The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [45]
“Pish! We don’t buy, we catch! September, the bicycle herds, well, I suppose they’re called voleries, not herds, right, Saturday? Voleries. Anyhow, their migration path runs though the meadowflats just east of the City, and if we are lucky, and have a bit of rope with us, we can hitch on with them all the way to the Provinces. Or nearly all the way. It’s difficult, they’re wild beasts, you know. And if I run just as hard as I can I shall be able to keep up with you and no one’s bones need be smashed or jangled. It goes without saying, I think, that it would be a bit ridiculous for me to ride a highwheel, even a big, brawny bull. Let us go now, right away! I shouldn’t want to miss it, we would feel much chagrined, and stuck.”
“September,” pleaded Saturday, his blue eyes growing even wider and darker. “I have to eat. If I don’t eat, I will fall, soon, and not ever get up.”
“Oh, how rude of me!” September had forgotten her own hunger in all the excitement, but now it was back, in force. And so, quite without thinking about it, September spent the last of her chipped rubies at a public house called The Toad and the Tabernacle, where the tables and chairs and walls were a deep black widow’s weeds, and the milky yellow light from the silken candelabra made Saturday’s skin just as black as the ceiling.
“Salt,” whispered the boy regretfully. “I need salt, and stone.”
“Is that what you eat?” September wrinkled her nose. Saturday drooped in shame.
“It’s what the sea eats. When I have been starved, no other food will sustain me. When I am well I shall have goose-foot tarts and hawthorn custard with you, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings! Please, you mustn’t slump so! Besides, I’m not certain I can eat anything here. It’s all sure to be Fairy food and I think I’ve been reasonable enough about that so far, and safe, but surely eating in a Fairy public house is right out.”
A-Through-L’s lips quirked, as if he knew a bit about both Fairies and Food, beginning as they both did with F. But he said nothing. September sat politely and drank a glass of clear water which was not food in the least and so obviously innocent. She tried to bargain with her stomach not to growl as A-Through-L demolished three plates of radishes and a flagon of genuine Morrowmoss well-water. Saturday gnawed a slab of blue sea-stone and daintily licked a joint of salt. He offered some to her uncertainly, and she demurred politely.
“I have a delicate digestion,” she said. “I don’t think it would bear much stone.”
A platter of painted duck eggs, sweet, dense bread, and marshmallow-fondue passed by on the shoulders of a waiter who might well have been a dwarf. September drank her water vigorously, trying not to look at it. And when all was done and swallowed and September still hungry but pleased with herself for avoiding temptation, the last of the sceptre went into the toll-chest of a much smaller, less splendid ferry. Without incident, its paddlewheel splashed through the other side of the Barleybroom. It took the three of them away from the soft, gleaming spires of Pandemonium and deposited them on a grassy, empty shore.
“It seems so sad to leave,” September remarked mournfully as she stepped onto the muddy shore, “when we have only just arrived. How I wish I could get to know Pandemonium a little better!”
September tucked the green smoking jacket under the Wyverary’s bronze chain, knotting the sleeves together. The jacket mourned, crying out in silent, emerald-colored consternation. Alas, the ears of folk with legs and noses and eyebrows are not made to hearken to the weeping of those with inseams and buttonholes and lapels. Already September could hear a kind of thunder in the distance. The Meadowflats stretched long and far around them as they walked: even, well-tempered grass, without tree or welcoming shade or the smallest white flower. If the grass were not so rich and green, she would