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

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Of course it’s Fairy food,” he chuckled. “Where do you think you are?”

  “Well,” September answered, “I’m not to eat Fairy food. I’ve been very careful and only eaten witch food, dragon food, dryad food, that sort of thing.”

  The little man laughed so loudly a few folk like him poked their heads out of the bread-house windows in curiosity. He held his small paunch and kept giggling.

  “Oh, you were being serious!” He tried to look solemn. “This is Fairyland, girl! There is no dragon food or witch food or dryad food. There is only Fairy food—it’s all Fairy food. This is Fairy earth that bears it, Fairy hands that carve it and cook it and serve it. I daresay you have quite the bellyful of the stuff. If there’s damage to be got from it, I promise it’s quite done by now.”

  September’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes filled up with tears, and now, finally, they spilled over and dropped onto the muffin-stone square. Saturday put his hand on her arm but did not know what to do to comfort her beyond that. This may seem like a silly thing to cry over, but September had suffered so very much in such a very short time, and she was so certain that she had been circumspect with regards to food. She had been careful! Even if the Marquess was frightening and Saturday so dear and broken and Ell so devoted—at least, she had thought, she had not eaten Fairy food! At least, she had managed better than most little girls in stories who are repeatedly told not to eat the food but do it anyway, being extravagantly silly and stupid!

  “What will happen to me?” she wept.

  A-Through-L waved his tail in distress. “We can’t say, September. We’re not Ravished.”

  “But look on the bright side!” cried the little man. “Eat your fill and have no fear of it now. Fairy food is the best kind—or else no one would have to warn children off it. I think it’s very dear of you to have tried to be so … abstinent! My name is Doctor Fallow, and I am the Satrap of Autumn. We had word that guests were careening our way.” He bowed at the waist and caught his jacket in the act of slipping off. “This is a wedding feast for my graduate assistants, and you are most invited.”

  September bowed as well. “These are my friends A-Through-L, who is a Wyvern and not a dragon, and Saturday. My name is September.”

  Doctor Fallow beamed. “What an excellent name,” he breathed.

  A great, jubilant noise rose up from the southern end of the village, and it became clear in a moment why they had found the square so empty. Everyone who was anyone had been at the party. A throng of creatures like Doctor Fallow, with long skinny noses and dear little clothes, came dancing in with crowns of leaves in their hair—for the leaves of the Autumn Provinces are brighter than any flower. Many wore glittery masks in black and gold and red and silver. Some played delicate twig pipes, some sang rude songs that greatly featured the words swelling, growing, and stretching in complicated puns.

  “I … I think they must be spriggans,” said Ell, embarrassed. Naturally, he could offer no further illumination on anything that so rudely insisted on beginning with S.

  At the head of the host came a pair of spriggans, looking at each other under the lashes of their eyes, blushing, smiling, laughing. One, a young man, was red from the tips of his hair to the tips of his feet, his skin glowing like an apple, his evening suit crimson from cuff to cuff link. The other, a young girl, was golden from lash to leg, her hair just the exact color of a yellow leaf, her gown butter bright.

  “The red fellow is Rubedo,” Doctor Fallow said jovially. “He specializes in Gross Matter, quite a promising lad, a bit iffy on the mathematics, of course. The doe is Citrinitas, my star pupil. She’s at work on the highest alchemical mysteries, all of which must be solved, like a detective solves a dastardly crime. I’m so pleased for them both I could sprout!” He drew a faded orange kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes.

  “Please,” called Citrinitas, her voice ringing out bright and clear as sunlight through the deepening evening. “Eat! We shall all have bad luck if a single soul goes hungry!”

  Ell trodded up to the table, happy as anything. “I don’t suppose you’ve any radishes, hm?” he asked—and no sooner than he had, a little spriggan lad held up a plate of shining red radishes, so bright they must have been polished. Saturday inched toward the table, looking apologetically back at September.

