It circled closer, and September could see its shadow in the water. It did not seem huge, but certainly big enough. Perhaps it was a baby and would leave her alone.
It circled still closer. September scrunched up into the center of the raft, as far as she could get from water on all sides, which was not very far at all. Finally, it circled so close to the raft that it jostled the sceptres, and September cried out fearfully. She held the wrench ready to whack the shark as hard as she might, her knuckles white on the handle. If they all want to call it a sword, she thought, I’ll use it as one! She was quite wild with terror.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t eat me. I’m sorry I ate the fish.”
The shark swam lazily around the raft. It rolled up a little, showing its black belly-for the shark was all black, with a few wild golden stripes running down the side, and its eyes were golden, too, rolling up out of the water to stare mercilessly at September.
“Why are you sorry?” it said softly, its voice rasping and rough. “I eat fish. That’s what fish are for.”
“I daresay you think that’s what little girls are for, too.”
The shark blinked. “Some of them.”
“And who eats you?”
“Bigger fish.”
The shark kept swimming around the raft, rolling up toward the breaking surf to speak.
“Are you going to eat me?”
“You ought to stop talking about eating. It’s making me hungry.”
September shut her mouth with a little snap. “You’re making me dizzy with all your swimming in circles,” she whispered.
“I can’t stop,” the shark rasped. “If I stop, I shall sink and die. That’s the way I’m made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I’m going, I’ll have to keep on. That’s living.”
“Is it?”
“If you’re a shark.”
September rubbed at the blood on her knee. “Am I a shark?” she said faintly.
“You don’t look like one, but I’m not a scientist.”
“Am I dreaming? This feels like a dream.”
“I don’t think so. I could bite you, to see if it hurts.”
“No, thank you.” September looked out at the flat gray water, all severe and stark in the sunrise. “I have to keep going,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“I have to keep going, so that I can keep going after that, forever and ever.”
“Not forever.”
“Why haven’t you eaten me, shark? I ate the fish; I ought to be eaten.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“But you’re a shark. Eating is what you do.”
“No. I swim. I roar. I race. I sleep. I dream. I know what Fairyland looks like from underneath, all her dark places. And I have a daughter. Who might have died, but for a girl in an orange dress who traded away her shadow. A shadow who might have known not to mourn over fish.”
September stared. “The Pooka girl?”
The shark rolled over entirely in the water, her huge fin rearing up out of the waves and slicing down again. “We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.” The shark broke off and plowed through a sudden, heavy swell that soaked September in its crashing. Just as she dove under the surf, September could see the great black tail shiver into legs, disappearing beneath the violet sea.
CHAPTER XVII
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD
In Which September Discovers a Great Amount of Old Furniture and Finds Herself in a Very Dark Place with Only a Little Light
This time, September saw the island coming. It glimmered on the edge of the horizon, fitfully green and golden. In the evening of her fifth day at sea, September steered her raft toward it. She longed to feel land beneath her again, to drink real water, to eat bread. She fell gratefully onto warm sand, rolling in it like a puppy for pleasure. She found several coconuts strewn over the beach and cracked one in a single blow against a stone.
The sea makes a girl strong, you know.
Slurping the watery juice and crunching the meat of it, September dismantled her raft and dressed, making sure to tie the sash of the smoking jacket tight around her waist. She began to walk inland in hopes of better food. Surely she was near the Lonely Gaol by now. Surely she could spare a moment for lunch if it meant not having to go through the dreadful ordeal of fishing again.
But there was no village in the interior of that grassy little island. No sweet houses, their chimneys smoking away. No herald’s square, no ringing churchbell. All she found was junk.
The beach sand gave way to long, whispering sea grass and in that long meadow lay a tremendous number of odd things, as though it were a garbage yard. Old sandals, teakettles, broken umbrellas, clay jars, torn silk screens, cowboy spurs, smashed clocks, lanterns, rosaries, rusted swords.
“Hello?” September called. The wind answered, buffeting the grass, but no one else.
“What a lonely place! I believe someone has forgotten to clean up after himself… for a good while, I suppose. Ah, well, perhaps I shall find a new pair of shoes…”
“I think not!”
September jumped half out of her skin, quite ready to run back to her raft and never make eyes at an island again. But her curiosity defeated her good sense. She peered over the grass to see who the voice might belong to. All she could see was an old pair of straw sandals with a bit of leather wrapped around the sole.
As she tiptoed over to get a better look, two old yellow eyes opened in the heels of the shoes.
“Who said you could have me? Not me, and I say whose feet I have to smush up against all day, I should rightly think!”
“I… I beg your pardon! I didn’t know you were alive!”
“Well, that’s folk with feet for you. Always thinking of themselves.”
Some of the other bits of junk crept closer to September: the swords unfolded long steely arms, and the jars sprouted thick, muscled feet. The silk screens accordioned their way to her, the teakettles turned their spouts toward the earth and spat steam until they popped upward. A great orange lantern floated on the wind, glowing slightly, and from beneath it, a green tassel hung, fluttering. A great clatter sounded as the garbage gathered around.
“Mr. Shoes…”
“My name is Hannibal, if you don’t mind.”
“Hannibal… I have read a great many books, and I have met spriggans and Pookas and even a Wyverary, but I cannot begin to imagine what you are!”
“WHO!” bellowed the shoes, hopping upright, straps flapping in indignation. “What is an indirect dative reserved for things. I am alive! I am a WHO. Or a whom, if you must. And we are Tsukumogami.”
September smiled uncertainly. The word meant no more to her than Mr. Map’s ffitthit. A pair of spurs whirred and clicked on spindly spidery legs.
“We’re a hundred years old,” they said, as though that explained it all.
The great orange lantern, which September could not help comparing to a pumpkin, flashed briefly for attention. Slowly, gracefully, golden, fiery letters began to write themselves on the papery surface of the lamp:
You use the things in your house
and think nothing of them. It leaves us bitter.
September put her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know! If a couch just sits there, looking like a couch, I can’t be expected to know it isn’t one.”
That’s the trouble.
But when a household object turns one hundred years old, it wakes up. It becomes alive. It gets a name and griefs and ambitions and unhappy love affairs. It is not always a good bargain. Sometimes, we cannot forget the sorrows and joys of the house we lived in. Sometimes, we cannot remember them. Tsukumogami are one hundred years old. They are awake.