“It started going again when you got out from under the Fairies’ thumbs. They break everything they touch, you know. But I suppose you and I do, too. I’m sorry, I really am. I’m sure you wanted to see how it would all turn out.”
September gasped. Her hands clutched at each other, as though trying to keep herself where she was. “I’m not ready,” she whispered. She held out one hand to Saturday, but he didn’t take it. He couldn’t understand why she was so upset. What wasn’t she ready for?
“One never is,” the Marquess answered wryly.
“No, no, no,” moaned Ell. “This always happens and I always hate it.” Blunderbuss bit his long neck comfortingly. She didn’t really understand, either. She’d only known Changelings before.
The Marquess wanted to rub it in, to tell the girl the worst of it: that no one was waiting for her at home. Her house stood empty in the still-chill May wind, among the fields shorn bald. Her parents had gone, even her dog had gone, and there would be no kisses on the forehead and tuckings in this time. Mallow couldn’t see where they’d gone, but she knew they would not come back for their girl. She wanted to gloat. She wanted to say: You’ll find out how it feels to lose everything. You’ll know how I felt. You’ll do just as I did because it’s the only thing anyone could do. In a few years it’ll be the Engineer who is the terror of Fairyland’s folk. But it would not come out. She laced her fingers through Lye’s and the words died in her.
“You know,” Iago purred, “a real villainess doesn’t do the expected thing. If the rules say she ought to grind her heel into the world and she straps on her best shoes, well, she might as well be a maidservant. So obedient. So mild-mannered. Coloring inside the lines. Doing the drudge work of the tale with no thanks from anyone. Every cat knows how to keep his owner feeding them: You may scratch and bite ninety-nine times, but the hundredth time, you must leap into a lap and press your nose to their nose. Rules are for dogs.”
“I am not a villain. Or an -ess,” murmured the Marquess. “I was a hero. I am a hero.”
“So save the maiden,” the Panther of Rough Storms rumbled contentedly.
Three pomegranate-colored grains of sand remained in the hourglass. Two quivered and tumbled down into the lower bell. The Marquess’s eyes found September’s. Her hair blossomed orange. The emerald-colored smoking jacket held tight to its mistress’s shoulders—it meant to go with her, if she had to go.
“We are so alike,” the Marquess said. “It would break your heart how alike we are.”
Mallow smashed the hourglass against the floor of the House Without Warning. Red sand flew in every direction. The last grain skittered across the tiles and came to rest against the lip of the broken fountain.
And nothing else happened.
September remained, standing much taller than she ever thought she’d be when she was twelve, her feet firmly on Fairy ground.
And she could not breathe. You are never going home. Her heart felt as though it had vanished from her body and left nothing but a hole. You will never see your parents again. September shut her eyes against her tears.
The soap golem led them to the center of the House Without Warning, which was really and truly a house now, with all the people Lye cared about inside it. At least for the moment, everyone the golem loved was collected within its long tiled halls and courtyards. All the crumblings and cracks looked suddenly charming and busy, covered in soft mosses and green with age. They began to build themselves merrily up again stone by stone. The soft smacking sounds of the golem’s soapy heels against the floor were light, cheerful. Everyone walked quietly in a long train brought up by the softly grumping engine of Aroostook. Everyone was afraid speaking would spoil it and bring back the brawling they’d only just escaped. Finally, they entered a large courtyard. In the midst of copper statues and fountains shaking off their verdigris rested a huge bathtub, hollowed out of a single rough stone. The floor showed two winged hippocamps rampant in cobalt and emerald. The tub covered one of their hooves like a great horseshoe.
Lye pulled at Mallow’s jacket and she wriggled out of it with a little laugh. She did not even seem to notice them watching her. She hesitated for a moment, then climbed into the stone tub, her skin flushing red with the heat. Her shadow eased in behind her, wrapping her long black arms around Mallow’s thin, pale chest.
“Is this my punishment?” Mallow asked tremblingly. “Will you boil me alive?”
Lye snapped off her right hand at the wrist. It made a dull chunking sound, and September gasped. She had seen Lye break off her fingers before, but her hand was so much, so much!
“This is the bath for washing your anger,” the golem said solemnly. She dropped her hand into the water. It fizzed up in bruised purples and reds and yellows. It smelled of dusty attics and the Briary gardens and the walls of the Lonely Gaol, of blue lions and black panthers and wooden spoons.