The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland 1)

Pandemonium spread out around her, a city of cloth. Bright storefronts ran on ahead of them, built with violet crinoline and crimson organdy. Towers wound up in wobbly twists of stiff, shining brocade. Memorial statues wore felt helmets over bombazine faces. High, thin, fuzzy houses puffed out angora doors; fancy taffeta offices glimmered under the gaze of black-lace gargoyles. Even the broad avenue they stood on was a mass of ropy, pumpkin-colored grosgrain. And there! That crooked, creased, ancient leather obelisk must be Groangyre Tower! The warm wind filled a coppery satin balloon at the tip-top of the tower and blew it up into a fine cupola.

The woven scarlet path at their feet waited patiently, indulging their country gawking.

“She couldn’t have done it all by herself!” gasped September.

A-Through-L shrugged. “Fierce was her needle, and she wore it like a sword. Wielded it, too! Brandished, even! Woven things are so warm, she said, so kind and home-like. But all that was so terribly long ago. The Marquess would like to change it, of course, turn it all to stone tied up in brambles, but all the brick-wights long ago learned to spin thread and knit alleyways and forgot their old trades, and even Marquesses cannot have their way in all things.”

A little sound rustled up from the patient path, something like a cough, if fabric that wove itself could cough. In fact, September noticed, a great number of linen paths wound out in front of folk as they hurried past, all of different colors, cobalt and ochre and silver and rose, busily weaving through side streets and thoroughfares, dodging carriage traffic, buskers squeezing accordions with four arms, barkers advertising roasted melons and fresh fennel bouquets for the discerning lover. Pedestrians—hoofed and web-footed and eight-legged and more—confidentl

y ran after their paths. And on each burlap street corner, a smaller version of their own Switchpoint worked busily away.

Their little red path grew even redder as September and Ell embarrassed it by standing still.

September laughed and ran ahead, grinning into the Pandemonium sun. The path leapt up and wove swiftly on, barely missing a lavender crepe streetlight and barreling right through a pair of imps haggling over a bar of green algae. A-through-L thundered after her, squashing the linen as he bounded down the street (which possessed the name Onionbore) while all and sundry hurried to get out of his way.

The scarlet path led them more or less north-ish, and though September loved the chase and the smell of broiling maple blossoms and brewing lime liquor, she could not help but notice that every alley and avenue they sped through seemed to point directly at a small unassuming building covered in wide, fluttering golden flowers—not silk flowers but real ones that covered walls and fences of green briars and black thorns. The only house in Pandemonium that grew and lived and was not sewn. Something about it glowed strange and baleful. September did not like to look at it. Ell could not help looking. But mercifully, the scarlet path stopped short and began unraveling itself backward, the way they had come, neatly balling up its excess thread as it went.

A rose-colored jacquard building leaned over them, its walls embossed with fine flowers and paisleys and curlicues. A great sign arched over the doorway. In flashing green lights it read, THE SILVER SHUTTLE NICKELODEON.

One of the green bulbs guttered a little.

“Are those electric lights?” asked September.

“Of course,” said Ell softly, as if in awe of the flickering glow. “Fairyland is a Scientifick place.”

“I suppose the Marquess did that, too.”

“No; in fact, she abhors electricity. The Royal Inventors’ Society did it. A terrible racket went up for days out of Groangyre. The lightning sylphs were complicit somehow. They made a mysterious sort of bargain with the glass ghouls and voilà—electricks! Modernity is certainly a fascinating thing. The Marquess said it was wicked, but if we wanted to engage in such un-Fairy-like behavior, it was our funeral. This is still a brave place, September. In the shadow of the Briary, it defies her.” Ell peered into the cool, shadowy lobby, rich with velvet and plush and brass banisters. “And they serve lemon ices.”

September chipped off another pair of her sceptre’s rubies to gain admission to a film called The Ifrit and the Zeppelin. She passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bellhop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree’s, sticking out bushily from beneath her cap. Also because dryad begins with D and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. The dryad’s eyes shone silver. She had very plump cheeks and smiled both when September asked for tickets and when she paid her rubies.

Shyly, September said, “If you are a dryad, where is your tree? Are you terribly unhappy here, so far from the forest?”

