The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making (8 page)

The Pooka wailed: “They’ll eat me! And drown me! And lash me to the ferry and make me pull it back and forth under the river!”

“It’s good enough for us,” growled one of the other Glashtyn. September saw for the first time that each of them clutched reigns and ugly, cruel bits in their fists.

“Please, please, please,” sobbed the child. She shivered back and forth from girl to jackal to girl with alarming speed, the whites of her eyes showing. September reached up to pet her and pried her slowly loose, the claws from her hair, the tail from her throat. She cradled the jackal pup, awkwardly, for she was not a very little creature. Her snout flashed into a mouth and back into a muzzle as she wept.

“Isn’t there anything else you’d take?” September said wretchedly. “Does it have to be a child?”

“There must be blood,” answered the Glashtyn quietly. “Do you offer yourself as replacement? That is certainly traditional.”

To her credit, September considered this for a moment. She was a strong swimmer, and would likely not drown, and they hadn’t said, exactly, that they meant to eat anyone. Being only Somewhat Heartless she could not cradle a trembling child in her arms and not feel sorry for it and want to keep it from being tossed overboard. But she did not want to be a tithe, and she did not want to die, even a little bit, she did not even want to brush shoulders with the smallest chance of it.

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. Isn’t there anything else? I have rubies…”

The horse-man snorted. “Dead rocks.”

“I have a jacket and a shoe.”

They stared at her.

“Well, I haven’t anything else! But I can’t let you have her, she’s just a kid, poor thing! How can you frighten her like this?”

The Glashtyn’s stare bored into her. The blue fire in his eyes was calculating.

“You have a voice,” he said slowly, “and a shadow. Choose one, and I will take it instead of the skin-shrugger.”

You might think that is no kind of choice. But September was suspicious. No bargain in Fairyland could be that easy. And yet--she could not lose her voice, she could not! How would she talk to Ell? How would she sing? How would she explain to her mother where she had gone? And she could not let the girl whose arms were clutched even now around her neck go down into the dark river. Even if they did not drown her and eat her, the girl didn’t want to go, and September could get very cross about that sort of thing.

“My shadow,” she said. “Take it. Though it hasn’t any blood, you know.”

She set the Pooka down and the child bolted to her mother, shivering fully into a pup midway across the ferry deck. The two jackals licked each other’s faces and whined. The Glashtyn held out his hand to Charlie Crunchcrab. The Fairy unbuckled an ugly, rusted, serrated knife from his belt and passed it over.

September had time to think:
oh, this will hurt
before the Glashtyn seized her, spun her around, and sawed the knife back and forth along her spine. She felt cold and faint. The knife made noises like shredding silk and grinding bone. She thought she might topple over, the pain was so terrible, running up and down her back. Still, she refused to cry. Finally, there was a sickening
crack
, and the Glashtyn pulled away with a scrap of something in his hand. A single drop of September’s blood dripped from the knife to the bleached wood of the deck.

The Glashtyn set the scrap of something down before him. It pooled darkly, shining a little, and then stood up in the shape of a girl just September’s height, with just September’s eyes and hair, all of black smoke and shadow. Slowly, the shadow-September smiled and pirouetted on one foot. It was not a gentle smile, or a kind one. The shadow extended her hand to the Glashtyn, who took it, smiling himself.

“We shall take her below and love her put her at the head of our parades,” he said. “For she was not taken, but given, and thus our only true possession.”

The shadow curtsied. To September, the curtsey seemed somewhat vicious, if a curtsey could be vicious. September was unsure that she had done the right thing now--surely she would miss her shadow, and surely the Glashtyn meant to make mischief with it, of some sort or another. But it was too late--the Glashtyn leapt over board as one, with the shadow-September riding on the leader’s shoulders. The Fairy throng stared at her, amazed. No one would speak to her. A-through-L finally strode across the deck to gather her up. He smelled so good and familiar, and his skin was so warm. She hugged his knee.

“Did I do the right thing, Charlie?” September asked the ferryman softly.

He shook his mad grey head. “Right or blight, done is dusted.”

September looked across the water at the gleaming city rising up, all towers and shine. Then, she looked down into the Barleybroom.

Six dark horse heads glided through the water at the head of the ferry, bits clamped in their teeth. Over their backs, a shadow girl leapt and danced, her ghostly laughter all but eaten up by the waves.

#

In Which We Turn Our Attention to a Long-Forgotten and Much-Suffering Jeweled Key.

Being careful and clever readers, you must now wonder if your woolgathering narrator has completely forgotten the jeweled key that so loyally followed September into Fairyland. Not so! But a key’s adventuring is of necessity a quieter thing than a girl’s, more singleminded, and also more fraught with loneliness.

