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

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “What does it say?”

  Goodbye smiled like a sun rising. “Oh, so many things, September, if you know how to look. Would you like to know how? Would you like to be able to divine the meaning of that blob there, the color of mashed potatoes, or that vein of jelly? Would you like to be a witch?”

  “Witchery is a life of wonder,” said Hello, “all the wheeling stars at your command, all the days of the future laid out before you, like dolls in bronze armor!”

  “And a really top-notch hat,” added Manythanks.

  “The Marquess has a fine hat, too,” said September, shaking her head to clear Goodbye’s sudden perfume. “I’ve been told.”

  Their faces darkened a little.

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll all be wearing tweed trousers by fall,” Goodbye snapped sarcastically. She shut her eyes and shook her head. When she opened them again, they were once more pools of deep violet, glistening with promises. “But we were discussing your prospects, my dear. For as much as I would like to bring you into my coven this very day, something bars me from accepting such a charming, polite, intelligent young ward. For a witch is nothing without her Spoon, and the Marquess stole mine years ago, because she is capricious and selfish and a brat.”

  Hello and Manythanks drew back from Goodbye as though the Marquess might appear that very moment and punish the brazen witch soundly.

  Goodbye hurried on. “But if some intrepid, brave, darling child went to the City and got it back for me, well, a witch would be grateful. You’ll know it right away: It’s a big wooden spoon, streaked with marrow and wine and sugar and yogurt and yesterday and grief and passion and jealousy and tomorrow. I’m sure the Marquess won’t miss it. She has so many nice things. And when you come back, we’ll make you a little black bustle and a black hat and teach you to call down the moon gulls and dance with the Giant Snails that guard the Pantry of Time.”

  September’s stomach hurt. She found it terribly hard to speak. “I’ve only just gotten here, Miss Goodbye. I … I don’t think I want to be anything but myself just yet. It would be like deciding on the spot to become a geologist back home. What if I don’t like rocks when I’m older? Witchery sounds very nice now, but I’m sure I should take better care with my … my prospects.”

  “But the future, child! Just think of it! If you see something you don’t like—pop! In go leek and licorice, and you can change it. What could be better?”

  “Does it really work that way? Can you really change the future?”

  Manythanks shrugged. “I’m sure it’s been done once or twice,” he said.

  September wrenched her eyes away from Goodbye’s loveliness. Her head cooled and cleared and smoothed itself out. “Miss,” she said, “don’t you really just want your Spoon back?”

  Goodbye stood up abruptly and brushed off her black dress. The perfume was gone, and she shrank a bit, still a somewhat handsome woman, but the glow, the perfect colors of her, were muted and usual again.

  “Yes,” she said curtly. “I can’t get it, the Marquess has lions.”

  “Well … you don’t have to shine at me and offer me a bustle, you know. I … I could get it for you. Maybe I could get it for you. Anyway, I could try. What did I come to Fairyland for, after all? To wander around on the beach like my grandfather, looking for dropped wedding rings?” September laughed for the first time since leaving Omaha, picturing her grandfather in his patched jacket waving his metal detector over the beach of Fairy gold. A quest, she thought, excitement rising in her like bread, a real quest like a real knight, and she doesn’t even see that I’m short and I don’t have a sword.

  “Well … how gallant of you, child,” said Hello. “She didn’t mean to offend with her shining … it’s only that the Marquess is fearful and fell. Long ago, she hunted witches. She rode out on a great panther and wielded her iceleaf bow against us. She broke our mother’s Spoon across her back and killed our brothers Farewell and Wellmet. Fine witches in the prime of their craft, all pierced with her arrows, laid out in the snow. And all because we would not give her what she wanted.”

  “What did she want?”

  Goodbye answered, her voice thick and ugly. “A single day. She commanded us to simmer for her a single day, the day of her death, so that she could hide from it. And we would not serve her.”

  September let go a long-held breath. She stared into the roiling black-violet soup, thinking furiously. The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvelous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

  Surely, she must have suspected the shape of her tale when the Green Wind appeared in her kitchen window. Certain signs are unmistakable. But now she is alone, poor child, and there do not seem to be too terribly many fairies about, and instead of dancing in mushroom rings, she must contend with very formal witches and their dead brothers, and we must pity her. It would be easy for me to tell you what happened to her—why, I’d need only choose a noun and a few verbs and off she goes! But September must do the choosing and the going, and you must remember from your own adventuring days how harsh a task lies before her at this moment.

  But a machinist’s daughter can be shrewd and practical. And can’t there be snow and enemies and red lanterns and somersaults? And at least one mushroom ring? That would be the best thing, really, if she can manage it.

  There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will all be hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it’s the wonders I’m after, even if I have to bleed for them.

