The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making Read Online Free Page B
Author: Catherynne M. Valente
Tags: Fiction, Juvenile Fiction
gnome, she looked back down the beach, in the direction she had come. Suddenly, it didn’t look like rose petals and sticks and eggshells at all. It glittered gold, real gold, all the way down to the violet-green water. Doubloons and necklaces and crowns, pieces of eight and plates and bricks and long, glittering sceptres. It shone so brightly September had to shade her eyes. No matter how she walked, to the left or right, the shore stayed firmly golden now.
September shivered. She was terribly hungry, and dripping rather dramatically. She wrung out her hair and the skirt of her orange dress onto a huge golden crown with crosses on it. The jacket, mortified that it had been so distracted from its duties by a mere momentary drowning, hurriedly puffed out, billowing in the sea wind until it was quite dry. Well , September thought, it’s all certainly very strange, but the Green Wind is not here to explain it anymore, and I can’t stay on the beach all day like a sunbather. A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet. She looked out at the rolling purple-green waves of the sea once more. A stirring fluttered in her that she could not name, something deep and strange, to do with the sea and the sky. But deeper than the stirring was her hunger, and her need to find something that bore fruit or sold meat or baked bread. She folded up the stirring very carefully and put it away at the bottom of her mind. Tearing her eyes from the glittering waves, she began to walk.
After a moment, she prudently knelt down and gathered up a particularly jewel-encrusted sceptre. You never know , she thought, I might have to ransom things, or bribe folk, or even buy something . September was not prone to stealing, but neither was she entirely stupid. She began to walk up the beach, using the sceptre as a walking stick.
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
September shivered. She was terribly hungry, and dripping rather dramatically. She wrung out her hair and the skirt of her orange dress onto a huge golden crown with crosses on it. The jacket, mortified that it had been so distracted from its duties by a mere momentary drowning, hurriedly puffed out, billowing in the sea wind until it was quite dry. Well , September thought, it’s all certainly very strange, but the Green Wind is not here to explain it anymore, and I can’t stay on the beach all day like a sunbather. A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet. She looked out at the rolling purple-green waves of the sea once more. A stirring fluttered in her that she could not name, something deep and strange, to do with the sea and the sky. But deeper than the stirring was her hunger, and her need to find something that bore fruit or sold meat or baked bread. She folded up the stirring very carefully and put it away at the bottom of her mind. Tearing her eyes from the glittering waves, she began to walk.
After a moment, she prudently knelt down and gathered up a particularly jewel-encrusted sceptre. You never know , she thought, I might have to ransom things, or bribe folk, or even buy something . September was not prone to stealing, but neither was she entirely stupid. She began to walk up the beach, using the sceptre as a walking stick.
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
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