“Well?” she snapped. “On your Way, then. Hoof it, or wheel it, or however your personal phraseology would handle the fantastical notion of getting a move on.”
September gave Aroostook a little gas. The engine boomed; the rods shivered. The little moon hanging from the rearview began to swell up like a balloon filling with water. It got bigger and bigger, and brighter and brighter, and more and more silver, and the engine boomed again and again, each boom shaking September’s bones until she thought they would come apart.
Then the Model A careened forward and Mercator, suburb of Westerly, slammed shut around them like a door.
A howl of fine cold powder sprayed up and over the windshield like an ocean wave. It whipped across September’s lips, sharp, vicious-and sweet.
It was snowing sugar in Fairyland.
September and the Blue Wind found themselves driving along a high mountain road. Jagged violet peaks shot up into the night, dark silver cliffs dropped dizzyingly away on either side of the path, and if we are honest, the Model A was not designed with such conditions in mind. They shuddered and jiggered and teetered, and the journey would certainly have been cut dramatically short if the car were not somehow, valiantly, driving itself. We may be very grateful for this, as young girls who learn to drive upon the great plains are no more designed for wintry mountain roads than convertible automobiles for snow, and it is in our interest and September’s that novels last longer than their beginnings.
Stars clotted the sky above, peeking out from behind gusts of confectioner’s snow. It streamed down in blazing ribbons of white and blue and green that made the Milky Way-or whatever Fairies might call the wild cord of starlight tying up the heavens-look rather like a scrap of old newspaper. And far below, where any fall from the high passes would abruptly end, roared a sea of cold turquoise fire, biting at the mountain’s feet and throwing little meteors of sugar-ice against the battered cliffs.
The Blue Wind sang out in joy. She put back her head and howled and it was just the same sound as the awful winter wind screeching all around them. They were still rushing up, up, up, the speed incredible, the sugar-snow lashing September’s face with electric prickling pain. Sugar is not nearly so soft as snow and not nearly so nice as dessert. Every crystal bit into her skin and having found warmth in the wound, melted there with a tiny sting. September, once more, wanted to cry out in joy, to shout, nothing in particular, but the wordless hooray of relief and delight when one finally gets what one has looked forward to for so long. But when she opened her mouth to crow, the sugar-snow flew in and choked her.
“Isn’t there anywhere we might get out of the storm?” September yelled over a shearing updraft that nearly upended the lot of them. A few spare puffins scrabbled against the blizzard, paddling their feet for purchase on the dark backseat.
“Out?” hooted the Blue Wind, laughing. Her laugh sounded like icicles breaking all in a row. “Why would we want to get out? This is my favorite vacation destination! The most splendid spot in all of Fairyland! The balmy beaches! The luxurious yurts! The mashed-rice cocktails! How I have longed to lay out on the slopes of Mount Chiaroscuro and Moon-tan!”
The Blue Wind hopped up on the seat, hardly able to contain herself. In one grand sweep of her arms, all of her lovely warm clothes vanished: her ice skates, her brocade coat, her spiked cap. She now wore a spangled cerulean bathing costume and a pair of large silver sunglasses-which September supposed were called moonglasses, if the Blue Wind meant to Moon-tan while wearing them. The Blue Wind flashed a dazzling robin’s-egg smile.
“That’s better! Your bauble whisked you to a dreamy, exclusive spot, September! Ever so much better than a nasty old beach lousy with witches.” The Blue Wind flicked the silver Moon still hanging from Aroostook’s mirror. It rocked back and forth listlessly. Whatever it had done, it had done it and would now like very much to be left alone.
A lump of sugar-ice rocketed out of the sea below and landed in September’s lap with a hard crackle and thump. September thought the witches were rather brilliant, and how she would have liked to have seen the wairwulf again, and tell him how she’d got on in the capital. She opened her mouth to say so-and could only cough in a cloud of stormsugar.
“Oh, VERY WELL! No one appreciates a good squall anymore.” The Blue Wind turned up her face to the sky. “Shut it!” she hollered.
And the sky did.
The snow laid down on the ground like an obedient dog. The wind went suddenly, utterly silent. The cold fire sea still crashed and pounded below, but it only made a distant, hushing sound like radio-static. The Model A rounded a rill and rolled out onto the wide, flat table of the summit, a glassy dark shard of land mounded up with sweet, crystalline slush on all sides. September pushed her driving goggles up onto the black Criminal’s cap like an aviator. They had fogged and frozen so quickly she’d hardly been able to see until now-and now that she could, two extraordinary things showed themselves immediately.
The first extraordinary thing was this: Without any warning at all, without any reason at all, the steering wheel of the Model A-of Aroostook-had turned into a bright green sunflower. The petals felt hard and sturdy under September’s hands. The green of them shone with oily swoops of purple. Aroostook’s body was no different than it had always been. The same peeling dark paint, the same cracked headlamps, the same piebald tires. Even the same half-deflated squeeze bulb of the horn still sported its pink rubber patch. It all still smelled of gasoline and rust. But inside, the green flower of the steering wheel glinted undeniably as it caught the light of the second extraordinary thing.
A great road ran up out of the mountain. It began on the summit, its passage flanked by two silver streetlamps as tall as elm trees. On either side curled bony rails like briars, canted and corkscrewed at strange angles. Here and there on the bone briars, clusters of cool green berries bobbed and swung, glowing as brightly as lightbulbs. It ran so far and so high September got dizzy just trying to follow it-for the road did not run straight, either, but looped and spiraled and doubled back on itself, a long snarl of silk yarn thrown up into the sky. Ice glittered on the rails and the long lanes-and so did moonlight. For the road led far and high indeed, all the way up to the Moon, which hung above them in the sky, distant and beautiful, a giant crescent the size of a world. The last of the puffins bounced up out of the backseat and rose to meet the Moon, honking softly all the way.
“What happened to Aroostook?” September stared at the improbable sunflower which should not, should not be there. Of course all manner of improbable things happened in Fairyland, but September herself had never changed. Her clothes stayed the same, her face, her hair, her shoes, whether she came wearing one or two.
This was different.
If September knew anything, she knew what happened to you when you jumped or ran or swam or fell or flew into Fairyland. She and the girl who had crawled out of the kitchen window two years ago were one and the same, that was certain. Yet she could not explain the sunflower. She felt her own skin with her hands; she seemed quite herself. Her essential September-ness had not turned into a strange flower.
The Blue Wind ignored her quiet distress. She had somehow pulled a spyglass out of her bathing costume. It glittered, hollowed out of an icicle. Through it, she peered up at the road to the Moon. September followed that icy gaze with her own naked eye. She remembered what her friend Taiga, the reindeer-girl, had said in the glass forest: that the Moon was a rich and fertille place where all manner of folk lived. The road to the Moon dazzled her eyes and all the rest of her, too.