“Oh, September, I’ve seen him, of course I’ve seen him. All of them, not just that one. There and everywhere, and sometimes he talks to me and sometimes he doesn’t and I don’t know why he does what he does because I’m not him yet. Maybe he’s not even me yet! The me and the him cross over but we’re not the same and maybe he knows something I don’t or maybe I know something he doesn’t or maybe he’s just gone cold and wicked because of some dreadful thing that will have happened but hasn’t yet happened and maybe that thing will definitely have happened and maybe it will tentatively have happened or maybe he got put in a cage again and he just couldn’t bear it and now he’s got to do whatever he can to stay out of it or maybe he just doesn’t care about anything because he lost the girl he loved-I don’t know. I can think of a million million waves he could have ridden to get to where he is but I won’t find out till I’m drowning in them. No one understands this but a Marid-this is what it means to be a Marid. You see him and you think me and I knew if you saw him first you would be afraid because it is frightening! I’m frightened! I have to turn into him! He’s already been all the Saturdays it takes to be that Saturday, but whatever happened is still coming for me, I still have to stand up for the hurts and the grief that made him and I can’t not do it, but knowing I will is like looking at a hot stove and knowing you’re going to touch it, knowing you’re going to burn, and feeling the blisters and the peeling before you even reach out your hand. I have to feel it now, all the time, and I don’t even know what the stove is. You have to understand, September, you have to. I told you when we met, I told you and you liked me anyway.” His voice broke a little.
September tried to be stern. She didn’t like it. She didn’t know what to do with it. It seemed to say something deeply wrong that she could not quite put her hand to. It sat on the floor of her heart like a toy with a thousand working pieces that could not possibly be put together. But her sternness, which was after all only a very young thing, crumbled when Saturday’s voice cracked like a glass. She touched his shoulder, very gingerly, as if her hand might go through him.
“I can’t talk about this right now,” she whispered. “I would rather fight the Yeti. A Yeti is big and angry and you can’t deny it’s a Yeti. All that fur. All that snow. A Yeti is a Yeti and that’s very straightforward, which is admirable in its own way!”
“I do so love arguments,” came a raspy, silky, cottony voice behind them. All four of them jumped.
The voice belonged to a creature watching them, chewing an unripe lightning-sprout in her mouth like cud. She had the body of a white donkey, muscled and powerful, with electric hooves. But a magnificent peacock’s tail spread out from her rump, dark green-violet wings folded along her back, and where a long horse’s face ought to be, a human face beamed at them. She had dark hazelnut-colored skin and silver-black hair curling out from beneath a domed red cap festooned with copper stars and prongs. A crescent moon stuck out of the top on a slender spike. The creature was not young: wrinkles creased her skin like map-lines, little starbursts near her dark eyes, deep trenches on her brow. September realized she had not seen many old folk in Fairyland.
“You can call me Candlestick, if I can be in your argument,” she said, trotting closer. “I once argued with my fate until it clapped its hands over its ears and bellowed for peace-and that means I am very good at bickering. My fate behaved itself after that. It would tie itself up in a bow and walk to the sun barefoot if I looked at it crosswise, and that’s the sort of attitude you want in your fate if you ask me, which you should, because this is my jungle and you should defer to the sorts of people who run whole jungles.”
September’s head felt heavy and fuzzy. She had put so many things out of it to consider later. They crowded in at the edges, buzzing, insistent. But she would not let them in.
“Miss Candlestick, if you please, we do not mean to barge into your very nice jungle. We are on our way to Orrery. If there is a toll or something we might be able to pay it, but we must get through and on.” September twisted her hands.
Candlestick reared up, turned round, and trotted off, her peacock tail fanning darkly in the stormy light. For a moment September thought she had left them. But her thin, pointed face appeared again around the side of a lightning-yew.
“Come on then,” she said.
They followed the pale donkey through the winding paths of the Lightning Jungle. A-Through-L nudged Aroostook’s bumper with his snout, rolling her along behind September and Saturday, who felt it rude to drive while their host walked. Long shapes that might have been vines and might have been some brand of thundery snake coiled through the canopy overhead.
“How did you make your fate talk to you?” Saturday asked Candlestick. His voice sounded low and bruised. “I suspect a Marid’s fate is a very obstinate thing, and not at all social.”
Candlestick shook her gray hair. “In my younger days, I was the most cantankerous Buraq you should ever like to meet. If the sun came out in the summertime, when it had every right, I raged at it because I wanted snow. If the stars shone bright, I let forth with a diatribe on the virtues of darkness. My mother and father thought me wretched; my cousins said I was the most unhappy creature to walk the Moon and could, the next time I wanted to harangue them on the subject of their faults and their choices, go and soak my head. They did not understand me! Though it is true that no one understands other people. Other people are the puzzle that will not be solved, the argument that cannot be won, the safe that cannot be cracked. They just could imagine the truth: I was happiest when I was arguing! When you argue with verve in your saddlebags, you are extremely alive. That is why you yell and holler and shake your fist-could there be anything sweeter than convincing someone to see the world your way? What else is talking for, or jokes, or stories, or battles? The Loudest Magic, and how I loved it. They saw a jennet red in the face-they could not see me red in the heart, so full of knowing that I had to make them know it, too. Until I changed my mind, of course. There’s no fun in arguing if you never get shown up. Who plays a game if there’s no chance they’ll lose? I do so crave to be proven wrong. It is as sweet as proving yourself right, when done properly. The trouble is, most people only argue with their friends and their family, which a real sportsman knows is no way to practice. If no one you know can prove you wrong, you’re in peril and that’s the truth. Well, I do go on-the devil of a thesis is digression! When my herd could no longer get a word in edgewise-and that’s the best way to get a word in, where no one can see it coming-I flew off to find the Sajada, where all the things worth knowing are kept. There, someone would best me, I was sure. After all, growing up is nothing but an argument with your parents on the topic of whether or not you are grown. You scream am so am so am so from the moment you’re born, and they fire back are not are not are not from the moment they’ve got you, and on it goes until you can say it loudest. I won my argument by lighting out for parts unknown-it’s a good rejoinder, but a last resort.”
Is that what I’ve done? September thought. Lit out?
Candlestick pawed the brilliant earth and went on. “You know what a fate looks like, don’t you? It’s just a little toy version of yourself, made out of alabaster and emerald and a little bit of lapis lazuli and ambition and coincidence and regret and everyone else’s expectations and laziness and hope and where you’re born and who to and everything you’re afraid of plus everything that’s afraid of you. They’re all kept in the Sajada. And I went all the way to Pluto to find out where they keep the Sajada!”