from itself that the Key fell to the forest floor and did not move for a long while.
But move, at last, it did. What if September came upon a lock and was lost without her Key? What if she were imprisoned? What if she were lonely, with all her friends snatched away? No. The Key would not abandon her. It set out, after her curling, spiraling green trail, all the way to the hut of Mr. Map, who gave it a cup of fortifying tea and showed it the way to the sea, placing a gentle kiss upon the Key’s clasp before it went.
The Key blushed and set out over the Perverse and Perilous Sea, full of purpose, sure that soon-oh, so very soon!-September would be near.
CHAPTER XV
THE ISLAND OF THE NASNAS
In Which September Runs Aground, Learns of the Vulnerabilities of Folklore, and Is Half Tempted
It was not so much that September came upon an island as that she had a bit of an accident with an island. She cannot be entirely blamed. The current ran right into the little isle, and even if she had been awake and at the tiller, she might not have been able to avoid it. As things stood, September awoke with her ship tangled in a bramble of lilies and seagrass and spiky cream-colored flowers she could not name. It was not the collision that had woken her, but all the perfume of that thin beach, drifting out with the tide. Her mouth was thick and dry, her belly empty, and the sun beat at her head. The violet salt of the sea caked her arms and cheeks. She looked, in fact, entirely a mess.
If there are folk here, I ought to make myself fit for company, September thought, and she set about taking down her sail, which was by now quite sodden with seawater and not at all nice to wear. She shook out her green smoking jacket and tied it on, and lastly, with much frowning, slid the Marquess’s shoes back on her feet, though she did not like doing so. But roses have thorns and girls have feet, and the two do not get along. September still felt wet and sore, but she thought she might be more or less respectable-looking. She bent in the flowery shore and searched for berries, any sort that might make a breakfast. She found a few round hard pinkish things that tasted a bit of salt and grapefruit rind. Can’t ask them all to taste of blueberry cream and be knocked off a tree by a Wyverary for me, she thought, and with the thought of Ell, slumped.
“I’m alone again,” she whispered. “Just me and the sea and not much of anything else. Oh, how I wish my friends were here! I am coming, I promise, it’s only that I must eat something and drink fresh water, or I shall not make it round the horn of Fairyland at all.”
“N’ whol al,” said a quiet voice. September started and looked round.
A lady stood uncertainly by, looking as if she might run at any moment-if indeed she could run, for the lady was truly only half a lady. She was cleanly cut in half lengthwise, having only one eye, one ear, half a mouth, half a nose. It did not seem to trouble her any. Her clothes had been made to fit her shape, lavender silk trousers with only one leg, a pale blue doublet-or singlet-with only one padded sleeve. Half a head of hair tumbled down her side, colored like night.
“What?” said September. The one-legged woman flushed and hopped backward a little, ducking her half face into a high yellow collar.
“Oh, I don’t mean to be rude-I didn’t understand you, is all!”
“Ot ly one,” tried the lady again, and then leapt away on her one leg, bounding up the beach and over a tangled heath that led into the center of the island. She hopped gracefully, as if it were the most natural way of moving invented. Little black flowers wavered in her wake.
Now, September knew she ought to stay straight on course and never turn aside until she reached the Lonely Gaol. But one cannot simply say mysterious things and then run off! That’s practically begging to be followed. September’s feet were already scrambling up through the heath before her mind could worry about her little ship or what terrible clock might be ticking toward a miserable prison at the bottom of the world. She was off and running, calling after the half-lady, so thirsty she thought her throat might catch on fire. We must simply count ourselves lucky that she remembered her wrench and did not leave it to be carried off by some enterprising turtle.
The island was not great or broad, and September might well have caught the lady, but that both of them ran right into the center of a village before a victor could be declared in their race. September understood immediately that the strange creature was home-all the houses were cut neatly in half. Arranged in a gentle half circle, each sweet, small green-grass house had half windows and half doors and half roofs of coral tile, each and everything precisely and deliberately built for half a soul. Half a great edifice stood at one end of the long village green, with half pillars and half stairs all of silver. The lady ran full tilt toward a young man, tall and half formed just as she was. His trousers, too, were silk and purple, his collar yellow and high. The two joined-smack!-at the seam, and she turned to face September. A glowing line ran down their bodies where the join had been made.
“Not wholly alone,” said the creature, in a voice neither male nor female. “That’s what I said. You are not wholly alone.”
“Oh!” said September simply, and sat down on the smooth green. Now that she had run all that way, she was quite beside herself with tiredness and strangeness. If only she could get a drink of water! She would not mind half a glass…
“When I am myself, I cannot speak as you would understand me. I can only say half my words. I need my twin to speak to outsiders-not that you are an outsider!”