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By Root 857 0

to see a thing for all its flapping in her face. Shaking and tired, she pulled up the sodden green smoking jacket from its place, wedged in between cracks in the raft. Oh, how the jacket wanted to hug her and reassure her that a little rain was not so terribly bad! Having no dress now, September pulled the emerald jacket over her sore body. She untied the sash from the Spoon, which had served so well and loyally as a mast, and knotted it tight round her waist. The smoking jacket rushed to lengthen and broaden into a dress for her, and tried its best to radiate warmth. September slung the Spoon and the Wrench through the sash on either side of her hips, like a cowboy’s guns.

Gleam extended a long, pale green arm from the base of the lantern. September took it, and began hauling herself up the slippery glass humps of the Lonely Gaol.

Far below, the creature who was neither a dragon, nor a fish, nor a mountain rill, breathed in and out, in and out.

“Gleam,” September whispered. “Can you fly away up to the top of the towers and see whether a red wyvern or a blue Marid is there to be seen?”

Gleam brightened a little and disappeared like an orange arrow, darting up through the howling storm. September watched her go, crouching behind a slime-slathered boulder. She did not want to think about the door. All prisons have their gates, and all prison gates are guarded. The gate of the Lonely Gaol glimmered faintly in the storm-light, bolted with iron.

To keep them in, September thought. For iron hurts them so. The two blue lions flanked the door, their manes waving and curling slowly as though they were underwater, silver stars gleaming in their tails, their fur. Still, they slept, but September remembered that even sleeping, they had stolen her friends away in half a blink. Certainly she would be no work at all for them.

September thought furiously. She could not possibly fight the lions--they were the size of houses! If Ell could not fight them, she had no hope. All she had was the Spoon and the Wrench and a very wet jacket. And really, I oughtn’t to use the Spoon. It’s not mine. I’ve no idea about how witchcraft is done. Might as well ask me to make a pie out here. With ice cream on top.

And yet, the Spoon loomed large in her mind, as if offering its services. September peered around her and spied a little tidepool She crept along the rocks and stuck her hand into the cold water. She could feel a few stubborn mussels clinging to the glass, and a great deal of dead kelp and mud. Well, it was a kind of soup, wasn’t it? September blindly scraped at the glass lumps around her, scraping lichen and moss and unnameable gunk into the pool, trying to look like a brave, resourceful witch who knew just exactly what she was doing. She took up the Spoon and slid it into the pool, stirring counterclockwise, which is to say: widdershins.

“Please,” September whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as if wishing. “Show me a future when I have already gotten through the door, and how I did it.”

For a long while, the pool stayed black and murky. The storm laughed at her, throwing out a few more lightning bolts for good measure. September stirred harder. She did not know what else a witch was meant to do. Perhaps it would not work, since she did not have a hat, and was not at all dressed well. We must dress well, or the future will not take us seriously, Goodbye had said. Well, certainly the soupy pool had no reason to take September seriously. She didn’t even have shoes, anymore.

Slowly, the pool began to quiver. Oh, please! September thought furiously. A fuzzy, warped image flickered on the surface of the water, like a broken movie reel. September watched a small version of the iron gate coalesce, with two small lions on either side. They were not really blue, but sort of green and wriggly, like mold. A tiny green something walked up to the lions. Behind the tiny green something floated an even tinier round light, like a will o’ the wisp. September turned her head to one side, trying to see what was happening in the tidepool. The tiny green