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

THE ISLAND OF THE NASNAS

In Which September Runs Aground, Learns of the Vulnerabilities of Folklore, and Is Half Tempted

It was not so much that September came upon an island as that she had a bit of an accident with an island. She cannot be entirely blamed. The current ran right into the little isle, and even if she had been awake and at the tiller, she might not have been able to avoid it. As things stood, September awoke with her ship tangled in a bramble of lilies and seagrass and spiky cream-colored flowers she could not name. It was not the collision that had woken her, but all the perfume of that thin beach, drifting out with the tide. Her mouth was thick and dry, her belly empty, and the sun beat at her head. The violet salt of the sea caked her arms and cheeks. She looked, in fact, entirely a mess.

If there are folk here, I ought to make myself fit for company, September thought, and she set about taking down her sail, which was by now quite sodden with seawater and not at all nice to wear. She shook out her green smoking jacket and tied it on, and lastly, with much frowning, slid the Marquess’s shoes back on her feet, though she did not like doing so. But roses have thorns and girls have feet, and the two do not get along. September still felt wet and sore, but she thought she might be more or less respectable-looking. She bent in the flowery shore and searched for berries, any sort that might make a breakfast. She found a few round hard pinkish things that tasted a bit of salt and grapefruit rind. Can’t ask them all to taste of blueberry cream and be knocked off a tree by a Wyverary for me, she thought, and with the thought of Ell, slumped.

“I’m alone again,” she whispered. “Just me and the sea and not much of anything else. Oh, how I wish my friends were here! I am coming, I promise, it’s only that I must eat something and drink fresh water, or I shall not make it round the horn of Fairyland at all.”

“N’ whol al,” said a quiet voice. September started and looked round.

A lady stood uncertainly by, looking as if she might run at any moment—if indeed she could run, for the lady was truly only half a lady. She was cleanly cut in half lengthwise, having only one eye, one ear, half a mouth, half a nose. It did not seem to trouble her any. Her clothes had been made to fit her shape, lavender silk trousers with only one leg, a pale blue doublet—or singlet—with only one padded sleeve. Half a head of hair tumbled down her side, colored like night.

“What?” said September. The one-legged woman flushed and hopped backward a little, ducking her half face into a high yellow collar.

“Oh, I don’t mean to be rude—I didn’t understand you, is all!”

“Ot ly one,” tried the lady again, and then leapt away on her one leg, bounding up the beach and over a tangled heath that led into the center of the island. She hopped gracefully, as if it were the most natural way of moving invented. Little black flowers wavered in her wake.

Now, September knew she ought to stay straight on course and never turn aside until she reached the Lonely Gaol. But one cannot simply say mysterious things and then run off! That’s practically begging to be followed. September’s feet were already scrambling up through the heath before her mind could worry about her little ship or what terrible clock might be ticking toward a miserable prison at the bottom of the world. She was off and running, calling after the half-lady, so thirsty she thought her throat might catch on fire. We must simply count ourselves lucky that she remembered her wrench and did not leave it to be carried off by some enterprising turtle.

The island was not great or broad, and September might well have caught the lady, but that both of them ran right into the center of a village before a victor could be declared in their race. September understood immediately that the strange creature was home—all the houses were cut neatly in half. Arranged in a gentle half circle, each sweet, small green-grass house had half windows and half doors and half roofs of coral tile, each and everything precisely and deliberately built for half a soul. Half a great edifice stood at one end of the long village green, with half pillars and half stairs all of silver. The lady ran full tilt toward a young man, tall and half formed just as she was. His trousers, too, were silk and purple, his collar yellow and high. The two joined—smack!—at the seam, and she turned to face September. A glowing line ran down their bodies where the join had been made.

“Not wholly alone,” said the creature, in a voice neither male nor female. “That’s what I said. You are not wholly alone.”

“Oh!” said September simply, and sat down on the smooth green. Now that she had run all that way, she was quite beside herself with tiredness and strangeness. If only she could get a drink of water! She would not mind half a glass.…

“When I am myself, I cannot speak as you would understand me. I can only say half my words. I need my twin to speak to outsiders—not that you are an outsider!”

“I rather think I am!”

“All things being equal,” the half-lady continued in her same soft voice, “outsiders are to keep to the outside. But we can see you are one of us.”

“One of … who?”

“The Nasnas. The half-a-whole, whom the gods saw fit to bisect. I am Nor. My brother is Neither.” The two of them bowed in perfect unison, the glowing line between them intact.

“My name is September, but I’m not a … a Nasnas.”

“And yet you’ve been cut in half.”

“But I haven’t!” September clutched at her chest to be sure.

“You have no shadow,” said Neither/Nor, wandering away up toward the great silver half-palace. “Half of you is gone,” she called over her shoulder.

September scrambled after her.

“It’s no bother to me not to have a shadow,” she panted, trying to keep up with the hopping Neither/Nor as she bounded over a tangled heath. “But it must be terribly difficult to live without a left part!”

“All Nasnas are twins. I have a left part. It is only that he is not attached to me. Much as your shadow is not attached to you, but off and having its own adventures, singing its own shadow songs, eating feasts of shade and gloam. It’s still your shadow, even if you are not bound to it. And, perhaps, it is a bother to it, to be separated from you. One must always be considerate of one’s other half.”

Nor shuddered, and the glowing seam between her and her brother went dim. She leapt away from him and caught the hand of a passing girl, spinning her like a dance partner. The two leapt up and joined as Nor and her brother had done. “Not!” the new creature cried to itself. “It’s been too long!” A new Nor turned toward September, almost a normal woman, but for the seam in her face. Her voice was different, too, higher, more musical.

“Of course, one may have a number of other halves,” Nor said with a grin. “We have always felt sorry for those who are forced to be only one person, forever and ever until they die. My brother and I are Neither/Nor, my sister and I are Not/Nor, and on and on the combinations go, sharing dreams and labor and life. We are halves, but we make an infinite whole.”

“I’m … not like that,” whispered September. She could not say why they frightened her, but the Nasnas lady and her many siblings made her feel more unsure and unsettled than even Death had. “Why are you like that?”

“Why do you have two legs? Why is your hair brown?”