The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Page 2

  September bit her lip. She had never been fond of jigsaw puzzles, even though her grandmother loved them and had glued one thousand pieces all over her house as a kind of wallpaper. Slowly, trying to remember it all, she clapped one hand over her eye. She raised one foot and hopped in what she hoped was widdershins around the Leopard of Little Breezes. Her orange dress flapped against the green jacket shining in the sun. When she stopped, September unfastened the jeweled orange key from her lapel and pricked her finger sharply with its pin. Blood welled up and dripped onto the blue stones. She laid the key gently at the feet of the impassive Latitude and Longitude and drew a deep breath.

  “I want to go home,” she lied softly.

  Latitude and Longitude turned smoothly toward each other, as though they were on pedestals. They began to bend and fold like staircases, reaching out for each other and interlocking, hand into hand, foot onto knee, arms akimbo. They moved mechanically in their strange circus dance, jerkily, joints swinging like dolls’. The street shook a little and then was still. Ever so briefly, Latitude and Longitude kissed, and when they parted, there was a space between their mouths just large enough for a Leopard carrying a Harsh Air and a little girl. All September could see on the other side were clouds.

  Solemnly, the Green Wind held out his gloved hand to the girl in orange.

  “Well done, September,” he said, and lifted her onto the Leopard’s emerald saddle.

  One can never see what happens after an exeunt on a Leopard. It is against the rules of theatre. But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs.

  For, you see, when September and the Green Wind had gone through the puzzle of the world on their great cat, the jeweled key rose up and swooped in behind them, as quiet as you like.

  CHAPTER II

  THE CLOSET BETWEEN WORLDS

  In Which September Passes Between Worlds, Asks Four Questions and Receives Twelve Answers, and Is Inspected by a Customs Officer

  By the time a lady reaches the grand, golden evening of her life, she has accumulated a great number of things. You know this—when you visited your grandmother on the lake that summer you were surprised to see how many portraits of people you didn’t recognize hung on the walls and how many porcelain ducks and copper pans and books and collectible spoons and old mirrors and scrap wood and half-finished knitting and board games and fireplace pokers she had stuffed away in the corners of her house. You couldn’t think what use a person would have for all that junk, why they would keep it around for all this time, slowly fading in the sun and turning the same shade of parchmenty brown. You thought your grandmother was a bit crazy, to have such a collection of glass owls and china sugar bowls.

  That is what the space between Fairyland and our world looks like. It is Grandmother’s big, dark closet, her shed out back, her basement, cluttered with the stuff and nonsense of millennia. The world didn’t really know where else to put it, you see. The earth is frugal; she doesn’t toss out perfectly good bronze helmets or spinning wheels or water clocks. She might need them one day. As for all the portraiture: When you’ve lived as long as she has, you’ll need help remembering your grandchildren, too.

  September marveled at the heaps of oddities in the closet between worlds. The ceiling was very low, with roots coming through, and everything had a genteel fade to it, the old lace and code-breaking machines, the anchors and heavy picture frames, the dinosaur bones and orreries. As the Leopard proceeded through the dimly lit passageway, September looked into the painted eyes of pharaohs and blind poets, chemists and serene philosophers. September could tell they were philosophers because they had on drapey clothes, like curtains. But most of the portraits were just people, wearing whatever they had liked to wear when they were living, raking hay or writing diaries or baking bread.

  “Sir Wind,” September said, when she had recovered herself and her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously and not call me any pretty names or tease me.”

  “Of course, my … September. And you can call me Green. I feel we’re becoming very well acquainted.”

  “Why did you take me out of Omaha? Do you take very many girls? Are they all from Nebraska? Why are you being so nice to me?”

  September could not be sure, but she thought the Leopard of Little Breezes laughed. It might have been a snort.

  “That’s rather more than one question. Therefore, I think it’s only fair I give you rather more than one set of answers.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “One: Omaha is no place for anybody. Two: No, my schedule keeps me quite busy enough. Three: See above. Four: So that you will like me and not be afraid.”

  Up ahead, there was a line of folk in long, colorful coats, moving slowly, checking watches, smoothing hair under hats. The Leopard slowed.

  “I said no teasing,” said September.

  “One: I was lonely. Two: I have been known to spirit a child or two away, I shan’t lie. It is the nature of winds to Snatch and Grasp at things, and Blow Them Away. Three: Nebraska does not grow many of the kinds of girls who ought to go to Fairyland. Four: If I were not nice, and did not know the way to Fairyland, and did not have a rather spectacular cat, you would not smile at me or say amusing things. You would tell me politely that you like teacups and small dogs and to please be on my way.”

  They came up short and took their place in line. Everyone towered above September—the line might have been long or short; she could not tell. September leapt off of the Leopard and onto the dry, compact dirt of the closet between worlds. The Green Wind hopped lightly down beside her.

  “You said I was ill-tempered! Was that really why?”

