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“What others call you, you become,” said September worriedly. “So you are a monster. A villain.”

The Yeti stared at her. “That’s just the first part. What others call you, you become. It’s a terrible magic that everyone can do-so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become. I’ll have to have a word with the Undercamel, he’s clearly gotten lazy.”

September’s breath caught. Her heart flooded with words, with callings: Knight, Bishop, irascible, ill-tempered, wicked little thief, Criminal, Revolutionary, child, autumnal acquisition, small fey, jaded little tart-and more, worse, whispered names behind brick school buildings, in the backs of classrooms, in the halls. Each one of them like a spell cast on her. What would she call herself? September reached inside for a new word, for her own word. She found nothing. She just didn’t know.

But A-Through-L had listened, too. He peered out of his little silk basket at the infant Moon, pulling at her cord pitifully. He, too, looked into his many-chambered lizard-heart for something to become. He saw the Black Cosmic Dog worrying his muzzle, his teeth broken where the cord that bound the Moon to her child had rebuffed him. And he looked down into the Moon, the great cracks that the Shears opened in her. The red crescent had stopped growing. It twisted and writhed in whatever pain a Moon feels, bruises forming where the long tether vanished within it.

Ell said nothing. If he said anything at all September would stop him. The Wyverary flapped his tiny wings and darted away from September. Even if he ended up no bigger than a dragonfly, well, at least the little Moon would live and grow up and people would make a home on it and build cities and libraries and circuses and make it feel Necessary. He would not let a whole Moon go wondering why no Papa came to help it, as he had once done when he was small and did not understand that his father was the Library all around him.

Ell took a deep breath. He let the violet flame build within him, caretaking it, stoking it, holding it till he was close to the cord and ready. Till he chose to let it free and use it as he wished. The ropy, glistening stone that connected the two Moons hung much bigger and thicker than he. But he would try. The Wyverary opened his small scarlet mouth and bellowed out a long, glorious, rich stream of fire, steady and controlled and hotter than any he’d made before. It seared into the cord, broiling and scorching it. Ell did not know how long he could keep it up. He steeled himself and roared louder. The flame bubbled and flared and sang-and the cord snapped. The red Moon floated free, rolling up into the shape of a smile, sidling through the sky.

Ell gasped, empty and exhausted.

And very, very big.

The Wyverary swelled up like the red moon itself, the size flowing back into his body, his neck, his wings, his claws, his dear, sweet eyes, his great nostrils, his snapping, waving, splendid orange whiskers. He was already harooming with joy when he felt his basket burst, and the haroom grew with him until they were both their old size once more. A-Through-L roared with glee-and no fire came. He felt the curse snap in him like a bone.

“Fire begins with F and Child begins with C and I begin with A!” he called from his height, but they could not hear him. “I seized my fire and it didn’t seize me and I am myself again and that starts with B and that is Big! And look! Mating season ends when the hatchlings break their shells and just look at that pretty red kid with her horns on straight!”

The Wyverary landed next to September, towering over her as he loved to do. “Family is a transitive property,” he laughed, and his laugh rolled rich and full from his enormous throat.

September stared up at her friend’s laugh and his height and his joy. She reached up and he put his warm, huge cheek into her little hand, just as Errata and Tem had done. September’s heart eased, just the tiniest bit. Just enough to let the rest happen.

For Saturday had returned.

Both of them.

The older Saturday put down the Bone Shears, blackened with Moon-blood. He looked very stern indeed. Very much like a Grown-up. Terrifying and huge and full of an impossible and unimaginable future. September raised her hand in the smallest possible hello. The younger Saturday clouded up before the other version of his life. He stared up at himself, his eyes hard and unreadable.

“Tell me,” he said. “You can tell me. If she’ll ever look at me again without seeing you.”

Saturday sighed, a sigh both weary and amused. “I am sorry. I am. I know I was frightening. But I was here when I was you, and I was frightened, so I had to be here when you were you. And because the Moon is our mother, too. The Mother of all the seas in Fairyland, our great-grandmother. We should always be happy when cousins arrive. We should always help. But I can’t help you, because I didn’t help me when I was you.”

“Does that mean nothing can change?” asked September. “If what you said is true then it’s all a circle and I’m stuck in it. And I’ll have a daughter with Saturday because I already had one that I haven’t had yet and the verbs are very difficult but they seem to add up to the future is a fist and it won’t let me go even if I put a hammer through it.”

“September,” the younger Saturday said. He lifted her chin so that he could see her eyes, see her hear him. “Listen to me. Listen. You can’t ignore me because you’re afraid of who I’ll be or who you’ll be or who we’ll be together or of something silly like predestination, which is only another way of saying you have certain appointments that must be kept. But appointments are nothing! You’re always late because you had such a lovely lunch or got lost down some sunny alley. And I have never thought it so awful to live knowing your future and your past, having them so familiar you set a place for them at dinner and give them gifts on holidays. It’s your present you’ve always got to be introduced to, over and over. I like being a Marid and that is what it means. You make me feel as though it is wicked, but it isn’t. Yes, he is here because he was always here-but the farther out you go, the less calm anything is. An ocean, September, you have to think of an ocean. The depth of it, and the waves. Storms spin up in the open sea, wrecks and pirates and doldrums and they come out of nowhere and go back to nowhere when they’ve done. There’s Saturdays out there like schools of fish, thousands and thousands, flashing and swarming, each leaping and turning and diving alone-but all together they look like one shape and that shape is me. A school of wishes and decisions and comings and goings and circuses and cages and shadows and kisses and we get where we’re going but none of us can see the whole shape at once. But you can’t be afraid of that, you can’t, because you’re just like me.”

September blinked. “I am not!”

“No, September, don’t you see?” Saturday smiled and it was like a blue flower opening. “You move through Fairyland backwards, forwards, and upside down. You come and go, vanish and appear. You miss years that go by for us, and we miss years that go by for you. We never know when we will find you again, or if we will! You meet us out of order, and sometimes we’re the same age and sometimes I’ll be older and sometimes you will because that’s the kind of story we’re in. It’s all jumbled up on the outside, but it all makes sense in your head. It all flows the right way in your heart.” Saturday grasped her hands. “And you saw her, you saw our daughter standing on the Gears of the World. You saw yourself, in the Country of Photography, wanting to play robbers. Just like a Marid sees. You are like me, you are like me, we are the same, and you have to understand.”