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

“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.