The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making (17 page)

Finally, it was all finished. September was quite proud of herself, and we may be proud of her too, for certainly I have never made a boat so quickly, and I daresay only one or two of you have pulled the trick. All she lacked was a sail. September thought for a good while, considering what Lye, the soap-golem, had said:
even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin. And foxes and bears have skin too, so I shan’t be ashamed if they’re not.

“Well, I shan’t be! My dress; my sail!” cried September aloud, and wriggled out of her orange dress. She tied the sleeves to the top of the mast and the tips of the skirt to the bottom. The wind puffed it out obligingly. She took off the Marquess’s dreadful shoes and wedged them between the sceptres. There she stood, her newly-shorn hair flying in every direction, naked and fierce, with the tide coming in. She shoved the raft out to sea and leapt on, nearly tipping the thing over, clutching her wrench and using it as a rudder to steer her way. She would not have known to call it a rudder, really, but she needed something to push on and direct herself, and the wrench was all she had left. The wind caught her little orange sail and the current caught the little ship, and soon enough she was sweeping along the shoreline in a whipping breeze. Her skin pricked and she shivered, but she would bear it. With clenched teeth and goosebumps.

I did it! I figured it out myself, with no Fairy or spriggan or even a Wyverary to tell me how!
Of course she would have preferred to have a Wyverary to show her, to be a great red ship for her to whoop and ride upon. But he was not here, and she was hoisted on the bursting, splashing waves by a ship of her own making, her hair, her Spoon, her dress, and her loyal jacket, who rejoiced, quietly, with her as the Gillybirds shrieked and sang.

The moon rose slim and horned that night. All the stars flashed and wiggled in the sky, so many constellations September could not name. One looked a bit like a book, and she named it: Ell’s Father. Another looked something like a spotted cat with big glowing red stars for eyes. She named that one: My Leopard. Still another looked like a rainstorm, and as she watched falling stars twinkled through it, like real rain.

“And that’s Saturday’s Home,” September whispered to herself.

The night wind blew warm and she stretched out beneath the orange sail, watching the distant, shadowy shore slowly slip by. She had not really considered the problem of food--
silly girl, after all the trouble over it!
And in the dark, she loosened seven or eight strands of hair from the raft and tied them to the wrench, hoping to catch a fish for her supper. Even September did not quite think this was going to work. She had some idea about fishing, since her mother and grandfather had taken her to catch minnows in the pond one summer or another. But they always cast for her, and baited the hook--ah, a hook. That was a bother. And no bait, either. Still, she had little enough choice, and sunk the length of hair into the lapping sea.

Despite everything, despite being terribly afraid for her friends and not having the first idea how far the Gaol might be, September had to admit that sailing at night, by one’s lonesome, was so awfully pleasant she could hardly bear it. That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea--that stirring landlocked children know so well--moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead.

Somewhere towards dawn, September fell asleep, her wrench curled tightly against her, her hair still trailing in the surf, catching no fish at all.

#

In Which We Return to the Jeweled Key and Its Progress

Now, what, you have every right to ask, has happened to our erstwhile friend the jeweled Key, all this while, as such awful and marvelous events have befallen September?

I shall tell you. I live to please.

The Key finally entered Pandemonium and immediately knew the city to be beautiful, rich, delicious--and empty of a little girl named September. It drooped despondently and peeked through organdy alleys--abandoned, but not hopeless. It did not follow her scent, but her memory, which left a curling green trail visible only to lonely animated objects and a certain opthamologist’s patients, which doctor it would be poor form to mention here. Finally, the wreckage of Saturday’s lobster cage informed the Key in a breathy, splintered voice that the whole troupe had left for the Autumn Provinces some time back. The Key’s little jeweled breast swelled with renewed purpose, and it flew out over the Barleybroom and across the Meadowflats as fast as it could, a little blur of orange in the air, no more than a marigold petal.

It saw the dust-cloud of the velocipedes running, but could not catch them. The Key wheezed and cried sorrow to the heavens, but Keys have a certain upper speed limit, and even in love our gentle-hearted brooch could not exceed it. Calpurnia Farthing glimpsed the rushing Key on her return from the borders of Autumn, and thought it curious. Penny squealed and begged to catch and keep it, but Calpurnia would not allow it, pets being a nuisance to traveling folk. She squinted through her goggles and thought to herself:
that is a Key. Where there is a Key, there is yet hope
.

