The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There Read Online Free PDF Page B

picked up, something with oboes and a banjo and a gentle drum. Taiga turned the radio off.
    “It’s meant to tune itself to you, to find the station that has the tune or the news you want to hear. Cabbage-made, and that’s the best there is.” Taiga patted September’s knee. “It’s Fairyland-Below, everyone knows it. Shadows just seep into the ground and disappear. They’re stealing our shadows, and who knows why? To eat? To murder? To marry? To hang on their walls like deer heads? Fairyland-Below is full of devils and dragons, and between them all they’ve about half a cup of nice and sweet.”
    September stood up. She brushed a stray moonkin seed from her birthday dress. She looked once upward, and her heart wanted her friends Ell, the Wyverary, and Saturday, the Marid, with her so badly she thought it might leap out of her chest and go after them, all on its own. But her heart stayed where it was, and she turned her face back toward Taiga, who would not be her friend after all, not now, when she had so far yet to go. “Tell me how to get into Fairyland-Below,” September said quietly, with the hardness of a much older girl.
    “Why would you go there?” Neep said suddenly, his voice high and nervous. “It’s dreadful . It’s dark and there’s no law at all and the Dodos just run riot down there, like rats. And…” he lowered his voice to a squeak, “the Alleyman lives there.” The other Hreinn shuddered.
    September squared her shoulders. “I am going to get your shadows back, all of you, and Our Charlie, too. And even mine. Because it’s my fault, you see. I did it. And you must always clean up your own messes, even when your messes look just like you and curtsy very viciously when what they mean is, I am going to make trouble forever and ever .”
    *   *   *
    And so September explained to them about how she had lost her shadow, how she had given it up to save a Pooka child and let the Glashtyn cut it off her with a terrible bony knife. How the shadow had stood up just like a girl and whirled around in a very disconcerting way. She told Taiga and Neep and the others how the Glashtyn had said they would take her shadow and love her and put her at the head of all their parades, and then all of them dove down to the kingdom under the river, which was surely Fairyland-Below. Though she could not quite work it out, September felt sure that her shadow and everyone’s shadows were all part of the same broken thing, and broken things were to be fixed, whatever the cost, especially if you had been the one to break it in the first place. But September did not tell them any more about her deeds than she had to. When it came down to it, even if hearing that she was good with a Fairy wrench might have made them more sure of her, she could not do it. It was nothing to brag about, when she had left Fairyland so upset in the doing of it. She begged them again to tell her how to get down to that other Fairyland; she would risk the hunters that ran so rampant in the forest.
    “But September, it’s not like there’s a trapdoor and down you go,” insisted Taiga. “You have to see the Sibyl. And why do that, why go see that awful old lady when you could stay here with us and eat moonkins and read books and play sad songs on the root-bellows and be safe?” The reindeer-girl looked around at her herd and all of them nodded, some with long furry faces, some with thin, worried human ones.
    “But you must see I can’t do that,” September said. “What would my Wyvern think of my playing songs while Fairyland was hurting? Or Calpurnia Farthing the Fairy Rider or Mr. Map or Saturday? What would I think of myself, at the end of it all?”
    Taiga nodded sadly, as if to say, Arguing with humans only leads to tears . She went to one of the bookshelves and drew out a large blue volume from the top shelf. She stood on her tiptoes.
    “We’ve been saving it,” she explained. “But where you’re going you’ll need