  “One: There is a department in Fairyland entirely devoted to spiriting off young boys and girls (mostly orphans, but we have become more liberal in this late age), so that we may have a ready supply of a certain kind of story to tell when winter comes and there is nothing to do but drink fennel beer and peer at the hearth. Two: See above. Three: Dry, brown places are prime real estate for children who want to escape them. It’s much harder to find wastrels in New York City to fly about on a Leopard. After all, they have the Metropolitan Museum to occupy them. Four: I am not being very nice at all. See how I lie to you and make you do things my way? That is so you will be ready to live in Fairyland, where this sort of thing is considered the height of manners.”

  September curled her fists. She tried very hard not to cry.

  “Green! Stop it! I just want to know—”

  “One! Because you were born in—”

  “If I am special,” finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it’s because she’s special, because she’s smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and … I don’t know that I’m any of those things. I don’t even know that I’m as ill-tempered as all that. I’m not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl’s house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn’t mean to choose me at all, because I’m not like storybook girls. I’m short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn’t even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.”

  The Leopard turned her prodigious spotted head and looked at September with large, solemn yellow eyes.

  “We came for you,” she growled. “Just you.”

  The big cat licked the child’s cheek roughly. September smiled, just a little. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the green jacket.

  “NEXT!” boomed a deep, severe voice that echoed all over the closet. It was so strong that they were blown back into the folk who had silently joined the line behind them. The party in front of them, all pink eye shadow and spangled, spiky hair, explod
ed past a tall podium in a flutter of papers and luggage.

  At the top of the podium loomed an enormous gargoyle, its face a mass of bronze and black rock, waggling stone eyebrows and a stern metal jaw. Its lolling eyes burned red flames. Its heavy arms clicked and whirred, greasy pistons pumping. The creature’s chest was plated in gnarled, knuckled silver, half open along a thick seam, showing a thudding, white-violet heart within.

  “Papers!” the gargoyle thundered. Portraits rattled along the earthen walls. Its breath was smoky and hot, and in its mechanical jaw, a steel tongue rattled. September shrank against the Leopard, the force of the gargoyle’s breath pushing at her face.

  “Betsy Basilstalk you come out of there this second!” the Green Wind hollered back, though not quite so loud, having no leather-bellow lungs to help him along.

  The iron gargoyle paused. “No,” it bellowed.

  “You’re not impressing anyone, you know,” sighed the Green Wind.

  “She’s impressed. Look, she’s all shaking and things,” replied the gargoyle.

  “Betsy, I will thrash you a good one, and you know I can. Don’t forget who whipped the Lord of Leafglen and rode him about like a dog. I am not a tourist. I will not be treated like one,” said the Green Wind.

  “No, you’re not a tourist,” growled a thick, phlegmy but much quieter voice. A little woman—no bigger than September and, perhaps, a bit smaller—hopped out of the gargoyle and up onto the podium. The gargoyle’s eye-flames snuffed out, and its great shoulders sagged. The little woman’s muscled chest was shaped like a bear’s, her legs thick and knobbly, her short hair sludged up and spiked along her scalp, sticking up in knifepoints. She chewed on a hand-rolled cigarette; the smoke smelled sweet, like vanilla and rum and maple syrup and other things not terribly good for you. “You’re not a tourist,” she repeated in a grumbly, gravelly voice. “You’re greenlist, and that means no-good scoundrel, and that means No Entry Allowed, Orders of the Marquess.”

  “Betsy, I filed my immigration request with the stamps of the Four Clandestines weeks and weeks ago. I even have a letter of reference from the Seelie Parliament. Well, the clerk. But it’s on official letterhead and everything, and I think we all know that stationery makes a statement,” the Green Wind said defensively.

  Betsy quirked a hairy eyebrow at him and hopped back into the gargoyle-puppet, quick as a blink. It roared to life, all fiery eyes and clanking arms.

  “GO AWAY. OR SEE WHO GETS THRASHED.”

  “Green,” whispered September, “is she … a gnome?”

  “Too right I am,” grumbled Betsy, squeezing out of the puppet again. It slumped in her absence. “And very perceptive of you, that is. What gave it away?”

  September’s heart still hammered all over the place from the yelling of the gargoyle. She held her trembling hand a little above her head.

  “Pointy,” she squeaked, and cleared her throat. “Gnomes have … pointy hats? I thought … pointy hair is as good as a hat, maybe?”

  “She’s a regular logician, Greeny. My grandmother wears a pointy hat, girl. My great-grandmother. I wouldn’t be caught dead in one any more than you’d like to wear a frilly bonnet. Gnomes are modern now. We’re better than modern, even. Just look, you,” and Betsy flexed an extremely respectable biceps, the size of an oilcan. “None of this flitting about in gardens and blessing thresholds for me. I went to trade school, I did. Now I’m a customs agent with my own great hulking hunk of heave here. What have you got?”

  “A Leopard,” answered September quickly.

  “True,” considered Betsy. “But you have haven’t got papers or both shoes, and that’s a trouble.”

  “Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.”

  “They do. You just can’t see them right,” Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. “All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that’s all. Whereas Rupert here? He’s as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.”

  She scratched the hulking shell behind what might have been an ear. It remained still and dark.

  “Then why tell me it’s all puppets and engines? Don’t you want me to let you peer at me?” asked September.

