The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making

CHAPTER XIV
IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING

In Which September Leaves Autumn for Winter, Meets a Certain Gentleman of Means, and Considers the Problem of Nautical Engineering

September woke to the sound of the snow falling. Hoarowls cried overhead: “Hoomaroo! Hoomaroo!” The sun burned white and soft behind long clouds. A cold, piney wind blew over her skin.

She opened her eyes-and she had eyes! She had skin! She could even shiver! September lay on a makeshift stretcher, a piece of piebald hide stretched between long poles. Her hands-and she had hands!-were folded neatly over her chest, and her hair flowed over her shoulders and down to the sash of the exultant green smoking jacket, dark brown and familiar and dry and clean. She was well again and whole.

And alone. It all came rushing back to her: the sleeping blue lions, Saturday and A-Through-L, all of it. And the dream, too, still clinging to her like old clothes.

Mary, Mary, Morning Bell.

In a panic, she reached for her sword-and felt the copper wrench safely beside her on the piebald hide. The Spoon still rested snugly in her sash. Saturday’s favor was gone, though, lost to the woods. September sat up, her head heavy and sick. A wood spread out around her, and it appeared long past autumn, the trees black and stark, snow glittering on everything, softening every edge to exquisite, perfect white. The green smoking jacket busily puffed up to keep out the gently blowing snow.

“You see? You’re quite well again. I promised you would be.” Citrinitas sat a little ways away, as though afraid to come too near. The little spriggan clutched her three-fingered hands together miserably. She scratched her long yellow nose and pulled up a great yellow hood over her head. She snapped her fingers, and a little golden fire burned before her, floating above the snow. Citrinitas sheepishly fished a marshmallow out of her pocket and speared it on her thumbnail to roast.

“Where are my friends?” September demanded, happy to find she had her voice back, strong and loud, echoing in the empty wood.

“I didn’t have to bring you out, you know. I could have left you there, and it would have been a good bit less trouble than dragging you out across the Winter Treaty. So close to Spring! It doesn’t sit right with the stomach. Rubedo didn’t even want to come. And he so longs to travel! Doctor Fallow is a bit of a coward-he hid when the lions came. Eventually, we’ll find him, though. I think he’s angry with you-you might have at least matriculated before turning all… tree-ish. And now I’ve missed our wedding, thank you very much.”

“You’ll have another tomorrow! And, anyway, if it’s so much bother, why didn’t you just grow and cover the distance in three steps?”

“Well,” Citrinitas blushed deep ochre, “I did. But that’s not the point. The point is gratitude, and how you ought to have it.”

September gritted her teeth. She liked the feeling of it-of having teeth. “Where are my friends?” she repeated icily.

“Oh, how should I know? We were only told to feed you up and send you into the woods. No one tells us anything unless it’s ‘Mix up Life-in-a-Flask for me, Citrinitas!’ ‘Bake me a Cake of Youth, Trinny!’ ‘Grade these papers!’ ‘Watch that beaker!’ ‘A monograph on the nature of goblins’ riddles, Ci-ci!’ I swear to you, I am finished with postdoctoral work!”

The golden spriggan struck her bony knee with her fist. As she spoke, her voice got higher and higher until it squeaked like a teakettle.

“Anyway, it’s no use interrogating me. I don’t know. But I’ve brought you to the snow, and the snow is the beginning and the end of everything, everyone knows that. I’ve brought you to the snow and the Ministry, and the clerk will… well, mainly he’ll say ‘Ffitthit’ at you. But I expect they’re in the Lonely Gaol, you know, since that’s where the lions take people usually, and that’s far, oh so awfully far, and it won’t do you any good, anyway. Parole was outlawed years ago. And the Gaol is guarded by the Very Unpleasant Man, and you’re just a little girl.”

September’s face burned. She got up and marched over to Citrinitas and crouched next to her. And maybe Lye’s bath, oh so terribly long ago now, really had given her a red, frothy draught of courage, because otherwise she could not imagine where she might have found the gall to hiss at the miserable spriggan, “I am not just a little girl.” Then September straightened up, scowling at the alchemist. “I can get bigger, just like you. Only… it just takes me a little longer.” She turned on her heel, seized her copper wrench, and began to walk over the crystal snow drifts to a little hut nestled between two great yew trees, which could only be the Ministry, or at least, she hoped it was the Ministry, because otherwise she would suddenly look very foolish. She did not look back.

