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

CHAPTER XVI
UNTIL WE STOP

In Which September Feeds Herself by Gruesome Means

“I shall catch a fish, just see how I do!” cried September to no one but the moon. The moon, for his part, smiled behind one white hand and tried to look very serious.

But September had been thinking about the problem of a hook, and when she had her lock of hair tied up to the wrench again, she suddenly seized the hilt of the wrench and brought it banging down on the curlicued head of one of the silver sceptres. The wrench, eager for something to do, quite crushed the wand’s head, and bits of metal flew over the deck of the raft. September picked out a likely shard and knotted it into her long, braided strands of hair.

“Now for bait,” she said, “which I’ve none of at all.”

September suddenly cursed herself for not having thought to save a few berries from the beach.

“No points for ought to have,” she sighed.

September pushed the makeshift hook into the pad of her thumb until she could not help but yelp in pain. Blood welled up, and she rubbed the hook in it, all over, until it shone red. Her eyes watered, but she did not cry. The sound of her stomach was louder than the pain of her thumb. Slowly, she sunk the bloody hook into the water, and waited.

Fishing, as many of you know, is a very tedious activity. Fish are stubborn and do not like to be killed and eaten. One has to stay very still, so still one almost falls asleep, and even then no fish might come. Even the moon busied himself elsewhere, watching a pine forest full of martens and Harpies chase each other round in circles. The stars moved overhead, racing on their long silver track, and still, September sat, her line in the water, patient as death.

Finally, the line went taut and tugged beneath the mild waves. September leapt up. “What have I caught?” she cried with excitement. “What will it be? Why, this is like Christmas, when you’ve no idea what might be in the packages!”

September hauled hard on the wrench and fell backward as her prize flew up onto the deck. It was pink, the very color of a pink crayon, and its eyes bulged huge and emerald. It gaped pitifully, suddenly forced to contend with air instead of water. September felt sorry for it, all in a rush.

“I know you don’t want to be eaten,” she said wretchedly. “And I don’t want to eat you! But it’s been two days now, and I must have something!”

The fish gaped.

“If only you were a magic fish, you could grant a wish, and I could have more of the lovely spriggans’ feast-or Ell’s radishes.”

The fish sucked at the air but found no sea to breathe there.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered finally. “I don’t want to chew up another creature just to keep on for another day! You’re alive. But I’m alive, too! Alive doesn’t much care about anything but staying that way. Just like you meant to eat my blood, and that’s why you were caught. I suppose I ought to stop talking. I don’t think you are a magic fish.”

September did not know anything about killing fish, really. Her mother and grandfather usually did that part. But she could think logically enough. She brought the hilt of the wrench down hard on the pink fish’s head. She shut her eyes at the last moment, though, and missed. Twice more and she had it, though she quite wished she hadn’t. However, September knew that was not the worst part. You couldn’t just bite into a fish. The guts had to come out. Wincing, not wanting to watch what her hands were doing, September took up the hook and brought it down on the fish’s soft pink belly. The skin was tougher than she thought, and she had to saw at it. Her hands got quite soaked in blood, which looked black in the moonlight. Finally, she got the belly open and reached inside, where it was warm and slimy, and she was crying by then, big, hot tears rolling down her face and into the ruined fish. With one pull, she hauled the fish’s organ parts out and threw them overboard, sobbing on her knees over her supper.

You mustn’t think poorly of her for crying. Up until that moment, fish had mainly come into her life filleted, cooked, and salted with lemon juice on top. It is a hard thing to be starving and alone with no one to show you how to do it right. She got such sprays of blood on her face and on her knees.

September had no way to cook it. The sodden smoking jacket wanted to make fire for her, but that was beyond its power. The moon wished her a hearth but had to content himself with watching the young girl, kneeling on her raft as the sea rushed by around her and she pulled raw fish from the bone in strips. September ate slowly, deliberately. Some instinct told her that she had to have the blood, too, for at sea water is so scarce. It took her until morning to eat the fish. She wept all the while, a terrible circuit, all the water she drank from the fish pouring out again.

Just before dawn, September spied the shark’s fin. Something deep in the ancestral memories of humans quakes in sight of a shark’s fin, even if that human grew up in Omaha and never saw a shark in all her days. It rose dark and sharp in the pearly gloaming just before the sun peeked up. The fin made a long, lazy circle around September’s raft. The wind was utterly calm. September’s dress hung slack on the Spoon-mast. Little ripples glinted in the water, and the current moved her along, but it had been slow going for several hours, and September had slept. But now she was awake, and the stars were winking out one by one, and in the distance, the unmistakable triangle of a shark’s head circled slowly, unconcerned.

This sort of thing happens in pirate stories, September remembered. As soon as someone goes overboard, voilà! Sharks. But I am not a pirate. But then, pirates are often eaten by sharks. So perhaps I shall not have a pirate’s luck with them if I do not have a cutlass or a feathered hat?

It circled closer, and September could see its shadow in the water. It did not seem huge, but certainly big enough. Perhaps it was a baby and would leave her alone.

It circled still closer. September scrunched up into the center of the raft, as far as she could get from water on all sides, which was not very far at all. Finally, it circled so close to the raft that it jostled the sceptres, and September cried out fearfully. She held the wrench ready to whack the shark as hard as she might, her knuckles white on the handle. If they all want to call it a sword, she thought, I’ll use it as one! She was quite wild with terror.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t eat me. I’m sorry I ate the fish.”

The shark swam lazily around the raft. It rolled up a little, showing its black belly-for the shark was all black, with a few wild golden stripes running down the side, and its eyes were golden, too, rolling up out of the water to stare mercilessly at September.

“Why are you sorry?” it said softly, its voice rasping and rough. “I eat fish. That’s what fish are for.”

“I daresay you think that’s what little girls are for, too.”

The shark blinked. “Some of them.”

“And who eats you?”

“Bigger fish.”

The shark kept swimming around the raft, rolling up toward the breaking surf to speak.

“Are you going to eat me?”

“You ought to stop talking about eating. It’s making me hungry.”

September shut her mouth with a little snap. “You’re making me dizzy with all your swimming in circles,” she whispered.

“I can’t stop,” the shark rasped. “If I stop, I shall sink and die. That’s the way I’m made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I’m going, I’ll have to keep on. That’s living.”

“Is it?”

“If you’re a shark.”

September rubbed at the blood on her knee. “Am I a shark?” she said faintly.

“You don’t look like one, but I’m not a scientist.”

“Am I dreaming? This feels like a dream.”

“I don’t think so. I could bite you, to see if it hurts.”

“No, thank you.” September looked out at the flat gray water, all severe and stark in the sunrise. “I have to keep going,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“I have to keep going, so that I can keep going after that, forever and ever.”

“Not forever.”

“Why haven’t you eaten me, shark? I ate the fish; I ought to be eaten.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“But you’re a shark. Eating is what you do.”

“No. I swim. I roar. I race. I sleep. I dream. I know what Fairyland looks like from underneath, all her dark places. And I have a daughter. Who might have died, but for a girl in an orange dress who traded away her shadow. A shadow who might have known not to mourn over fish.”

September stared. “The Pooka girl?”

The shark rolled over entirely in the water, her huge fin rearing up out of the waves and slicing down again. “We all just keep moving, September. We keep moving until we stop.” The shark broke off and plowed through a sudden, heavy swell that soaked September in its crashing. Just as she dove under the surf, September could see the great black tail shiver into legs, disappearing beneath the violet sea.