The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Valente, Catherynne M.



For all those who take the hand of a brightly colored stranger

and journey back to Fairyland once a year



and everyone

whoever thought

they were too young

or too old.





Dramatis Personae SEPTEMBER, a Girl Her Parents AROOSTOOK, a 1925 Model A Ford BOOMER, a Lineman BEATRICE, a Gentleman Greyhound The Blue Wind PEASEBLOSSOM, a Puffin THE CALCATRIX, a Strange Crocodile Several Untrustworthy Winds BALLAST DOWNBOUND, a Klaubautermann The Moon The Black Cosmic Dog RUSHE, a Black Jackal WAITE, a White Jackal NEFARIOUS FREEDOM COPPERMOLT III, a Lobster SPOKE, a Taxicrab ALMANACK, a Very Large Whelk ABECEDARIA, a Periwig A-THROUGH-L, a Wyverary CIDERSKIN, a Yeti SATURDAY, a Marid VALENTINE AND PENTAMETER, Two Acrobats CANDLESTICK, a Buraq MARIGOLD, a Lamia TAMARIND, a Lamia A Certain Leopard TURING, a Tyger TEM, a Child Her Parents ERRATA, a Wyvern THE PEARL, a Thaumaturge A Fairy





CHAPTER I


THE INVISIBLE CLOAK OF ALL THINGS PAST

In Which a Girl Named September Tells Several Lies, Hoards Money, Turns Fourteen, Wears Trousers, and Goes on a Joy-Ride

Once upon a time, a girl named September told a great number of lies.

The trouble with lies is that they love company. Once you tell a single lie, that lie gets terribly excited and calls all its friends to visit. Soon you find yourself making room for them in every corner, turning down beds and lighting lamps to make them comfortable, feeding them and tidying them and mending them when they start to wear thin. This is most especially true if you tell a very large lie, as September did. A good, solid, beefy lie is too heavy to stand on its own. It needs smaller, quicker, more complicated lies to hold it up.

September would be awfully crushed to hear us call her a liar, but it cannot be escaped that she and honesty had not got on well for some time.

There are many sorts of lies. You could fill a shop with them. To be sure, lies are terribly common. Few would pay particularly good money for fibs when they are so busy making their own at home for nothing. But if you peek inside the shop door of the heart, there you will find a full stockroom. Lies to conceal dastardly deeds stack up smartly along the shelves. Over in the refrigerated section hang lies told so long ago and so often that they turned into the truth and get taught in history books. Lies told to make oneself seem grand pile up high on a special four-color display. And in the front windows, laid out so nicely no one could blame you for having them, snuggle up little harmless lies told to spare feelings or save face or keep a friend from trouble.

*

Of course, nothing is really harmless. Sometimes telling the truth can bang the world about its ears just as much as any lie. But you must always be careful when you visit that little shop where lies are kept. They are always looking for a way out.

*

The first lie September told was very simple indeed. It was such a tiny lie, in fact, that if you were not looking carefully, as we are, you would surely miss it. She told it on a rainy, blustery, squalling day, which is just the right sort of day to start down a strange and secret path. Long, cindery, smoky-colored clouds rolled and rumbled over the Nebraska prairie. The storm fell in silver streamers, stirring the thirsty earth into a thick soup. September sat in her mother and father’s house, looking out the window at the sloshy drops plunking into mud puddles the size of fishing ponds. Everything glittered with the eerie, swirling light of the heavy sky. Her familiar fields looked quite like another world.

September had a book open on her lap but could not concentrate on it. Her cup of tea had gone altogether cold. The pink and yellow flowers on the handle had worn almost to white. A certain small and amiable dog rolled over next to her, hoping to have his belly scratched. September did not notice, which deeply offended the dog. Her mother read the newspaper by the fire. Her father napped quietly with a checkered blanket thrown over his poor wounded leg, which never could heal quite right, no matter how many long trips into the city they took to visit his doctors. A bubble of thunder burst and spat. September’s mother looked up, leaving off an interesting article about a modern new road that might run very near to their house, and asked her daughter:

“Whatever are you thinking about, dear? You seem quite lost in your head.”

And September, very simply, answered, “Oh, nothing really.”

This was wholly, thoroughly, enormously untrue.

September was thinking about Fairyland.

Now, you might say that September had been lying all along, for certainly she never told her parents about the magical country she had visited twice now. That is what grown-up sorts who are very interested in technical terms call a lie of omission. But we will be generous and forgive September for leaving her adventures out of suppertime conversation. How could she ever explain it all? Mama and Papa, you might be interested to know that I flew away to a land of Witches and Wyverns and Spriggans, fought the wicked Marquess who was in charge of it all, and won—please pass the roast beets? It would never do. Papa and Mama, not only did I do all that, but I went back! My shadow had been making trouble, you see, and I had to go to the underworld to fix it all up again. Shall I do the washing up?

No, it seemed best to leave the matter where it lay. And where it lay was deep inside September where no one could take it from her and ruin it by staring at it too closely. When she felt afraid or alone, when her father was in such awful pain he could not bear to have anyone near him on account of the terrible racket of their breathing and thinking and swallowing, she could take her memories out and slip them on like a shawl of fabulous gems.