For the key slipped between Latitude and Longitude, and tumbled briefly--oh so briefly!--through the starry dark behind the screen of the world. It landed unceremoniously on the shimmering jacket of a hobgoblin in transit from Broceliande to Atlantis. The Key blended into the other glittery bits of folly which bedecked the jacket and went unquestioned by Betsy Basilstalk or Rupert the Gargoyle.

Good-naturedly illiterate, the Key had no wish to visit the blue crystal universities of Atlantis, and unhooked its clasp just in time to tumble through the rooty, moldy, wormy passage to Fairyland. It caught an updraft of sea-air and soared over the fleecy clouds, playing tag with the blue-necked gillybirds.

It passed over the witches and narrowly avoided a sucking vortex of the events of next week that threatened to pull it down into the cauldron.

It flew over the field full of little red flowers, but no Wyverary, or even a Wyvern, appeared to accompany it or explain how anything worked or was in the days before today.

The Key, too, found the House Without Warning, long after a nicely scrubbed September had passed through. Under Lye’s gentle eye, the Key primly dropped into a tiny tub and soaked until it gleamed.

The Key missed the ferry September rode into Pandemonium and was forced to sleep on the grassy shore, where it was picked up by a delighted banshee child. The girl squealed piercingly and pinned the Key to her little green-gold breast. Her mother admonished her not to pick up strange treasures which were surely not hers, but no one can listen to a banshee shriek in indignation for long without giving in. So it was that the Key boarded the ferry and passed into Pandemonium, three days after September had left the city behind.

The Key cursed its slowness. It wept an orange tear, slightly rusted.

The Key remembered being part of a green smoking jacket. It remembered wanting to please. It remembered, a little, being born out of a lapel, the sudden rush of air over facets and gold. It recalled with sorrow being torn from its mother, the jacket, and the taste of a young girl’s blood under its needle. It shuddered at the memory of her blood, at night.

What the Key knew was that it was connected to September, that the purpose of its whole being was to be with her, just to rest near her skin. The Key had been created to make her smile. It could not stop wanting to make her smile, any more than you can stop walking on two legs or start breathing with your liver instead of your lungs. What if September needed the Key? What if the world became dark and frightening and it was not there to comfort her? The Key knew it must fly faster.

It was only that the girl kept
running
, so far, and so fast, almost as if she didn’t know that the Key was trying as hard as it could to keep up.

#

In Which September Enters Pandemonium At Last and Is Discovered by the Marquess, While A-Through-L Enjoys a Lemon Ice.

“Go on,” said the Wyverary, nudging the girl in the orange dress with his great red nose. “Ask.”

September squinted dubiously. The brass face before her did not move.

In fact, it was a brass face hoisted up on a tower of tangled brass hands that seemed to be frozen in the acts of pleading, praying, beseeching, orating, pointing, prodding. They wound around each other until five of them fanned out in a kind of finger-fringed flower that held the face aloft. The burnished face had swollen, puffy cheeks, a pursed mouth, and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Its ears flared enormous, larger than its head. Behind the post rose a huge, bustling, and walled city. The sounds from within rumbled indistinctly, as bustle will do. The wall did not look terribly sturdy--it was patchwork, motley-colored, a dozen kinds of brocade and stiff silk and satin and broadcloth, all sewn together with gnarled, ropy yarn the color of squash, thicker than tree trunks. They stood at a gate of goat-hide. The Switchpoint, for that’s what Ell called it, made a kissing face at them. All around them well-kept lawns wound down to the lapping Barleybroom, full of gentle little paths and sedate violets nodding pleasantly. A sundial spun its shadow slowly around cluster of yellow peonies. Not at all what you might expect from a place called Pandemonium, really, especially the bird baths and commemorative benches. It looked much more like Hanscom Park in Omaha than the outskirts of a Fairy City.

The Switchpoint still pursed its lips at them. A sparrow landed on one of its over sized ears and flew away again, as though the brass burned its feet. Ell insisted that this was the way in.

“What shall I ask?” said September, shuffling her feet.

“Well, where do you want to go?” Ell stretched his long neck, uncoiling it and yawning, then coiling it up again.

“I expect to wherever the Marquess lives.”

“That’s the Briary.”

“But then…thieves work at night, mostly, and I ought to start acting like a thief, if I mean to steal something. So we ought to wait, until nightfall, you know. It’s easier to be sneaky in the dark.”

“September, Queen Among Thieves, you will never get into Pandemonium this way. You must have a Purpose. You must have Business Here. Loiterers, Lackadaisicals, and other Menaces might do well in other cities, but they are allergic to Pandemonium, and it is allergic to them. If you do not have Business Here, you must at least pretend you do with a very firm expression, or else learn to eat violets and converse with sundials.”

