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“And I should not ever be able to go home.”

“That is why I had to go to such lengths to bring you here, to show you Fairyland as it really is. It is a sacrifice I ask of you, September. A very great one, I know. But you must do it, for all the other children to come.” The Marquess’s hair seeped indigo. “Besides, it shouldn’t be that hard. You didn’t even wave goodbye to your father, shooting at people in some awful battlefield! You didn’t think of your mother at all! You don’t want to go home, not really. Stay here and play with me. I will let your friends free and we can all dance together through the snow and the storm. I know such wonderful games.”

September might have cried, a week ago, shamed at how she had treated her mother and father. But she was wrung dry of tears now.

“I won’t,” she said firmly. “It was wrong of me not to say goodbye. That does not mean it is right to put an end to everything. How awful it would be to say that no other child should ever get to see what I have seen? To ride on a wyvern and a highwheel, to meet a witch?”

The Marquess frowned. Her hair shivered into a frosty white. “I suspected you would say that. You are selfish, after all, and heartless, like all children. But allow me to make my argument?”

Iago, the Panther of Rough Storms, appeared silently at her side as though he had always been there. He purred.

September, her skin finally, slowly warming in the hall, allowed the Marquess to pull her onto Iago’s back, where an onyx saddle bore her up. She could not help but think of the Leopard and the Green Wind as the monarch of Fairyland settled in behind her and put her arms around September’s waist.

Gleam hesitated:

She will lie to you.

“I know,” September sighed. “But how else will Saturday see the sun again? Or Ell?”

I am one hundred and eleven years old.

That is a long time. I know her--

With a singing snap, a silver arrow pierced Gleam’s papery skin and she dropped to the floor in mid-sentence. September whirled in the saddle. The Marquess tucked her iceleaf bow behind her back, where it disappeared like vapor, the thorny branch of it still quivering slightly as it dissolved.

“Old folk are so terribly annoying, don’t you agree? Always trying to spoil our fun with their incessant babbling about bygone days!”

Before September could protest, Iago leapt into the air, soaring up into the towers of the Lonely Gaol, leaving the ruin of a paper lantern, broken, behind them.

A pale green hand crept out of the top of the lantern, covered with blood. After awhile, it was still.

Everywhere she looked, September was surrounded by clocks. In a tiny room at the top of a bulbous tower, the Marquess, Iago, and September crowded in, nearly squeezed out by the volume of clocks: grandfather clocks and bedside alarm clocks and dear little Swiss cuckoo clocks with golden birds in them, pocket-watches and pendulum clocks and water clocks and sundials. The ticking went on and on, like heartbeats. Under each clock was a little brass plaque, and on each plaque was a name. September did not recognize any of them.

“This is a very secret place, September. And a very sad one. Each of these clocks belongs to a child who has come to Fairyland. When it chimes midnight, the child is sent home--all in a huff, whether she asked to go or not! Some clocks run fast, so fast a boy might dwell in Fairyland for no more than an hour. He wakes up, and what a lovely dream he had! Some run slow, and a girl might spend her whole life in Fairyland, years upon years, until she is snapped horribly back home to mourn her loss for the rest of her days. You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run, and always faster than you think.”

The Marquess leaned forward, her hair shining redder than any apple. She smoothed the dust from a plaque under a particular clock: a milky pink-gold one, cut out of a whole, enormous pearl. Its hands stood golden and motionless at ten minutes to midnight.

The plaque beneath the clock read: September.

“You see?