The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [35]
In Which September Meets the Marquess At Last, Argues Several Valid Points But Is Pressed Into Royal Service Anyway, Being Consoled Only By the Acquisition of a Spoon and a New Pair of Shoes.
Somewhere, under all those brambles, there was probably a building.
A palace, even. Certainly September could make out towers, a portcullis, even a moat of floating golden flowers. Not golden in the darling little way folk in our world call buttercups or certain girls’ hair golden: these flowers were genuinely gold, burnished, glowing, deep. Yet they were soft; pleasant winds crinkled the petals as they drifted along on a lazy current, spinning and colliding gently. But the briars tangled up everything else, great vines thicker around than September whose thorns were awfully sharp and angry looking. They braided each other, ran up and down the walls, snarled in great knots. Here and there were clutches of pale gold berries, their skin so thin September could see the juice sloshing inside. But neither she nor the Wyverary could glimpse even an inch of masonry. It was as though the Briary had just grown that way, and had never been any different.
No guards flanked the door--if it was a door. Large flowers bloomed aggressively through an arch in the brambles in a sort of door-like fashion. Their centers were clotted with glistening pollen. September reached out her hand to touch one--A-Through-L cried out a wordless warning! But the flower simply soaked her hand in pollen and closed its petals over her fingers, searching and suckling with its silken blossom. Satisfied, it wrinkled away and aside to allow September to duck into a hall hung with dim, sun-dappled shadows.
It drew closed again sharply, keeping the Wyverary outside. A-Through-L bellowed, and the bellowing of any Wyvern is terrible to hear. He struck the flower; it remained, tough and unyielding as bronze. The brambles writhed a little, as if in silent, viney laughter.
September walked through the grand hall, trying not to make noise on the beautiful polished floor. A giant, heart-shaped double staircase ran up to a bank of windows. There was a neat rack on which to place one’s shoes and umbrellas. A kind of light drifted in between the bramble-vines, falling on a grandiosely-framed painting of a tall, lovely woman with long golden hair tied back in a velvet bow. Her hand rested on a leopard’s head, and in her other she held a simple wooden hunter’s bow. She wore an ivory crown and a smile so wide and kind September felt she could love that lady all the days of her life and never feel cheated, even if she never looked twice at such a poor, shabby soul as September. Even in the painting, she seemed to glow. That is what a grown-up looks like, thought September. Not like the grown-ups in my world who look sad and disappointed and grimy with work and bored with everything. Like her. What do the storybooks say?
In the fullness of her strength.
“Did you come all the way here with only one shoe?” came a sweet, wondering voice.
September whirled away from the painting. In the center of the heart-shaped staircase sat a little girl, holding her chin in her hands. She had thick cherry-purple hair that hung in old-fashioned sausage-curls to her shoulders, and that magnificent, terrible hat poised on her head, like a cake tipping to one side. The hat was black, September could see now as she could not when this child shook hands with a bear onscreen. The feathers shone blue and green and red and cream-colored. The jewels glittered dark and violet. Next to her, a huge panther purred languidly and watched September out of one green eye.
“That must have been just awfully painful,” the child marveled. “How brave of you!”
The Marquess ran one hand luxuriously along the panther’s spine, winding her fingers in his fur--and drew up a pair of exquisite black shoes, like September’s, if September’s shoe had grown up, gone to a great many balls and theatrical to-dos, and found a dashing mate. They had little heels and black crystal lilies on the