The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making (10 page)

“Yes…”

“And in that place is a thing I need, closed up in a glass casket in the heart of the Worsted Wood.”

“But the Green Wind said the Worsted Wood was forbidden--”

“Government has its little privileges.”

“He said it was dangerous--”

“Posh! What does he know? He is not
allowed
here. And never will be, whatever he told you. The Worsted Wood is just
wood
. No more or less dangerous than any other wood. If there are ravening beasts, well, they have every right to live and eat, don’t they? If there are spells, they have a right to weave. All you must do is go there and eat candy and have a wonderful time with the spriggans, and jump in leaf piles and dance in the moonlight--and before you leave, with a full belly and the first whisper of snow blowing through your hair, open the casket and bring me whatever it is you find there. Even if it is ridiculous, even if it seems useless and small. That isn’t so much to ask, is it? In exchange for a Spoon that tells the future?”

“What…what is in the casket?”

“That’s none of your worry, beautiful child. Your pretty head needn’t trouble itself with that.”

September bit the inside of her cheek, but the Marquess was so
close
. She tried to think of the Green Wind, of his pleasant green smell and the clouds whisking by as they flew over Westerly. She felt calmer--a little calmer. Not terribly much calmer.

“Why can’t you get it yourself? You can go anywhere…”

The Marquess rolled her bright blue eyes. “If you must know, it’s a cranky casket, and if I were to go…well, let us say it would not give me the same gift it would give you, who are innocent and sweet and gentle of spirit.”

“I’m not…I’m ill-tempered and irascible…”

“Now, who told you that?” The Marquess caressed September’s face softly. Her hand was hot, like fire. September flinched beneath her blazing touch. “How rude of them. You are quite the sweetest child
I’ve
ever met.”

“I
can’t
, I just can’t do what you want unless I know what it is. Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.”

“I will never be cruel to you, September. You remind me so much of myself.”

“I don't know why you would say something like that when you are a Marquess and I am a nobody, and no one anywhere is afraid of me,” September said, and really, it was quite brave of her. “Still, I can’t.” September blinked several times, trying to clear her head. In her pocket, she clutched the glass ball the Green Wind had given her. “Unless you tell me the truth,” she said as firmly as she could. “And give me the Spoon now, not later, when I’ve returned.”

The Marquess looked at September appraisingly. Her blood-colored hair was slowly lightening to a gentle pink, like candy floss.

“How strong you are, child. You must have eaten your spinach and brussel sprouts all up and drunk all your milk, once upon a time. Now, let us think! What would a beautiful monarch send you for? Oh, I know! The glass casket contains a magical sword. It is so powerful that it doesn’t have a name. It is no spoiled, painted dilettante like Excalibur or Durendal. Naming a sword like this one would only cheapen it and make it tawdry. But the casket is also old, and also opinionated, and were I to stand in the forest and cut its fastenings…well. It would not give me the true sword.”

“But you would use it…to kill more witches’ brothers, I think…”

“September, I swear to you, here and now, in the presence of Iago, Queen Mallow, and your single, solitary shoe, that I will never use that sword to harm a soul. Little unpleasantries are necessary, when one rules wicked, trickstery folk. But I would not soil such a sword by using it for simple, everyday murdering. I intend something much grander.”

September wanted to ask. She burned to ask.

“Ah, but that I will not tell you, little one. You are not ready to know. And loose lips sink
glorious
new worlds. Fairyland is still so beautiful for you. You would not believe me if I told you how sour it can go. Suffice it to say that I shall find the source of this sourness, and with the blade of the sword you bring me I will cut it out. Will you get it for me? Will you take Goodbye’s Spoon and go to the Autumn Provinces in my name?”

September thought of the poor, angry, lost witches, peering into their cauldron while the sea pounded away. She thought of the wairwulf, and his kindness to her. She thought of her Wyverary, and his chafed, locked wings.

“No,” she squeaked. Blood beat against her brow. She felt dizzy. “I will do nothing in your name.”

The Marquess shrugged. She bent and kissed the Panther’s ears. “Well, then I shall have your deluded, ridiculous cut-rate dragon rendered into glue and perfume.”

“No!”

Iago growled softly. The Marquess seized September’s hand and crushed her fingers in her burning grip. “I think that’s just about enough
no
s out of you young lady,” she hissed. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Some country witch? I do not ask favors. I do not beg indulgences from spoiled brats. Only occasionally do I make bargains. I offered you a good one, a fair one! If you do not want to play fair, you cannot expect me to. Iago, go and fetch the Wyvern.”

