Catherynne M. Valente ’s phantasy novelThe Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Makingbroke the cyberspace and then became a publication sentience . Now the sixth and final Fairyland book is come in out , The Girl Who hie Fairyland All the Way Home . And here ’s an sole excerpt ! This section is one of the “ interludes ” between the chapters in the Holy Writ .
Interlude: Sisters Oughtn’t Keep Secrets
countenance us depart September to slumber for a little while . She has gain it — it ’s ever so tiring to be suddenly in bearing of a news report when you have become quite accustomed to the story happening to you , rather than you happening to it . And besides , Martin Luther King Jr. and Queens are the most trying of citizenry . There are far too many of them about for anyone ’s comfort and serenity of mind . Why , we have scarcely gotten to get our breath ! Let us sit down together for a moment , and I shall pour you a glass of whatever you like well . You may hold my hand if you wish , I do n’t mind . I should n’t want you to feel alone .
Now that we have made ourselves quite comfortable , I must severalize you — we have forgotten about something important . I ’m indisputable you did not mean to , and I surely did not . It is only that so many exciting thing have happened that we did not remark . Let us peer beneath the sofa cushions and beneath the seam for it . Let us jostle the curtains and elevate up the tablecloth . We shall get ourselves into trouble if we do not find it . For this tale begin in Nebraska , and we have not so much as glanced Omaha - way in ever so long . It is gruelling to remember to go knocking at a farmhouse room access when so many palace doors await — but a door is a doorway , and a door is always an escapade .
In this special farmhouse , which I expect you bang nearly as well as I do by now , two charwoman were endure in the kitchen . They looked atrociously likewise , as they always had , even as children . The same dark-skinned haircloth and dark eye and fierce set of their jaws , just the same as September ’s eye and hair and jaw . Their names were Susan Jane and Margaret . They were sis . And one of them had just enounce something very odd indeed . Margaret touched her sis ’s cheek softly . She smile , a smile that startled and tease and trip the light fantastic .
“ Listen to me , Susie , ” Aunt Margaret whispered , so that only they two could get a line . “ I know where September is . ”
“ How could you ? Why would n’t you evidence me at once ? ” enunciate Susan Jane .
“ Listen to me very cautiously . Whatever I say , you must believe me , even if it sounds like the most ridiculous matter a somebody has said in the whole chronicle of the reality . Do you promise ? ”
“ Yes , ” said September ’s female parent .
Margaret find oneself herself suddenly very afraid . There were words she had never said aloud to her babe before , or even to anyone in the commonwealth of Nebraska or the rural area of America . Words she bed were n’t safe to say , words more powerful than big H . Aunt Margaret had led a life occupy with secrets , and that is a very hard riding habit to break up , even if you badly want to break it . So for a good while she said nothing , because she could not make herself say the matter she had kept hidden at the bottom of her heart for so long . lastly , she let a long breath out through her nozzle and wrestled her secret out into the piddling midnight kitchen .
“ September is in a space called Fairyland . It ’s very far aside , far away than any topographic point you’re able to remember of , and then far away still . It ’s a storybook place . A place that ’s contact magic and shaken its hired man . Now , I make love this because . . . because I ’ve been to Fairyland , too . All those fourth dimension I said I was going to Paris or Turkey or Morocco or Mongolia ? I ’ve been lie up , down , and all around , Susie . Where would a charwoman like me get the money to visit Paris ? No . I ’ve never been to France . Never been to much of anywhere . Except this place . And I call up you commemorate . I think you remember when I was little and I would bunk off into the woodwind instrument and you could n’t find me all day and into the night , even though you knew I ’d go into the woods and the woods were n’t all that terribly bad to begin with . I cogitate you call up green shadow under the kitchen window , and the audio of a cat far giving than ours whiz at the door . ”
“ Fairyland . A real place call Fairyland . ” And it seemed to Susan Jane that she did remember , a footling . She did remember her baby whispering in the dark , tail butterfly that were n’t butterflies at all , the shape of a valet at the window in green riding breeches and green snowshoes . . .
“ Very , very real . The realest . The first time I went I was nine years old . A man all in green flew up to the second - chronicle window in our old house on a fly leopard and said : You seem like a brainsick and implike enough child , how would you like to descend away with me on the Leopard of Little Breezes and be render to the Tattersall Tundra that lies near the terminal of Fairyland ? And once he said it , I did palpate mad and mischievous , and I did desire to see what a Tattersall Tundra was , and I jumped out of that window as tight as you could say your own name . ”
“ Were n’t you afraid of a unknown man at the windowpane ? ”
“ Well , I reasoned after that anyone who can win the love of a flying leopard has to be mostly all right . And he was . I rode on the back of a great arctic Charles James Fox and wear off trousers and fell in with the Tobogganeers , a banding of snowy Stregas who keep their Deepfreeze buy in with magic . I teach to deepen myself into a polar bear and a manticore and a coke - Scarabaeus sacer . And that was only the first sentence . I screw it sounds mad but you promised to think me . Time ’s got its lid on funny remark over there , so I could toy in Fairyland for months and still come home for dinner with new ribbons in my hair . Only it was n’t play , exactly . I have another name when I ’m there . I have a little house in the batch . I ’ve . . . done terrible things and I ’ve done things so grand I wish I could throw a parade down Farnam Street in my own honor . ”
“ Has September done terrible things ? ”
“ Oh , I ’d suppose she has . And marvellous things . Fairyland has a weakness for the dramatic . I do n’t have sex exactly ; we ’ve never been there at the same time . But I ’ve heard her name whispered and hollered . I suspect she ’s been there a few times by now . I know the looking in her eye . It ’s the look in my middle . ”
“ And is that why ? Is that why September ’s gone to this Fairyland , because you went ? Did you take her there ? ”
“ Oh no , Susie . That ’s not how it works . Fairyland comes to you . I did n’t have a thing to do with it . It just happened that way . There ’s . . . there ’s a weak place in the world , I think . Near here . More people go through than you imagine . I used to always worry you ’d falter in somehow and I ’d have to share . Oh , that ’s terrible of me , I know , but all little girls are frightful , sometimes . Anyway , I always came back . September ’s always come back , too , because you have to come back . Humans do n’t much get to stay put . They do n’t even get to say when they come and go . Except me . ”
Susan Jane looked at her sister as though she had never met the woman before . “ Why you ? ”
Margaret smiled lightly . A smile full of pride that did n’t want to seem majestic . “ I did Fairyland a favour once . I was honor . ”
Aunt Margaret touch the annulus on her right hand . It was an interlocking silver puzzle ring she ’d contribute back from Turkey when September was only small . It had four rings with ridges and engraving and pattern on them . If you flex and wriggle them just right , they snapped together to become one single , complete ring .
“ I promise I would conceive you . I promised I would believe you . ” Susan Jane said it a few more times , so that it would become true .
“ Do you want to go to Fairyland , Susie ? I should have asked you before , I sleep with . Sisters ought n’t keep secret . Only it was such a just secret . ”
“ Oh yes , ” breathed September ’s mother .
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