The Key entered the Autumn Provinces far too late, but followed the trail of September’s memory into the Worsted Wood. There, it met with the Death of Keys, which is a thing I may not describe to you. It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.

Much shaken, the Key returned to see the ruined September, her wracked body all branches and leaves and buds, being carried by Citrinitas in three long strides so far from itself that the Key fell to the forest floor and did not move for a long while.

But move, at last, it did. What if September came upon a lock and was lost without her Key? What if she were imprisoned? What if she were lonely, with all her friends snatched away? No. The Key would not abandon her. It set out, after her curling, spiraling green trail, all the way to the hut of Mr. Map, who gave it a cup of fortifying tea and showed it the way to the sea, placing a gentle kiss upon the Key’s clasp before it went.

The Key blushed and set out over the Perverse and Perilous Sea, full of purpose, sure that soon--oh, so very soon!--September would be near.

#

In Which September Runs Aground, Learns of the Vulnerabilities of Folklore, and Is Half-Tempted

It was not so much that September came upon an island as that she had a bit of an accident with an island. She cannot be entirely blamed. The current ran right into the little isle, and even if she had been awake and at the tiller she might not have been able to avoid it. As things stood, September awoke with her ship tangled in a bramble of lilies and seagrass, of spiky cream-colored flowers she could not name. It was not the collision that had woken her, but all the perfume of that thin beach, drifting out with the tide. Her mouth was thick and dry, her belly empty, and the sun beat at her head. The violet salt of the sea caked her arms and cheeks. She looked, in fact, entirely a mess.

If there are folk here, I ought to make myself fit for company
, September thought, and set about taking down her sail, which was by now quite sodden with seawater and not at all nice to wear. She shook out her green smoking jacket and tied it on, and lastly, with much frowning, slid the Marquess’s shoes back on her feet, though she did not like to. But roses have thorns and girls have feet, and the two do not get along. September still felt wet and sore, but she thought she might be more or less respectable-looking. She bent in the flowery shore and searched for berries, any sort that might make a breakfast. She found a few round hard pinkish things that tasted a bit of salt and grapefruit rind.
Can’t ask them all to taste of blueberry cream, and be knocked off a tree by a Wyverary for me
, she thought, and with the thought of Ell, slumped.

“I’m alone again,” she whispered. “just me, and the sea, and not much of anything else. Oh, how I wish my friends were here! I am coming, I promise, it’s only that I must eat something, and drink fresh water, or I shall not make it round the horn of Fairyland at all.”

“N’ whol al,” said a quiet voice. September started and looked round.

A lady stood uncertainly by, looking as if she might run at any moment--if indeed she could run, for the lady was truly only half a lady. She was cleanly cut in half lengthwise, having only one eye, one ear, half a mouth, half a nose. It did not seem to trouble her any. Her clothes had been made to fit her shape, lavender silk trousers with only one leg, a pale blue doublet--or singlet--with only one padded sleeve. Half a head of hair tumbled down her side, colored like night.

“What?” said September. The one-legged woman flushed and hopped backward a little, ducking her half-face into a high yellow collar. “Oh, I don’t mean to be rude, I didn’t understand you, is all!”

“Ot ly one,” tried the lady again, and then leapt away on her one leg, bounding up the beach and over a tangled heath that led into the center of the island. She hopped gracefully, as if it were the most natural way of moving invented. Little black flowers wavered in her wake.

Now, September knew she ought to stay straight on course, and never turn aside until she reached the Lonely Gaol. But one cannot simply say mysterious things and then run off! That’s practically begging to be followed. September’s feet were already scrambling up through the heath before her mind could worry about her little ship or what terrible clock might be ticking towards a miserable prison at the bottom of the world. She was off and running, calling after the half-lady, so thirsty she thought her throat might catch on fire. We must simply count ourselves lucky that she remembered her wrench, and did not leave it to be carried off by some enterprising turtle.