  Finally, September stepped forward and, quite without knowing she meant to do it, dropped to one knee before the witch Goodbye. She bent her head to hide her trembling and said, “I am just a girl from Omaha. I can only do a few things. I can swim and read books and fix boilers if they are only a little broken. Sometimes, I can make very rash decisions when really I ought to keep quiet and be a good girl. If those are weapons you think might be useful, I will take them up and go after your Spoon. If I return”—September swallowed hard—“I ask only that you give me safe passage back to the closet between worlds, so that I can go home when it is all over and sleep in my own bed. And … a favor…”

  “What sort of favor?” said Goodbye warily.

  September frowned. “Well, I can’t think of anything good just now. But I will think of something, by and by.”

  The moon peered over the clouds at them. With great solemnity, Hello and Goodbye spat into their hands and shook on the bargain.

  “What about the lions?” Goodbye said fearfully.

  “Well, I have some experience with big cats. I expect lions are no more fearsome than Leopards,” answered September, though she was not quite so sure as she sounded. “Only, tell me, where does the Marquess live? How can I get there?”

  As one, the three witches pointed west at a cleft in the cliffs. “Where else?” said Manythanks. “The capital. Pandemonium.”

  “Is it very far?”

  They all looked shamefacedly at their feet. More than “very,” then, thought September.

  “Good-bye,” said Hello.

  “Many thanks,” said Goodbye.

  “Farewell,” said Manythanks, and kissed her very lightly on the cheek. The wairwulf’s kiss joined the Green Wind’s there, and the two of
them got along very well, considering.

  The full moon shone jubilantly as September strode up over the dunes and into the interior of Fairyland with her belly full of witch-cake. She smelled the sweet, wheat-sugar scent of sea grass and listened to distant owls call after mice. And then she suddenly remembered, like a crack of lightning in her mind, check your pockets. She laid her sceptre in the grass and dug into the pocket of her green smoking jacket. September pulled out a small crystal ball, glittering in the moonlight. A single perfectly green leaf hung suspended in it, swaying back and forth gently, as if blown by a faraway wind.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE WYVERARY

  In Which September Is Discovered by a Wyvern, Learns of a Most Distressing Law, and Thinks of Home (but Only Briefly)

  September woke in a meadow full of tiny red flowers. She had walked through the night, watching the moon slowly fall down into the horizon and all the dark morning stars turn in the sky, like a silver carousel. It was important, she reasoned, not to fall asleep in the dark where deviant things might carry her off. No matter how tired she was, or how sore her bare foot, she would wait till morning, when she could be assured of the sun to keep her warm while she dreamed. And the sun had pulled up a warm blanket of her light over the little girl, tucking her in with gentle beams. September’s long hair had dried on the meadow-grass. Her orange dress was only a little stiff now from the salt of the sea. She yawned and stretched.

  “What happened to your shoe?” said a big, deep, rumbling voice. September froze in mid-stretch. Two blazing, flame-colored eyes danced before her. A dragon was staring at her with acute interest, crouching like a cat in the long grass. His tail waved lazily. The beast’s lizardish skin glowed a profound red, the color of the very last embers of the fire. His horns (and these horns led September to presume the dragon a he) jutted out from his head like a young bull’s, fine and thick and black. He had his wings tucked neatly back along his knobbly spine—where they were bound with great bronze chains and fastened with an extremely serious-looking lock.

  “I … I lost it,” said September, holding herself utterly still so as not to spook either the dragon or herself, her arms still stuck out into the air. “It fell into the sink as I was climbing onto a Leopard.”

  “That’s not losing it,” the beast rumbled sagely. “That’s leaving it.”

  “Um,” said September.

  “Don’t wear shoes myself,” the dragon haroomed. “Tried when I was a wee thing, but the cobblers gave me up for lost.” He rose up on heavily muscled hind legs and, balancing carefully on one of them, flexed one enormous three-toed scarlet foot. His black claws clicked together with a sound like typewriter keys clacking. “You’re very quiet! Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you do a trick? I’ll be impressed, I promise. Start with your name, that’s easiest.”

  September put down her arms and folded them in her lap. The dragon hunched in close, his smoky-sweet breath flaring huge red nostrils. “September,” she said softly. “And … well, I’m very scared, and I don’t know if you’re going to eat me or not, and it’s hard to do tricks when you’re scared. Anyway, where I come from, it’s a known fact that dragons eat people, and I prefer to be the one doing the eating if eating is to be done. Which it hasn’t been since last night. I don’t suppose you have cake? I think dragon food would be all right, it’s only Fairy food I’m to watch out for.”

  “How funny you are!” crowed the beast. “First off, I am not a dragon. I don’t know where you could have gotten that idea. I was very careful to show you my feet. I am a Wyvern. No forepaws, see?” The Wyvern displayed his proud, scaled chest, the color of old peaches. He balanced quite well on his massive hindquarters, and the rest of him rose up in a kind of squat S-shape, ending in the colossal head, which bore many teeth and a thick jaw and snapping bits of fire-colored whiskers. “And you must have very rude dragons where you come from! I’ve never heard the like! If people show up to a dragon’s mountain yelling about sacrifices and O, YE, FELL BEAST SPARE MY VILLAGE this and GREAT DRAGON, I SHALL MURDER THEE that, well, certainly, a fellow might have a chomp. But you oughtn’t judge any more than you judge a lady for eating the lovely fresh salad that a waiter brings her in a restaurant. Secondly, no, I don’t have any cake.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean any offense.”

