The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making (7 page)

Lye dropped in her finger, which did not foam this time, but melted, like butter in a pan, over the surface of the green water. September sank under and held her breath, as she often did at home, practicing for a swimming meet.
I used to wish my father would come home, and my mother would let me come sleep with her like when I was a baby. I used to wish I had a friend at school who would play games and read books with me, and then we would talk about what wonderful things had happened to the children in the books.
But all that seemed faraway now.
Now I wish…I wish the Marquess would leave everyone alone. And that I could be a…a paladin, like Lye said. A bold knight and true. And that I will not cry when I get afraid. And that Ell really is part-library, even though I know he probably isn’t. And that my mother will not be angry when I get home.

September’s hair floated up above her head in drifting curls. Lye scrubbed her, even under the water, with a rough brush until her skin tingled. Abruptly, the soap golem lifted her up and dropped her into the next tub, a silver clawfoot filled with creamy hot milk. It smelled of vanilla and rum and maple syrup, just like Betsy Basilstalk’s cigarette. Lye stroked September’s hair in the new bath and lifted several pitchers of it over her head. She broke off her thumb and swirled it three times through the bath, counter-clockwise.
All traffic travels widdershins
, giggled September to herself. It fizzed and sparkled, showering the surface with blue sparks.

“Lastly,” Lye said, “we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck, some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money, and lost, like a memory, and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absent-mindedness and over-confidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be plumped up again--after all, it was only a bit thirsty for something to do.”

Lye pushed September down into the milk again. She shut her eyes and sank into the warm cream, enjoying it, flexing her aching toes. She did not know whether her luck was even then growing more robust, but she found she did not much care.
Baths are marvelous whether or no,
she thought,
and Fairy baths best of all.

The soap golem pulled September at last from the luck-bath and began drying her with long, flat, stiff banana leaves, baked brown by the sun. She tousled her clean, wet hair. When September was beginning to feel quite dry and happy, the Wyverary ducked into the courtyard, shaking his scales like an indignant cat. He tried to shake out his wings, but the chain stopped him short, and he winced. September’s sceptre jangled against the padlock.

“Brrr!” he boomed. “I suppose I’m clean, if it matters. Books don’t judge one for being a touch well-traveled.”

The soap golem nodded. “And ready for the City to take you in.”

The little breeze returned September’s clothes, crisp and clean and dry, scented lightly with a bit of water from the baths of courage, and wishing, and luck. She could not be sure, but she thought the breeze might have purred a bit, rather like a leopard.

“If you see her,” said Lye softly, almost whispering. “My mistress. If you see her, tell her I am still her friend, and there are ever so many more games to play…”

“I shall, Lye, I promise,” said September, and reached up suddenly to hug the golem, though she hadn’t meant to. Lye slowly enfolded her soap-arms around the child. But when September reached up to kiss the golem’s brow, Lye drew back sharply before her lips could touch the word written there.

“Careful,” Lye said. “I am fragile.”

“That’s all right,” said September suddenly, feeling the warm cinnamon courage of her bath bubble up inside her, fresh and bright. “I’m not.”

The House Without Warning was possessed of a small door nestled up beside a marble statue of Pan blowing his horn--if only September knew that Pan is also a man, and not merely a prefix! Well, nevermind. But it was too late for warnings now, as the House well knew. The door straightened up and opened gallantly for the Wyverary and the girl. Seagulls cried from inside, and many voices jangled together, but all was dark within. Slowly, they stepped through into the black.

“Ell,” said September as they crossed the threshold, “what sort of tubs did you wash in?”

The Wyverary shook his great head and would not speak.

#

In Which September Crosses a River, Receives a Lesson in Evolution, and Loses Something Precious, But Saves a Pooka.

The Barleybroom River roared and splashed as September and the Wyverary stepped through the bath-house door onto a rich, wet, green bank. At least, September presumed it was the Barleybroom. Something colorful and hazy floated in the center of the river as it foamed along round it in a great circle. September almost tripped for gawking. Folk surrounded them, pushing, laughing, shouting, all laden with every kind of suitcase and traveling pack, from brass-banded steamer trunks to green handkerchiefs tied around knotty sticks of hawthorn. September tried to look as though she belonged there, back straight, eyes ahead. Black river mud squelched between toes of her one bare foot.

Every sort of creature jostled for position, trying gamely to get to a long, pale pier first: centaurs and satyrs and brownies and will o’ the wisps, birds with girls’ legs and girls with birds’ legs, trolls with splendid epaulets and dwarves in velvet trousers and waistcoats, hobgoblins plying violins as they walked, mice taller than September, and a great number of human-seeming ladies and lords and children. September caught the eye of one of them, a little girl in a neat hazelnut-husk dress. She had red columbines tangled up in her blonde hair. She danced around her mother, teasing and pulling at her skirt. The girl clapped her gaze on September in mid-leap. She winked wickedly and shivered her shoulders--and suddenly the girl was a sleek black jackal pup, with a gold stripe down her back. Now, jackals are not the wicked creatures some irresponsible folklorists would have children believe. They are quite sweet and soft, and their ears are clever and enormous. Such a lovely creature the little girl had become. Only her narrow blue eyes were the same. Her great tall ears twitched and she continued on pestering her mother with yips and nips.

