The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [64]
The dream-Saturday held up his hands. They were chained in ivory manacles. “Did it mean me, do you think?” he said. “When it said you’d lose your heart?”
“But when the night comes rushing on,” sang the girl, laughing uncontrollably. She took a bite out of her iron bolt. It crumbled like cake in her mouth. “Down falls Mary, dead and gone!” The girl smiled. Her teeth were full of black oil.
And for a moment, just a moment, September saw them all: Saturday, Ell, and the strange blonde girl, bound and bolted and chained in a dreary, wet cell, sleeping, skeletal, dead.
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Chapter XIV: In a Ship of Her Own Making
In Which September Leaves Autumn For Winter, Meets a Certain Gentleman of Means, and Considers the Problem of Nautical Engineering.
September woke to the sound of the snow falling. Hoarowls cried overhead: Hoomaroo! Hoomaroo! The sun burned white and soft behind long clouds. A cold, piney wind blew over her skin.
She opened her eyes--and she had eyes! She had skin! She could even shiver! September lay on a makeshift stretcher, a piece of piebald hide stretched between long poles. Her hands--and she had hands!--were folded neatly over her chest, and her hair flowed over her shoulders and down to the sash of the exultant green smoking jacket, dark brown and familiar and dry and clean. She was well again, and whole.
And alone. It all came rushing back to her, the sleeping blue lions, Saturday and A-Through-L, all of it. And the dream, too, still clinging to her like old clothes.
Mary, Mary, Morning Bell.
In a panic, she reached for her sword--and felt the copper wrench safely beside her on the piebald hide. The Spoon still rested snugly in her sash. Saturday’s favor was gone, though, lost to the woods. September sat up, her head heavy and sick. A wood spread out around her, long past autumn, the trees black and stark, snow glittering on everything, softening every edge to exquisite, perfect white. The green smoking jacket busily puffed up to keep out the gently blowing snow.
“You see? You’re quite well again. I promised you would be.” Citrinitas sat a little ways away, as though afraid to come too near. The little spriggan clutched her three-fingered hands together miserably. She scratched her long yellow nose and pulled up a long yellow hood over her head. She snapped her fingers and a little golden fire burned before her, floating above the snow. Citrinitas sheepishly fished a marshmallow out of her pocket and speared it on her thumbnail to roast.
“Where are my friends?” September demanded, happy to find she had her voice back, strong and loud, echoing in the empy wood.
“I didn’t have to bring you out, you know. I could have left you there and it would have been a good bit less trouble than dragging you out across the Winter Treaty. So close to Spring! It doesn’t sit right with the stomach. Rubedo didn’t even want to come. And he so longs to travel! Doctor Fallow is a bit of a coward, he hid when the lions came. Eventually we’ll find him, though. I think he’s angry with you--you might have at least matriculated before turning all…tree-ish. And now I’ve missed our wedding, thank you very much.”
“You’ll have another tomorrow! And anyway if it’s so much bother, why didn’t you just grow and cover the distance in three steps?”
“Well,” Citrinitas blushed deep ochre. “I did. But that’s not the point. The point is gratitude, and how you ought to have it.”
September gritted her teeth. She liked the feeling of it--of having teeth. “Where are my friends?” she repeated icily.
“Oh, how should I know? We were only told to feed you up and send you into the woods, no one tells us anything unless it’s ‘Mix up Life-in-a-Flask for me, Citrinitas!’ ‘Bake me a Cake-of-Youth, Trinny!’ ‘Grade these papers!’ ‘Watch that beaker!’ ‘A monograph on the nature of goblins’ riddles, Ci-ci!’ I swear to you, I am finished with post-doctoral work!”
The golden spriggan struck her bony knee with her fist. As she spoke her voice got higher and higher until