“There,” September said. “That’s better.” She smiled at the orange lantern. “Oh, Gleam, do you know? I forgot to tell the Leopard that I met her brother the Panther…”
September pushed her raft into the bouncing waves. Gleam followed quickly behind, lighting up the night like a tiny autumn moon.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LONELY GAOL
In Which September Arrives at Last at the Bottom of the World, but Is Unexpectedly Expected
A ring of blue storms dance around the Lonely Gaol. They are on social terms with one another-the storms hold cotillions in the spring and harvest dances in the fall. If one has the right wind speed and precipitation, one can attend storm weddings, storm funerals, storm christenings. It is a happy life for a storm. None think of travel, nor sailing the free ocean, nor venturing into foreign lands of any sort. They do not know why they stay, huddled up tight at the bottom of the world, only that they have always lived there. These were their parents’ and grandparents’ stomping grounds, too, all the way down to the single primordial storm that in days of old covered the whole of the continent.
But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.
The current of Fairyland circles the Lonely Gaol. It sluices in through holes in the base of the great towers and emerges on the other side, to begin once more its long journey around the horn of Fairyland. This unstoppable circulation kicks up storms the way you kick up dust when you run very fast down a dirt road. It cannot be helped. Somewhere deep down there in the roots of the Lonely Gaol lives a hoary old beast, something like a dragon, something like a fish, something like a mountain rill. She is older than the Gaol and the sluicing of the water-older, perhaps, than Fairyland. When she breathes in, she sucks up crystal from the stones of the earth. When she breathes out, she blows bubbles in the crystal, so that it swells up in great lumps and heaps. The sea splashes and cools the glass, and it grows and grows. Perhaps, she is sleeping. Perhaps, she is too big and too old to do much but breathe. But this is how the Lonely Gaol, which was not always a gaol at all, grew out of the sea in the first place. If you squint just so, you can see the red flares of her breath between the roaring waves, blinking on and off like a dock light.
September could see it. She did not know what it was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark. In the shrieking whirl of the storms, she clung to her copper wrench and steered toward the light. Rain slashed at her face. Her skin had long ago gone numb and half blue. Everything ached from wrestling the raft to stay on course. Gleam bobbed and floated up ahead, valiantly trying to show the way, but the storm air was so awfully dark and thick. Lightning turned the world white-when she could see again, September looked up and glimpsed huge holes tearing open in her orange dress. A whip of wind lashed out and finished the job: The dress ripped along the sleeves and shot off into the dark. The storm ate up September’s cry of despair, delighted at its mischief, as all storms are.
Gleam flashed several times up ahead, her orange paper soaked and ragged.
Look!
At first, September could not see what the lantern meant. Before her lay only shadows within shadows. The red light sighed faithfully, off and on, off and on. But one shadow grew greater and blacker than the others as she strained to peer through the violet and violent clouds. It soared lumpish and huge, towering up in gargantuan humps, boulders, misshapen domes. Pale fires lit windows far up the sides of the towers. In flashes of lightning, September could see that mold and moss and lichen covered the lower domes, slurping upward toward the peaks. But the high towers were all of glass, and storms showed through, roiling and purple.
A sickening crack shuddered through the raft-they had run aground. A spear of glassy rock spurted through the silver sceptres, just barely missing September’s leg. The rain hissed and fell, and for once, September was glad she had cut off her hair, for if she still had it, she would surely be unable to see a thing for all its flapping in her face. Shaking and tired, she pulled up the sodden green smoking jacket from its place, wedged in between cracks in the raft. Oh, how the jacket wanted to hug her and reassure her that a little rain was not so terribly bad! Having no dress now, September pulled the emerald jacket over her sore body. She untied the sash from the Spoon, which had served so well and loyally as a mast, and knotted it tight round her waist. The smoking jacket rushed to lengthen and broaden into a dress for her, and tried its best to radiate warmth. September slung the Spoon and the Wrench through the sash on either side of her hips, like a cowboy’s guns.
Gleam extended a long, pale green arm from the base of the lantern. September took it and began hauling herself up the slippery glass humps of the Lonely Gaol.
Far below, the creature who was neither a dragon, nor a fish, nor a mountain rill, breathed in and out, in and out.
“Gleam,” September whispered. “Can you fly away up to the top of the towers and see whether a red Wyvern or a blue Marid is there to be seen?”
Gleam brightened a little and disappeared like an orange arrow, darting up through the howling storm. September watched her go, crouching behind a slime-slathered boulder. She did not want to think about the door. All prisons have their gates, and all prison gates are guarded. The gate of the Lonely Gaol glimmered faintly in the storm light, bolted with iron.
To keep them in, September thought. For iron hurts them so. The two blue lions flanked the door, their manes waving and curling slowly as though they were underwater, silver stars gleaming in their tails, their fur. Still, they slept, but September remembered that even sleeping they had stolen her friends away in half a blink. Certainly, she would be no work at all for them.
September thought furiously. She could not possibly fight the lions-they were the size of houses! If Ell could not fight them, she had no hope. All she had was the Spoon and the Wrench and a very wet jacket. And really, I oughtn’t to use the Spoon. It’s not mine. I’ve no idea about how witchcraft is done. Might as well ask me to make a pie out here. With ice cream on top.
And yet, the Spoon loomed large in her mind, as if offering its services. September peered around her and spied a little tide pool. She crept along the rocks and stuck her hand into the cold water. She could feel a few stubborn mussels clinging to the glass along with a great deal of dead kelp and mud. Well, it was a kind of soup, wasn’t it? September blindly scraped at the glass lumps around her, gathering lichen and moss and unnameable gunk into the pool, trying to look like a brave, resourceful witch who knew just exactly what she was doing. She took up the Spoon and slid it into the pool, stirring counterclockwise, which is to say, widdershins.
“Please,” September whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as if wishing. “Show me a future when I have already gotten through the door, and how I did it.”
For a long while, the pool stayed black and murky. The storm laughed at her, throwing out a few more lightning bolts for good measure. September stirred harder. She did not know what else a witch was meant to do. Perhaps, it would not work, since she did not have a hat and was not at all dressed well. “We have to dress well or the future will not take us seriously,” Good-bye had said. Well, certainly the soupy pool had no reason to take September seriously. She didn’t even have shoes anymore.