“Did you know,” said the Wyverary happily, snuffling the fresh air with his huge nostrils, “that the Barleybroom used to be full of tea? There was an undertow of tea leaves, flowing in from some tributary. It used to be, oh, the color of brandy, with little bits of lemon peel floating in, and lumps of sugar like lily pads.”

“It’s not tea now, at least, I’ve never had tea colored indigo.”

“Well, the Marquess said that sort of thing was silly. Everyone knows what a river looks like, she said. She got the Glashtyn to dam the tributary and drag along nets to catch all the leaves, and eat up all the lemon peels and sugar cubes. They cried while they did it. But you see now, it’s a nice, normal blue color.” The Wyverary scowled. “Proper, I guess,” he sighed. The jackal-girl chased her tail.

“What is that girl, Ell?”

“Mmm? Oh, just a Pooka, I suspect. Starts with P. None of mine, you know.”

Finally, the procession fanned out before a great, gnarled pier of driftwood and ropy yellow vines. A great barge moored there, tiered like a black cake. Green paper lanterns swung from its ledges and arches; fell designs had been long ago carved into its wood. All along the top were old men leaning against monstrous poles. Ribbons and lily-strands streamed from the pole-tips. The whole effect was very gay and festive, but the old men were haggard and salty and grim.

“The Barleybroom Ferry!” crowed the Wyverary. “Of course, never was a need for it before, when a body could fly into Pandemonium as quick as you like. But progress is the goal of all good souls.”

September stared open-mouthed as they slowly inched nearer to the gangplank. She tugged at the tip of A-Through-L’s wing.

“It’s a Fairy,” she whispered.

“Of course it is, girl! What did I just say?”

“No, not a ferry, a
Fairy
.”

The toll-man was ancient and hunched, his grey hair caught up in several wild pigtails around two barnacled goat-horns. He had rheumy eyes and glasses as thick as beer-mug bottoms and three gold hoops in one ear. He wore a thick Navy peacoat with brass buttons and sailcloth trousers--and two iridescent wings jutted out of the back of his tailored coat, rimmed in gold, glittering as the sunlight made spinning violet prisms inside them. They were bound with a delicate iron chain, thin, but enough to keep them flat and useless against the old ferryman’s back.

“Fare,” he growled as their turn came.

The Wyverary cleared his prodigious throat. September started. “Oh!” she cried. “I suppose I’m the one with the purse strings.” She pulled her sceptre from the links in Ell’s chain.
I knew I might need such a thing!
September was quite pleased with herself for displaying such excellent foresight. With the end of one of Ell’s claws, she chipped two rubies from the bulb of the sceptre and held them out proudly.

“‘’E’s too big,” sniffed the ferryman. “Have to pay double for Excessive Baggage.”

“I am not
baggage
,” gasped the Wyverary.

“Dunno. She keeps her shiny whatnot on ya. Might be Baggage. Sure and you’re Excessive. Double fare, anyhow.”

“It’s fine!” hushed September, and chipped a third gleaming red stone from the sceptre. All three glittered on her palm like pricks of blood. “Easy come, easy go. I certainly shan’t be going without you!”

“On with it,” gruffed the ferryman, waggling his caterpillary eyebrows and scooping up the gems.

The Wyverary gave one giant leap and settled gracefully on the top level of the great black ferry. September walked with her head straight, up the plank and around the spiral staircase to join him. Perhaps it was Lye’s bath, but she felt quite bold and intrepid, and having paid her own way, quite grown-up. This, inevitably, leads to disastrous decisions, but September could not know that, not then, when the sun was so very bright, and the river so blue. Let us allow her these new, strange pleasures.

No?

Very well, but I have tried to be a generous narrator, and care for my girl as best I could. I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.

Chaise longues in blue and gold dotted the sunny deck of the Fairy. Lithe blue women and great pale trolls lay out, bathing in the light. A-Through-L snorted happily along with the creaking and groaning sounds of the ferry uncoupling from the pier.

“Isn’t it lovely to be on our way,” he sighed, “to be near the City? The great City, where everyone has hope of becoming marvelous!”

September did not answer. A shadow fell over her, as she thought of how often she had heard older girls in her school bathrooms talk about how they would go one day to a place called Los Angeles and be stars, be beautiful and rich, marry the men from the movies. A few said they might chuck California and go to New York, where they would also be beautiful and rich, but instead of movie stars they would be dancers and photographers’ models and marry great writers. September had been dubious. She had not wanted to go to either city. They seemed awful and huge and too crammed with marriageable men. She did not want to think that Pandemonium could be like that. She did not want Fairyland to be full of older girls who wanted to be stars.

“Look sharp, girl,” grumbled the ferryman, who had come up to take his place at the pole. He did not take it up, however, and yet the ferry sailed smoothly through the water. He just leaned against it and squinted at the distant city. “Small’ns who daydream are like to fall off, and you’dn’t want that.”

