The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Fairyland 3)

By now, my dear friends, you know me better.

And so September tried to put an expression of a very proud, noble, solemn adultish sort of wonder on her face, because it was a trick she felt she ought to learn. But that is a lot to contain in two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and she really only managed her own unhidable leaping, fizzing joy—yet this time the joy was a silent one. It jangled inside her but did not boil over. To be back in Fairyland. To be near magic and thrillingness again. To be in a place where she did not have to lie about the things she wanted most of all—because they were here, and she could touch them and talk with them and wrestle with them and ride upon them.

But there was no one to praise September for her restraint.

And where was here? It looked so terribly familiar, but September could be quite sure she had never run down a road of vellum or called up to the tip-tops of scroll-towers before. And run she did, to catch the puffins and the Blue Wind and Mr. Albert’s poor car who hadn’t asked to be bothered with any of this trouble! Her jar of coins rattled and jingled loudly in the canyon of pillars. But hadn’t she heard the wind whistling like that before? Hadn’t she smelled that dry, sweet smell on the breeze?

Fortunately, now that they’d jumped the Line, the flock of puffins didn’t seem to be in any great hurry. The glossy throng of them burst apart, save those hoisting up the stolen automobile on their ice-armored backs. A few shot ahead up toward the sun, cannonballs with orange beaks. Little birdy bullets of pearl and ink fired and spun out to land upon whatever they could find in that wild place. As September bolted up over a rise in the papery road, she found what they found: a little shantytown laid out among the pillars, every rooftop and chimney colonized by the squat, chattering birds.

The road ran smoothly, straight into the village, whose back bunched up against the mountains. The peaks beyond flowed up to impossible heights, traceries of text and compasses and old, old ink disappearing into the distance. A boardwalk ran from the main avenue into the town proper, each slat on the path the fold of a long, thick, heavy map, hanging the way they did in libraries, draped over strong bars so as not to crease or wrinkle. The slats showed the blue of strange oceans, every one. September scrambled to a stop before a ramp up onto the boardwalk: an atlas the size of a boat, open to its frontispiece, which read:

MERCATOR, TOWN OF.

FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED 1203.

EDITOR: KING CRUNCHCRAB

I.

LAYOUT AND DESIGN: CADASTRAL CROSSHATCH, ESQ.

ALL PERSONS, EVENTS, CRIMES AND CRIMINALS, MAGIC, MAYHEM, AND THREATS OF BODILY HARM USED BY PERMISSION.

VISITORS OF LOW REPUTATION REPORT TO THE WAY STATION IMMEDIATELY.

ALL OTHERS KEEP OUT.

“Well, I don’t think I have a low reputation!” opined September, catching her breath.

A wild, bouncing laugh prevented her from further defending her character. September startled: Up above her, crouching on the rim of a spindly, spirally chimney, the Blue Wind pointed at her and kept on laughing.

“Oh, my little sour blueberry, you are just adorable when you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The Blue Wind sprang out from the chimney like a bat. She spread her arms for the briefest moment, then pirouetted down to the ground before September. She clapped her blue hands.

“Even if you hadn’t entirely deposed (and possibly killed) not one but two governments and destabilized all sorts of political regions you couldn’t even pronounce, let alone draft up constitutional monarchies for, even if you’d been far more careful about leaving your toys strewn about everywhere when you tire yourself out with anarchy and run on home, I’d say you really are the lowest sort.” The Blue Wind grinned wickedly. Her purple lips shone. “A hitchhiker.”

“I didn’t hitch!”

“Oh, come off yourself! You could never have got through without me! When have you ever gotten into Fairyland by your lonesome? Never, because you can’t, because you are a person and people are boring and boring means you.” The Blue Wind crossed her brocaded arms over her chest, quite satisfied with her logic.

This struck September like a slap. She remembered, suddenly, that the Blue Wind was not loved by her brothers and sisters. The Green Wind had said so, she was quite sure. “You’re teasing me. A Wind wouldn’t call such names. Winds are…well, not kind, but at least they aren’t cruel!”

