The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [9]
The going was not easy. Gold is very slippery to walk on and insists on sliding all over the place. She found that her bare foot was actually a bit more suited to the task than the shod one, as she could grasp at the gleaming ground with her toes. Nevertheless, every step set off a little cascade of coins. By afternoon, September thought she had probably stepped on the collective national worth of Finland. Just as this rather grown-up thought crossed her mind, a long, peculiar shadow fell across her path.
In Omaha, signposts are bright green with white writing, or occasionally white with black writing. September understood those signs, and all the things they pointed to. But the signpost before her now was made of pale, wind-bleached wood, and towered above her: a beautiful carved woman with flowers in her hair, a long goat’s tail winding around her legs, and a solemn expression on her sea-worn face. The deep gold light of the Fairyland sun played on her carefully whittled hair. She had wide, flaring wings, like September’s swimming trophy. The wooden woman had four arms, each outstretched in a different direction, pointing with authority. On the inside of her easterly arm, pointing backward in the direction September had come, someone had carved in deep, elegant letters:
TO LOSE YOUR WAY
On the northerly arm, pointing up to the tops of the cliffs, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR LIFE
On the southerly arm, pointing out to sea, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR MIND
And on the westerly arm, pointing up to a little headland and a dwindling of the golden beach, it said:
TO LOSE YOUR HEART
September bit her lip. She certainly didn’t want to lose her life, so the cliffs were right out, even if she thought she could climb them. Losing her mind was not too much better, and besides, there was nothing about with which to fashion a seagoing vessel, unless she wanted to sink promptly on a raft of gold. She had already lost her way, walking for miles in that direction, and anyway, if one’s way is lost one cannot get anywhere and she definitely wanted to get somewhere, even if she didn’t know where somewhere was. Somewhere mainly involved food and a bed and a fireplace, whereas Here had only Fairy gold and a roaring, cold sea.
Only the heart was left.
You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.
Besides, she could see smoke off in the distance, wafting upward in thin curlicues.
September ran off towards the spiraling smoke. Behind her, the beautiful, four-armed woman who pointed the way closed her eyes and shook her birchwood head, rueful and knowing.
“Hello!” called September as she ran, tripping over the last of the gold bricks and sceptres. “Hello!”
Three figures hunched blackly around a large pot, a cauldron really, huge and iron and rough. They were dressed very finely, two women in high-collared, old-fashioned dresses with bustles, hair drawn back in thick chignons, and a young man in a lovely black suit with tails. But what September chiefly noticed was their hats.
Any child knows what a witch looks like. The warts are important, yes, the hooked nose, the cruel smile. But it’s the hat that cinches it: pointy and black with a wide rim. Plenty of people have warts and hooked noses and cruel smiles, but are not witches at all. Hats change everything. September knew this with all her being, deep in the place where she knew her own name, and that her mother would still love her even though she hadn’t waved goodbye. For one day her father had put on a hat with golden things on it and suddenly he hadn’t been her father anymore, he had been a soldier, and he had left. Hats have