“Fairyland. A real place called Fairyland.” And it seemed to Susan Jane that she did remember, a little. She did remember her sister whispering in the dark, chasing butterflies that weren’t butterflies at all, the shape of a man at the window in green jodhpurs and green snowshoes …
“Very, very real. The realest. The first time I went I was nine years old. A man all in green flew up to the second-story window in our old house on a flying leopard and said: You seem like a mad and mischievous enough child, how would you like to come away with me on the Leopard of Little Breezes and be delivered to the Tattersall Tundra that lies near the pole of Fairyland? And once he said it, I did feel mad and mischievous, and I did want to see what a Tattersall Tundra was, and I jumped out of that window as fast as you can say your own name.”
“Weren’t you afraid of a strange man at the window?”
“Well, I reasoned later that anyone who can win the love of a flying leopard has to be mostly all right. And he was. I rode on the back of a great arctic fox and wore trousers and fell in with the Tobogganeers, a band of snowy Stregas who keep their freezers stocked with magic. I learned to change myself into a polar bear and a manticore and a snow-scarab. And that was only the first time. I know it sounds mad but you promised to believe me. Time’s got its hat on funny over there, so I could play in Fairyland for months and still come home for dinner with new ribbons in my hair. Only it wasn’t play, exactly. I have another name when I’m there. I have a little house in the mountains. I’ve … done terrible things and I’ve done things so grand I wish I could throw a parade down Farnam Street in my own honor.”
“Has September done terrible things?”
“Oh, I’d imagine she has. And wonderful things. Fairyland has a weakness for the dramatic. I don’t know exactly; we’ve never been there at the same time. But I’ve heard her name whispered and hollered. I suspect she’s been there a few times by now. I know the look in her eye. It’s the look in my eye.”
“And is that why? Is that why September’s gone to this Fairyland, because you went? Did you take her there?”
“Oh no, Susie. That’s not how it works. Fairyland comes to you. I didn’t have a thing to do with it. It just happened that way. There’s … there’s a weak place in the world, I think. Near here. More people go through than you think. I used to always worry you’d stumble in somehow and I’d have to share. Oh, that’s terrible of me, I know, but all little girls are terrible, sometimes. Anyway, I always came back. September’s always come back, too, because you have to come back. Humans don’t much get to stay. They don’t even get to say when they come and go. Except me.”
Susan Jane looked at her sister as though she had never met the woman before. “Why you?”
Margaret smiled softly. A smile full of pride that didn’t want to seem proud. “I did Fairyland a favor once. I was rewarded.”
Aunt Margaret touched the ring on her right hand. It was an interlocking silver puzzle ring she’d brought back from Turkey when September was only little. It had four rings with ridges and engravings and patterns on them. If you turned and twisted them just right, they snapped together to become one single, complete ring.
“I promised I would believe you. I promised I would believe you.” Susan Jane said it a few more times, so that it would become true.
“Do you want to go to Fairyland, Susie? I should have asked you before, I know. Sisters oughtn’t keep secrets. Only it was such a good secret.”
“Oh yes,” breathed September’s mother.
CHAPTER V
THE CANTANKEROUS DERBY
In Which the Race Begins
Before anything else can happen, I must tell you a few things about Fairyland races. Fairylanders are simply mad for games and contests and races of all sorts, and thus, everyone knows the rules and nobody will bother much explaining them to one another. But I am rather kinder than most sportsmen and all referees, so I shall bring you up to speed while the early Thursday morning shadows and a few centaurs gather together all the things a healthy, happy race needs to grow up thrilling and swift.