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

A great black road sign reared up, blazing with silver letters: FALLING FORTUNES: EXPECT DELAYS.

September laughed a little. It had seemed harder and longer to get into Fairyland this time. Like a door that has always swung smoothly suddenly sticking. Perhaps Boomer and Beatrice had got the Line sturdy again. Another sign drifted by: CAUTION: YETI CROSSING. This alarmed September, and she held tighter to the green sunflower of the wheel. She could not tell if she was doing the driving or Aroostook or the road itself, but she held on anyhow.

“I hope we won’t find the Moon empty when we get there. I met a whole family of reindeer-girls and reindeer-boys who said they’d once lived on the Moon. The way they talked about it, it seemed like the most wonderful place—but I suppose it was frightening, too. They had to leave, after all.”

The pair of them, car and girl, came up over a rise in the road. A long straightaway opened up before them, miles and miles before curving off and up sharply, the last turnoff to the Moon. Aroostook opened up her throttle and roared out onto the thoroughfare—and sputtered, choked, coughed, and promptly went silent. September caught the wheel before it spun wild. They rolled on a little farther as there was no wind to slow them down, but the engine stayed stubbornly mute.

“What’s happened, Aroostook?” And this was the first time she had used the Model A’s name out loud, if that was her name. “Whether or not you’re alive, you do seem to be acting very strangely, and until I know why, I shall tread very lightly on your feelings—should you have any.”

September clambered out of the car onto the silver paving stones. There was no sound at all on the road to the Moon. The dark air wrapped her head like cold wool. Even when she spoke, the sound seemed to fall apart as soon as it left her lips. The starlight shone down as strong as party lanterns.

“Poor Aroostook, what’s troubling you?”

September opened the hood of the Model A. Bits of paint and rust flaked off and fell, winking, into the blackness below the road. She had been over every cog and pat of grease in that engine with her mother. It was as familiar to her as her own bed. She tugged on her black cap to keep out the cold and tapped her finger on the gas tank. It bonged out a desolate clang.

September sighed heavily. There was a pack of tools in the trunk for fixing just about anything but this. “I expect we used up the whole tank coming across,” she exclaimed. “I know I’m starving! Eating’s always the first trouble in Fairyland.” She patted the Model A’s head-lamp in sympathy. “It feels like you’ve never eaten before and will never get the chance again when you set foot—or wheel!—here. And if I’m hungry, you must have been running on fumes all this while! Well, there’s nothing for it but waiting. Someone else will come along presently—where there’s folk,

there’s always more!”

And so they did. September settled down beside the forlorn Model A, drawing pictures with her fingers in the frost that coated the road. She pulled a few of the pale green fruits from the briar-rails to satisfy her own stomach. She bit slowly, in case they tasted foul. Their pulp glowed oozily—not foul but not sweet, rather like a very juicy onion that had once met a heap of black pepper and had a grand time. Her Criminal’s silks slid against her like hands rubbing her skin to warm it up. September squeezed Aroostook’s horn. Perhaps someone would hear it and put some speed on. The horn wheezed like a throat clearing. It oompahed bravely, but the sound died just a breath beyond the bell of the horn, just as her voice had. It was no longer entirely an oompah, either. The horn sounded hard and urgent, almost like a real voice, but the space ate up all the sound the horn could feed it.

Finally, at last, thankfully, a shape approached, creeping toward the stranded car with incredible slowness down the long crystal straightaway. As it drew nearer, September saw that it was a ship. A real sailing ship, with lines trailing everywhere and a tall, squarish black sail crossed by white poles like bones. Nearer still and it was not so much a galleon or a schooner but a merchant’s barge, flat and broad, its prow a great pair of scissors sticking out point-first. It cut through the still dark air, not sailing but flying, scissor blades lazily opening and closing, eating up the miles. Barnacles of every color crusted the bottom of the boat: honey and lilac and cherry and bottle-green, tiny as pen-points, huge as beer barrels. Holes honeycombed the rudder; striped ultramarine fish with long, fine fins like a girl’s hair swam slowly in and out of them. Even nearer and a mariner, the captain, perhaps, held up a hand in greeting, throwing lines over and wrangling the wheel to come around. The fish in the rudder all darted into their hiding places at once and the sailing barge stopped abruptly, neatly parked alongside them. The mariner peered over the rail. Light from a tall sign crackling with violet sparks scrubbed them all in shine: B.D.’S MOONDOCK SALVAGATION.

The mariner had an otter’s round, furry face, sporting a beard of crusted icicles and whiskers that clinked when they twitched. But her lower half was a long, gnarled fish’s tail, wound around itself as tight as a bolt. Her scales flowed in wild patterns, dull and gray as old metal, dripping with boney, knife-shaped fins. On her shoulders glowed two ancient glass lanterns. Their brass netting had turned green and misshapen with the junk of years. The candles within blazed a pale, uncanny green. A thousand nights of grizzly wax had busted out the lantern panes and spilt onto the creature’s fur, so thick and so much that her chest vanished completely inside a cuirass of the stuff, a hundred shades of white. She wore a battered, threadbare Admiral’s hat all tangled with white seaweed.

Half-buried in the wax of her chest was a stitched nametag. It read: Ballast.

The otter-fish blinked one dark eye slowly, then the other. Her fuzzy cheeks puffed out and she barked up at the crescent Moon. Then she turned her back, a ridge of salt-crusted fins glittering on her spine, and began banging on a thick copper pipe with her fist in time to a rough, grumbly tune.

Bully for Ahab and Blackbeard and I

We’ve got a doomed ship and a death to defy

We’ve got us a maelstrom and a hook in our eye

We’ve got our salt souls all baked up in a pie

Oh, bully for Blackbeard and Ahab and I!

“Pardon me,” began September. “I don’t mean to be any trouble—”

The otter-fish cut off both her song and September. “Ship’s broke,” she sniffed.

“I think it’s lovely!” September protested. The colored barnacles seemed to breathe gently, swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking.

“Not mine, thine. Mine’ll swing anchor at the end of the world.” Ballast threw down a heavy, wet rope. “Yours won’t make tomorrow. Tie her on and we’ll see what we see.”

September hefted the rope and, with much pushing and hauling, got it knotted around Aroostook’s bumper. She caught the salt-caked ladder Ballast humped over the rail and came aboard. Everything on the barge stood very neat and tidy: boxes and barrels and vases and pots and chests, but each one closed, well polished and maintained, and stacked in orderly pyramids. Ballast seemed to have used up her store of neatnickery on her cargo. When she moved, making smart, efficient little hops on her wound-up pewter-colored tail, bits of wax broke off and crumbled away. The barge began to sail again, upbound toward the Moon. The ultramarine fish blossomed out of the lacy rudder once more, their trailing fins floating in space.

And a moment later, Aroostook, too, was floating in space, trailing behind the salvagation barge as a winch slowly hauled it the rest of the way on board.

The great rope lashed barnacled barge and rusty Ford together into one awkward vessel. Ballast rubbed her furry cheeks. Her pelt was the color of good, old rum.

“Do you know anything about cars?” said September shyly, once they were away.

The otter-fish blinked her eyes again. “If that’s what you want to call your ship, then I know everything there is to know. And ship is just another word for what bears you up and keeps you safe. So if you stop your yapping I’ll do yours. It’s my job, anywhat. Ballast Downbound, that’s me, B.D.’s Moondock Salvagation, sundries and subtleties, answer to every SOS and IOU.”

September clapped her chilled hands in relief. “How lucky that you happened along!”