The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [79]
But she did not look up, and very soon, September was asleep.
When she woke, the lantern had gone. The seawater had risen slightly. No day peeped through the top of the well. September screamed frustration, kicking the wall with her good leg.
“I shan’t make it to one hundred, you know!” she hollered up angrily. “People don’t live that long with broken legs in the dark!”
September screamed again, wordlessly. The cold seeped in, unmoved. She shoved her hands in her apologetic smoking-jacket pockets to keep warm--and what was there but the glass globe the Green Wind hand given her? September seized it and threw it hard against the opposite wall in a fit of rage and frustration. She felt a little better. Breaking things heals a great many hurts. This is why children do it so often.
The green leaf drifted down to the stagnant seawater and spun a bit on the surface of it, like a camping compass.
September felt something heavy and furred settle to rest on her lap. The well filled with a deep, profound purring.
“Oh…” choked September. “It can’t be. I must be dreaming. It just can’t.”
September stroked a huge head nestled against her. Even in the dark, she knew it was spotted. She could feel whiskers prickling her arms.
“How would you like to come away with me, September?” said a familiar voice. The scent of green things filled the well: mint and grass and rosemary and fresh water, frogs and leaves and hay. September threw up her arms in the dark, knowing they would settle on broad shoulders. Her tears wet the cheek of the Green Wind, and he chuckled in her embrace.
“Oh, my little rolling hazelnut, where have you lost yourself?”
“Green! Green! You came! It was all going so well, and then the Marquess said she’d turn Ell to glue and I stole her Marid and we rode bicycles and I tried so hard to be brave, and irascible, and ill-tempered, but then they were gone, all of them, and I had to build a raft and I cut my hair off and my shadow’s gone and I think my leg’s broken, and I’m so scared! And I got a wrench! But I don’t know what I’m meant to do with it and in the stories none of the heroes ever broke their legs and it’s all on account of my shoes somehow, but that means the Marquess must have known, all along, that I’d come here, and I just want to go home.”
“Really? That’s all? I can take you home just now,” murmured the Green Wind. “If that’s all you want. Nothing but a blink and we’re in Omaha, no harm done, all well and ending well. There, there. No need of crying.”
September’s leg burned and her arms felt so heavy. “No, but…my friends…they’re locked away and they need me…”
“Well, it’s all a dream, no worries about that. I’m sure it’ll all work itself out. Dreams have a way of doing that.”
“Is it a dream?”
“I don’t know, what do you think? It certainly seems like a dream. I mean, talking leopards! My stars.”
September squeezed her fists in the dark.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not. Or if it is I don’t care. They need me.”
“Good girl,” chuffed the Green Wind. “When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game, and would like to start another.”
“Yes, please, I would like to start another.”
“That’s not a magic I have, love. You’re in this story. You must get out on your own if you are to get out at all.”
“But how does this story end?”
The Green Wind shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems familiar to me so far. A child whisked off to a foreign land beset by a wicked ruler, sent to find a sword…”
“Am I to save Fairyland then? Did you choose me to do that? Am I a chosen one, like all those heroes whose legs were never broken?”
The Green Wind stroked her hair. She could not see his face, but she knew it was grave.
“Of course not. No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back, and to make friends with a wyvern. You chose to trade your shadow for a child’s life. You chose not to let the Marquess hurt your friend--you