“I’m sorry!” cried Citrinitas after her. “I am! Alchemy really is lovely, once you get past the alchemists…”

September ignored her and walked up the hill, the snow swallowing up the spriggan’s voice.

September breathed relief. The Marquess’s lovely black shoes had gotten soaked with snowmelt. A pleasant sign, freshly painted black and red, rose up out of a snow drift:

THE MARVELOUS MINISTRY OF MR. MAP

(YULETIDE DIVISION)

The hut was covered in white furs and bits of holly, but the bits were placed rather haphazardly, as if someone meant to be festive but got bored and gave up instead. The door was a sturdy thing with a compass rose stamped rudely into the wood. September knocked politely.

“Ffitthit!” came the answer from within. It was an odd sound, like someone spitting and coughing and growling and asking after one’s relations all at once.

“Excuse me! Citrinitas sent me! Please let me in, Sir Map!”

The door cracked.

“It’s mister, kitten. MISTER. Do you see an Order of the Green Kirtle on my chest? Eh? A Crystal Cross? It’d be news to me. Call me by my proper name, good grief and all gallows!”

An old man peered down at her, the bags under his eyes wrinkled like old paper, his hair and long corkscrewed mustache not even white, but the color of old, stained parchment. His skin was lined and brown, and his neatly brushed hair curled in a stately fashion, tied up in a black ribbon, like the old portraits of presidents in September’s schoolbooks. He had a pleasant, jolly belly and broad cheeks-and fat, furry wolf’s ears with a great deal of gray fur in them. He wore a bright blue suit with the cuffs rolled up over impressive forearms, so bright it startled in the midst of the white woods. His forearms were covered in sailors’ tattoos. For a moment, he and September just stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak first.

“Your suit… it’s lovely…,” murmured September, suddenly shy.

Mr. Map shrugged. “Well,” he said, as though it were perfectly logical, “world’s mostly water. Why pretend it’s not?”

September leaned in close, rather closer than is courteous. She saw that his suit was a map, with little lines and bits of writing on it. The buttons of his blazer and his cuff links were green islands, as was his belt buckle, an enormous, sparkling gem, the biggest island of all. September recognized the shape of the buckle. She had seen it, oh so briefly, as she fell from the customs office in the sky. That’s Fairyland, she thought.

Mr. Map left the doorway and went back to his work. September followed him inside. A great easel dominated the little room, on which Mr. Map had been busy painting a sea serpent in a wild ocean bordering a small island chain. Maps covered and cluttered every surface of the hut, topographical maps, geological maps, submarine maps, population-density maps, artistic maps, and scribbled-over wartime maps. The maps left room for only a single chair, the easel, and a table groaning with paints and pens. September shut the door gently behind her. It latched, and somewhere deep in the woods, a lock spun.

“Excuse me, Mr. Map, but the lady alchemist said you’d know where to find my friends?”

“Now why would I know that?” Mr. Map licked his pen-his tongue was all black with ink, and the pen’s bristles filled up with it. He returned to his map. “Seems to me a friend knows best where friends are.”

“They… were taken. By two lions, the Marquess’s lions. She said their strength came from sleeping, but I didn’t understand… I guess I understand now.”

“Do you know where I learned my Art?” Mr. Map said nonchalantly, sipping a hot brandy, which seemed to materialize in his hand. September could swear she had not seen him pick up a snifter from his side table. “Ffitthiiit!” sighed Mr. Map slowly, smacking his lips. “I promise, I waste nothing in asking. Like a ship, I always come round again to where I started.”

“No, Mister. I don’t know.”

“In prison, my kit, my cub! Where one learns anything worth knowing. In prison there is nothing but time, time, time. Time goes on just positively forever. You could master Wrackglummer, or learn Sanskrit, or memorize every poem ever written about ravens (there are exactly seven thousand ninety-four at current count, but a no-talent rat down in the city keeps spoiling my count), and still you’d have so much time on your hands you’d be bored sleepless.”

