The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [89]
“It will be as big as I need it to be,” she murmured.
And the wrench sighed. It melted in her hand like a popsicle in the summertime, until it was delicate and tiny, a jeweler’s tool. Before the Marquess could tell her not to, September gripped the offending wheel within the heart of Maud Elizabeth Smythe's clock with her wrench and pulled at it.
“Don’t you dare!” cried the Marquess. She ran her hand along Iago’s black spine. He just looked up at her, his emerald eyes sad.
“Mallow…” he whispered. “I’m tired.”
“Please! I can’t go back!” The Marquess snatched September’s hand, squeezing it horribly tight.
“Don’t you touch me!” cried September. “I’m not like you!”
The Marquess laughed her knife-like laugh again. “Do you think Fairyland loves you? That it will keep you close and dear, because you are a good girl and I am not? Fairyland loves no one. It has no heart. It doesn’t care. It will spit you back out just like it did me.”
September nodded miserably. They were both crying, struggling with the wrench. September plunged her fingers into the clock, desperately trying to turn the wheel on her own. The gears cut her chilblained hands and soaked the clock’s innards with blood.
“No, no, I won’t let you! I won’t go home!” The Marquess sobbed. And then she did an extraordinary thing.
She let September go. The Marquess took a step back, as big a step as she could manage in that tiny place. The storm flashed lightning and rain behind her.
“I won’t let you. Either of you. Not you, not Fairyland. I won’t let you win.” She put her hand on her chest. “I have magic yet. If you will set the clock working again, then I must be still. I have read quite as many stories as you, September. More, no doubt. And I know a secret you do not: I am not the villain. I am no dark lord. I am the princess in this tale. I am the maiden, with her kingdom stolen away. And how may a princess remain safe and protected through centuries, no matter who may assail her? She sleeps. For a hundred years, for a thousand. Until her enemies have all perished and the sun rises over her perfect, innocent face once more.”
The Marquess fell down. It was so fast--one moment she stood, the next, she had dropped like a flower snapped in half. She lay perfectly still on the floor, her eyes shut, serene.
September turned the wheel with her tiny wrench. The hands moved, slowly at first, and then whirred faster and faster.
In the room, suddenly, a soft alarm bell began to ring.
#
Chapter XX: Saturday’s Wish
In Which Escapes Are Made, A Great Wrestling Match Occurs, and a Stranger Appears
“Is she dead?” whispered Iago.
The Marquess breathed deep and even. The Panther of Rough Storms bent his ponderous black head and bit her experimentally, the way one pinches oneself to test whether one is dreaming. She did not move.
“I don’t think so…” said September fearfully.
“I ought to take her away somewhere. Somewhere quiet. I think a bier of some kind is traditional, in these cases.”
“Shouldn’t she…go back now? That the clock is working?”
“I’m not an expert. Maybe she is back. Maybe she is dreaming of tomatoes and her father. I hope not.” The Panther meowed horribly. “I did love her. In her sleep, she looked so like Mallow. I kept thinking: one day, she’ll wake up, and it’ll be like it once was, and we shall all have a nice cake and laugh about how silly things got.”
A distant shatter and crash echoed through the Lonely Gaol. Iago looked up, unconcerned.
“She held half this world together with her will. It will all come apart now. I wonder what we shall all look like, without her?”
“I have to get my friends out! Help me, Iago, please, I can’t get to them by myself!”
“Oh…well, I suppose someone ought to have a good ending, out of all of us.” The Panther’s eyes were glassy and faraway. “She fed me fish,” he whispered. “And blackberry jam.”
“Not together, I hope,” said September, trying to make him laugh as she climbed into his saddle. A great tear splashed onto the Marquess’s sleeping cheek as Iago rose up and away