The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [6]
“I filed my immigration request with the stamps of the Four Clandestines, weeks and weeks ago. I even have a letter of reference from the Seelie Parliament. Well, the clerk. But it’s on official letterhead and everything and I think we all know that stationary makes a statement.”
Betsy quirked her hairy eyebrow at him and hopped back into the gargoyle-puppet, quick as a blink. It roared to life, all fiery eyes and clanking arms.
“GO AWAY. OR SEE WHO GETS THRASHED.”
“Green,” whispered September, “is she…a gnome?”
“Too right I am,” grumbled Betsy, squeezing out of the puppet again. It slumped in her absence. “And very perceptive of you, that is. What gave it away?”
September’s heart still hammered all over the place from the yelling of the gargoyle. She held her trembling hand a little above her head.
“Pointy,” she squeaked, and cleared her throat. “Gnomes have…pointy hats? I thought…pointy hair is as good as a hat, maybe?”
“She’s a regular logician, Greeny. My grandmother wears a pointy hat, girl. My great-grandmother. I wouldn’t be caught dead in one any more than you’d like to wear a frilly bonnet. Gnomes are modern now. We’re better than modern, even. Just look, you,” and Betsy flexed an extremely respectable bicep, the size of an oil can. “None of this flitting about in gardens and blessing thresh-holds for me. I went to trade school, I did. Now I’m a customs agent with my own great hulking hunk of heave here. What have you got?”
“A Leopard,” answered September quickly.
“True,” considered Betsy. “But you have haven’t got papers or both shoes, and that’s a trouble.”
“Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.”
“They do, you just can’t see them right,” grinned Betsy Basilstalk. “All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that’s all. Whereas Rupert here? He’s as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.”
She scratched the hulking shell behind what might have been an ear. It remained still and dark.
“Then why tell me it’s all puppets and engines? Don’t you want me to let you peer at me?” asked September.
Betsy beckoned her closer, until they stood nose to nose and all September could smell was the vanilla and rum and maple syrup of her cigarette, which was all through her skin, too.
“Because when humans come to Fairyland, we’re supposed to trick them and steal from them and whap them about the ears--but we’re also supposed hex them up so that they can see proper-like. Not everything, just enough so as to be dazzled by mushroom-glamours, not so much that we can't fool you twice with Fairy gold. It's a real science. Used to be done with ointment. It’s in the rulebook.”
“Are you going to put something very foul in my eyes, then?”
“I told you, kid. Gnomes are modern now. I have personally picketed the Hallowmash Pharmacy. There’s other ways of opening your thick head. Like Rupert. He’s great with thick heads. Most people, I show them Rupert, they see anything I tell them to. Now, papers, please.”
The Green Wind looked sidelong at September and then at his feet. September could swear he was blushing, blushing green through his beard. “You know very well, Betsy,” he whispered, “that the Ravished need no papers. It’s in the manual, page 764, paragraph 6.” The Green Wind coughed politely. “The Persephone clause.”
Betsy gave him a long look that plainly said: so that’s what’s afoot, you old bag of air? She blew her sweet, thick smoke up into his face and grunted.
September knew she could not have been the only one.
“Don’t answer for you, though, tall thing. All right, she can go, but you stay.” Betsy chewed her cigarette. “And the cat, too. I’m not violating the Greenlist for the likes of you.”
The Green Wind stroked September’s hair with his