The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [65]
“Anyway it’s no use interrogating me. I don’t know. But I’ve brought you to the snow and the snow is the beginning and the end of everything, everyone knows that. I’ve brought you to the snow and the Ministry, and the clerk will…well, mainly he’ll say: Ffitthit at you. But I expect they’re in the Lonely Gaol, you know, since that’s where the lions take people, usually, and that’s far, oh so awfully far, and it won’t do you any good any way. Parole was outlawed years ago. And the Gaol is guarded by the Very Unpleasant Man and you’re just a little girl.”
September’s face burned. She got up and marched over to Citrinitas and crouched next to her. And maybe Lye’s bath, oh so terribly long ago now, really had given her a red, frothy draught of courage, because otherwise she could not imagine where she might have found the gall to hiss at the miserable spriggan:
“I am not just a little girl.” September straightened up, scowling at the spriggan. “I can get bigger, just like you. Only…it just takes me a little longer.” She turned on her heel, seized her copper wrench, and began to walk over the crystal snow drifts to a little hut nestled between two great yew trees, which could only be the Ministry, or at least, she hoped it was the Ministry, because otherwise she would suddenly look very foolish. She did not look back.
“I’m sorry!” cried Citrinitas after her. “I am! Alchemy really is lovely, once you get past the alchemists…”
September ignored her, and walked up the hill, the snow swallowing up the spriggan’s voice.
September breathed relief. The Marquess’s lovely black shoes had gotten soaked with snowmelt. A pleasant sign, freshly painted black and red, rose up out of a snow drift:
The Marvelous Ministry of Mr. Map (Yuletide Division)
The hut was covered in white furs and bits of holly, but the bits were rather haphazard, as if someone meant to be festive but got bored and gave up instead. The door was a sturdy thing with a compass rose stamped rudely into the wood. September knocked politely.
“Fftthit!” came the answer from within. It was an odd sound, like someone spitting and coughing and growling and asking after one’s relations all at once.
“Excuse me! Citrinitas sent me! Please let me in, Sir Map!”
The door cracked.
“It’s mister, kitten. MISTER. Do you see an Order of the Green Kirtle on my chest? Eh? A Crystal Cross? It’d be news to me. Call me by my proper name, good grief and all gallows!”
An old man peered down at her, the bags under his eyes wrinkled like old paper, his hair and long, corkscrewed mustache not even white, but the color of old, stained parchment. His skin was lined and brown, and his neatly brushed hair curled in a stately fashion, tied up in a black ribbon like the old portraits of Presidents in September’s schoolbooks. He had a pleasant, jolly belly and broad cheeks--and fat, furry wolf’s ears with a great deal of grey fur in them. He wore a bright blue suit with the cuffs rolled up over impressive forearms, so bright it startled in the midst of the white wood. His forearms were covered in sailors’ tattoos. For a moment, the two of them just stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak first.
“You suit…its lovely…” murmured September, suddenly shy.
Mr. Map shrugged. “Well,” he said, as though it were perfectly logical. “World’s mostly water. Why pretend it’s not?”
September leaned in close, rather closer than is courteous. She saw that his suit was a map, with little lines and bits of writing on it. The buttons of his blazer were green islands, and his cufflinks, and his belt buckle was an enormous, sparkling gem, the biggest island of all. September recognized the shape. She had seen it, oh, so briefly, as she fell from the customs office in the sky. That’s Fairyland, she thought.
Mr. Map left the doorway and went back to his work. September followed. A great easel dominated the little room, on which Mr. Map had been busy painting a sea serpent in a wild ocean bordering a small island chain. Maps covered and cluttered every surface