  “Well,” she said, “if the damage is already done … it certainly does look delicious. And I have a weakness for pumpkin.” Her mother often liked to say she had a weakness for things: for hot cocoa, for exciting novels, for mechanics’ magazines, for her father. September felt it quite a grown-up thing to say.

  Let it be said that no other child has ever eaten as September did that night. She tasted a bit of everything—some things more than others, for Fairy food is a most adventurous cuisine, complex and daring. She even sipped the hazelnut beer and slurped at the cauliflower ice cream. Together, she and Saturday took on the challenge of a Gagana’s Egg, which was not really an egg at all, he explained, but a sugar-glazed shell of many colors containing a whole meal. Saturday deftly placed eight bone cups around a massive copper-rose globe. Saturday pierced the egg with an ice pick (thoughtfully provided) in eight places and let the steaming liquid spill into the little cups in eight different colors. September delighted in each one: the violet brew that tasted of roasted chestnuts and honey; the bloody red one that tasted like fig pastry; the creamy pink one, a kind of limy rosewater treacle. Saturday drank, too, always after her. His stomach was still weary from starving, and he would have preferred a nice salt lick and a lump of schist, but for her, he would eat any sugar, drink any red draught. When September finished the cups, Saturday showed her how to pierce the top hemisphere of the egg four more times so that the top of the shell could be lifted away whole and filled with water to steep into a sort of gooseberry-tasting tea. Inside the egg, a golden broiled bird nestled next to oil-soaked bread, brandied clams, and several fiery, spicy fruits September could not name but which quite took her breath away.

  Indeed, by the end of the feast, she was only sorry to have waited so long to gorge herself on Fairy food.

  Doctor Fallow belched loudly. “Have you strength in you still to see my offices? I think you’d find them most interesting.” The spriggan’s eyes flashed like a wolf’s in the candlelight, for it was now quite dark. The stars of autumn wheeled overhead, hard and bright and cold. A lonely wind began to pick up outside the warm, ruddy village. “Rubedo and Citrinitas must come along, too, of course.”

  “But it’s their wedding night!” protested September. “Surely, they would like to retire with milk and a nice book!”

  Ell snorted. Bits of radish remained in his whiskers. In the firelight, his eyes seemed crinkly and soft. September remembered what he said, that they belonged to each other. She rather liked to think that. She felt it was a thing she might take out and look at when all was dark and cold, and it might warm her.

  Doctor Fallow waved his hand. “Rubbish. Every night is their wedding. Every night is their feast. Tomorrow, too, they will be married with just as much pomp and song, and we will eat just as well and then go to my offices, for work must be done even on wedding nights. And then we will do it all over again. How wonderful is ritual, what a comfort in dark times!”

  September remembered what the Marquess had said: “A place where it is always autumn, where there is always cider and pumpkin pie, where leaves are always orange and fresh-cut wood is always burning, and it is always, just always Halloween.” And so it was—so many of the spriggans wore masks and danced wildly and leapt out from the shadows to spook one another.

  “You may as well come along, September. You were expected, and the expected ought to do what they’re told. It’s only manners.”

  “But the casket in the woods … I don’t have much time.… It took so long to get here!”

  “All that tomorrow, my dear! You can’t worry on a full stomach!”

  The whole colorful throng of them, Rubedo and Citri
nitas arm in arm, A-Through-L prickly and guarded, Saturday walking silently just behind September, his eyes huge and wary, September herself, and Doctor Fallow leading the way, crossed the square to one of the largest buildings. Thready clouds hid its roof up above the crowns of the trees. It seemed far too big for the little folk.

  Doctor Fallow waggled his bushy eyebrows, winked twice, pinched his long nose, puffed out his cheeks, and spun around on one foot. Rubedo and Citrinitas did the same—and all three of them sprouted up like nothing you’ve seen: swelled, grew, stretched, until they were taller than A-Through-L and of a perfect size to enter the huge building.