“No! Please don’t! I’ll go! I’ll go. Just so long as you promise it’s not for hurting anyone.”

The Marquess’s hair flushed with pleasure, turning a deep pumpkiny orange, just September’s favorite shade. She pressed September’s hand to her lips--but still she squeezed it, painfully. “I just knew we would be friends!” she crooned. “Now that you’ve stopped being stubborn, let’s get that bedraggled old shoe off of you!”

Numbly, automatically, September let the Marquess toss away her loyal, honest mary-jane and slipped the black, be-ribboned shoes onto her feet. They fit perfectly. Of course they fit perfectly.

Patting her arm, the Marquess led her to the door of the Briary. September suddenly realized that she had seen nothing at all of the house, knew nothing of the Marquess’s powers, knew little more than when she had arrived. She had been
handled
, and with ease.

“Still,” she whispered, her one small defiance. “I’ll take the Spoon now.”

“Of course. I can be
so
reasonable, when I am obeyed.” The Marquess stroked Iago again. The Panther arched his back, relishing her hand. She drew up a long wooden spoon, much stained, its handle wrapped in leather. September took it and stuck it through the sash of the green smoking jacket.

The Marquess stood on her toes and kissed September’s forehead. Her lips alone were cold. When she pulled away, her hair was a deep, dark green.

“Iago will show you out. When we meet again, things between us will have progressed very far, I think.”

Iago took September’s mashed hand gently in his mouth and tugged her toward the flower-door.

“Safe travels, September,” called the Marquess brightly. She smiled again, from the bottom of the heart-shaped stair, the sweetest smile September had ever seen on a child. “And if you do not bring my sword in seven nights’ time, I shall have that Spoon back, and your head on a thorn in my garden.”

#

In Which A Wyverary Makes a Sacrifice While September Engages in Wanton Destruction of Lobster Cages and Meets a New Friend.

Dazed, trembling, September stumbled out of the Briary, led by the jaws of the Panther. The flower door rustled behind her. A-Through-L was gone--he hadn’t waited for her. Of course he hadn’t waited. He had known she was weak, that she would give in as soon as the Marquess behaved kindly towards her. He had known her for a rotten, cowardly child. She cursed herself, that she was not braver, not more clever. What is a child brought to Fairyland for if not to thwart wicked rulers? Ell had known she wasn’t good enough. September yanked her hand from the cat’s mouth and knelt in the grass, staring through growing tears.

“Good grief,” sighed Iago. “You oughtn’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I should have said no. A braver girl would have said no. An ill-tempered one.”

“Temperament, you’ll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat. The Marquess gets what she wants, little girl. There’s no shame in being unable to defy her.” The Panther sniffed and scratched at his nose with a black paw. “And precious little satisfaction in denying her, well do I know.”

“Oh, ho! September!” called a deep, familiar, rolling voice. September leapt up and ran towards it, wheeling around the bramble-wall of the Briary with Iago close behind. The Wyverary stood by the moat-bank in a kind of pen, his tail waving back and forth like a dog who has found a stash of bones. A high fence of kimono-silk posts came up to his knee. A-Through-L waved with one foot, and then bent to peer into a cage.

The cage was wooden, shabby--a lobster cage, September recognized. The kind lobstermen from far east where Aunt Margaret lived used to drag the creatures off the sea floor. A great many of them lay about, empty, some shattered and broken. Only in one of them, a boy crouched, shivering, his eyes downcast. A boy with dark blue skin, and black swirling patterns on his back, curling like waves. He looked up at her, his face drawn and thin, greasy hair tied up in a knot on the top of his head. His eyes were huge, and black, and full of tears.

“Don’t let me out,” he whispered. “I know you’ll want to. All good souls want to. But she’ll never forgive you.”

Oh, September. Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless. But you are stubborn, and do not listen to your elders.

September fell to her knees before the lobster cage. “Oh! But you must be miserable in there!”

“I am,” answered the blue child, “but you mustn’t let me out. I belong to her.”

“Too right he does,” warned the panther Iago, batting at a little cotton beetle skittering through the dusty pen. “I wouldn’t even consider it, if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you’d do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.”

“Well,” September said slowly, burning to defy the Marquess in something, anything, and make up for her weakness in the Briary. “This Spoon belonged to her too, until a few minutes ago.”

