The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [61]
Inside was a long, sturdy wrench.
#
Chapter XIII: Autumn Is the Kingdom Where Everything Changes
In Which Our Heroine Succumbs to Autumn, Saturday and the Wyverary are Abducted, and Saturday Has a Rather Odd Dream.
September ran.
The sky behind her had gone an icy lemony-cream color, pushing the deep blue night aside. Dew and frost sparkled on the Worsted Wood, clinging to the silken puffs like stitched diamonds. Her breath fogged. Leaves crushed and rustled beneath her feet. She ran so fast, so terribly fast--but she feared not fast enough. With every step she could feel her legs getting skinnier and harder, like the trunks of saplings. With every step she thought they might break. In the Marquess’s shoes, her toes rasped and cracked. She had no hair left, and though she could not see it she knew her skull was turning into a thatch of bare, autumnal branches. Like Death’s skull. She had so little time.
When they are in a great hurry, little girls rarely look behind them. Especially those who are even a little Heartless, though we may be quite certain by now that September’s Heart had grown heavier than she expected when she climbed out of her window that long ago morning. Because she did not look behind, September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see it bend in half until it cracked, and Death hop up again, quite well, quite awake, and quite small once more. She certainly did not see Death stand on her tiptoes and blow a kiss after her, a kiss that rushed through all the frosted leaves of the autumnal forest, but could not quite catch a child running as fast as she could. As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.
Up ahead of her September could see Mercurio, the spriggans’ village, nestled in the flaming orange trees, loaf-chimneys smoking cozily, the smell of breakfast, pumpkin flapjacks and chestnut tea floating over the forest to her shriveled nose. September tried to call out. Red leaves burst from her mouth in a scarlet puff, and drifted away. She gasped, something between a sob and an exhausted wracking cough. I’ve lost my voice after all, she thought. She clutched the wrench to her chest, hooking it through her twiggy elbow, which had grown soft sticky buds, like rosehips. The wrench gleamed in the dawn, burnished copper, its head shaped and carved into a graceful hand, ready to clutch a bolt in its grip. Everything shimmered with morning wetness.
A-Through-L yawned in the town square, his huge neck shining as he stretched it up and out. As September burst into the square she saw the Wyverary playing some kind of checkers with Saturday, using raisiny cupcakes for pieces. Doctor Fallow sat back in a rich, padded chair, smoking a churchwarden pipe with satisfaction. They looked up joyfully to greet her. She tried to smile and open up her arms to hug them. But September could not fault them for the shock and dismay on their faces as they saw her ruined body stumble onto the bread-bricks. She wondered if she still had her eyes left. If they were still brown and warm, or dried up seed pods. September could hardly breathe. Branches poked and stabbed at her as she gasped after her breath. The green smoking jacket despaired. If it had hands it would have wrung them, if a mouth, it would have wept. It cinched itself closer to her waist--only a cluster of maple branches, now--trying to stay close to her.
“September!” cried A-Through-L. Saturday leapt to his feet, upsetting the cupcake-checkers.
Saturday gasped: “Oh, no, no…are you all right?”
September sank to her knees, shaking her head. Saturday put his thin blue arms around her. He was not sure it was allowed, but he could not bear not to. He held her, gingerly, much as she had held Death. Saturday had never had anyone to cradle and protect before, either.
Saturday, September tried to