  “I … don’t think I’m of a girth to walk comfortably in there,” sighed Ell. “Though I’m certainly of a height. I shall wait outside. If anything proves wonderful there, do yell out the window.” He settled down, heavy with radishes, to nap in the courtyard of Doctor Fallow’s office.

  As they passed through doors and down hallways, the spriggans swelled up and shrunk down to fit each passageway. September and Saturday sometimes had to crawl on their bellies and sometimes could not even see the top of the door frames above them, and they had to scale the staircases like mountain climbers. The building could only be comfortable to a spriggan. Finally, the spriggans settled into something smaller than they had been when they entered—but taller than they had been at the feast—and opened the door to a great laboratory full of bubbling things.

  “The heart of our university,” said Doctor Fallow expansively. “Only broadly speaking a university, of course.”

  “We don’t have classes, really,” said Rubedo.

  “Or exams,” said Citrinitas.

  “And we’re the only students,” they said together.

  “But no work is more important than ours,” finished Rubedo.

  “You’re … alchemists, right?” said September shyly. She remembered, “The practice of alchemy is forbidden to all except young ladies born on Tuesdays” and spriggans, who were exempt from everything, if the Green Wind was to be believed.

  “Exact as an equation!” crowed Doctor Fallow.

  “Then I should tell you I was born on a Tuesday.”

  “How marvelous!” exclaimed Citrinitas. “I am so weary of running all the student committees myself.”

  “And what use I could make of an assistant! The volume of papers is monstrous,” said Rubedo ruefully, glaring at his wife.

  “Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” said Doctor Fallow, raising his hands for silence. “The young lady can have no more than the most rudimentary understanding of the Noble Science. Perhaps she would rather be a rutabaga farmer. I hear the market is very good this year.”

  “It’s … turning lead to gold, right?” said September.

  All three spriggans laughed uproariously. Saturday flinched—he did not like people laughing at September.

  “Oh, we solved that long ago!” Rubedo chuckled. “I believe that was Greengallows, Henrik Greengallows? Is that right, my love? Ancient history has never been my subject. A famous case study even reported a method for turning straw into gold! The young lady who discovered it wrote a really rather thin paper—but she toured the lecture circuit for years! Her firstborn refined it, so that she could make straw from gold and solve the terrible problem of housing for destitute brownies.”

  “Hedwig Greengallows, my dear,” mused Citrinitas. “Henrik was just her mercurer. Men are so awfully fond of attributing women’s work to their brothers! But, September, you have no idea how freed we all felt by Hedwig’s breakthrough. It is tedious to spend centuries on one problem. Now, we have several departments. Rubedo labors at the task of turning gold to bread, so that we may eat our abundance, while I am writing my dissertation on the Elixir Mortis—the Elixir of Death.”

  “It seems to me,” said Saturday shyly, “that the country of Autumn is a strange place to conduct experiments. Nothing here changes, yet alchemy is the science of change.”

  “What a well-spoken boy!” exclaimed Doctor Fallow. “But truly, the Autumn Provinces provide the most ideal situation for our program. Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter—which is the door of death—but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise but not yet decrepit or senile. If you wrote a letter of requisition, you could ask for no better place to practice alchemy.”

  “What is the Elixir of Death?” asked September, running her fingers along several strange instruments: a scalpel with a bit of mercury clinging to it, scissors with a great mass of golden hair caught in the shears, a jar full of thick liquid that shifted back and forth from yellow to red.

  Citrinitas brightened—if that were possible. She clutched her three-fingered hands to her breast. “Oh, nothing could be more fascinating! The Elixir of Life, as you will certainly know, is produced via the Chymical Wedding, a most secret process. The resulting stuff makes one immortal. The Elixir of Death, more rare by far, returns the dead to life. I expect you’ve heard the tale of the boy and the wolf? No? Well, it was terrible: The boy’s brothers betrayed him and cut him all up, but his friend the wolf got himself a vial of the water of Death and fixed him right up. It’s quite a famous story. Death herself produces the Elixir, when she is moved to weep—not a frequent occurrence, I assure you! I am trying to synthesize it from less … esoteric ingredients.”