The Blue Wind arched one aquamarine eyebrow. “Have you never known a cruel wind? What an easy, balmy, tropical life you must have! I never tease, madam! I coax, I beguile, I stomp, I throw tantrums, and for certain I freeze—I am the Coldest and Harshest of all the Harsh Airs! I am the shiver of the world! But I do not tease. You can cause ever so much more trouble by taking folk seriously, asking just what they’re doing and doing just what they ask.” Her blue eyes glittered. A puffin circled down and landed on her shoulder. He marched back and forth (a very cramped sort of marching) with an icy poleax in his wing.

September burst forth. “You were supposed to come and get me! You were supposed to bring me to Fairyland in the spring! Or if not you one of the others! The Green Wind promised—he promised I’d go back every year and you didn’t come and now you’re just snapping like an old dog. You don’t seem like a Wind at all, in fact! Where is your cat? Shouldn’t you like stealing folks away? You certainly seem to like stealing everything else!”

The Blue Wind put her hands on her lilac hips. Her voice tightened into a squall.

“Listen, you spoiled, wretched gust of a girl,” she snarled, “I am not public transportation! Haven’t you become the jaded little tart! Accustomed to getting what you want and wanting what you’ve gotten accustomed to.” The Wind puffed out her cheeks like a cherub and calmed herself down. She looked out over the boardwalk as if she had much better things to do and to drink. “Expectations are so very dangerous to young humans. I wouldn’t give my worst hat for the way my siblings manage their affairs. I don’t even attend the reunions. I go my own way—and don’t they punish me for it! They took my Snow Leopard away over that nonsense in Tunisia, if you must roll out my embarrassment first thing. Hypocrites, the lot of them. As if they’ve never turned the world the wrong way round just to see it fly! But I never let it get to me. I keep my head high! My puffins are quite the equal of their snobby old tabbies. The Puffins of Sudden Blizzards, my little army. Winter needs her knights, after all.” The Blue Wind saluted the stalwart fellow on her shoulder. He saluted back with the tip of his poleax. “No, I do not think I would like to steal you away to Fairyland. I thought about it for a good long while, all through the summer. I watched you scuttle around boringly and put my brain on it and I think I just don’t like you very much. Fairyland has spoiled you rotten. I suppose you think you’re owed the trip! The cheek! It’s time for you to be a sensible, gracious girl, get good marks, and stop mucking about with Fairylands of any stripe. Learn a trade, hit the road, close the case.”

September opened her mouth to protest, panic rising up through her legs and stomach like a stormcloud. What a cruel Wind this was! She did not like her manner at all. September had never thought she was owed anything—but hadn’t she? Hadn’t she felt angry when May passed and the whole summer, too, and nothing, not even a whisper? Hadn’t she felt, well, betrayed? But who had ever promised September anything? You can only feel betrayed when you have a right to something. Chagrin seeped up through September’s toes and all the way to her cheeks.

The Blue Wind barked laughter. She reached down swiftly and gave September’s cheek the tiniest of slaps. It struck her like a cold word. September stared, dumbfounded, her mouth hanging open.

“She who blushes first loses!” the Wind crowed. “I win and that’s the match!”

September lifted her hand to her face. She had been struck only once before. One of the older girls in school, whose name was Martha May and who had the thickest, brightest, prettiest red hair anywhere, had walked up to her at lunchtime one day and slapped her. It wasn’t a hard slap; at the last moment Martha May shut her eyes and didn’t land it quite right. Her fingers brushed September’s cheek and her ear. But it stung all the same. Martha’s friends had dared her; through her tears and hammering heart September could see them laughing under their hands, which is how folk laugh when they know they oughtn’t be laughing. Martha May had stood there for a moment, looking really rather sorry and not at all sure why she’d done it, in the end. But then she laughed and ran off back to her pack, her red curls awfully bright in the sun.