The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [33]
September chipped off another pair of her sceptre’s rubies to gain admission to a film called The Ifrit and the Zeppelin. She passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bell-hop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree, sticking out in bushily under her cap. Also because dryad begins with D, and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. The dryad's eyes shone silver. She had very plump cheeks and smiled both when September asked for tickets and when she paid her rubies.
Shyly, September said: “If you are a dryad, where is your tree? Are you terribly unhappy here, so far from the forest?”
The ticket-dryad laughed, and the sound of it was a little like rain falling on leaves. “Didn’t you know, little love? Film is made with camphor, which is a tree. In the cinnamon family, to be exact, which is large and boisterous and gossipy. I run the projector, and my trees run through my fingers all day long! Just because a thing is transparent and silvery and comes in big reels doesn’t mean it’s not a tree.”
Thankfully, the theatre was generous and the ceiling was high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and licked his lemon ice daintily. The lights lowered. September leaned forward, munching popped pomegranate seeds from a little striped box. It’s dryad food, really, she thought. I shall certainly be all right.
At home, she loved the movies. She loved sitting in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to begin. Especially the tragic and frightening movies, where ladies fainted dead away and monsters roared up out of the dark. Like in that cartoon her mother had taken her to see when she was very small, where the dark-haired princess ran away into the terrible forest and the owls flew at her and pecked at her hands. That was wonderful--because the world was suddenly alive, and excited, and wanted things just the way September herself sometimes wanted things. Even if the world seemed mainly to not want a princess bothering it. September had not liked the princess so much, either, as she had a high, breathy voice she found deeply annoying. But the owls, and the mines, and the flashing eyes in the wood. That she liked. And now she was in the wood, really and truly, with the flashing eyes all around her. What could Fairy movies possibly be like?
“The Associated Pressed Fairy Moveable Gazette Proudly Presents: News from Around Fairyland!” announced a pleasant female voice as the screen flickered into life. Oh, geez, thought September. A newsreel. This is what happens when grown-ups run the movies. Can we not skip straight to a dark-haired princess being beset by things?
“The wedding of Ghiyath the Jann and Rabab the Marid was celebrated with much pomp on the magnetized Arctic shores Tuesday,” continued the smooth, sweet announcer. “Witches present brewed a bouilliabaise of a long and interesting marriage, five children, (one a mermaid), a friendly sort of unfaithfulness for all involved, and an early death for Ghiyath, followed by an extended and scandalous widowhood for Rabab.”
A huge man with golden skin like desert sand embraced a woman passionately, one flaming hand on her foaming hair, one arm around her sea-slick waist. She wore a dress of anenomes, opening and closing. A few similarly-wet folk reclined on clouds, applauding, polite and bored. The scene was in black and white, and September slumped back in her chair, impatient for the Ifrit and her zeppelin.
“An exhibit of artifacts from the moon opens Sunday at the Municipal Museum. Scientists have discovered the moon is in fact made of pearl, and are even now investigating the method by which it is attached to the firmament, and what benefit lunar research might reveal for Fairies like you.”
A proud-looking spriggan with a thin, curved nose demonstrated how a piece of moon-rock could be dissolved in a mysterious solution. He dropped the stone into a crystal beaker with a three-fingered claw and drank