“I’m different. I’m a Marid.”

September looked blank. The boy sighed, his tattooed shoulders slumping as if he always suspected the world would be a disappointment.

“Do you know what
djinni
are?” sighed Iago dramatically, as if he could not begin to hear her ignorance.

September shook her head.

“Like genies,” piped up the Wyverary, delighted that he could be helpful, as
djinni
began with D. “They grant wishes. And wreck things, but mostly grant wishes.”

“Well, he’s like a djinn, which is like a…genie, like he said.”

“Only I’m not,” said the boy. “I’m a Marid. Djinni are born in the air. They live in the air. They die in the air. They eat cloud-cakes and storm-roasts and drink lightning-beer. Marids live in the sea. They’re born in the sea. They die in the sea. Inside them, the sea is always roaring. Always at high tide. Inside me. And yes, we grant wishes. And so the Marquess loves us. She has her own burly magic, angry and old. But in the end she knows she is safe, even if her magic should fail, for she has her Marids. We can be made to parcel out her will in wishes.”

“Why don’t you just wish your way out of the cage?” asked September, very sensibly.

“It doesn’t work like that. I can only grant wishes if I am defeated in battle, if I am hurt nearly to death. I cannot change the rules. When she needs one of us, she beckons. She gives us wooden swords; she is at least sporting.”

“Oh, that’s
ghastly
,” breathed September.

“She sends the black cat after us, to the far north where we live. He pounced on my mother Rabab and held her still while her fishermen closed me up in a cage. I was small. I could not help her. I wished as hard as I could, but I cannot wrestle myself. I owned a scimitar of frozen salt, and I slashed at the cat with it, but he seized it in his jaws and splintered it, and I shall never see it again, or my mother, or my sisters, or my beautiful, lonely sea, which is so far off I cannot even hear her breathing.”

Iago licked his paw and looked mildly at September.
Go on, little human
, his gaze seemed to say,
tell me I am wicked
.

“But I’ve heard of Rabab!” said September suddenly. “I saw her on the newsreel! But she’s so young! She’s just been married!”

The boy fidgeted. “Marids…are not like others. Our lives are deep, like the sea. We flow in all directions. Everything happens at once, all on top of each other, from the seafloor to the surface. My mother knew it was time to marry because her children had begun to appear, wandering about, grinning at the moon. It’s complicated. A Marid might meet her son when she is only eleven and he is twenty-four, and spend years searching the deeps for the mate who looks like him, the right mate, the one who was always already her mate. My mother found Ghiyath because he had my eyes.”

“That sounds confusing.”

“Only if you’re not a Marid. I knew Rabab as soon as I saw her. She had my nose and her hair was just the same shade of black as mine. She was walking on the shore; a cloud of mist followed her like a dog. I brought her a flower, a dune-daisy. I held it out to her, and we stared at each other for a long time. She said: ‘Is it time, then?’ I said: ‘Now, we shall play hide and seek.’ And I ran off down the strand. She still has to have me, of course. It’s like a current, we have to go where where we’re going. There are a great number of us, since we are all forever growing up together and also already grown. As many as sparkles in the sea. We are solitary, though. So as to avoid awkward social situations. But it does mean the Marquess can wrestle us and still have us whole and healthy. We are her cake, and her having it. I think my older self is already dead.”

“Does that mean you’ll never have children or a mate then, if the older you is gone?”

“No, I shall be him presently. I need only wait.”

“You poor thing, how terribly strange your life is! What is your name?”

“Saturday,” the boy said. “And it is only strange to you.”

“Even so…my name is September. And I am not going to let you stay in there, Saturday. Not today, not after everything.”

Now, September might have left well enough alone if she did not feel so terribly guilty about accepting employment with the Marquess. If she were not already thinking of some way to tell the Wyverary, while not looking at his blistered skin under his chain, that they had to go and get a sword for the tyrant. If she did not want to leave some bit of mischief in her wake. She took a step back, drew the Spoon out of her sash, and with a great swing that nearly whacked into Ell’s kneecap behind her, brought the Spoon crashing down on the cage’s lock. Splinters flew in a most satisfying fashion.

Saturday crouched back, like an hound certain the dogcatcher is just around the corner. September reached out her hand. The blue boy hesitated.

“Will you beat me, if I say no?” he whispered fearfully.