“We could go to the Municipal Library, see your…grandfather.” September was still deeply unsure about Ell’s theory on his parentage.

A-Through-L blushed, going all orange in the face. “I…I’m not ready!” he quailed suddenly. “I haven’t had a brush-up on my studies! I haven’t had my horns waxed or my credentials calligraphed or anything! Tomorrow, we can go tomorrow, or maybe next week!”

“Oh, Ell, don’t worry,” September sighed. “I think you look fine as you are! And you’re quite the smartest beast I’ve ever known.”

“But how many beasts have you known?”

“Well, there’s you…and the Leopard, and the wairwulf. I’m only eleven! I think three is a very respectable number.”

“Not what you’d call a statistical sampling, though. But it’s no matter, today we ride on the rails of your quest, not mine. I’m not ready. I’m just not.” A-Through-L’s eyes turned pleading. Tears welled up, bright turquoise, glittering.

“Oh! It’s all right, Ell! Don’t cry!” September stroked his leathery knee. She turned to the Switchpoint and took a deep breath, speaking as loudly and sternly as she could.

“Listen, Mr. Brass-Ears! I should like to find a place that is cool and shady, somewhat near the Briary, but not too near, where we can rest and laugh and see something wonderful of Pandemonium while we wait for the sun to set.”

“And lemon ices,” whispered Ell.

“And where they serve lemon ices,” finished September firmly.

The Switchpoint exhaled with a long, high whistle, its cheeks deflating like spent balloons. Its eyes opened and its ears fluttered. All the hands of the post flexed, made fists, and relaxed again.

“Papers,” the Switchpoint said in a faint, airy voice. Its eyes were hard brass balls, glinting with judgment.

September fished the little green book Betsy Basilstalk had given her out of the inner pocket of the smoking jacket. The jacket was deeply pleased to have kept it safe for her. She held it up so the cherubic little face could examine it. It clucked imperiously.

“Ravished, eh? Haven’t seen one of you in awhile.” The Switchpoint looked dubiously at A-Through-L, who scratched at the grass with one enormous claw.

“He’s my…companion. My wyvern,” said September hurriedly. She hoped he would not be too offended at being called
hers
.

“Do you have a Deed for him?”

The Wyverary drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable. “True servitude,” he said gently, “can only be voluntary. Surely you know that, surely you once chose to stand here and frown at those who wish only to enter the city. Surely you once did something else, sold gloves or frightened children at festivals, and chose this instead.”

The Switchpoint squinted up at him. “Were a soldier, we were,” it grumbled.

The great goat hair gate drew back like a theatre curtain. Four of the hands at the base of the Switchpoint post began to work furiously, so fast the fingers blurred so that September could not even see them moving. Slowly, a deep scarlet scrap began to spread out from the post, weaving itself as it went, a little brass thumb sliding back and forth like a shuttle. It flowed on, raw, shimmering silk, under September’s shadowless feet and through the gate, stopping there, as if to beckon them onward.

September took a step forward. The hands blurred into industry again, and the scarlet path wove swiftly on, into Pandemonium.

“It’s all right,” said Ell confidentially as they passed through the gate. “I know you didn’t mean it, about my being yours.” The great beast flicked his red tail. “But I can be. And you can be mine! And what lovely games we shall have!”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” sighed A-Through-L happily as September gaped. “Queen Mallow built it this way, years and years ago.”

Pandemonium spread out around her a city of cloth. Bright storefronts ran ahead of them, built with violet crinoline and crimson organdy. Towers wound up in wobbly twists of stiff, shining brocade. Memorial statues wore felt helmets over bombazine faces. High, thin, fuzzy houses puffed out angora doors; fancy taffeta offices glimmered under the gaze of black lace gargoyles. Even the broad avenue they stood on was a mass of ropy, pumpkin-colored grosgrain. And there! That crooked, creased, ancient leather obelisk must be Groangyre Tower! The warm wind filled a coppery satin balloon at the tip-top of the tower and blew it up into a fine cupola.

The woven scarlet path at their feet waited patiently, indulging their country gawking.

“She couldn’t have done it all by herself!” gasped September.

A-Through-L shrugged. “Fierce was her needle, and she wore it like a sword. Wielded it, too! Brandished, even! Woven things are so warm, she said, so kind and home-like. But all that was so terribly long ago. The Marquess would like to change it, of course, turn it all to stone tied up in brambles, but all the brick-wights long ago learned to spin thread and knit alleyways, and even Marquesses cannot have their way in all things.”

