The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making Read Free

out his gloved hand to the girl in orange.
    “Well done, September,” he said, and lifted her onto the Leopard’s emerald saddle.
     
    One can never see what happens after exeunt, on a leopard . It is against the rules of theatre. But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs.
    For, you see, when September and the Green Wind had gone through the puzzle of the world on their great cat, the jeweled key rose up and swooped in behind them, as quiet as you like.
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Local Thunder

Chapter II: The Closet Between Worlds
     
    In Which September Passes Between Worlds, Asks Four Questions and Receives Twelve Answers, and Is Inspected by a Customs Officer.
     
    By the time a lady reaches the grand, golden evening of her life, she has accumulated a great number of things. You know this--when you visited your grandmother on the lake that summer you were surprised how many portraits of people you didn’t recognize hung on the walls, how many porcelain ducks and copper pans and books and collectible spoons and old mirrors and scrap wood and half-finished knitting and board games and fireplace pokers she had stuffed away in the corners of her house. You couldn’t think what use a person would have for all that junk, why they would keep it around for all this time, slowly fading in the sun and all turning the same shade of parchmenty-brown. You thought your grandmother was a bit crazy, to have such a collection of glass owls and china sugarbowls.
    That is what the space between Fairyland and our world looks like. It is grandmother’s big, dark closet, her shed out back, her basement, cluttered with the stuff and nonsense of millenia. The world didn’t really know where else to put it, you see. The earth is frugal, she doesn’t toss out perfectly good bronze helmets or spinning wheels or water clocks. She might need them one day. As for all the portraiture, when you’ve lived as long as she has, you’ll need help remembering your grandchildren, too.
    September marveled at the heaps of oddities in the closet between worlds. The ceiling was very low, with roots coming through, and everything had a genteel fade to it, the old lace and code-breaking machines, the anchors and heavy picture frames, the dinosaur bones and orreries. As the Leopard proceeded through the dimly-lit passage, September looked into the painted eyes of pharaohs and blind poets, chemists and serene philosophers. September could tell they were philosophers because they had on drapey clothes, like curtains. But most of the portraits were just people, wearing whatever they had liked to wear when they were living, raking hay or writing diaries or baking bread.
    “Sir Wind,” September said, when she had recovered herself and her eyes had adjust to the darkness, “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously and not call me any pretty names or tease me.”
    “Of course, my…September. And you can call me Green. I feel we’re becoming very well acquainted.”
    “Why did you take me out of Omaha? Do you take very many girls? Are they all from Nebraska? Why are you being so nice to me?”
    September could not be sure, but she thought the Leopard of Little Breezes laughed. It might have been a snort.
    “That’s rather more than one question. Therefore I think it’s only fair I give you rather more than one set of answers.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “One: Omaha is no place for anybody. Two: No, my schedule keeps me quite busy enough. Three: See above. Four: So that you will like me, and not be afraid.”
    Up ahead, there was a line of folk in long, colorful coats, moving slowly, checking watches, smoothing hair under hats. The Leopard slowed.
    “I said no teasing,” said September.
    “One: I was lonely. Two: I have been known to spirit a child or two away, I shan’t lie. It is the nature of winds to Snatch and