The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [1]
September, I promise you, tried very hard to listen, but the rushing winds kept blowing her dark hair into her face. "I...I think so..." she stammered, pulling her curls away from her mouth.
“Obviously the eating or drinking of Fairy foodstuffs constitutes a binding contract to return at least once a year in accordance with seasonal myth cycles.”
September started. “What? What does that mean?”
The Green Wind stroked his neatly pointed beard. “It means: eat anything you like, precious cherry-child!” He laughed like the whistling air through high branches. “Sweet as cherries, bright as berries, the light of my moony sky!
The Leopard of Little Breezes yawned up and further off from the rooftops of Omaha, Nebraska, to which September did not even wave good-bye. One ought not to judge her: all children are Heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless At All. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown.
And so September did not wave good-bye to her house, or her mother’s factory, puffing white smoke far below her. She did not even wave good-bye to her father when they passed over Europe. You and I might be shocked by this, but September had read a great number of books, and knew that parents are only angry until they have discovered that their little adventurer has been to Fairyland, and not the corner pub, and then everything is alright. Instead, she looked straight into the clouds until the wind made her eyes water. She leaned into the Leopard of Little Breezes, whose pelt was rough and bright, and listened to the beating of her huge and thundering heart.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Sir Wind,” said September after a respectable time had passed, “how does one get to Fairyland? After awhile, we shall certainly pass India and Japan and California and simply come round to my house again.”
The Green Wind chuckled. “I suppose that would be true, if the earth were round.”
“I’m reasonably sure it is…”
“You’re going to have to stop that sort of backwards, old-fashioned thinking, you know. Conservatism is not an attractive trait. Fairyland is a very Scientifick place. We subscribe to all the best journals.”
The Leopard of Little Breezes gave a light roar. Several small clouds skipped huffily out of their path.
“The earth, my dear, is roughly trapezoidal, vaguely rhomboid, a bit of a tesseract, and altogether grumpy when its fur is stroked the wrong way! In short, it is a puzzle, my autumnal acquisition, like the interlocking silver rings your Aunt Margaret bought back from Turkey when you were nine.”
“How did you know about my Aunt Margaret?” exclaimed September, holding her hair back with one hand.
“I happened to be performing my usual noon-time dust-up just then. She wore a black skirt, you wore your yellow dress with the monkeys on it. Harsh Airs have excellent memories for things they have Ruffled.”
September smoothed the lap of her now-wrinkled and rumpled orange dress. She liked anything orange: leaves, some moons, marigolds, chrysanthemums, cheese, pumpkin, both in pie and out, orange juice, marmalade. Orange was bright and demanding. You couldn’t ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird