The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)

by Catherynne M. Valente

September touched the face of the pearly clock. She picked it up, marveling at it. She was so tired. All she wanted was to sleep, and wake up to steaming cocoa, then sleep again. If Saturday and Ell were safe, she could sleep.

Furtively, so that the Marquess might miss her doing it, she glanced at the other plaques. They said things like, GREGORY ANTONIO BELLANCA and HARRIET MARIE SEAGRAVES and DIANA PENELOPE KINCAID. But hers just said, SEPTEMBER. And didn’t it look a little tacked on? Was there—possibly—just the shadow of something else behind it? September bent her head and picked at the bottom corner of the plaque with her thumb.

“True names,” said September wonderingly. “These are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you don’t come, and they call again but you still don’t come, and they call you by all your names together, and then, of course, you have to come, and right quick. Because true names have power, like Lye said. But I never told anyone my true name. The Green Wind told me not to. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I do now.” September looked up. Iago watched her with his round, calm eyes. He flicked his gaze toward the Marquess, and all of the sudden September knew; she knew it, though she could not say, not exactly, how she could possibly have known. “This is your clock!” she cried, brandishing it. “And it’s stopped!”

collar. “I dreamed about you!” cried September. “We are alike, I said. It would break your heart, September, how alike we are. This is what I looked like when I was twelve and lived on my father’s farm.

Can you imagine? A farmer’s daughter, being allowed to sit and read all day with no one to bother her? I thought I would die with the pleasure of it.

me aside when it’s finished playing with me! If this place could steal my life from me, well, I, too, can steal. I know how the world works—the real world. I brought it all back with me—taxes and customs and laws and the Greenlist.

Tears flowed hot and frightened and bitter. Iago howled, mourning for Mallow or the Marquess or Fairyland, September could not be sure.

What if it had been September, and she had lived here so long that she forgot home?

Fairyland loves no one. It has no heart. It doesn’t care.

I am not the villain. I am no dark lord. I

All the ache and horror of it, the sea and the fish and the sadness of Queen Mallow and Iago and all of them, poured out of her into the grass, into the day. Finally, she touched Saturday’s blue back ever so gently, with the tips of her fingers.

The Stumbled have clocks. It is their tragedy. But no one has quite the same tragedy. Changelings can’t leave without help. And the Ravished…” The Green Wind pulled an hourglass from his coat. It was filled with deep red sand, the color of wine. On its ebony base was a little brass plaque. It read, SEPTEMBER MORNING BELL.

“September, do you remember your big orange book that you like so much, full of old stories and tales? And do you remember a certain girl in that book, who went underground and spent the whole winter there, so that the world mourned and snowed and withered and got all covered in ice? And because she ate six pomegranate seeds, she had to stay there in the winter and could only come home in the springtime?” “Yes,” said September slowly. “That is what it means to be Ravished. When the sand runs out, you must go home, just like poor Mallow. But when spring comes again, so will you, and the hourglass will turn over again. It will all begin anew. You are bound to us now, but you will never live fully here, nor fully there. Ravished means you cannot stay and you cannot go. You ate heartily in Fairyland, and I am so terribly glad you did, even though it was certainly naughty of me to have tricked you so. But I do think I warned you not to eat, so you cannot bring suit against me.”

Maybe her mother would not miss her. Maybe it would be like dreaming.

“When spring comes, I shall meet you at the Municipal Library, and you will see how much I’ve learned! You’ll be so proud of me and love me so!” “Oh, Ell, but I do love you! Right now!” “One can always bear more love,” the Wyverary purred.

You and I may imagine this simple plea floating up and out of the golden field and up into the sky, winding and wending toward our stalwart friend, the jeweled Key, which had sought September through all of her adventures. We cannot fully understand the joy that exploded in the heart of the Key as it heard September’s cry, and how fast it flew, knowing she needed it, knowing its girl cried out for it.

The Key thought it might die of the sound of her voice. September gathered it up in her hand, and it felt it must die all over again, for the touch of

For when she lifted her daughter up out of the threadbare couch, September cast no shadow at all.