The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

hooked tails and whirled around one another, whooping and stamping.
Aubergine squawked, loud and long, as though she had been holding it in all her
life. She danced in a ring with a green flamingo and several very large, very
Quiet, and very solemn quails.

And finally, over the hill, a man in a green smoking jacket, and green
jodhpurs, and green snowshoes came riding down on a roaring Leopard.

“My darling daisy, my pumpkin-dear, light of my moony-sky!” the Green
Wind cried. “Dance with me, my autumnal apple of my springtime eye!” He
swept her up into his arms, swinging her into a wild jig that soared up into the air
with every turn. September laughed while the air filled up with the scent of
green growing things.

Halloween laughed, too, and offered the Green Wind’s shadow her arm.
Only their father’s shadow stood alone, leaning on his good leg, watching the
dance and unable to take part. September, a blush high in her cheeks, left the
Green Wind to the Silver Wind’s attentions. He kept time on a green mandolin
he summoned up out of the Leopard’s fur.
September took her father’s hand.
“We did it,” she said. “We’re almost home.”
At that moment, somewhere far off and elsewise, the last trickle of sand fell
out of a tall hourglass, and September winked out like a firefly at first light.

CHAPTER XXII

YOU CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT YOU DO IN

A WAR



In Which September Returns Home



Morning was coming on bright gold and pink over the prairie. September

found herself in the tall wheat, just where she’d gone rushing after the Black
Wind and the Silver Wind in their rowboat. She was in her birthday dress again,
and fiercely hungry for breakfast. I wonder what did happen to Prince Myrrh, if
he found the Marquess—what if he should wake her up? I wonder if I shall ever
know where the Fairies have gone? And why Dodo eggs are so special? When I
go back, I shall find out, for surely nothing else can go so awfully wrong this
time while I am gone! Ell and Saturday and I will have a real adventure, with no
sadness or dark places.

September rubbed her eyes, which ached from so much sunlight after walking
in the gloam. Everything was so bright she might almost have thought Fairyland-
Below was all a dream—except that in her hand she held a scrap of blackness
that might have been a flag caught in the wind, but September knew was not.

It was her father’s shadow. She still held his hand.
Across the wheatfield, her familiar house waited, cozy and warm.
“Is that home?” her father’s shadow said. “Is it really home?”
“Yes, Papa. It’s home. Mother’s there, and good coffee, and our old dog by
the fire. I’ve brought you all the way home.” She did so want him to be proud of
her.
“It was worth it, then. All the things I’ve done.”
“Don’t think about that, Papa.”
Her father’s shadow looked sadly down at her. “You can never forget what
you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war
either.”
They began to walk toward the house, though September dragged her feet.
She wanted to savor this last moment with her father, for of course this was only
a shadow. Her father’s body was still fighting in France, and once they got to the
house she’d be fatherless again.
Finally she stopped, and the shadow stopped with her. September fought her
tears. She held up her arms as she’d done when she was just a little thing, to be
held, to be safe and warm.
“I miss you so much,” she whispered. “Sometimes I dream that you’ve died,

and I shall never see you again.”
September’s father turned back. He picked her up and held her as he had done

long ago, his black eyes squeezed shut, his big, dark hand on her curly head. She
buried her face in his shadowy shoulder and held on. If she let go, he’d just
vanish, she knew it.

A light came on in the house. September saw it—and more, she saw two
people moving and talking in the light. Her breath caught.

Could it be? Could it be true?
September scrambled down and took off running through the wheat, pulling
her father’s shadow behind her. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
By the time she reached the stoop where the milkman had left his bottles, the
shadow had dwindled to a scrap of dark hardly bigger than a blanket. September
squeezed it to her chest and hoped as hard as she could, Wanted with all her
might.
Her mother stood in the hall near the tall walnut-wood radio. Her face was
streaked and puffy with tears as she held September’s father close, her real
father, not a shadow but a man, in a soldier’s brown uniform and a hat with
golden things on it. He leaned a little on a dark crutch, for his leg had a white
cast on it.
When September’s mother saw her daughter coming in with the milk from the
stoop, she smiled like the sun coming up and opened her arms to invite her little
girl into their embrace. September’s father looked tired—but he smiled his old
crooked smile and said her name. He could not pick her up in his arms as he
would have liked to. But he held his daughter tight all the same, and the small,
amiable dog leapt and jumped and yipped around the three of them.
September gently pressed the black cloth to her father’s side as he put his
good arm around her. His shadow flowed into place, relieved, exhausted. She did
not need a Rivet Gun in this world to keep them together. The shadow longed to
be whole again. It would never speak of what happened, except with the shadow
of his wife while their bodies slept. But shadows keep secrets better than anyone.
The three of them held each other for a long time.
When the tears and hugging and what shall we have for breakfasts were done
and the cheerful, impossible, wonderful day was getting on with its business,
September’s mother finally saw a strange thing. She did not say anything—who
would, when her family was together again and there was so much to think
about? But she could be almost certain that her daughter’s shadow had gone a
deep, profound shade of green—just the color of the smoking jacket of a man
she’d known long ago, when she was just a small girl.