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

September looked into the Marquess’s shining blue eyes. “But I would have. To save my friends. I would have done whatever you asked.”

“No,” answered the Marquess ruefully. “Not this. Not even to save them. Believe me, September, I have thought on these matters a great deal. I have made calculations that would beggar your soul. What is it that villains always say at the end of stories? ‘You and I are more alike than you think.’ Well”—the Marquess took September’s hand in hers and very gently kissed it—“we are. Oh, how alike we are! I feel very warmly toward you, and I only want to protect you, as I wish someone had protected me. Come, September, look out the window with me. It’s not a difficult thing. A show of faith, let’s call it.”

September allowed herself to be led to one of the sheer crystal walls. Gleam followed silently, flashing with anxiety. Below them, the sea crashed away, sending up spray and spume. The Marquess held up her hand—and the sea calmed, drew aside, all in a moment. The sky cleared in a widening circle, like an iris. Stars beamed through—and half a moon. And where the sea had been were huge stone shapes in the water, turning at a creeping pace. Click. The shapes had wide square teeth like gears. Gears of ancient stone, enormous and inexorable. Click. They turned against one another. Click.

“What are they?” September asked.

“The Gears of the World. We are within the secret heart of Fairyland, September. The current that moves through the sea begins and ends here. And more than that—so much more.”

The Marquess raised her hand again, and the sea drew farther away. September watched as the stone gears ground into something else—iron gears, more deliberately made, sharper.

“This is the place where your world joins ours. Where the human world touches Fairyland, just for a moment. This place is all that allows folk to travel—only occasionally and by strange roads—from one place to another. The touch of the iron makes Fairies weaker, so that they cannot storm over your world and subdue it. The stone keeps humans at bay. But some can pass through. Without that brief kiss of iron and stone, the worlds would uncouple and separate entirely. No one would ever get trapped here or in the human world. No child could be stolen and replaced with a goblin, or worse, replaced with nothing and her mother left to mourn. No one would ever get lost.”

“Oh…”

“You see, don’t you? What you have to do.”

“I don’t want to.”

“But it is the right thing. Take up thy mother’s sword, September, the only girl in Fairyland who could have pulled a wrench from that casket, whose mother could have known and loved machines, engines, tools. As soon as you told me about her, I knew, I just knew that we were meant to find one another, here, at the end of everything. Uncouple the worlds, September. Tear them apart so that no one can ever again drag a poor, lost child across the boundaries and abandon them here without a friend in the world.”

CHAPTER XIX

CLOCKS

In Which All Is Revealed

“Surely the Wrench is too small,” said September.

“I told you,” coaxed the Marquess, her hair full of storm colors, violet and gray. “It is not a wrench. It is a sword, impossibly old. It will be whatever size you need it to be.”

“But … then there would be no more adventures. No more Fairies in my world to tell stories about, and no humans here to know what a Wyvern looks like. No more fairy tales at all, for where would they come from?”

“No more Fairies making mischief, spoiling beer and cream, stealing children, eating souls. No more humans meddling with Fairyland, mucking up its politics and tracking mud all over the floor.”

“And I should not ever be able to go home.”

“That is why I had to go to such lengths to bring you here, to show you Fairyland as it really is. It is a sacrifice I ask of you, September. A very great one, I know. But you must do it, for all the other children to come.” The Marquess’s hair seeped indigo. “Besides, it shouldn’t be that hard. You didn’t even wave good-bye to your father, shooting at people in some awful battlefield! You didn’t think of your mother at all! You don’t want to go home, not really. Stay here and play with me. I will let your friends free, and we can all dance together through the snow and the storm. I know such wonderful games.”

September might have cried a week ago, ashamed at how she had treated her mother and father. But she was wrung dry of tears now.

“I won’t,” she said firmly. “It was wrong of me not to say good-bye. That does not mean it is right to put an end to everything. How awful it would be to say that no other child should ever get to see what I have seen. To ride on a Wyvern and a highwheel, to meet a witch.”

The Marquess frowned. Her hair shivered into a frosty white. “I suspected you would say that. You are selfish, after all, and heartless, like all children. But allow me to make my argument?”

Iago, the Panther of Rough Storms, appeared silently at her side as though he had always been there. He purred.

September, her skin finally and slowly warming in the hall, allowed the Marquess to pull her onto Iago’s back, where an onyx saddle bore her up. She could not help but think of the Leopard and the Green Wind as the monarch of Fairyland settled in behind her and put her arms around September’s waist.

Gleam hesitated:

She will lie to you.

“I know,” September sighed. “But how else will Saturday see the sun again? Or Ell?”

I am one hundred and twelve years old.

That is a long time. I know her—