The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [51]
September’s orange dress seemed suddenly drab; the Wyverary’s scarlet skin seemed a bit brown and dull. They could not compete--but they laughed all the same, as leaves drifted slowly from trees and fell into their hair. Penny balanced expertly on her highwheel seat and reached up to catch them out of the air, whooping and giggling.
“Ah, Penny, we’ll not go in, though,” sighed Calpurnia Farthing, raising her goggles to drink in the colors of the forest ahead of them, its shady paths, its mournful brown birds.
“Oh, why not, Cal? They’re sure to have flapjacks! I’m hungry!”
“We have to bring in the herd, love. The highwheels' home is off further towards the sea, in the oil-tides and the nickel-pools. We’ll camp, and I’ll sing you The Nobell Lay of the Unicycle and the One-Legged Gyrl--you like that one! The rest of the velos will catch up and we’ll take them down to the water’s edge and I’ll let you have a puff of my pipe.”
“Can’t we just stay one night?” Penny pleaded, pulling her pigtails in earnestness.
Calpurnia shuddered. “It’s best…not to go in if you don’t have doings there. Autumn has a hungry heart--September is the beginning of death.” The Fairy looked at the earnest girl in the orange dress and laughed shortly, realizing what she had said. “Well. Pan forgive all puns. Be glad autumn is brief, Penny, in our familiars. As for you, September, I feel a powerful urge to tell you to be careful, but I think you’ve lead ears for such advice. Just remember that autumn is also called fall, and some falling places are so deep there’s no climbing out.”
“Goodbye dragon!” chirped Penny, and A-Through-L, still panting from his great exertion across the plains, three days’ running with barely a break for napping, did not argue with her, but tolerated her smacking a kiss on his toes. “Goodbye Saturday!”
Calpurnia Farthing brusquely extended her hand to Saturday, but when he moved to shake it, she grabbed it up and kissed his fingers like a lord kissing a lady’s hand. She crouched down to look the boy in the eye.
“I have a thing to tell you, Marid.”
Saturday waited patiently.
“We’re not kin, but fey to fey, you’ll hark?”
He nodded. She leaned in, to whisper in his ear, so that September could not hear.
But we have special privileges. I shall tell you what Calpurnia Farthing said:
“The riddle of the Ravished,” she whispered, “is that they must always go down into the black naked and lonesome. But they cannot come back up into the light alone.”
The light in the Autumn Provinces is always late afternoon light, the golden, perfect kind that slants and sighs, that casts gentle shadows on the earth.
Of course, September had no shadow.
But the shadows of the others walked long and thin through the forest of bloody-bright trees. They were disturbed by their missing compatriot, and pulled away from the place where September’s shadow was not. Shadows have a kind of camaraderie. As folk become friends and have adventures, so too do their shadows frolick and quaver in fear and emerge triumphant from battles with enemies’ shadows, all unknown to us, who think we are the movers of our tales. And so the shadow of the Wyverary mourned the loss of his companion, and the shadow of the Marid caught its black mood.
And yet, none among them could keep from delight as many paths opened up wide and even before them, a bed of crisp brown leaves blowing up in little dervishes and settling again. A few mournful birds sang out. The wind smelled of smoke, and baking bread, and apples. Saturday closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth, like a cat, to take it all in. A-Through-L fairly skipped.
“Truly, Autumn is my season,” the scarlet beast chorted. “Spring and Summer and Winter