The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [5]
September curled her fists. She tried very hard not to cry.
“Green! Stop it! I just want to know--”
“One! Because you were born in--”
“If I was special,” finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it’s because she’s special, because she’s smart and strong, and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and…I don’t know that I’m any of those things. I don’t even know that I’m as ill-tempered as all that. I’m not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work, but what I mean to say is: maybe you meant to go to another girl’s house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn’t mean me at all, because I’m not like storybook girls, I’m short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn’t even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.”
The Leopard turned her prodigious, spotted head and looked at September with large, solemn, yellow eyes.
“We came for you,” she growled. “Just you.”
The big cat licked the child’s cheek roughly. September smiled, just a little. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the green jacket.
“NEXT!” boomed a deep, severe voice which echoed all over the closet. It was so strong that they were blown back into the folk who had silently joined the line behind them. The party in front of them, all pink eyeshadow and spangled, spiky hair, exploded past a tall podium in a flutter of papers and luggage.
At the top of the podium loomed an enormous gargoyle, its face a mass of bronze and black rock, waggling stone eyebrows and stern metal jaw. Its lolling eyes burned red flame. Its heavy arms clicked and whirred, greasy pistons pumping. The creature’s chest was plated in gnarled, knuckled silver, half-open along a thick seam, showing a thudding, white-violet heart within.
“PAPERS!” The gargoyle thundered. Portraits rattled along the earthen walls. Its breath was smoky and hot, and in its mechanical jaw, a steel tongue rattled. September shrank against the Leopard, the force of the gargoyle’s breath pushing at her face.
“BETSY BASILSTALK YOU COME OUT OF THERE THIS SECOND!” The Green Wind hollered back, though not quite so loud, having no leather-bellow lungs to help him along.
The creature paused. “NO,” it bellowed.
“You’re not impressing anyone, you know,” sighed the Green Wind.
“SHE’S IMPRESSED. LOOK, SHE’S ALL SHAKING AND THINGS.”
“Betsy, I will thrash you a good one, and you know I can. Don’t forget who whipped the Lord of Leafglen and rode him about like a dog. I am not a tourist, Betsy. I will not be treated like one.”
“No, you’re not a tourist,” growled a thick, phelgmy, but much quieter voice. The gargoyle’s eye-flames snuffed out and its great shoulders sagged. A little woman hopped up onto the podium, no bigger than September, and perhaps a bit smaller. Her muscled chest was shaped like a bear’s, her legs thick and knobbly, her short hair sludged up and spiked along her scalp, sticking up in knifepoints. She chewed on a hand-rolled cigarette; the smoke smelled sweet, like vanilla and rum and maple syrup and other things not terribly good for you. “You’re not a tourist,” she repeated in a grumbly, gravelly voice, “you’re Greenlist, and that means No Good Scoundrel, and that means No Entry