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

you know,” sighed the Green Wind.
    “SHE’S IMPRESSED. LOOK, SHE’S ALL SHAKING AND THINGS.”
    “Betsy, I will thrash you a good one, and you know I can. Don’t forget who whipped the Lord of Leafglen and rode him about like a dog. I am not a tourist, Betsy. I will not be treated like one.”
    “No, you’re not a tourist,” growled a thick, phelgmy, but much quieter voice. The gargoyle’s eye-flames snuffed out and its great shoulders sagged. A little woman hopped up onto the podium, no bigger than September, and perhaps a bit smaller. Her muscled chest was shaped like a bear’s, her legs thick and knobbly, her short hair sludged up and spiked along her scalp, sticking up in knifepoints. She chewed on a hand-rolled cigarette; the smoke smelled sweet, like vanilla and rum and maple syrup and other things not terribly good for you. “You’re not a tourist,” she repeated in a grumbly, gravelly voice, “you’re Greenlist , and that means No Good Scoundrel, and that means No Entry Allowed, Orders of the Marquess.”
    “I filed my immigration request with the stamps of the Four Clandestines, weeks and weeks ago. I even have a letter of reference from the Seelie Parliament. Well, the clerk. But it’s on official letterhead and everything and I think we all know that stationary makes a statement .”
    Betsy quirked her hairy eyebrow at him and hopped back into the gargoyle-puppet, quick as a blink. It roared to life, all fiery eyes and clanking arms.
    “GO AWAY. OR SEE WHO GETS THRASHED.”
    “Green,” whispered September, “is she…a gnome?”
    “Too right I am,” grumbled Betsy, squeezing out of the puppet again. It slumped in her absence. “And very perceptive of you, that is. What gave it away?”
    September’s heart still hammered all over the place from the yelling of the gargoyle. She held her trembling hand a little above her head.
    “Pointy,” she squeaked, and cleared her throat. “Gnomes have…pointy hats? I thought…pointy hair is as good as a hat, maybe?”
    “She’s a regular logician, Greeny. My grandmother wears a pointy hat, girl. My great-grandmother . I wouldn’t be caught dead in one any more than you’d like to wear a frilly bonnet. Gnomes are modern now. We’re better than modern, even. Just look, you,” and Betsy flexed an extremely respectable bicep, the size of an oil can. “None of this flitting about in gardens and blessing thresh-holds for me. I went to trade school, I did. Now I’m a customs agent with my own great hulking hunk of heave here. What have you got?”
    “A Leopard,” answered September quickly.
    “True,” considered Betsy. “But you have haven’t got papers or both shoes, and that’s a trouble.”
    “Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.”
    “They do, you just can’t see them right,” grinned Betsy Basilstalk. “All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly . Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that’s all. Whereas Rupert here? He’s as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.”
    She scratched the hulking shell behind what might have been an ear. It remained still and dark.
    “Then why tell me it’s all puppets and engines? Don’t you want me to let you peer at me?” asked September.
    Betsy beckoned her closer, until they stood nose to nose and all September could smell was the vanilla and rum and maple syrup of her cigarette, which was all through her skin, too.
    “Because when humans come to Fairyland, we’re supposed to trick them and steal from them and whap them about the ears--but we’re also supposed hex them up so that they can see proper-like. Not everything, just enough so as to be dazzled by mushroom-glamours, not