• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“What was?” September was almost afraid to know.

“The clock, September. The clock is all. It is the only arbiter. What I needed was a man on the inside. Someone in Fairyland, a friend. Not a husband, or a Leopard. Someone whose loyalty and love for me was greater than any law, any boundary, stronger than blood or reason or cat or man. Someone I had made with my own hands, who loved only me, who could not bear to be parted from me.”

“Lye!”

“Yes, Lye, my poor golem. She risked her whole being to come here, where the water is relentless and wore so much of her away. She battled the guards, who in those days were bear-wights, and gained entrance to this little room. She set my clock going backward, and pulled me back into this world by the scruff of my neck. I didn’t know that, then. It was only later, when I came here myself, that I discovered her tracks. Standing in her soapy footprints I stopped my clock, so that it could never snatch me back out of my own life again. I was a child once more, but I was home. Time is a mystery here. Only a year back home and everyone I knew here, in my life as Mallow, had grown old or died. No one remembered what I looked like as a child. I told them I’d killed her. I tore down her banners and broke her throne. And so I had my revenge.”

“But why? You could have ruled well again, and been loved! Maybe your time was done, maybe defeating King Goldmouth and restoring Fairyland was your destiny, and when it was finished…”

The Marquess grimaced. She ran her hands back over her hair--the black curls returned. She ran her hands over her dress--black crinoline flowed over her, and lace, and jewels. She placed her hat firmly back on her head and dried her eyes.

“I am not a toy, September! Fairyland cannot just cast me aside when it’s finished playing with me! If this place could steal my life from me, well, I, too, can steal. I know how the world works--the real world. I brought it all back with me--taxes and customs and laws and the Greenlist. If they wanted to just drop me back in the human world, I can drop the human world into theirs, every bit of it. I punished them all! I bound down their wings and I set the lions on them if they squeaked about it. I made Fairyland nice for the children who come over the gears, I made it safe. I did it for every child before me who had a life here, who was happy here! Don’t you see, September? No one should have to go back. Not ever. We can fix this world, you and I. Uncouple the gears and save us both! Let this be a place where no one has to be dragged home, screaming, to a field full of tomatoes and a father’s fists!”

September reeled. She had thought she was done with crying, but she could not bear the Marquess’s tale. Tears flowed hot and frightened and bitter. Iago howled, mourning for Mallow or the Marquess or Fairyland, September could not be sure.

“I’m sorry, Mallow…”

“Don’t call me that,” the Marquess snapped.

“Maud, then. I’m so sorry.”

“Are you going to tell me how wicked I am?”

“No.”

“Good. Now do as I say, little girl, or I shall throttle your friends in front of you, and let Iago have the meat of them.”

Iago grimaced a little.

September still clutched the pearly clock to her breast. She could not imagine it--living a whole life here and then, suddenly, horribly, being a lost child again, all of everything gone. It was too awful to think of. Gently, September turned the clock over in her hands. But the Marquess, poor Maud, was broken now, and she wanted to break Fairyland, too, to make it like her, sad and bitter and coiled up like a snake, ready to strike at anyone, friend or foe. September slid her fingernail under the latch. The door of the clock’s workings sprang free. What if it had been September, and she had lived here so long that she forgot home?

September’s hands found the stopped gears. She knew she could do it. Clocks were easy. Her mother had taught her about clocks ages ago. Even if it were me, she thought, I could not chain Ell’s wings like that.

September drew the wrench from her side. It was huge and long,