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

Grasp at things, and Blow Them Away. Three: Nebraska does not grow many of the kinds of girls who ought to go to Fairyland. Four: If I were not nice, and did not know the way to Fairyland, and did not have a rather spectacular cat, you would not smile at me or say amusing things. You would tell me politely that you like teacups and small dogs and to please be on my way.”
    They came up short and took their place in line. Everyone towered above September--the line might have been long or short, she could not tell. September leapt off of the Leopard and onto the dry, compact dirt of the closet between worlds. The Green Wind hopped lightly down beside her.
    “You said I was ill-tempered! Was that really why?”
    “One: There is a department in Fairyland entirely devoted to spiriting off young boys and girls (mostly orphans, but we are have become liberal in this late age) so that we may have a ready supply of a certain kind of story to tell when winter comes and there is nothing to do but drink fennel-beer and peer at the hearth. Two: See Above. Three: dry, brown places are prime real estate for children who want to escape them. It’s much harder to find wastrels in New York to fly about on a Leopard. After all, they have the Metropolitan Museum to occupy them. Four: I am not being very nice at all. See how I lie to you and make you do things my way? That is so you will be ready to live in Fairyland, where this sort of thing is considered the height of manners.”
    September curled her fists. She tried very hard not to cry.
    “Green! Stop it! I just want to know--”
    “One! Because you were born in--”
    “If I was special,” finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it’s because she’s special, because she’s smart and strong, and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and…I don’t know that I’m any of those things. I don’t even know that I’m as ill-tempered as all that. I’m not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work, but what I mean to say is: maybe you meant to go to another girl’s house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn’t mean me at all, because I’m not like storybook girls, I’m short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn’t even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.”
    The Leopard turned her prodigious, spotted head and looked at September with large, solemn, yellow eyes.
    “We came for you,” she growled. “Just you.”
    The big cat licked the child’s cheek roughly. September smiled, just a little. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the green jacket.
    “NEXT!” boomed a deep, severe voice which echoed all over the closet. It was so strong that they were blown back into the folk who had silently joined the line behind them. The party in front of them, all pink eyeshadow and spangled, spiky hair, exploded past a tall podium in a flutter of papers and luggage.
    At the top of the podium loomed an enormous gargoyle, its face a mass of bronze and black rock, waggling stone eyebrows and stern metal jaw. Its lolling eyes burned red flame. Its heavy arms clicked and whirred, greasy pistons pumping. The creature’s chest was plated in gnarled, knuckled silver, half-open along a thick seam, showing a thudding, white-violet heart within.
    “PAPERS!” The gargoyle thundered. Portraits rattled along the earthen walls. Its breath was smoky and hot, and in its mechanical jaw, a steel tongue rattled. September shrank against the Leopard, the force of the gargoyle’s breath pushing at her face.
    “BETSY BASILSTALK YOU COME OUT OF THERE THIS SECOND!” The Green Wind hollered back, though not quite so loud, having no leather-bellow lungs to help him along.
    The creature paused. “NO,” it bellowed.
    “You’re not impressing anyone,