“You see, don’t you? What you have to do.”
“I don’t want to.”
“But it is the right thing. Take up thy mother’s sword, September, the only girl in Fairyland who could have pulled a wrench from that casket, whose mother could have known and loved machines, engines, tools. As soon as you told me about her, I knew, I just knew that we were meant to find one another, here, at the end of everything. Uncouple the worlds, September. Tear them apart so that no one can ever again drag a poor, lost child across the boundaries and abandon them here without a friend in the world.”
CHAPTER XIX
CLOCKS
In Which All Is Revealed
“Surely the Wrench is too small,” said September.
“I told you,” coaxed the Marquess, her hair full of storm colors, violet and gray. “It is not a wrench. It is a sword, impossibly old. It will be whatever size you need it to be.”
“But… then there would be no more adventures. No more Fairies in my world to tell stories about, and no humans here to know what a Wyvern looks like. No more fairy tales at all, for where would they come from?”
“No more Fairies making mischief, spoiling beer and cream, stealing children, eating souls. No more humans meddling with Fairyland, mucking up its politics and tracking mud all over the floor.”
“And I should not ever be able to go home.”
“That is why I had to go to such lengths to bring you here, to show you Fairyland as it really is. It is a sacrifice I ask of you, September. A very great one, I know. But you must do it, for all the other children to come.” The Marquess’s hair seeped indigo. “Besides, it shouldn’t be that hard. You didn’t even wave good-bye to your father, shooting at people in some awful battlefield! You didn’t think of your mother at all! You don’t want to go home, not really. Stay here and play with me. I will let your friends free, and we can all dance together through the snow and the storm. I know such wonderful games.”
September might have cried a week ago, ashamed at how she had treated her mother and father. But she was wrung dry of tears now.
“I won’t,” she said firmly. “It was wrong of me not to say good-bye. That does not mean it is right to put an end to everything. How awful it would be to say that no other child should ever get to see what I have seen. To ride on a Wyvern and a highwheel, to meet a witch.”
The Marquess frowned. Her hair shivered into a frosty white. “I suspected you would say that. You are selfish, after all, and heartless, like all children. But allow me to make my argument?”
Iago, the Panther of Rough Storms, appeared silently at her side as though he had always been there. He purred.
September, her skin finally and slowly warming in the hall, allowed the Marquess to pull her onto Iago’s back, where an onyx saddle bore her up. She could not help but think of the Leopard and the Green Wind as the monarch of Fairyland settled in behind her and put her arms around September’s waist.
Gleam hesitated:
She will lie to you.
“I know,” September sighed. “But how else will Saturday see the sun again? Or Ell?”
I am one hundred and twelve years old.
That is a long time. I know her-
With a singing snap, a silver arrow pierced Gleam’s papery skin, and she dropped to the floor in mid-sentence. September whirled in the saddle. The Marquess tucked her iceleaf bow behind her back, where it disappeared like vapor, the thorny branch of it still quivering slightly as it dissolved.
“Old folk are so terribly annoying, don’t you agree? Always trying to spoil our fun with their incessant babbling about bygone days!”
Before September could protest, Iago leapt into the air, soaring up into the towers of the Lonely Gaol, leaving the ruin of a paper lantern behind them.
A pale-green hand crept out of the top of the lantern, covered with blood. After a while, it was still.
Everywhere she looked, September was surrounded by clocks. In a tiny room at the top of a bulbous tower, the Marquess, Iago, and September crowded in, nearly squeezed out by the volume of clocks: grandfather clocks and bedside alarm clocks and dear little Swiss cuckoo clocks with golden birds in them, pocket watches and pendulum clocks and water clocks and sundials. The ticking went on and on, like heartbeats. Under each clock was a little brass plaque, and on each plaque was a name. September did not recognize any of them.
“This is a very secret place, September. And a very sad one. Each of these clocks belongs to a child who has come to Fairyland. When it chimes midnight, the child is sent home-all in a huff, whether she asked to go or not! Some clocks run fast, so fast a boy might dwell in Fairyland for no more than an hour. He wakes up, and what a lovely dream he had! Some run slow, and a girl might spend her whole life in Fairyland, years upon years, until she is snapped horribly back home to mourn her loss for the rest of her days. You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run-and always faster than you think.”
The Marquess leaned forward, her hair shining redder than any apple. She smoothed the dust from a plaque under a particular clock: a milky pink-gold one, cut out of a whole, enormous pearl. Its hands stood golden and motionless at ten minutes to midnight.
The plaque beneath the clock read, SEPTEMBER.
“You see?” crooned the Marquess. “You have so little time left. Just enough to fly down to the seaside with Iago and do as I ask. Or else you will be snatched back, and your friends stuck here with me. I promise, I will take out my frustration upon them. Don’t be stubborn! Just a little turn of your Wrench, and all will be well. You can eat lemon ices and ride highwheels to your heart’s content, and your boys safe beside you.”
September touched the face of the pearly clock. She picked it up, marveling at it. She was so tired. All she wanted was to sleep, and wake up to steaming cocoa, then sleep again. If Saturday and Ell were safe, she could sleep. She tried not to think about Gleam. It would be wonderful, really, to live in Fairyland forever. Isn’t that what anyone would wish for? Isn’t that what she herself had wished for, so often? To fly and leap and know magic and eat Gagana’s Eggs and meet Fairies? September closed her eyes: She saw her mother there, on the backs of her eyelids. Crying on the edge of her bed. Because September had not left a note. Had not even waved good-bye.
When she opened them again, her eyes fell on the little brass plaque: SEPTEMBER. Furtively, so that the Marquess might miss her doing it, she glanced at the other plaques. They said things like, GREGORY ANTONIO BELLANCA and HARRIET MARIE SEAGRAVES and DIANA PENELOPE KINCAID. But hers just said, SEPTEMBER. And didn’t it look a little tacked on? Was there-possibly-just the shadow of something else behind it? September bent her head and picked at the bottom corner of the plaque with her thumb.
“What are you doing?” the Marquess said sharply.
September ignored her. The plaque gave a little-she pried it out with her fingernails. It clattered to the floor. Behind it was a much older plaque, gone green with verdigris. It read,
MAUD ELIZABETH SMYTHE.
“True names,” said September wonderingly. “These are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you don’t come, and they call again but you still don’t come, and they call you by all your names together, and then, of course, you have to come, and right quick. Because true names have power, like Lye said. But I never told anyone my true name. The Green Wind told me not to. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I do now.” September looked up. Iago watched her with his round, calm eyes. He flicked his gaze toward the Marquess, and all of the sudden September knew; she knew it, though she could not say, not exactly, how she could possibly have known. “This is your clock!” she cried, brandishing it. “And it’s stopped!”