Hello and Manythanks drew back from Goodbye as though the Marquess might appear that very moment and punish the brazen witch soundly.
Goodbye hurried on. “But if some intrepid, brave, darling child went to the City and got it back for me, well, a witch would be grateful. You’ll know it right away: It’s a big wooden spoon, streaked with marrow and wine and sugar and yogurt and yesterday and grief and passion and jealousy and tomorrow. I’m sure the Marquess won’t miss it. She has so many nice things. And when you come back, we’ll make you a little black bustle and a black hat and teach you to call down the moon gulls and dance with the Giant Snails that guard the Pantry of Time.”
September’s stomach hurt. She found it terribly hard to speak. “I’ve only just gotten here, Miss Goodbye. I… I don’t think I want to be anything but myself just yet. It would be like deciding on the spot to become a geologist back home. What if I don’t like rocks when I’m older? Witchery sounds very nice now, but I’m sure I should take better care with my… my prospects.”
“But the future, child! Just think of it! If you see something you don’t like-pop! In go leek and licorice, and you can change it. What could be better?”
“Does it really work that way? Can you really change the future?”
Manythanks shrugged. “I’m sure it’s been done once or twice,” he said.
September wrenched her eyes away from Goodbye’s loveliness. Her head cooled and cleared and smoothed itself out. “Miss,” she said, “don’t you really just want your Spoon back?”
Goodbye stood up abruptly and brushed off her black dress. The perfume was gone, and she shrank a bit, still a somewhat handsome woman, but the glow, the perfect colors of her, were muted and usual again.
“Yes,” she said curtly. “I can’t get it, the Marquess has lions.”
“Well… you don’t have to shine at me and offer me a bustle, you know. I… I could get it for you. Maybe I could get it for you. Anyway, I could try. What did I come to Fairyland for, after all? To wander around on the beach like my grandfather, looking for dropped wedding rings?” September laughed for the first time since leaving Omaha, picturing her grandfather in his patched jacket waving his metal detector over the beach of Fairy gold. A quest, she thought, excitement rising in her like bread, a real quest like a real knight, and she doesn’t even see that I’m short and I don’t have a sword.
“Well… how gallant of you, child,” said Hello. “She didn’t mean to offend with her shining… it’s only that the Marquess is fearful and fell. Long ago, she hunted witches. She rode out on a great panther and wielded her iceleaf bow against us. She broke our mother’s Spoon across her back and killed our brothers Farewell and Wellmet. Fine witches in the prime of their craft, all pierced with her arrows, laid out in the snow. And all because we would not give her what she wanted.”
“What did she want?”
Goodbye answered, her voice thick and ugly. “A single day. She commanded us to simmer for her a single day, the day of her death, so that she could hide from it. And we would not serve her.”
September let go a long-held breath. She stared into the roiling black-violet soup, thinking furiously. The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvelous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.
Surely, she must have suspected the shape of her tale when the Green Wind appeared in her kitchen window. Certain signs are unmistakable. But now she is alone, poor child, and there do not seem to be too terribly many fairies about, and instead of dancing in mushroom rings, she must contend with very formal witches and their dead brothers, and we must pity her. It would be easy for me to tell you what happened to her-why, I’d need only choose a noun and a few verbs and off she goes! But September must do the choosing and the going, and you must remember from your own adventuring days how harsh a task lies before her at this moment.
But a machinist’s daughter can be shrewd and practical. And can’t there be snow and enemies and red lanterns and somersaults? And at least one mushroom ring? That would be the best thing, really, if she can manage it.
There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will all be hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it’s the wonders I’m after, even if I have to bleed for them.
Finally, September stepped forward and, quite without knowing she meant to do it, dropped to one knee before the witch Goodbye. She bent her head to hide her trembling and said, “I am just a girl from Omaha. I can only do a few things. I can swim and read books and fix boilers if they are only a little broken. Sometimes, I can make very rash decisions when really I ought to keep quiet and be a good girl. If those are weapons you think might be useful, I will take them up and go after your Spoon. If I return”-September swallowed hard-“I ask only that you give me safe passage back to the closet between worlds, so that I can go home when it is all over and sleep in my own bed. And… a favor…”
“What sort of favor?” said Goodbye warily.
September frowned. “Well, I can’t think of anything good just now. But I will think of something, by and by.”
The moon peered over the clouds at them. With great solemnity, Hello and Goodbye spat into their hands and shook on the bargain.
“What about the lions?” Goodbye said fearfully.
“Well, I have some experience with big cats. I expect lions are no more fearsome than Leopards,” answered September, though she was not quite so sure as she sounded. “Only, tell me, where does the Marquess live? How can I get there?”
As one, the three witches pointed west at a cleft in the cliffs. “Where else?” said Manythanks. “The capital. Pandemonium.”
“Is it very far?”
They all looked shamefacedly at their feet. More than “very,” then, thought September.
“Good-bye,” said Hello.
“Many thanks,” said Goodbye.
“Farewell,” said Manythanks, and kissed her very lightly on the cheek. The wairwulf’s kiss joined the Green Wind’s there, and the two of them got along very well, considering.
The full moon shone jubilantly as September strode up over the dunes and into the interior of Fairyland with her belly full of witch-cake. She smelled the sweet, wheat-sugar scent of sea grass and listened to distant owls call after mice. And then she suddenly remembered, like a crack of lightning in her mind, check your pockets. She laid her sceptre in the grass and dug into the pocket of her green smoking jacket. September pulled out a small crystal ball, glittering in the moonlight. A single perfectly green leaf hung suspended in it, swaying back and forth gently, as if blown by a faraway wind.