The ticket dryad laughed, and the sound of it was a little like rain falling on leaves. “Didn’t you know, little love? Film is made with camphor, which is a tree. In the cinnamon family, to be exact, which is large and boisterous and gossipy. I run the projector, and my trees run through my fingers all day long! Just because a thing is transparent and silvery and comes in big reels, doesn’t mean it’s not a tree.”

Thankfully, the theatre was generous and the ceiling high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and daintily licked his lemon ice. The lights lowered. September leaned forward, munching popped pomegranate seeds from a little striped box. It’s dryad food, really, she thought. I shall certainly be all right.

At home, she loved the movies. She loved sitting in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to begin. Especially, the tragic and frightening movies in which ladies fainted dead away and monsters roared up out of the dark. Like in that cartoon her mother had taken her to see when she was very small, in which the dark-haired princess ran away into the terrible forest and the owls flew at her and pecked at her hands. That was wonderful—because the world was suddenly alive and excited and wanted things just the way September herself sometimes wanted things. Even if the world seemed mainly not to want a princess bothering it. September had not liked the princess so much, either, as she had a high, breathy voice she found deeply annoying. But the owls and the mines and the flashing eyes in the wood—that she had liked. And now she was in the woods, really and truly, with the flashing eyes all around her. What could Fairy movies possibly be like?

“The Associated Pressed Fairy Moveable Gazette Proudly Presents: News from Around Fairyland!” announced a pleasant female voice as the screen flickered into life. Oh, jeez, thought September. A newsreel. This is what happens when grown-ups run the movies. Can we not skip straight to a dark-haired princess being beset by things?

“The wedding of Ghiyath the Jann and Rabab the Marid was celebrated with much pomp on the magnetized Arctic shores Tuesday,” continued the smooth, sweet announcer. “Witches present brewed a bouillabaisse of a long and interesting marriage: five children (one a mermaid), a friendly sort of unfaithfulness for all involved, and an early death for Ghiyath, followed by an extended and scandalous widowhood for Rabab.”

A huge man with skin like desert sand embraced a woman passionately, one flaming hand on her foaming hair, one arm around her sea-slick waist. She wore a dress of anemones that opened and closed. A few similarly wet folk reclined on clouds, applauding, polite and bored. The scene was in black and white, and September slumped back in her chair, impatient for the Ifrit and her zeppelin.

“An exhibit of artifacts from the moon opens Sunday at the Municipal Museum. Scientists have discovered the moon is, in fact, made of pearl and are even now investigating the method by which it is attached to the firmament and what benefits lunar research might reveal for Fairies like you.”

A proud-looking spriggan with a thin, curved nose demonstrated how a piece of moon rock could be dissolved in a mysterious solution. He dropped the stone into a crystal beaker with a three-fingered claw and drank down the draught completely. The scene cut away before any effect might be seen.

“The Changeling Recital at Dandydown Hall went off splendidly last week, featuring an orchestra of violins, oboes, one piano, a nickelstave, two tubas, a lorelei, and a full grummellphone section. The children played Agnes Buttercream’s famous Elegy for Reindeer and Roc’s Egg in D Minor. The conductor unwisely chose a rousing encore of Ode to Queen Mallow’s Third Fingernail, however, and riot police were called to the scene.”

A host of children in prim black clothing played their instruments furiously on a stage shaped like a huge oak leaf. They all wore identical shoes, which seemed painfully small and tight on their little feet: mary janes very much like September’s. A little piece of sad, gentle music played, sashaying into something brighter and livelier, before two unhappy-looking kobolds lifted the conductor unceremoniously off of the stage. The goblins seemed far too strong for their slight height.

“The performance culminated in the righteous punishment of several greenlisted musicians, who certainly deserved whatever they got.”

The same kobolds—or near cousins—hauled several terrified-looking Satyrs onto the flickering gray stage and made them stomp their pan-pipes underfoot. A man in a top hat and mustache brandished a whip menacingly before the scene went dark.

“And finally, our beloved Marquess has concluded a treaty with the Island-Country of Buyan, bringing prosperity and order to both. We here at the AP extend our praise and adulation to the Lovely Monarch.”