A little sound rustled up from the patient path, something like a cough, if fabric that wove itself could cough. In fact, September noticed, a great number of linen paths wound out in front of folk as they hurried past, all of different colors, cobalt and ochre and silver and rose, busily weaving through side streets and thoroughfares, dodging carriage-traffic, buskers squeezing accordions with four arms, barkers advertising roasted melons and fresh fennel-bouquets for the discerning lover. Pedestrians, hoofed and web-footed and eight-legged and more, confidently ran after their paths. And on each burlap street-corner, a smaller version of their own Switchpoint worked busily away.

Their little red path grew even redder as September and Ell embarrassed it by standing still.

September laughed and ran ahead, grinning into the Pandemonium sun. The path leapt up and wove swiftly on, barely missing a lavender crepe streetlight and barreling right through a pair of imps haggling over a bar of green algae. A-through-L thundered after her, squashing the linen as he bounded down the street (which possessed the name of Onionbore) while all and sundry hurried to get out of his way.

The scarlet path led them more or less north-ish, and though September loved the chase and the smell of broiling maple-blossoms and lime-liquor brewing, she could not help but notice that every alley and avenue they sped through seemed to point directly at a small, unassuming building covered in wide, fluttering golden flowers--not silk flowers, but real ones, that covered walls and fences of green briars and black thorns. The only citadel in Pandemonium that grew and lived and was not sewn. Something about it glowed strange and baleful. September did not like to look at it. Ell could not help looking. But mercifully the scarlet path stopped short and began unraveling itself backward, the way they had come, neatly balling up its excess thread as it went.

A rose-colored jacquard building leaned over them, its walls embossed with fine flowers and paisleys and curlicues. A great sign arched over the doorway. In flashing green lights it read:

THE SILVER SHUTTLE

NICKELODEON

One of the green bulbs guttered a little.

“Are those
electric
lights?” said September.

“Of course,” said Ell softly, as if in awe of the flickering glow. “Fairyland is a Scientifick place.”

“I suppose the Marquess did that, too.”

“No, in fact, she abhors electricity. The Inventors’ Guild did it. A terrible racket went up for days out of Groangyre. The lightning-sylphs were complicit, somehow. They made a mysterious sort of bargain with the glass-ghouls and
voila
--electricks! Modernity is certainly a fascinating thing. The Marquess said it was wicked, but if we wanted to engage in such un-Fairy-like behaviors, it was our funeral. This is a brave place, September. In the shadow of the Briary, it defies her.” Ell peered into the cool, shadowy lobby, rich with velvet and plush and brass banisters. “And they serve lemon ices.”

September chipped off another pair of her sceptre’s rubies to gain admission to a film called
The Ifrit and the Zeppelin.
She
passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bell-hop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree, sticking out in bushily under her cap. Also because dryad begins with D, and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. The dryad's eyes shone silver. She had very plump cheeks and smiled both when September asked for tickets and when she paid her rubies.

Shyly, September said: “If you are a dryad, where is your tree? Are you terribly unhappy here, so far from the forest?”

The ticket-dryad laughed, and the sound of it was a little like rain falling on leaves. “Didn’t you know, little love? Film is made with camphor, which
is
a tree. In the cinnamon family, to be exact, which is large and boisterous and gossipy. I run the projector, and my trees run through my fingers all day long! Just because a thing is transparent and silvery and comes in big reels doesn’t mean it’s not a tree.”

Thankfully, the theatre was generous and the ceiling was high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and licked his lemon ice daintily. The lights lowered. September leaned forward, munching popped pomegranate seeds from a little striped box.
It’s dryad food, really
, she thought.
I shall certainly be all right
.

At home, she loved the movies. She loved sitting in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to begin. Especially the tragic and frightening movies, where ladies fainted dead away and monsters roared up out of the dark. Like in that cartoon her mother had taken her to see when she was very small, where the dark-haired princess ran away into the terrible forest and the owls flew at her and pecked at her hands.
That
was wonderful--because the world was suddenly alive, and excited, and wanted things just the way September herself sometimes wanted things. Even if the world seemed mainly to not want a princess bothering it. September had not liked the princess so much, either, as she had a high, breathy voice she found deeply annoying. But the owls, and the mines, and the flashing eyes in the wood.
That
she liked. And now she was in the wood, really and truly, with the flashing eyes all around her. What could Fairy movies possibly be like?

“The Associated Pressed Fairy Moveable Gazette Proudly Presents: News from Around Fairyland!” announced a pleasant female voice as the screen flickered into life.
Oh, geez,
thought September.
A newsreel. This is what happens when grown-ups run the movies. Can we not skip straight to a dark-haired princess being beset by things?