September thought of the poems she had been made to write in class, the hours she had spent trying to find a rhyme for this or that thing. She liked poetry, liked how, in a good poem, the words fit together like a puzzle. But she had not, in her estimation, ever managed a good poem. Hers came out fitting together more like a broken faucet and an angry milk-goat.
“Harder, yes,” she admitted.
The Oat Knight nodded. “This I have been told.”
Several lithe, young horse-headed boys peeked out of the rein-houses. They stepped nimbly onto the sand and stared at her, standing stiff and tall. The Oat Knight put a cold, blue-gray hand on her arm.
“Come,” he said. “We wronged you. Break bread with us and we will mend.”
The Oat Knight led them to the bonfire, and the other Glashtyn brought out bowls of clean, fresh water, salads of alfalfa and apples, lumps of sugar dotting oatmeal soaked in whiskey and cream, thick, lush seaweed and round, firm fern heads. Inside the oatmeal mash hid a little roasted puffin, glistening with brown fat. The Glashtyn sat cross-legged on the ground and ate with their fingers-which should have seemed vulgar but instead looked rather nice, when they did it. September even saw a few Glashtyn girls, with rings in their velvety ears rather than their noses. Aubergine enjoyed the food greatly, but she kept looking out to sea, as if she expected something to appear over the horizon. Saturday ate with relish. Ell only sampled the vegetables.
The Oat Knight introduced the others: the Millet Knight and the Corn Knight and the Barley Knight and the Apple Knight and the Bean Knight, and the mares too, called the Buckwheat Knight and the Rice Knight and the Rue Knight. They shook her hand one by one, putting their hands over their hearts as they did so. After supper, the Oat Knight gave them each a clay cup of appley drinking chocolate, and they all walked together onto the dark sand beach. The crystal moon was visible again, showing a bold V on its milky face. Long bleached-wood piers stuck out into the moon-colored sea. September watched the waves break against the shore; they shattered into a foam of tiny black diamonds.
“I chose, you know,” September said, embarrassed by the silence and the deference the Glashtyn Knights showed her. “I chose to do it. I could have let you take the Pooka girl and kept my mouth shut-though perhaps I couldn’t have. I’m not very good at keeping my mouth shut! But, anyway, you mustn’t feel so bad about it. I made the choice.”
“But we made you choose,” the Oat Knight said wretchedly. “And we meant it selfishly. A Knight should not be so selfish. But we hated the ferry so. We hated the hauling and the endless work of it! We wanted to end it. We would have done anything to end it.”
“But it is ended!” Ell said. “You can be happy now!”
September had not thought a horse could blush, but the Oat Knight did, his whole face heavy and hot with shame. How could she have feared this boy so? He was hardly older than herself!
“We are free of the Marquess now. We no longer pull the ferry-we no longer have to. You must not think we are ungrateful. We know what it cost. September, look there and see the emblems of our gratitude.”
September looked. It took a long time to see it, like a half-finished puzzle whose picture you cannot guess until it snaps into focus all at once. The pleasant hills that guarded the Glashtyn village were not hills at all, but vast, heavy chains, grown over with grass and moss and kelp, with little hardy trees growing up out of their green links.
Pale scars shone on the Oat Knight’s slender chest where once he had borne those very chains. The Knight touched them lightly.
“Someday, perhaps, I may sow my poems as I wished to, because of you.”
“Then what’s wrong?” September asked. “Why do you seem so glum, when you have your own lovely town by the sea?”
“I mislike telling a lady that we practiced deceit,” the Glashtyn said. She rather liked his formal way of talking. It was how a Knight ought to talk. “In all things we prefer to play fair. Even Fairies obey the letter of their pretty laws.”
“I forgive you,” September said kindly, even though she had no idea what he meant. But forgiving seemed to be the sort of thing a Fairy Bishop ought to do when faced with a humble Knight.
“We meant to take her down and use her most selfishly,” confessed the Oat Knight. “Your shadow, I mean. Our Hollow Queen. You cannot blame us. We needed her, you see. Because one of the rules of Fairyland-Below is Do Not Steal Queens. A Girl in the Wild Is Worth Two in Chains. And you gave her to us. Not completely freely, but mostly freely, and one has to work with what one has these days. We said we meant to put her at the head of our parades-and we did. I am sure you have seen it. It is the thing to see in Fairyland-Below, the gorgeous Revels she invents night by night. But we also meant for her to go deep, as deep into Fairyland-Below as anyone has ever gone, and find something. Something valuable to us. Something we have longed for. For at the bottom of Fairyland-Below the Prince of the Underneath sleeps. Prince Myrrh, Who Never Wakes. Princes do that, sometimes, you know. Fall asleep for years at a time.”
“I do know, actually,” September said.
The Oat Knight did not seem particularly surprised. “Everyone knows that, I suppose. I did not mean to be prideful in assuming you did not, my lady. We meant for Halloween to do what must be done. To find the Sleeping Prince and wake him up for us. But she didn’t want to do it. She said, ‘I don’t want to marry any silly Prince who can’t even set his own alarm clock. I shall be Queen for my own sake, and if he doesn’t like it, he can have a couple of cups of coffee and come see me about it.’ ”
“Good for her,” said Saturday, and September privately agreed. She did not like the notion that her shadow was just a tool for the benefit of a boy neither of them had ever heard of. But then, she meant to use that very boy as a tool for her own use, didn’t she? She looked down at her drinking chocolate, and further, to the waves churning beneath the pier.
“Yes, well, we didn’t begrudge her,” the Oat Night continued. “Shadows own a wildness we do not. And you defeated the Marquess, anyway, for which we owe gratitude.” The Glashtyn saluted her, putting his hand over his heart. “So we didn’t strictly need the Prince so much, to go up and free us from her. We might have liked to be the ones to do it ourselves, of course. We don’t like to have to say a girl from Away saved us. But that’s no matter, in the end. Everything worked itself out, and for a long while Halloween made things such fun that we didn’t really mind. We asked if we could just call her the Sleeping Prince, to satisfy prophecy and make it all neat and tidy. She said we could, if we didn’t mind being thumped. But…oh, we were not as strong as our Queen! We got so tired, dancing and feasting every night. We needed a rest. So we came here and built our village. We meant to stay for a summer and return to Tain in the fall.”
“But you couldn’t,” said Aubergine. September jumped a little. The Night-Dodo could be so quiet, September was always startled when she spoke. “No matter how you tried to remember how much you liked it in Tain, or that you really did mean to go back, it just slipped away from you. There was such a lot of good grasses and birds to eat, and the moonset made you so sleepy and happy.”
“Yes,” sighed the Oat Knight. “You understand.”
Aubergine clucked lightly. “This is the Forgetful Sea. Over and away in the middle of it is Walghvogel, my home. The sea breeze and the spray makes the mind sleepy, though it’s nothing compared to a dunk in the stuff.”
“We do mean to go back,” said the Oat Knight plaintively. “The Revels were so beautiful. And Halloween loved us specially.”
“Of course, you mean to,” Aubergine said comfortingly. “It’s not your fault at all.”