“I can swim,” said September with mild indignation, recalling her adventure in the ocean.

“Sure and you can. But the Glashtyn have run of the Barleybroom, and they swim better.”

September wanted to ask about the Glashtyn, but her mouth ran away from her.

“Are you a Fairy, Sir?”

The ferryman gave her a withering look.

“Well, I mean, I
think
you are one, but I’d rather ask. I wouldn’t like someone to assume I’m something I’m not! And what I mean to say is, if you
are
a Fairy, then could you tell me what a Fairy
is
, taxonomically speaking, and why you’re the only one I’ve seen?” September was glad for her pronunciation of
taxonomically
, which she had had as a spelling word not terribly far back.

“
Scientifick’ly
speaking, a Fairy, what I am, is not much different’n a human. Your lot evolved from monkeys. We evolved…well, it’s not talked on in polite circles, but there never was a polite circle with a human in it. Fairies started out as frogs. Amphibianderous, right? Well, being frogs was no kind of fun, so we went about and stole better bits--wings from dragonflies and faces from people and hearts from birds and horns from various goats and antelope-ish things and souls from ifrits and tails from cows and we evolved, over a million million minutes, just like you.”

“I…I don’t think that’s how evolution works…” said September softly.

“Oh? Your name Charlie Darwin all sudden-true?”

“No, it’s just--”

“It’s Survival of Them Who’s Best at Nicking Things, girl!

“I mean to say, humans didn’t evolve like that--”

“That’s your trouble, then. Don’t you go striping my facts with your daft babbling. I say: let them as wants to evolve do it, and soak the rest. As for why we’re not exactly thick on the ground, that’s none of yours and I’ll thank you not to pry into family business.” The ferryman fished a corncob pipe out of his pocket and snapped his fingers. Smoke began to trail out of the basket, smelling mostly like a wet cornfield. “Course, if you want to keep evolving your own self, I’d advise you get stowing away, down below.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not supposed to say. Whole point is your’n don’t know what day the tithe comes calling.” The ferryman winked, his eyes twinkling with a sudden, dim glee, rather more like September expected from a Fairy. “Now, look there,” he grinned. “I’ve gone and spilt it.”

September might well have run, but she cold not abandon her scaley red friend, and despite being quite able to use the word
taxonomically
in a sentence, was somewhat fuzzy on the meaning of
tithe
. Thus it was that September was caught with her mouth hanging open when the ferry ground splashily to a halt in the middle of the roaring river.

“Told you, but ears like a cow, you’ve got,” sighed the ferryman, and stuck his pole to meet the six tall men climbing six ropes, pirate-like, over the top of the deck.

Each of the men stood naked but for silver gauntlets and greaves, and had black, regal horses’s heads where their boys’ heads ought to have been. The leader, a big brass ring in his silky nose as if he were a bull, called out in a deep, echoing voice:

“Charlie Crunchcrab, the Glashtyn come to claim our tithe by Law and Right of Fair Trade!”

“I hear ya, old nag,” grumbled the ferryman. “Not so dense as all that. Got the summons this morning and everything. Needn’t be so formal.”

The Fairy folk gathered on the top deck quailed and clung together in silent terror. They stared fixedly at the floor, trying desperately not to look the horse-men in the eye. September looked across the throng at Ell, who shook his great head and tried to hunker down and become, improbably, invisible.

“Bring the children up!” bellowed the horse-man.

Rough hands grabbed September’s arms and dragged her, along with dozens of other small ones, to stand before the Glashtyn, whose eyes flashed blue and green fire. September looked down and saw the little Pooka girl beside her, trembling, her jackal-ears kept appearing and disappearing nervously. September took the child’s hand and squeezed it comfortingly.

“Not me,” the girl whispered. “Please let it not be me.”

The Glashtyn walked down the line, staring each of the children in the eye. The leader glared hard at September, and yanked her chin upward to check her teeth. But finally, he passed her by. The horse-heads conferred.

“That one!” cried the leader, and a ripple of relief passed through the crowd. For a moment, September’s breath stopped, sure he was pointing directly at her.

But it was not her.

The little Pooka girl screamed in utter, animal terror. She shivered into a jackal and clambered around September’s legs, clawed up her back and onto her shoulders, wrapping her tail around her throat.

“No! No!” The Pooka wept, shrieking and clinging to September.

“What’s happening?” she choked, stumbling under the weight of the panicked jackal-girl.

“She’s the tithe, and nothing to be done,” said the ferryman Charlie Crunchcrab. “Might as well be grown-up and dignified about it. The ferry pulls on through Glashtyn territory. They have a right to their fare, too. No one knows what day it will come, or who they will choose, but, well, you all have to get to the City, one way or any way, is-true?”

“No! Not me! I don’t want to go! Mama, please! Where’s my mama?”

But September could see her mother, near one of the chaises, a long black jackal with golden ears, lying on her side, paws over her face in grief.

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard!” The girl clung to September.

“That’s evolution, love. Take as taking can.”

“What are they going to do to her?”

“None of your business,” snapped the Glashtyn leader.