September gritted her teeth. She liked the feeling of it—of having teeth. “Where are my friends?” she repeated icily.

“Oh, how should I know? We were only told to feed you up and send you into the woods. No one tells us anything unless it’s ‘Mix up Life-in-a-Flask for me, Citrinitas!’ ‘Bake me a Cake of Youth, Trinny!’ ‘Grade these papers!’ ‘Watch that beaker!’ ‘A monograph on the nature of goblins’ riddles, Ci-ci!’ I swear to you, I am finished with postdoctoral work!”

The golden spriggan struck her bony knee with her fist. As she spoke, her voice got higher and higher until it squeaked like a teakettle.

“Anyway, it’s no use interrogating me. I don’t know. But I’ve brought you to the snow, and the snow is the beginning and the end of everything, everyone knows that. I’ve brought you to the snow and the Ministry, and the clerk will … well, mainly he’ll say ‘Ffitthit’ at you. But I expect they’re in the Lonely Gaol, you know, since that’s where the lions take people usually, and that’s far, oh so awfully far, and it won’t do you any good, anyway. Parole was outlawed years ago. And the Gaol is guarded by the Very Unpleasant Man, and you’re just a little girl.”

September’s face burned. She got up and marched over to Citrinitas and crouched next to her. And maybe Lye’s bath, oh so terribly long ago now, really had given her a red, frothy draught of courage, because otherwise she could not imagine where she might have found the gall to hiss at the miserable spriggan, “I am not just a little girl.” Then September straightened up, scowling at the alchemist. “I can get bigger, just like you. Only … it just takes me a little longer.” She turned on her heel, seized her copper wrench, and began to walk over the crystal snow drifts to a little hut nestled between two great yew trees, which could only be the Ministry, or at least, she hoped it was the Ministry, because otherwise she would suddenly look very foolish. She did not look back.

“I’m sorry!” cried Citrinitas after her. “I am! Alchemy really is lovely, once you get past the alchemists…”

September ignored her and walked up the hill, the snow swallowing up the spriggan’s voice.

September breathed relief. The Marquess’s lovely black shoes had gotten soaked with snowmelt. A pleasant sign, freshly painted black and red, rose up out of a snow drift:

THE MARVELOUS MINISTRY OF MR. MAP

(YULETIDE DIVISION)

The hut was covered in white furs and bits of holly, but the bits were placed rather haphazardly, as if someone meant to be festive but got bored and gave up instead. The door was a sturdy thing with a compass rose stamped rudely into the wood. September knocked politely.

“Ffitthit!” came the answer from within. It was an odd sound, like someone spitting and coughing and growling and asking after one’s relations all at once.

“Excuse me! Citrinitas sent me! Please let me in, Sir Map!”

The door cracked.

“It’s mister, kitten. MISTER. Do you see an Order of the Green Kirtle on my chest? Eh? A Crystal Cross? It’d be news to me. Call me by my proper name, good grief and all gallows!”

An old man peered down at her, the bags under his eyes wrinkled like old paper, his hair and long corkscrewed mustache not even white, but the color of old, stained parchment. His skin was lined and brown, and his neatly brushed hair curled in a stately fashion, tied up in a black ribbon, like the old portraits of presidents in September’s schoolbooks. He had a pleasant, jolly belly and broad cheeks—and fat, furry wolf’s ears with a great deal of gray fur in them. He wore a bright blue suit with the cuffs rolled up over impressive forearms, so bright it startled in the midst of the white woods. His forearms were covered in sailors’ tattoos. For a moment, he and September just stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak first.

“Your suit … it’s lovely…,” murmured September, suddenly shy.

Mr. Map shrugged. “Well,” he said, as though it were perfectly logical, “world’s mostly water. Why pretend it’s not?”

September leaned in close, rather closer than is courteous. She saw that his suit was a map, with little lines and bits of writing on it. The buttons of his blazer and his cuff links were green islands, as was his belt buckle, an enormous, sparkling gem, the biggest island of all. September recognized the shape of the buckle. She had seen it, oh so briefly, as she fell from the customs office in the sky. That’s Fairyland, she thought.

Mr. Map left the doorway and went back to his work. September followed him inside. A great easel dominated the little room, on which Mr. Map had been busy painting a sea serpent in a wild ocean bordering a small island chain. Maps covered and cluttered every surface of the hut, topographical maps, geological maps, submarine maps, population-density maps, artistic maps, and scribbled-over wartime maps. The maps left room for only a single chair, the easel, and a table groaning with paints and pens. September shut the door gently behind her. It latched, and somewhere deep in the woods, a lock spun.

“Excuse me, Mr. Map, but the lady alchemist said you’d know where to find my friends?”

“Now why would I know that?” Mr. Map licked his pen—his tongue was all black with ink, and the pen’s bristles filled up with it. He returned to his map. “Seems to me a friend knows best where friends are.”

“They … were taken. By two lions, the Marquess’s lions. She said their strength came from sleeping, but I didn’t understand … I guess I understand now.”

“Do you know where I learned my Art?” Mr. Map said nonchalantly, sipping a hot brandy, which seemed to materialize in his hand. September could swear she had not seen him pick up a snifter from his side table. “Ffitthiiit!” sighed Mr. Map slowly, smacking his lips. “I promise, I waste nothing in asking. Like a ship, I always come round again to where I started.”

“No, Mister. I don’t know.”

“In prison, my kit, my cub! Where one learns anything worth knowing. In prison there is nothing but time, time, time. Time goes on just positively forever. You could master Wrackglummer, or learn Sanskrit, or memorize every poem ever written about ravens (there are exactly seven thousand ninety-four at current count, but a no-talent rat down in the city keeps spoiling my count), and still you’d have so much time on your hands you’d be bored sleepless.”

“Why were you in prison?”

Mr. Map sipped his brandy again. He shut his eyes and shook his glossy curls. He offered his drink to September, who, having given up all pretense of carefulness, took a big gulp. It tasted like burnt walnuts and hot sugar, and she coughed.

“That’s what happens to the old guard, my pup. You can always count on it. We who serve, we who make the world run. When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can’t make it run the other way again.” Mr. Map opened his eyes. He smiled sadly. “Which is to say I once stood at the side of Queen Mallow, and loved her.”

“You were a soldier?”

Tags: Catherynne M. Valente Fairyland Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net