The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [73]
“What about the Ravished? How do they get home?” September realized that she was considering how to get home, for the first time.
Nor grinned. She had sharp, wolfish teeth. “Can’t say, can I? Or won’t say, won’t I? But it’s better to Stumble, really, if you’ve a heart set on home.”
At the factory door, Nor gathered up a great deal of leather into the crook of her arm. She pointed with her eyebrows at a communal well just outside the gate. September fell upon a copper ladle and drank deep. As she slurped, the Nasnas scratched her chin again. “I might could make you a pair that works the other way,” she said finally. “Reverse engineering, and all? A pair that would take you home.”
“Really? You could do that?”
“Shoes are funny beasts. You think they’re just clothes, but really, they’re alive. They want things. Fancy ones with gems want to go to balls, big boots want to go to work, slippers want to dance. Or sleep. Shoes make the path you’re on. Change your shoes, change the path.” Nor looked meaningfully at the Marquess’s dandied black shoes. September wished she’d gone barefoot. “Changeling shoes want to stay here. I wager I can make a pair who want to go to the place you come from. Bit of old mud on the heel, bit of devil’s salt in the buckle, bit of growing up hammered in. You’ll wake up, like it was a dream. It will have been a dream. No worries, no faults, no blame. Off to school with you and your peanut butter sandwich, too!”
September squeezed back tears. She suddenly missed her mother, and she’d lost her shadow and her hair and salt creaked in her elbows and she was so awfully tired, and really, she hadn’t counted on adventures being so exhausting. She was hungry, still, and she missed her Wyverary so! And how could she know how much farther there was to go? September still did not think herself terribly brave, and she trembled when she thought of the thirst of the sea, and the possibility--even probability--of sharks and other terrible things. When the stars were out and the night warm and Mr. Map's brandy had been hot in her belly, it had been alright, even wonderful. But now her knees hurt, and her fingers, and she was lonely. September shivered in her wet, salt-crusted dress. And she hated her cursed shoes, hated them wholly and utterly.
“I can’t,” she squeaked finally. “I can’t. My friends are not dreams. They need me.” And she remembered the awful dream, and little Saturday, chained up again, on the floor of that dark cell. “Who else will come for them, if I don’t?”
“What a dear heart you have, girl,” said Nor. “Of course, that’s how she’ll catch you, in the end.”
“How did you--”
“I know shoes, little one. And I know those shoes.” The Nasnas shrugged helplessly. “I can’t be late to work, you know. Other beasts in the world have troubles.”
Nor slid her finger into the glowing seam between them and the two popped apart. Not bowed to her sister and bounded away. Nor punched her card in the machine near the silver door of the factory.
September let the half-lady go. She walked back over the heath with the little black flowers waving. Down at the beach, she wriggled out of her dress again and strung up her sail. She pushed off with her wrench into the current and watched the island dwindle.
“I’m not one of them,” she said to herself. “No matter what they say. I don’t work at some awful old factory, and my shadow isn’t half myself.”
But she thought of Ell and Saturday, lost at the bottom of the world, bound up in the dark. And some part of her hurt, a part which had been joined to them as if along a glowing seam.
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Chapter XVI: