The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [81]
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Chapter XVIII: The Lonely Gaol
In Which September Arrives at Last At the Bottom of the World, But Is Unexpectedly Expected.
A ring of blue storms dance around the Lonely Gaol. They are on social terms with one another--the storms hold cotillions in the spring, and harvest dances in the fall. If one has the right wind speed and precipitation, one can attend storm weddings, storm funerals, storm christenings. It is a happy life for a storm. None think of travel, nor sailing the free ocean, nor venturing into foreign lands of any sort. They do not know why they stay, huddled up tight at the bottom of the world, only that they have always lived there. These were their parents’ and grandparents’ stamping grounds, too, all the way down to the single primordial storm that in days of old covered the whole of the continent.
But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.
The current of Fairyland circles the Lonely Gaol. It sluices in through holes in the base of the great towers and emerges on the other side, to begin once more its long journey around the horn of Fairyland. This unstoppable circulation kicks up storms the way you kick up dust when you run very fast down a dirt road. It cannot be helped. Somewhere deep down there in the roots of the Lonely Gaol lives a hoary old beast, something like a dragon, something like a fish, something like a mountain rill. She is older than the Gaol and the sluicing of the water--older, perhaps, than Fairyland. When she breathes in, she sucks up crystal from the stones of the earth. When she breathes out, she blows bubbles in the crystal, so that it swells up in great lumps and heaps. The sea splashes and cools the glass, and it grows and grows. Perhaps she is sleeping. Perhaps she is too big and too old to do much but breathe. But this is how the Lonely Gaol, which was not always a Gaol at all, grew out of the sea in the first place. If you squint just so, you can see the red flares of her breath between the roaring waves, blinking on and off like a dock-light.
September could see it. She did not know what is was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark. In the shrieking whirl of the storms, she clung to her copper wrench and steered toward the light. Rain slashed at her face. Her skin had long ago gone numb and half-blue. Everything ached from wrestling the raft to stay on course. Gleam bobbed and floated up ahead, valiantly trying to show the way, but the storm-air was so awfully dark and thick. Lightning turned the world white--when she could see again, September looked up to see huge holes tearing open in her orange dress. A whip of wind lashed out and finished the job: the dress ripped along the sleeves and shot off into the dark. The storm ate up September’s cry of despair, delighted at its mischief, as all storms are.
Gleam flashed several times up ahead, her orange paper soaked and ragged.
Look!
At first September could not see what the lantern meant. Before her lay only shadows within shadows. The red light sighed faithfully, off and on, off and on. But one shadow grew greater and blacker than the others as she strained to peer through the violet and violent clouds. It soared lumpish and huge, towering up in gargantuan humps, boulders, misshapen domes. Pale fires lit windows far up the sides of the towers. In flashes of lightning, September could see that mold and moss and lichen covered the lower domes, slurping upwards towards the peaks. But the high towers were all of glass, and storms showed through, roiling and purple.
A sickening crack shuddered through the raft--they had run aground. A spear of glassy rock spurted through the silver sceptres, just barely missing September’s leg. The rain hissed and fell, and for once September was glad she had cut off her hair, for if she still had it she would surely be unable