The Marquess’s hair went black with rage. Her face flushed and Iago growled under his breath. But finally, she gave out a long sigh and simply took off her hat. She lay it gently on the gable of a cuckoo clock. She ran her hands through her hair-it faded to a plain, dull blond. She ran her hands over her dress-it became a gray farmer’s daughter’s dress with old yellow lace at the collar.
“I dreamed about you!” cried September.
“We are alike, I said. It would break your heart, September, how alike we are. This is what I looked like when I was twelve and lived on my father’s farm. We grew more tomatoes than any other farm in Ontario. Just acres of them. But we weren’t rich. My father drank most anything we earned. My mother was a seamstress-she took in all the mending from the neighbors. She died when I was eight, and I took up the mending after that, so that I could eat some and have a Sunday dress after the harvest was in and the whiskey house closed down. I always smelled like tomatoes. And then one day, when I couldn’t bear the mules and the chores and the horrid, horrid tomatoes any longer, I hid in the attic until my father gave up looking for me and went to work the fields with his hands. I had a splendid day up there, rooting around among all the old things my mother had left behind, and her mother before that. Of course, you can imagine what happened. There was an old armoire, covered in a drop cloth. I pulled down the cloth, and when I opened the door of the armoire, it was so deep and dark in there that I couldn’t see a thing. So I climbed inside. And the door closed so fast behind me. And I kept walking, until somehow the sun was shining again and I was standing in a field of the greenest grass and the prettiest red flowers you ever saw. And right there in front of me was a Leopard, as big as life.” The Marquess’s eyes filled with tears. “I Stumbled, September, into Fairyland. I didn’t know what I’d done, only that it was so beautiful, and the wind was so sweet, and there were no tomatoes anywhere. I certainly didn’t know I had a clock. I had such adventures, oh, so many! I grew up a bit and was so glad to grow up a bit and not be small and gray any longer. I learned such things-I met a young sorcerer with funny old wolf ears, and he let me read all of his books. Can you imagine? A farmer’s daughter, being allowed to sit and read all day with no one to bother her? I thought I would die with the pleasure of it. And every day, the sorcerer would ask my name, but I was ashamed to tell him. Maud is so ugly and plain, and everyone here was named something marvelous. But one day, we were working the garden. The sorcerer was showing me how to harvest a particular root to make a kind of candy that might-if you boiled it just right-turn your hair all manner of colors.” The Marquess looked up at September, tears streaking her face. She spread out her hands, trembling. “I took his hand in mine, and I said, ‘You can call me Mallow.’”
September’s mouth dropped open.
“The days went by like dreams, September. Before I knew it, I had a sword and I’d faced down King Goldmouth and his army of clouds, and I was Queen. I ruled long and well and wisely. Anyone will tell you. I married my sorcerer. We were happy. Fairyland prospered, and I could hardly remember what a tomato was anymore. My Leopard played at my side. I discovered, by and by, that I was with child. I had not told my sorcerer yet. I was enjoying my secret, lying on the broad lawn outside my palace and drifting off into sleep, my head propped up on my Leopard’s flank.
“I think, well, when I remember it now, I think I can remember the tick. The last tick of my clock. With one awful ticking, I was swept out of Fairyland as though I had never been there. I woke up in my father’s house, curled up inside the armoire, as though no time at all had passed. No Leopard. No sorcerer. No child. I was twelve again and hungry, and my father was just getting home from his day’s work. He bellowed up to me, his voice thick with liquor. But oh, how I remembered it all! I remembered it fiercely, my whole life in Fairyland, taken away in an instant! Because a clock ran out! September, surely, you can feel in your bones the unfairness of it! The loss! I screamed in the armoire. I kicked the wooden walls in, trying to get back. I cried as though I were dying. My father found me and gave me a good thrashing for sneaking around where I oughtn’t. I tasted blood in my mouth.”
The Marquess sank to her knees. Iago pressed his silky black head against her cheek.
“How… how did you get back?” September said softly.
“I clawed my way back, September. I would have broken the world open to crawl back in. I searched every scrap of furniture in that attic for another way. But the armoire was just an armoire, and the closet just a closet, and the jewelry box just a jewelry box. I read newspapers ravenously, looking for missing children, begging my father to take me to the places where they’d vanished. He refused. He got a new wife, and she sent me away to school, to be rid of me. I didn’t care-I was glad to be rid of them! My new school was old and creaky, with dusty corners and drafty halls. Just the sort of place that might conceal a door to Fairyland in a story. And one morning, just walking to geometry class, I took one step on those dirty cobblestones and took the next one in a broad golden field full of glowerwheat. It was a hard passage-blood shot out of my nose, and I think I probably fainted. We aren’t meant to come that way, so harshly. But it was the only way.”
“What was?” September was almost afraid to know.
“The clock, September. The clock is all. It is the only arbiter. What I needed was a man on the inside. Someone in Fairyland, a friend. Not a husband or a Leopard. Someone whose loyalty and love for me was greater than any law, any boundary, stronger than blood or reason or cat or man. Someone I had made with my own hands, who loved only me, who could not bear to be parted from me.”
“Lye!”
“Yes, Lye, my poor golem. She risked her whole being to come here, where the water is relentless and wore so much of her away. She battled the guards, who in those days were bear-wights, and gained entrance to this little room. She set my clock going backward and pulled me back into this world by the scruff of my neck. I didn’t know that then. It was only later, when I came here myself, that I discovered her tracks. Standing in her soapy footprints, I stopped my clock, so that it could never snatch me back out of my own life again. I was a child once more, but I was home. Time is a mystery here. Only a year back home, and everyone I knew here in my life as Mallow had grown old or died. No one remembered what I looked like as a child. I told them I’d killed her. I tore down her banners and broke her throne. And so I had my revenge.”
“But why? You could have ruled well again and been loved! Maybe your time was done, maybe defeating King Goldmouth and restoring Fairyland was your destiny, and when it was finished…”
The Marquess grimaced. She ran her hands back over her hair-the black curls returned. She ran her hands over her dress-black crinoline flowed over her, and lace, and jewels. She placed her hat firmly back on her head and dried her eyes.
“I am not a toy, September! Fairyland cannot just cast me aside when it’s finished playing with me! If this place could steal my life from me, well, I, too, can steal. I know how the world works-the real world. I brought it all back with me-taxes and customs and laws and the Greenlist. If they wanted to just drop me back in the human world, I can drop the human world into theirs, every bit of it. I punished them all! I bound down their wings, and I set the lions on them if they squeaked about it. I made Fairyland nice for the children who come over the gears, I made it safe. I did it for every child before me who had a life here, who was happy here! Don’t you see, September? No one should have to go back. Not ever. We can fix this world, you and I. Uncouple the gears and save us both! Let this be a place where no one has to be dragged home, screaming, to a field full of tomatoes and a father’s fists!”