“Why can’t you open the shadow?” said Maud. She seemed suddenly reluctant, as though something in the box might hurt her, though only a moment ago she had had her hand inside the lock.
“You understand I don’t know how anything works. I only think it might be that this isn’t a shadow like you’re a shadow. It’s not alive. So a shadow has to touch it and move it, because no person can move a shadow, only a shadow can even touch another one. If this is to happen, it must happen all in shadow, or it would count as opening the box. But I’ve gotten very good at thinking these things out! I’ve got you to thank for that in a slantwise way. I wonder if thinking can become muscular, like your magic, if you train it up enough. My thinking has become muscular, like your magic used to be.”
Nod furrowed his brow. The scarlet stripes on his neck bunched together as he frowned deeper than any tapir has ever frowned.
“It’s not openable,” he said firmly. “Not any way under the sun. I was told. I was assured. This won’t work.” But his voice trembled, and when Maud, never taking her eyes from September, touched the lid of the box’s shadow, the dream-eating tapir bit her wrist to yank it away.
The Marquess screamed. All this time, she had been small and cowering, nothing like herself, a shadow of a shadow. But when Nod sunk his squarish teeth into her dark skin, she screamed and hissed-and then suddenly stood. She stared at the creature clamping down on her wrist. He shook his muzzle to get a better grip on her. Her spine straightened, and September saw her face settle into its old self, a face used to power, to getting her way, and never balking at any single thing.
“How dare you,” the Marquess snarled. “How dare you put your teeth on me?” She clamped her hand down on his snout and tore him free of her flesh. Shadow-blood welled up and fell. The tip of his elephant-like nose stretched far longer than September would have thought possible. It sought and found her wound as she held him fast. She threw him aside like a doll; his weight shattered a crate stamped with Pluto’s Fancy Mushrooms. Dark soil spilled out. The Marquess reached down and opened the shadow of the box, her eyes blazing. She opened it as herself, as the Marquess in all her fury and beauty and terror. And for a moment, nothing happened.
Then a clicking and grinding and groaning belched forth from the huge lock. It crumbled as it came open, turning to rusty dust. The lid sprang back-and September looked down on a handsome young man asleep in the steamer trunk, his hands folded over his belly. He wore fine black clothes and a healthy red color in his cheeks. He had brown hair the color of winter branches and a pair of small, furry wolf’s ears just like those September had seen on a certain cartographer long ago.
“I thought he would wake up,” September said. “I thought opening the box would be enough.”
The Marquess put her hands over her mouth. Her eyes slid shut and she shook her head, as if she wanted it all to go away. The fire drained out of her and she was Maud again.
“It can’t be,” she whispered. “It can’t be. How can it be?”
“Of course it can,” said Nod, shaking Pluto’s Fancy Mushrooms off of his pelt. “I’ve known since I first set eyes on you. I expect you couldn’t have opened the box otherwise-a damnable loophole I’ll be speaking with management about.”
“I don’t understand,” said September.
“Neither do I,” answered the Marquess, shadowy tears spilling out of her eyes.
The dream-eating tapir took her hand in his mouth-gentler this time. He drew her down onto the ground beside him; she sank to her knees. “Listen,” he said, his voice full of rough kindness, the sort an old carouser gives to a young one, or one soldier to another. “Did you ever hear a story where a lady and her fellow desperately wanted a child, but couldn’t have one? And they wanted it so much day in and day out that one morning a peach floated down the river, or a bamboo tree grew near their house, or a clay vessel washed up on the shore, and there was a magical child inside? Those children always do marvelous things-they conquer Ogre Island or marry the moon or bring down a wicked emperor. But those little babies inside the peaches and bamboo and clay have to come from somewhere, you know. And mostly, mostly they come from someone who meant to stay in Fairyland, who meant to be a mother and a knight there, or at least a smashing wizard, but the season turned or a banishing storm struck her ship or…or her clock simply ran out. Ladies with child who fell back into their own worlds and their own child’s bodies, opening their eyes not a moment after they left. The children they were carrying in Fairyland fall down through the earth, and eventually they come to rest down here until some farmer and his wife want a child so terribly much that a peach comes sailing by to claim them. Only this one had all sorts of magic, on account of his parents. His box did not go to some nice tailor or miller. He used the Map Magic in his blood to burrow down as low as any object can go. The burning Wanting Magic he was heir to he used to wait, to wait ages upon ages, and let the peaches and bamboo pass him by. He became an object, one whose dreams touched the roots of everything that grew in Fairyland-Below, until everyone knew who he was, because they’d been eating his beets and onions and drinking his wine, because he slept at the bottom of the world, and his dreams became the water that every root drank. All this time, sleeping and dreaming with me, just waiting. Waiting for his mother to come and wake him up.”
“That’s why he’s a Prince,” September said, and almost laughed at the strangeness of it. “He’s Queen Mallow’s son. He’s asleep because he’s never been born.”
“But he still grows, slowly, terribly slowly,” the Baku agreed. “And we’ve got to know each other quite well, in his dreaming.”
September took the Marquess’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “I know what to do.”
After all, in fairy tales, there was only one thing to do. In every story with a long sleep and a waking in it. An easy thing, a pretty thing. Standard currency.
September and Maud bent over the box, over the boy and his shadow. And gently, sweetly, September kissed the Prince. The Marquess, dark, swirling tears flowing down her face, kissed her child’s shadow.
His eyes opened.
A pain like the hands of a great clock ticking together burst in September’s chest, and the world went out like a candle.
CHAPTER XIX
SILVER, BLACK, AND RED
In Which Prince Myrrh Receives Some Career Advice, September Receives a Silver Bullet, and the Alleyman Is Unmasked
The darkness that swallowed September up snapped back just as quickly. She did not feel dizzy or ill at all-but her head still spun and she stumbled a little under the force of sudden noise and light.
Everyone was yelling very loudly and all at once.
Prince Myrrh, quite awake and red with passion, shouted out in pain. Iago snarled and hissed at a red hat with two feathers in it floating in the air. The Alleyman had his Woeful Wimble out and was screwing it into the shadow of Prince Myrrh, while a lovely lady all in silver hurled loathing at the shadow of the Marquess. A big, burly man in a broad, black fisherman’s hat and rain slicker cried out for September to snap to, do something, and another lady, this one in a flaming red gown and red scarves and a red war helmet, leapt at the red hat, which bobbed and dodged nimbly.