The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [58]
Gradually, the trees turned from wood and leaf to something altogether stranger: tall black distaffs wound around with fuzzy silk and wool and fleeces September could not name. They were all colored as autumn woods are colored, red and gold and brown and pale white. They crowded close together, fat and full, shaped more or less like pine trees. She could just see the sharp distaff jutting out of the wispy top of one great red beast of a tree. This must be where they get the stuff to build Pandemonium! September thought suddenly. Instead of cutting down a forest, they weave it!
The moon peeked out of the clouds, too shy to show herself fully. September came, by and by, to a little clearing where several parchment-colored distaffs had left their fibers all over the forest floor like pine needles. In the corner of the clearing sat a lady. September brought her hand to her mouth, so surprised and shaken was she, forgetting that her fingers were only branches now.
The lady sat on a throne of mushrooms. Chanterelles and portobellos and oysters and wild crimson forest mushrooms piled up high around her, fanning out around her head--for the lady too was primarily made of mushrooms, lovely cream-yellow ones opening up like a dress-collar around her brown face, lacy bits of fungus trailing from her every finger and toe. She looked off into the distance, her pale eyes a pair of tiny button mushrooms.
“Good evening, my lady,” said September, curtseying as best she knew how.
The mushroom queen said nothing. Her expression did not change.
“I have come for the casket in the wood.”
A little wind picked up, ruffling the shitakes at the lady’s feet.
“I do hope I’ve not offended, it’s only that I haven’t much time and I seem to be coming all over tree.”
The lady’s jaw sagged open. Bits of dirt fell out.
“Don’t mind her,” came a tiny, breathy voice behind her. September whirled.
A tiny brown creature stood at her feet, barely a finger high. She was brown all over, the color of a nut-husk. Only her lips were red. Her hair was long, covering most of her body like bark. She seemed very young. She wore a smart acorn cap.
“She’s just for show,” breathed the wee thing.
“Who are you?”
“I am Death,” said the creature. “I thought that was obvious.”
“But you’re so small!”
“Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off--very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.”
“Then who is she?”
“She is…” Death turned her head, considering. “She is like a party dress I wear when I want to impress visiting dignitaries. Like your friend Betsy, I too am a Terrible Engine. I too have occasional need of awe. But between us, I think, there is no need of finery.”
“But if we are so far apart, why are you here?”
“Because Autumn is the beginning of my country. And because there is a small chance that you may die sooner than I anticipated, that I shall need to grow very fast very soon.”
Death looked meaningfully at September’s hand. Within the green jacket, her arm had now shrunk into one long, knobbed branch from shoulder to fingertip.
“Is that why the Worsted Wood is forbidden? Because Death lives here?”
“And also hamadryads. They are very boring to listen to.”
“Then the Marquess sent me here to die.”
“I do not make such judgments, child. I only take what is offered me, in the dark, in the forest.”
September crumpled to the ground. She stared at the winter branches of her hand. A great orange tuft of her hair flew off--she was nearly bald now, only a few wisps of curls clinging to her head. She sniffed and cried--or tried to cry, but her eyes were dry as old seeds, and she could not.
“Death, I don’t know what to do.”
Death climbed up into her lap, sitting primly on her knee, which had