“Why were you in prison?”

Mr. Map sipped his brandy again. He shut his eyes and shook his glossy curls. He offered his drink to September, who, having given up all pretense of carefulness, took a big gulp. It tasted like burnt walnuts and hot sugar, and she coughed.

“That’s what happens to the old guard, my pup. You can always count on it. We who serve, we who make the world run. When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can’t make it run the other way again.” Mr. Map opened his eyes. He smiled sadly. “Which is to say I once stood at the side of Queen Mallow, and loved her.”

“You were a soldier?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I stood at her side.” Mr. Map blushed. It looked like ink spreading under his skin. His wolfy ears flicked back and forth in embarrassment. “You’re young, little fawn, but surely you catch my meaning. Once, you might have called me ‘Sir’ and no one would have corrected you.”

“Oh!” breathed September.

“Fftthit!” spat Mr. Map. “All done now-and gone, gone to old songs and older wine. History. She’s just another in a list of Queens to be memorized now.”

“My friend the Wyverary… the Wyvern said some people think she’s still alive, down in the cellars, or wherever the Marquess keeps folk…”

Mr. Map glanced at her, and his eyes drooped sadly. He tried a smile, but it did not quite work out.

“I met a lady in prison,” he went on, as though September hadn’t spoken. “A Järlhopp. They keep their memories in a necklace and wear it always and forever. Since her memory is so safe, she never forgets anything she’s seen, and the Järlhopp-her name was Leef, and how furry and sleek were her long ears!-Leef taught me to copy out my own memories onto parchment, to paint a perfect path… a path back to the things I loved, the things I knew when I was young. That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home-someday, somehow. Leef kept hers in that jewel at her throat; I kept mine on paper, endless paper, endless time, until the Marquess had need of me, until she sent me away to the wilds of the Winter Treaty, where nothing happens, where I cannot possibly cause trouble, where no one lives. And where there are no kind Järlhoppes to comfort me, or folk who might need maps to find their way.”

September looked at her feet. At the elegant, glittering shoes. The brandy warmed her all over. “I… I need to find my way,” she said.

“I know, little cub. And I’m telling you your way. The way to the bottom of the world, to the Lonely Gaol, where the lions take all the souls the Marquess hates.” Mr. Map leaned forward, licked his pen until it was full of ink, and wedged a jeweler’s glass into his eye so that he could brush in tiny details on the little island map. “You see, September, Fairyland is an island, and the sea that borders it only flows one way. It has always been so, and must always be. The sea cannot be changed in its course. If the Gaol were but offshore from us here in this land, you could not get there by sailing straight. The current does not move that way. You can only reach it by circumnavigating Fairyland entirely, and that is not a small task.”

“You know my name.”

“I know quite a number of things, you’ll find.”

“But surely, there is some place from which it is a short distance! If one could only get on the right side of it.”

“Surely. But I will not take you there.”

“Why ever not?”

Mr. Map looked grieved again. “Ffitthit,” he said softly. “We all have our masters.”

September clenched her fists. She could not bear to think of her friends in a wet, dreary prison. “It’s not fair! I could have gotten her this wretched thing in seven days! She didn’t even give me a chance!”

“September, my calf, my chick, seven days were never seven. They were three, or eight, or one, or whatever she wished them to be. If she wants you at the Lonely Gaol, she has a reason, and you could never have gone anywhere else. And I suspect”-he looked at the copper wrench, twisting his mustache in one great hand-“that she has devised some work for you to do there, with your fell blade. Hello, old friend,” he greeted it, “how strange for us to meet again, like this, with the snow blowing so outside.”

“You know my… my wrench?”

“Of course I know it. It was not a wrench when we were last acquainted, but one’s friends may change clothes and still one knows them.”

“Why does she need me to go all the way to her horrid old Gaol? I have the sword! The lions could have taken it and left us alone!”

“September, these things have their rhythms, their ways. Once the sword is taken up, none but the hand that won it can brandish it true. She cannot touch the sword, not for all the power in both her hands. But you can. And both your hands called it forth, gave it shape, gave it life.”