The island was not great or broad, and September might well have caught the lady, but that both of them ran right into the center of a village before a victor could be declared in their race. September understood immediately that the strange creature was home--all the houses were cut neatly in half. Arranged in a gentle half-circle, each sweet, small green-grass house had half windows and half doors and half roofs of coral tile, each and everything precisely and deliberately built for half a soul. Half a great edifice stood at one end of the long village green, with half-pillars and half-stairs all of silver. The lady ran full tilt towards a young man, tall and half-formed just as she was. His trousers, too, were silk and purple, his collar yellow and high. The two joined--smack!--at the seam, and she turned to face September. A glowing line ran down their bodies where the join had been made.

“Not wholly alone,” said the creature, in a voice neither male nor female. “That’s what we said. You are not wholly alone.”

“Oh!” said September simply, and sat down on the smooth green. Now that she had run all that way, was quite beside herself with tiredness and strangeness. If only she could get a drink of water! She would not mind half a glass…

“When I am myself, I cannot speak as you would understand me. I can only say half my words. I need my twin to speak to outsiders--not that you are an outsider!”

“I rather think I am!”

“All things being equal,” the half-lady continued in her same soft voice, “outsiders are to keep to the outside. But we can see you are one of us.”

“One of…who?”

“The Nasnas. The half-a-whole, whom the gods saw fit to bisect. I am Nor. My brother is Neither.” The two of them bowed in perfect unison, the glowing line between them intact.

“My name is September, but I’m not a…a Nasnas.”

“And yet you’ve been cut in half.”

“But I haven’t!” September clutched at her chest, to be sure.

“You have no shadow,” said Neither/Nor, wandering away up towards the great silver half-palace. “Half of you is gone,” she called over her shoulder.

September scrambled after her.

“It’s no bother to me not to have a shadow,” she panted, trying to keep up with the hopping Neither/Nor as she bounded over a tangled heath. “But it must be terribly difficult to live without a left part!”

“All Nasnas are twins. I have a left part. It is only that he is not attached to me. Much as your shadow is not attached to you, but off and having its own adventures, singing its own shadow-songs, eating feasts of shade and gloam. It’s still your shadow, even if you are not bound to it. And perhaps it is a bother to
it
, to be separated from you. One must always be considerate of one’s other half.”

Nor shuddered and the glowing seam between her and her brother went dim. She leapt away from him and caught the hand of a passing girl, spinning her like a dance partner. “Not!” she cried. “It’s been too long!” The two leapt up and joined as Nor and her brother had done. A new Nor turned towards September, almost a normal woman, but for the seam in her face. Her voice was different, too, higher, more musical.

“Of course, one may have a number of other halves,” Nor grinned. “We have always felt sorry for those who are forced to be only one person, forever and ever until they die. My brother and I are Neither/Nor, my sister and I are Not/Nor, and on and on the combinations go, sharing dreams and labor and life. We are halves, but we make an infinite whole.”

“I’m…not like that,” whispered September. She could not say why they frightened her, but the Nasnas lady and her many siblings made her feel more unsure and unsettled than even Death had. “Why are you like that?”

“Why do you have two legs? Why is your hair brown?”

September remembered Charlie Crunchcrab. “Evolution, I guess.”

“Well, we guess, too.”

“But don’t you have stories? About yourself. About why the world is the way it is.”

“You mean folklore?”

September shrugged uncertainly.

Not/Nor scratched her chin. “I think we had a folklore, once. I seem to remember. We locked it up in a vault to keep it safe. Or a library. Terribly similar. But bandits, you know. Bandits, bandits, always about! Wearing masks and carrying sacks. I’m afraid there was a break-in. They left a few crumbs--bandits are slovenly. I think I recall something about Cosmic Scissors, and Entropy, and Where Love Comes From. But no one remembers more, and the police don’t visit the hinterlands much.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“And I for yours! I was born half, but to lose yourself in the prime of life! What a trauma!”

“Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it much. It hurt while the Glashtyn cut it away, but I’m not sick or anything.”

“What do you suppose your shadow is doing without you? She might be ill with pining!”

September thought back to her shadow’s vicious smile, dancing on the shoulders of the horse-headed Glashtyn. “I don’t think so,” she said, and for the first time felt it had been a bit shabby of her to have cast of her shadow so quickly, and not to have written to it, or asked after it at all.

“I have to go to work now, little girl. Not’s shift is already done, and I’m keeping her from nap and roast fish.”

“What sort of shift do you have?” said September curiously. “And mightn’t there be some water there?” She knew about shifts, of course, because her mother had them. Shifts were the suns and moons of her old world, dividing everything into times when her mother was there, and times when she was not.

“I work at the shoe factory, girl! We all do, it’s what we do. Why, before the Marquess came, we just lay about on beaches and ate mangoes and drank coconut milk and knew nothing about industry whatever! How gladsome we are now, that she has shown us our laziness! Now we know the satisfaction of a full day’s labor, of punchcards and taxable income.”

September bit her lip. She wondered if the Marquess had happened by around the time their folklore had been stolen. “I like mangoes,” she said glumly.

“We make the changelings’ shoes,” continued Not/Nor, striding towards the silver half-palace that September now understood was a factory.

“That’s all? No shoes for anyone else?”

“Well, there are rather a lot of changelings. Bandits, again. Always about. Besides, it’s quite hard, to make the sorts of shoes changelings wear.”

September waited. She long ago learned that if she waited and blinked and behaved like a pupil, eventually someone would lecture her on something.

“It’s why we’re best suited, you know. Being this far southerly. It’s all magnetized, see. If we didn’t make the shoes, why, changelings would just float away back to their own world, and where would that leave all the honest folk who stole them fair and square?”

“I haven’t floated away.”

“You’re not a changeling! There’s no poppet or goblin in your bed, taking your place at supper. There’s more than one way between your world and ours. There’s the changeling road, and there’s Ravishing, and there’s those that Stumble, through a gap in the hedgerows or a mushroom ring or a tornado or wardrobe full of winter coats. It’s all dangerous, but changelings are terrible hard to keep track of. Someone’s always trying to capture them back or pull them off their horses during dress parade. The shoes, though, the shoes keep them here. Otherwise they’d just…fwoop! Like balloons. I make right-hand shoes. With iron in the soles. Iron won’t go through, see. Fairyland’s allergic. So am I, of course, but I take my pills like the Marquess taught us.”

“What about the Ravished? How do they get home?” September realized that she was considering how to get home, for the first time.

Nor grinned. She had sharp, wolfish teeth. “Can’t say, can I? Or won’t say, won’t I? But it’s better to Stumble, really, if you’ve a heart set on home.”

At the factory door, Nor gathered up a great deal of leather into the crook of her arm. She pointed with her eyebrows at a communal well just outside the gate. September fell upon a copper ladle and drank deep. As she slurped, the Nasnas scratched her chin again. “I might could make you a pair that works the other way,” she said finally. “Reverse engineering, and all? A pair that would take you home.”

“Really? You could do that?”

“Shoes are funny beasts. You think they’re just clothes, but really, they’re alive. They want things. Fancy ones with gems want to go to balls, big boots want to go to work, slippers want to dance. Or sleep. Shoes make the path you’re on. Change your shoes, change the path.” Nor looked meaningfully at the Marquess’s dandied black shoes. September wished she’d gone barefoot. “Changeling shoes want to stay here. I wager I can make a pair who want to go to the place you come from. Bit of old mud on the heel, bit of devil’s salt in the buckle, bit of growing up hammered in. You’ll wake up, like it was a dream. It will
have been
a dream. No worries, no faults, no blame. Off to school with you and your peanut butter sandwich, too!”

September squeezed back tears. She suddenly missed her mother, and she’d lost her shadow and her hair and salt creaked in her elbows and she was so awfully tired, and really, she hadn’t counted on adventures being so exhausting. She was hungry, still, and she missed her Wyverary so! And how could she know how much farther there was to go? September still did not think herself terribly brave, and she trembled when she thought of the thirst of the sea, and the possibility--even probability--of sharks and other terrible things. When the stars were out and the night warm and Mr. Map's brandy had been hot in her belly, it had been alright, even wonderful. But now her knees hurt, and her fingers, and she was lonely. September shivered in her wet, salt-crusted dress. And she hated her cursed shoes, hated them wholly and utterly.

“I can’t,” she squeaked finally. “I can’t. My friends are not dreams. They need me.” And she remembered the awful dream, and little Saturday, chained up again, on the floor of that dark cell. “Who else will come for them, if I don’t?”