The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [71]
“Ot ly one,” tried the lady again, and then leapt away on her one leg, bounding up the beach and over a tangled heath that led into the center of the island. She hopped gracefully, as if it were the most natural way of moving invented. Little black flowers wavered in her wake.
Now, September knew she ought to stay straight on course, and never turn aside until she reached the Lonely Gaol. But one cannot simply say mysterious things and then run off! That’s practically begging to be followed. September’s feet were already scrambling up through the heath before her mind could worry about her little ship or what terrible clock might be ticking towards a miserable prison at the bottom of the world. She was off and running, calling after the half-lady, so thirsty she thought her throat might catch on fire. We must simply count ourselves lucky that she remembered her wrench, and did not leave it to be carried off by some enterprising turtle.
The island was not great or broad, and September might well have caught the lady, but that both of them ran right into the center of a village before a victor could be declared in their race. September understood immediately that the strange creature was home--all the houses were cut neatly in half. Arranged in a gentle half-circle, each sweet, small green-grass house had half windows and half doors and half roofs of coral tile, each and everything precisely and deliberately built for half a soul. Half a great edifice stood at one end of the long village green, with half-pillars and half-stairs all of silver. The lady ran full tilt towards a young man, tall and half-formed just as she was. His trousers, too, were silk and purple, his collar yellow and high. The two joined--smack!--at the seam, and she turned to face September. A glowing line ran down their bodies where the join had been made.
“Not wholly alone,” said the creature, in a voice neither male nor female. “That’s what we said. You are not wholly alone.”
“Oh!” said September simply, and sat down on the smooth green. Now that she had run all that way, was quite beside herself with tiredness and strangeness. If only she could get a drink of water! She would not mind half a glass…
“When I am myself, I cannot speak as you would understand me. I can only say half my words. I need my twin to speak to outsiders--not that you are an outsider!”
“I rather think I am!”
“All things being equal,” the half-lady continued in her same soft voice, “outsiders are to keep to the outside. But we can see you are one of us.”
“One of…who?”
“The Nasnas. The half-a-whole, whom the gods saw fit to bisect. I am Nor. My brother is Neither.” The two of them bowed in perfect unison, the glowing line between them intact.
“My name is September, but I’m not a…a Nasnas.”
“And yet you’ve been cut in half.”
“But I haven’t!” September clutched at her chest, to be sure.
“You have no shadow,” said Neither/Nor, wandering away up towards the great silver half-palace. “Half of you is gone,” she called over her shoulder.
September scrambled after her.
“It’s no bother to me not to have a shadow,” she panted, trying to keep up with the hopping Neither/Nor as she bounded over a tangled heath. “But it must be terribly difficult to live without a left part!”
“All Nasnas are twins. I have a left part. It is only that he is not attached to me. Much as your shadow is not attached to you, but off and having its own adventures, singing its own shadow-songs, eating feasts of shade and gloam. It’s still your shadow, even if you are not bound to it. And perhaps it is a bother to it, to be separated from you. One must always be considerate of one’s other half.”
Nor shuddered and the glowing seam between her and her brother went dim. She leapt away from him and caught the hand of a passing girl, spinning her like a dance partner. “Not!” she cried. “It’s been too long!” The two leapt up and joined as Nor and her brother