“I’m really very tired, Mr. Map. Ever so much more tired than I thought I could be.”

Mr. Map signed his parchment with a flourish.

“Ffitthit, sweet kitten. So it always goes.”

September turned to go. Her feet felt heavy. She turned the knob of the great door and listened to the lock whir in the woods. When she opened it, no winter wood glittered outside, but a long shore and a bright sea. Gillybirds cried overhead, wrestling over bits of fish. The tide flowed out foamily from a silver beach, the very opposite from the one she had arrived on. Here, the sand was all manner of silver coins and crowns and sceptres and bars, filigreed diadems and long necklaces set with pearls, and chandeliers glittering with glass. The violet-green sea-the Perverse and Perilous Sea, she reminded herself-beat huge waves against the strand.

“What is a map,” said Mr. Map, “but a thing that gets you where you’re going?”

“The sword,” September whispered, her eyes all full of the sea. “Who had it before me?”

“I think you know. My Lady Mallow kept it.”

“And what was it, when she had it?”

Mr. Map cocked his head to one side. He drank off the last of his hot brandy.

“A needle,” he said softly.

September stepped out of the hut and onto the silver beach.

September could see the current Mr. Map had meant. The sea flowed just offshore, a deeper violet amid the violet waves, fast and cold and deep. She could see it-but she was still only September, and she could not swim all the way around Fairyland. The empty beach stretched far and long, and nowhere hulked a broken ship or raft for her to climb aboard. She had come so far, and for lack of a boat, her friends suffered in who knew what dark place. And Saturday, especially, had such a horror of being closed up and trapped. And Ell! Sweet, enormous Ell! At least, Gaol begins with G-or J, she was not exactly sure. What awful cell could they devise to contain her beast?

She could not leave them there to wait for the Marquess to get angry enough to deal with them. She did not think they would get cozy government posts in the winter wilds. She would simply have to think, and think quickly.

September began to walk through the jeweled, silver beach, searching desperately for real wood, something that might float. But, she thought suddenly, it was all wood once, on the other beach! Wood and flowers and chestnuts and acorns! It’s not really silver or gold at all! The wairwulf said it was Fairy gold! Like in stories when you wake up after selling your soul for a chest of pearls, and it’s all full of mud and sticks! September scrabbled in the flotsam and drew up a huge silver rod tipped in sapphire, something like her long-ago spent sceptre if it had been made by a giant’s hand. She tugged it down to the shoreline and tossed it onto the waves experimentally.

It floated, bobbing happily in the surf.

September yelped in victory and set about hauling several of the log-size sceptres together and lining them up side by side. By the time she had finished, the sun was very high, and she was all sweat from scalp to sole. But how shall I ever lash it together? she despaired. There was no silver rope or filigree wire to be had on all the beach. The distant dune grasses were short and sharp and furry and would never do. Oh, but I’ve just gotten it back, September thought. Surely I could use something else. As if to answer her, September’s hand fell upon the handles of a pair of silver scissors.

Well. If that’s the way of it, that’s the way of it.

She held out the length of her hair, heavy and thick and not red at all, not falling away bit by bit. She did not want to sniffle-what was a little hair? She had already lost it once after all. But that was magic, which could be undone, and this was scissors, which could not. And so, as the scissors sliced smoothly through her hair, she cried a little. Just a tear or two, rolling slowly down her cheek. Somehow, she had thought it would hurt, even though that was silly. She wiped her face clean. September braided her hair into many thin, strong ropes and knotted the sceptres together into a very serviceable raft. She wedged the witch’s Spoon into the center of it as a makeshift mast.

“Now, I really am terribly sorry, Smoking Jacket. You’ve been a loyal friend to me, but I’m afraid you’ll get quite wet, and I must ask you to excuse my using you so.” September sadly secured the mast with the long green sash, and stuffed the jacket into a gap where seawater might come in. The jacket did not mind. It had been wet before. And it liked very much being asked pardon.

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 ever pulled off such a 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 goose bumps.

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

INTERLUDE

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 ophthalmologist’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. Calpurnia 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.