The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [29]
September had time to think: oh, this will hurt before the Glashtyn seized her, spun her around, and sawed the knife back and forth along her spine. She felt cold and faint. The knife made noises like shredding silk and grinding bone. She thought she might topple over, the pain was so terrible, running up and down her back. Still, she refused to cry. Finally, there was a sickening crack, and the Glashtyn pulled away with a scrap of something in his hand. A single drop of September’s blood dripped from the knife to the bleached wood of the deck.
The Glashtyn set the scrap of something down before him. It pooled darkly, shining a little, and then stood up in the shape of a girl just September’s height, with just September’s eyes and hair, all of black smoke and shadow. Slowly, the shadow-September smiled and pirouetted on one foot. It was not a gentle smile, or a kind one. The shadow extended her hand to the Glashtyn, who took it, smiling himself.
“We shall take her below and love her put her at the head of our parades,” he said. “For she was not taken, but given, and thus our only true possession.”
The shadow curtsied. To September, the curtsey seemed somewhat vicious, if a curtsey could be vicious. September was unsure that she had done the right thing now--surely she would miss her shadow, and surely the Glashtyn meant to make mischief with it, of some sort or another. But it was too late--the Glashtyn leapt over board as one, with the shadow-September riding on the leader’s shoulders. The Fairy throng stared at her, amazed. No one would speak to her. A-through-L finally strode across the deck to gather her up. He smelled so good and familiar, and his skin was so warm. She hugged his knee.
“Did I do the right thing, Charlie?” September asked the ferryman softly.
He shook his mad grey head. “Right or blight, done is dusted.”
September looked across the water at the gleaming city rising up, all towers and shine. Then, she looked down into the Barleybroom.
Six dark horse heads glided through the water at the head of the ferry, bits clamped in their teeth. Over their backs, a shadow girl leapt and danced, her ghostly laughter all but eaten up by the waves.
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Interlude: The Key and Its Travels
In Which We Turn Our Attention to a Long-Forgotten and Much-Suffering Jeweled Key.
Being careful and clever readers, you must now wonder if your woolgathering narrator has completely forgotten the jeweled key that so loyally followed September into Fairyland. Not so! But a key’s adventuring is of necessity a quieter thing than a girl’s, more singleminded, and also more fraught with loneliness.
For the key slipped between Latitude and Longitude, and tumbled briefly--oh so briefly!--through the starry dark behind the screen of the world. It landed unceremoniously on the shimmering jacket of a hobgoblin in transit from Broceliande to Atlantis. The Key blended into the other glittery bits of folly which bedecked the jacket and went unquestioned by Betsy Basilstalk or Rupert the Gargoyle.
Good-naturedly illiterate, the Key had no wish to visit the blue crystal universities of Atlantis, and unhooked its clasp just in time to tumble through the rooty, moldy, wormy passage to Fairyland. It caught an updraft of sea-air and soared over the fleecy clouds, playing tag with the blue-necked gillybirds.
It passed over the witches and narrowly avoided a sucking vortex of the events of next week that threatened to pull it down into the cauldron.
It flew over the field full of little red flowers, but no Wyverary, or even a Wyvern, appeared to accompany it or explain how anything worked or was in the days before today.
The Key, too, found the House Without Warning, long after a nicely scrubbed September had passed through. Under Lye’s gentle eye, the Key primly dropped