  Betsy beckoned her closer, until they stood nose to nose and all September could smell was the vanilla and rum and maple syrup of her cigarette, which was all through the gnome’s skin, too.

  “Because when humans come to Fairyland, we’re supposed to trick them and steal from them and whap them about the ears—but we’re also supposed hex them up so that they can see proper-like. Not everything, just enough so as to be dazzled by mushroom glamours, and not so much that we can’t fool you twice with Fairy gold. It’s a real science. Used to be done with ointment. It’s in the rule book.”

  “Are you going to put something very foul in my eyes, then?”

  “I told you, kid. Gnomes are modern now. I have personally picketed the Hallowmash Pharmacy. There’s other ways of opening your thick head. Like Rupert. He’s great with thick heads. Most people, I show them Rupert, they see anything I tell them to. Now, papers, please.”

  The Green Wind looked sidelong at September and then at his feet. September could swear he was blushing, blushing green through his beard. “You know very well, Betsy,” he whispered, “that the Ravished need no papers. It’s in the manual, page 764, paragraph six.” The Green Wind coughed politely. “The Persephone clause.”

  Betsy gave him a long look that plainly said, So that’s what’s afoot, you old bag of air? She blew her sweet, thick smoke up into his face and grunted.

  September knew she could not have been the only one.

  “Don’t answer for you, though, tall thing. All right, she can go, but you stay.” Betsy chewed her cigarette. “And the cat, too. I’m not violating the Greenlist for the likes of you.”

  The Green Wind stroked September’s hair with his long fingers.

  “Time for us to part, my acorn love. I’m sure my visa will come through soon … maybe if you put in a good word for me with the embassy. In the meantime, remember the rules, don’t go swimming for an hour after eating and never tell anyone your true name.”

  “My true name?”

  “I came for you, September. Just you. I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.” He leaned in close and kissed her cheek, courtly, gentle, dry as desert wind. The Leopard licked her hand passionately.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispered.

  September did. She felt a warm, sunny wind on her face, full of the smells of green things: mint and grass and rosemary and fresh water, frogs and leaves and hay. It blew her dark hair back, and when she opened her eyes, the Green Wind and the Leopard of Little Breezes had gone. In her ear floated his last airy sigh: Check your pockets, my chimney-child.

  Betsy waved her hands in the air as if to disperse an unpleasant perfume. “He’s such a lot of bother. You’re better off—theatrical folk are nothing but a bundle of monologues and anxiety headaches.”

  The gnome pulled a little green leather book and a polished ruby-handled stamp from behind the podium. She opened the book and began stamping with a vicious delight.

  “Temporary Visa Type: Pomegranate. Housing Allotment: None. Alien Registry Category: Human, Ravished, non-changeling. Size: Medium. Age: Twelve. Privileges: None, or As Many As You Can Catch. Anything to declare?”

  September shook her head. Betsy rolled her red-rimmed eyes.

  “Customs Declaration: One shoe, Black. One dress, Orange. One smoking jacket, Not Yours.” The Gnome peered down from her podium. “One kiss, Extremely Green,” she finished emphatically, stamping the book hard and handing it down to September. “Off you go now, don’t hold up the line!
”

  Betsy Basilstalk grasped September by her lapels and hauled her off her feet, past the podium, toward a rooty, moldy, wormy hole in the back wall of the closet between worlds. At the last moment, she stopped, spat out a Fairy curse like a wad of tobacco, and pulled a little black box out of her pocket. She slid a red rod out of it, and the lid snapped open. It was filled with a vaguely golden jelly.

  “Pan’s hangover, kid.” Betsy cursed again. “Old habits die hard.” She dug her greasy finger into the stuff and flung it at September’s eyes. It dripped down her face like yolk.

  The gnome looked profoundly embarrassed. “Well,” she mumbled, looking at her toes, “what if Rupert fell down on the job and you got there and all you could see was sticks and grasshoppers and a lot of long, empty desert? It’s a long way to go for desert. Anyway, I don’t have to explain myself. On your way, then!”

  Betsy Basilstalk gave the girl a hard shove into the soft, leafy wall of the closet. With a wriggle, a squeeze, and a pop, September slid backward through to the other side.

  CHAPTER III

  HELLO, GOODBYE, AND MANYTHANKS

  In Which September Nearly Drowns, Meets Three Witches (One a Wairwulf), and Is Entrusted with the Quest for a Certain Spoon

  Salt water hit September like a wall. It roared foamily in her eyes, snatched at her hair, dragged at her feet with cold, purple-green hands. She gasped for air and got two lungs-ful of freezing, thick sea.

  Now, September could swim quite well. She had even won second medal at a tournament in Lincoln. She had a trophy with a winged lady on it, though she had always wondered what use a flying girl would have for swimming. The lady should have had webbed feet, September was sure. But in all her after-school practices her coaches had never impressed upon her the importance of practicing her butterfly stroke while being dropped from a great height without any ceremony at all into an ocean. With Fairy ooze in one’s eyes. Really, September thought, how could they leave something like that out?