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

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 th

e 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 retu

rned 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.

CHAPTER XV