  “And the casket in the Worsted Wood? Where does that fit in to all these strange studies?” said September shrewdly.

  “Well,” said Rubedo uncertainly, “the Worsted Wood lies at the heart of the Autumn country. None of us go in. The geese here, they migrate each evening, and one of them said a girl was on her way who would want to enter the woods, and we felt sorry for her.”

  “You are certainly welcome to, though none of us can truly recommend it,” said Doctor Fallow, rushing his words. “We confess—we made the casket. One of my undergraduate projects, I’m afraid! Quite a long time ago. You’re the first to show any interest in it since, oh, since Queen Mallow claimed her sword here, I expect.”

  September started. “It’s Queen Mallow’s sword?”

  “No, no, I didn’t say that, did I, girl? I said she claimed it. You can’t claim something that’s already yours. If it’s yours, it’s yours, eh? The casket is really quite clever. I received first marks for it. How shall I explain? It is both empty and full until one opens it. For when a box is shut, you cannot tell what it might contain, so you might as well say it contains everything, because, really, it could contain anything, see? But when you open it, you affect what is inside. Observing something changes it, that’s a law, nothing to be done. Oh, you’ll see in the morning! How splendid you will find it!”

  “But, September,” said Citrinitas sadly, “these sorts of things, well … they’re always guarded, aren’t they? It might be best to enroll with us now and worry about the casket when you’ve progressed in your studies a bit.”

  “I can’t! I haven’t time. I must open the casket tomorrow, or I shan’t have time to get back before the Marquess has my head!”

  “September,” whispered Saturday.

  “Perhaps you’d like to decide on your class schedule now, then? I have room in my morning Hermetics lecture, and I expect Citrinitas will be happy to get you up to speed in Elemental Affinities.”

  “September!” Saturday said, more loudly, but the spriggans were exclaiming and pulling at her, and she could not hear him.

  “We’ve even a free space on the squash team! How fortunate!” cried Rubedo, clapping his ruddy hands.

  “September!” wailed Saturday, tugging at her sleeve. Finally, she turned to him, flustered by all the yelling.

  “What?” she said, shaken.

  “Your hair is turning red,” Saturday said softly
, embarrassed to have all the attention suddenly on him.

  September looked down at her long, dark hair. One curl had indeed turned blazing scarlet, terribly bright against the rest of her. She touched it, amazed, and as her fingers brushed the red lock, it broke off and drifted off on an unseen wind, for all the world like an autumn leaf wafting away.

  CHAPTER XII

  THY MOTHER’S SWORD

  In Which September Enters the Worsted Wood, Loses All Her Hair, Meets Her Death, and Sings It to Sleep

  “It’s because I ate the food,” sniffed September miserably, hiding her face in the Wyverary’s chest. A-Through-L lay on the leafy ground like a Sphinx, nuzzling her hair with his nose. He stopped that right quick, though as more of it broke off and sailed away into the night.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “We ate it, too!”

  “What’s happening to me?” September wept.

  Her hair shone, bright red, curling up at the edges in pretty shapes. She had already lost much of it. The spriggans looked discomfited but they tried to be cheery.

  “I think it’s rather nice!” chirped Doctor Fallow. “An improvement, I declare!”

  “You do match me, now,” said Ell, trying to be helpful and optimistic.

  September rolled back the sleeve of the green smoking jacket, which was terribly chagrined and tried to keep covering her to protect her, but in the end, she wrestled the sleeve up to her elbow and waved her hand for the doctor to see. The skin there, once the same warm brown as her father’s, had gone hoary and rough, tinged with gray and green, like bark.

  “Is this an improvement?” she cried.

  “Well, this sort of thing happens. We must be adaptable. Autumn is the kingdom where everything changes. When you leave, it’ll be all right, probably. If you haven’t put down roots yet.”