“But when the night comes rushing on,” sang the girl, laughing uncontrollably. She took a bite out of her iron bolt. It crumbled like cake in her mouth. “Down falls Mary, dead and gone!” The girl smiled. Her teeth were full of black oil.
And for a moment, just a moment, September saw them alclass="underline" Saturday, Ell, and the strange blond girl, bound and bolted and chained in a dreary, wet cell, sleeping, skeletal, dead.
CHAPTER XIV
IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING
In Which September Leaves Autumn for Winter, Meets a Certain Gentleman of Means, and Considers the Problem of Nautical Engineering
September woke to the sound of the snow falling. Hoarowls cried overhead: “Hoomaroo! Hoomaroo!” The sun burned white and soft behind long clouds. A cold, piney wind blew over her skin.
She opened her eyes-and she had eyes! She had skin! She could even shiver! September lay on a makeshift stretcher, a piece of piebald hide stretched between long poles. Her hands-and she had hands!-were folded neatly over her chest, and her hair flowed over her shoulders and down to the sash of the exultant green smoking jacket, dark brown and familiar and dry and clean. She was well again and whole.
And alone. It all came rushing back to her: the sleeping blue lions, Saturday and A-Through-L, all of it. And the dream, too, still clinging to her like old clothes.
Mary, Mary, Morning Bell.
In a panic, she reached for her sword-and felt the copper wrench safely beside her on the piebald hide. The Spoon still rested snugly in her sash. Saturday’s favor was gone, though, lost to the woods. September sat up, her head heavy and sick. A wood spread out around her, and it appeared long past autumn, the trees black and stark, snow glittering on everything, softening every edge to exquisite, perfect white. The green smoking jacket busily puffed up to keep out the gently blowing snow.
“You see? You’re quite well again. I promised you would be.” Citrinitas sat a little ways away, as though afraid to come too near. The little spriggan clutched her three-fingered hands together miserably. She scratched her long yellow nose and pulled up a great yellow hood over her head. She snapped her fingers, and a little golden fire burned before her, floating above the snow. Citrinitas sheepishly fished a marshmallow out of her pocket and speared it on her thumbnail to roast.
“Where are my friends?” September demanded, happy to find she had her voice back, strong and loud, echoing in the empty wood.
“I didn’t have to bring you out, you know. I could have left you there, and it would have been a good bit less trouble than dragging you out across the Winter Treaty. So close to Spring! It doesn’t sit right with the stomach. Rubedo didn’t even want to come. And he so longs to travel! Doctor Fallow is a bit of a coward-he hid when the lions came. Eventually, we’ll find him, though. I think he’s angry with you-you might have at least matriculated before turning all… tree-ish. And now I’ve missed our wedding, thank you very much.”
“You’ll have another tomorrow! And, anyway, if it’s so much bother, why didn’t you just grow and cover the distance in three steps?”
“Well,” Citrinitas blushed deep ochre, “I did. But that’s not the point. The point is gratitude, and how you ought to have it.”
September gritted her teeth. She liked the feeling of it-of having teeth. “Where are my friends?” she repeated icily.
“Oh, how should I know? We were only told to feed you up and send you into the woods. No one tells us anything unless it’s ‘Mix up Life-in-a-Flask for me, Citrinitas!’ ‘Bake me a Cake of Youth, Trinny!’ ‘Grade these papers!’ ‘Watch that beaker!’ ‘A monograph on the nature of goblins’ riddles, Ci-ci!’ I swear to you, I am finished with postdoctoral work!”
The golden spriggan struck her bony knee with her fist. As she spoke, her voice got higher and higher until it squeaked like a teakettle.
“Anyway, it’s no use interrogating me. I don’t know. But I’ve brought you to the snow, and the snow is the beginning and the end of everything, everyone knows that. I’ve brought you to the snow and the Ministry, and the clerk will… well, mainly he’ll say ‘Ffitthit’ at you. But I expect they’re in the Lonely Gaol, you know, since that’s where the lions take people usually, and that’s far, oh so awfully far, and it won’t do you any good, anyway. Parole was outlawed years ago. And the Gaol is guarded by the Very Unpleasant Man, and you’re just a little girl.”
September’s face burned. She got up and marched over to Citrinitas and crouched next to her. And maybe Lye’s bath, oh so terribly long ago now, really had given her a red, frothy draught of courage, because otherwise she could not imagine where she might have found the gall to hiss at the miserable spriggan, “I am not just a little girl.” Then September straightened up, scowling at the alchemist. “I can get bigger, just like you. Only… it just takes me a little longer.” She turned on her heel, seized her copper wrench, and began to walk over the crystal snow drifts to a little hut nestled between two great yew trees, which could only be the Ministry, or at least, she hoped it was the Ministry, because otherwise she would suddenly look very foolish. She did not look back.
“I’m sorry!” cried Citrinitas after her. “I am! Alchemy really is lovely, once you get past the alchemists…”
September ignored her and walked up the hill, the snow swallowing up the spriggan’s voice.
September breathed relief. The Marquess’s lovely black shoes had gotten soaked with snowmelt. A pleasant sign, freshly painted black and red, rose up out of a snow drift:
THE MARVELOUS MINISTRY OF MR. MAP
(YULETIDE DIVISION)
The hut was covered in white furs and bits of holly, but the bits were placed rather haphazardly, as if someone meant to be festive but got bored and gave up instead. The door was a sturdy thing with a compass rose stamped rudely into the wood. September knocked politely.
“Ffitthit!” came the answer from within. It was an odd sound, like someone spitting and coughing and growling and asking after one’s relations all at once.
“Excuse me! Citrinitas sent me! Please let me in, Sir Map!”
The door cracked.
“It’s mister, kitten. MISTER. Do you see an Order of the Green Kirtle on my chest? Eh? A Crystal Cross? It’d be news to me. Call me by my proper name, good grief and all gallows!”
An old man peered down at her, the bags under his eyes wrinkled like old paper, his hair and long corkscrewed mustache not even white, but the color of old, stained parchment. His skin was lined and brown, and his neatly brushed hair curled in a stately fashion, tied up in a black ribbon, like the old portraits of presidents in September’s schoolbooks. He had a pleasant, jolly belly and broad cheeks-and fat, furry wolf’s ears with a great deal of gray fur in them. He wore a bright blue suit with the cuffs rolled up over impressive forearms, so bright it startled in the midst of the white woods. His forearms were covered in sailors’ tattoos. For a moment, he and September just stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak first.
“Your suit… it’s lovely…,” murmured September, suddenly shy.
Mr. Map shrugged. “Well,” he said, as though it were perfectly logical, “world’s mostly water. Why pretend it’s not?”
September leaned in close, rather closer than is courteous. She saw that his suit was a map, with little lines and bits of writing on it. The buttons of his blazer and his cuff links were green islands, as was his belt buckle, an enormous, sparkling gem, the biggest island of all. September recognized the shape of the buckle. She had seen it, oh so briefly, as she fell from the customs office in the sky. That’s Fairyland, she thought.