“Is this all?” asked September urgently. “The only picture of Patience?”
The Tyguerrotype scrabbled at the air again. And suddenly, awfully, the eleven blurs howled. It was the selfsame bawl they had heard on the plain before Ciderskin came to batter them. It was muffled; if a sound could blur, this one did. But it sounded all the same. Several Patiences stripped away like birch bark. The Fairies’ blurs only thickened into a creamy stain that blotted out half the city. The light of them was so bright September shaded her eyes.
And then the blurs were gone. The paw was gone. Turing pulled up a Patience as crisp and clear as ever-and empty. The image settled around them, lines and shapes opening out to let them walk through. September dashed to the pavilion, but nothing remained of the paw or the Fairy girl about to bite it. A thin wind whistled through the gently growing and roughly abandoned place. Across the lawn-roads and toadstools and brambly, rooty palaces, nothing remained but rubbish, useless belongings left where they lay, as if a whole city’s pockets had been turned out onto the ground.
“That’s it?” September cried. “Where did it go?”
“We are all at the whimsy of those who observe us,” said the Tyguerrotype kindly. “We can never know what will move someone in your world to photograph something. Why was it worthy, and not this other thing? Folk choose what to observe, and what they observe, at last, becomes all there is.”
The eleven blurs bawled again, all together. Saturday shuddered. September shook her head. She opened and closed her hands.
“I don’t know what to do now,” she said helplessly. “I was so sure I was right, that the answer was here.” September put her hand on her cheek. Her skin felt hot-and somehow sour, if skin can feel sour. She pulled her hand away. Black paint smeared her palm, inky and bubbling. But it was not paint-it was her palm, dropping away into a burn of nothing. She looked at Saturday-his chest was a lightless bruise of nothingness. Ell’s tail splotched with dark holes.
Turing’s stripes wriggled in distress. “I did say. I did say it was dangerous for you. I couldn’t vouch for your safety. I was very clear! You aren’t meant to stay so long in Country-you aren’t meant to stay more than a second, half of a second, half of a half of a half of a second! I think… I think you’re overdeveloping.”
She felt something tug at her sleeve, but her mind was too busy trying to right itself, to find a new grip on the whole of it.
“What happened to the Fairies,” she whispered, “happened here. We just saw it happen-one moment here, the next gone. Abecedaria said that the Fairies came to the Moon by the thousands-it must have happened to them here. In Patience.” The tug came again. “And if it happened here, then no one could know where the paw is, because there’s no one left to know.”
September yanked her sleeve away in irritation.
And looked down into her own eyes.
CHAPTER XVII
LAST SEPTEMBER
In Which Two Septembers and Two Wyverns Reveal Two Paths Forward
September stared up at herself.
September stared down at herself.
Only it was not herself, quite. The small, flat, silver-faced September tugging at her sleeve was exactly five years old, wearing a puffy dress with lace on the skirt that she remembered very clearly had belonged to an older cousin and had a tear under the sash. It was meant to be a sunny Easter yellow. The sash had been light green. She remembered it because the edges of the tear scratched her skin when she had to sit still for a portrait with her mother and father at Christmastime. Now, the dress, all black and white like the photo that still sat on their mantle at home, had a black and white girl in it and the girl in it was looking up at her expectantly.
“Hello!” said little September.
The bigger September did not know what to say.
“Don’t we look just alike?” her younger self said. “I saw you running-you run very fast! If you don’t slow down you’ll fall!”
Ell looked at the child with delight. “Wherever did you come from?” he asked. “I see you have both shoes. Well done, you!”
Little September pointed back over her shoulder-through several gauzy layers of photos, September saw her parents as if through glass, her father’s arm around her mother, her mothers hand outstretched to rest upon her daughter’s hair just as it did in the portrait at home in its brass frame on the mantle. She wanted to go to them, to run to them and tell them everything that had happened, to show them her silks and-and to have them see her, really see her, as she was when she was in Fairyland. Not a child in school. A Professional Revolutionary with a hammer on her hip and plans in her pocket.
“Come play with me!” the child cried. “Come away with me to my room and we’ll play robbers. I’m a very good robber.”
At this, September smiled faintly. But she did not feel at all well. Speaking with oneself causes awful headaches.
“I can’t,” she said softly. “Though I am sure you are a good robber.”
The small September made a grimacing face. “Grown-ups are the worst people I know,” she said confidentially. “And you have something on your face.” September’s hands were almost gone now, lightless lumps at the ends of her wrists. She began to feel very thin and hot all over.
The child looked at Saturday with big black eyes. “Hullo,” she said shyly. The Marid smiled at her, ear to ear and not an inch less.
“This is what it’s like,” he said excitedly. “Looking at yourself, your younger self. I’ve done it. All Marids do. It makes you dizzy at first, that’s normal, don’t worry. But what you’re feeling now is what the other Saturday felt when he looked at me, or what I feel when I come upon a tiny me running around the shoreline laughing at the werewhales.” September frowned. Saturday spread his hands. “Just look at her. Look at her,” he begged.
A great shape flickered up behind the child September. A-Through-L stared, dumbfounded. He began to rock from side to side and September knew his flame would come before it did-forking out in hot white bursts, not truly fire but flashbulbs popping away.
Little September had a Wyvern, too.
Her scales shone dark and silver in graceful patterns; her chest the color of pearl, her wings black as fireplace pokers. All along her back, great plates bristled like a stegosaurus-and that is how one knows a female Wyvern from a male. Her great silver eyes danced and her claws scratched like paper tearing. Small September giggled and put up her arms; the Wyvern nuzzled her with her broad gray nose.
“Hullo, Tem!” The other Wyvern haroomed, and nuzzled the child with her enormous long muzzle.
A-Through-L looked up at both Septembers. He was the size of a strong, lithe fox-but even the strongest and lithest of foxes is not very big. Terrible dark holes opened up in his little wings, glowing at the edges like holes in film.
“I found her in a picture that said Fantastic Lizards from Around Fairyland Gather for Annual Picnic!” recited the younger September carefully. “Her name is Errata. Isn’t that a funny name?”
“It begins with E,” whispered A-Through-L. His voice was so awfully small and high now-nothing at all like the big deep voice September so loved. She couldn’t help it-September gathered A-Through-L up in her arms and snuggled him close, as she’d done with her small and amiable dog at home when a thunderstorm came and it was feared. But her blackened, sizzling hands went right through his splotched, scorched ribs, and she had to balance him on her forearms.