  “Why should I be offended? Dragons are a bit more than cousins, but a bit less than siblings. I know all about them, you see, because they begin with D.”

  “What is your name, Wyvern? I should have been more polite.”

  “I am the Honorable Wyvern A-Through-L, small fey. I would say, ‘at your service,’ but that’s rather fussy, and I’m not, you see, so it would be inaccurate.”

  “That’s a very funny name for…”—September considered her words—“such a fine beast,” she finished.

  “It’s a family name,” A-Through-L said loftily, scratching behind one horn. “My father was a Library. So properly speaking, I am a Lyvern, or … a Libern? A Wyverary? I am still trying to find the best term.”

  “Well, I think that’s very unlikely,” said September, who preferred Wyverary.

  “However unlikely it may seem, it is the truth and, therefore, one hundred percent likely. My sainted mother was the familiar of a highly puissant Scientiste, and he loved her. He polished her scales every week with beeswax and truffle oil. He fed her sweet water and bitter radishes grown by hand in his laboratory and, therefore, much larger and more bitter than usual radishes. He petted her, and called her a good Wyvern, and made a bed for her out of river rushes and silk batting and old bones. (They didn’t come from anyone he knew, so that was all right, and a Wyvern nest has to have bones, or else it’s just not home.) It was quite a good situation for my mother, even if she hadn’t liked him a great deal and thought him very wise. As all reptiles know, the bigger the spectacles, the wiser the wearer, and the Scientiste wore the biggest pair ever built. But even the wisest of men may die, and that is especially true when the wisest of men has a fondness for industrial chemicals. So went my mother’s patron, in a spectacular display of Science.”

  “That’s very sad,” sighed September.

  “Terribly sad! But grief is wasted on the very roasted. Without her companion, my mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my mother lived and read and dreamed, allowing herself to grow closer and closer to Compleat, to notice more and more how fine and straight his shelves remained, despite great structural stress. That sort of moral fortitude is rare in this day and age. By and by, my siblings and I were born and romped on the balconies, raced up and down the splintered ladders, and pored over many encyclopedias and exciting novels. I know just everything about everything—so long as it begins with A through L. My mother was widowed by a real estate agent some years ago, and I never finished the encyclopedia. Anyway, Mother told us all about our father when we were yearlings. We asked, ‘Why do we not have a Papa?’ And she said, ‘Your Papa is the Library, and he loves you and will care for you. Do not expect a burly, handsome Wyvern to show up and show you how to breathe fire, my loves. None will come. But Compleat has books aplenty on the subject of combustion, and however odd it may seem, you are loved by two parents, just like any other beast.’”

  September bit her lip. She did not know how to say it gently. “I had a friend back home named Anna-Marie,” she said slowly. “Her father sold lawn mowers all over Nebraska and some in Kansas, too. When Anna-Marie was little, her daddy ran off with a lady from Topeka with the biggest lawn in the county. Anna-Marie doesn’t even remember her daddy, and sometimes when she’s sad, her mother says she didn’t have one, that she’s an angel’s daughter and no awful lawn mower salesman had a thing to do with her. Do you think, maybe … it could have been like that, with your mother?”

  A-Through-L looked pityingly at her, his blazing r
ed face scrunched up in doubt. “September, really. Which do you think is more likely? That some brute bull left my mother with egg and went off to sell lonemozers? Or that she mated with a Library and had many loved and loving children? I mean, let us be realistic! Besides, everyone says I look just like my father. Can’t you see my wings? Are they not made of fluttering vellum pages? If you squint you can even read a history of balloon travel!”

  A-Through-L lifted his wings slightly, to show their fluttering, but the great bronze chain kept them clamped down. He waggled them feebly.

  “Oh, of course. How silly of me. You must understand, I am new to Fairyland,” September assured him. But really, his wings were leathery and bony, like a pterodactyl’s, and not like vellum at all, and there was certainly nothing written there. September thought the creature was a little sad, but also a little dear.

  “Why are your wings chained up?” she asked, eager to change the subject. A-Through-L looked at her as though she must be somehow addled.

  “It’s the law, you know. You can’t be so new as all that. Aeronautic locomotion is permitted only by means of Leopard or licensed Ragwort Stalk. I think you’ll agree I’m not a Leopard or made of Ragwort. I’m not allowed to fly.”

  “Whyever not?”

  A-Through-L shrugged. “The Marquess decreed that flight was an Unfair Advantage in matters of Love and Cross-Country Racing. But she’s awfully fond of cats, and no one can tell Ragwort to sit still, so she granted special dispensations.”