September thought she might cry. “Oh…oh dear. Not all the world is like that. Well. I am not like that.”

The boy took her hand, after all. It was heavier than she expected, as though he were made of sea-stone. September was struck by how dark his eyes were, how wide in his thin face. It was like looking into the darkest possible sea, with strange fishes at the bottom of it. He stared at her, silent, wild.

“I suppose you fancy yourself brave now, hm? A knight?” Iago growled.

“Saturday,” said September, ignoring the Panther. She held the Marid gently around the shoulders. “Do you think, if I wanted to, could I wish us all away from here and someplace with a warm fire and cider for you and food for all of us and safe harbor and just everything?”

“I told you--”

“No, I know, but we could just pretend to wrestle. And you could give in. That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

Saturday straightened a little. He was taller than September, but not by much. The looping black patterns in his skin made whirlpools on his skinny chest. He wore some sort of sealskin trousers, torn at the knees, worn at the cuffs. “I cannot cheat. I cannot pretend. And even now I am strong. I must be made to submit. Like the sea my grandmother, I cannot be changed--I can only be mastered.” His shoulders slumped. “But I would rather be gentle. And loved. And never wish for anything, ever.”

“Oh…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended. I’m sorry for you. You will be punished for freeing me. The cat will eat you, probably. Or me. Or both of us. He’s very hungry, most of the time.”

“He cannot eat Ell. Ell will whack him if he tries, I am sure. And possibly roast him. Come with us, Saturday, come away from Pandemonium. Into the forest, into the wild places where she does not want to go. I am not very tall, but I have a Spoon, and a sceptre, and I will protect you if I can.”

The Panther Iago regarded them in a vaguely bored way.

“But I hoped you’d stay to luncheon,” he purred. “I would have laid my head on your lap.”

“Thank you kindly, but I don't think I'd like that,” said September brightly.

“You’re stealing her Marid,” the cat said tonelessly. “Do you want one of her cannons, too? They’re about the same: stupid, dangerous, and useful.”

“He doesn’t belong to her!”

“Well, he certainly does.” Iago grinned. His pink tongue flopped out between sharp teeth. “But I won’t tell. Iago won’t, no.”

“Why wouldn’t you? She’s your mistress!”

“Because I’m a cat. A big one, the Panther of Rough Storms, in fact. But still a cat. If there’s a saucer of milk to spill, I’d rather spill it than let it lie. If my mistress grows absent-minded and leaves a ball of yarn about, I’ll bat it between my paws, and unravel it. Because it’s fun. Because it’s what cats do best.” He tried to smile, but his teeth got in the way. “If I have a mind, I could even help. After all, it would be much more efficient…more modern…if you could fly to your destination instead of walking all that way. Being a Lieutenant has its small pleasures. Very small, sometimes. I could grant special dispensation to your Wyvern and remove his chains. Temporarily, of course. She would approve of that.”

A-Through-L slowly sat back on his haunches, sending up a cloud of dust.

“I could fly? Really fly? Like when I was small?”

Iago rolled his eyes. “Yes, like when you were small. Like when you were a wee lizard with nary a care in the world, licking your eyeballs and sucking crows’ eggs. Just like life was in that distant Eden of your scaley, wormy youth. How wonderful it will be, I’m sure. Shall I remove them for you?”

Ell looked down at his chains. With his claws he lifted them in awe and let them fall against his hide. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, but was overcome. Once, and only once, he allowed himself to look up into the forbidden sky. And at last, he shook his great head. The sun glinted on his horns. “I…I can’t,” he said wretchedly. “Not while my sister M-Through-S can’t fly. Not while my brother T-Through-Z can’t. Not while my mother wanders on foot. The Marquess is splendid--oh, she is so splendid! If she should appear right this second I would abase myself in gratitude. But I cannot take her beneficence. I cannot bargain for my own joy alone--no one else gets to fly. Why should I? I am not special, or worthy. If she should appear right this very second, I would beg her:
let your magnanimousness find some other soul who longs to fly and unlock her chains
. I will walk wherever it is I wish to go. I will walk to my grandfather the Municipal Library, and he will praise me for my unselfishness. I have walked my whole life. More will not hurt me.”

September’s eyes filled with tears.
Why did I not just say no?
She thought wretchedly. But her own voice answered her back:
to save him, so that he could say no if he liked. Glue cannot say yes or no. I did the right thing, I did.