Catherynne M. Valente ’s “ Fairyland ” volume have captured the imaginations of reader of all ages . And in slip you ’ve miss out , we ’ve got the exclusive debut of a book trailer that explicate the series . Plus here are the first two chapters of her brand unexampled Scripture , The young lady Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two .
Check out the beautiful trailer above — admonish : that strain is a gorgeous earworm ! — and here are the first two amazing chapters of Girl Who Soared , to assist you get up to speed on Fairyland :
C H A P T E R I
THE INVISIBLE CLOAK OF ALL THINGS PAST
In Which a Girl name September Tells Several Lies , Hoards Money , Turns Fourteen , Wears Trousers , and go on a Joy- drive
Once upon a time , a daughter named September told a great number oflies . The bother with lies is that they bonk fellowship . Once you tell a exclusive lie , that prevarication fuck off terribly emotional and calls all its friends to visit . Soon you observe yourself produce elbow room for them in every corner , turning down bed and ignition lamps to make them comfortable , feed them and tidying them and furbish up them when they start to wear thin . This is most especially honest if you order a very large lie , as September did . A good , solid , beefy Trygve Halvden Lie is too heavy to stand on its own . It needs smaller , quicker , more complicated Trygve Lie to nurse it up .
September would be awfully crushed to discover us call her a prevaricator , but it can not be get away that she and Lunaria annua had not got on well for some metre .
There are many sort oflies . You could satiate a workshop with them . To be sure , prevarication are terribly common . Few would make up particularly good money for fibs when they are so officious make their own at home for nothing . But if you peek inside the shop room access of the heart , there you will find a full stock room . Lies to hold back dastardly deeds stack up smartly along the shelf . Over in the refrigerated section hang lie 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 lofty galvanic pile up high on a particular four- color presentation . And in the front windows , set out so nicely no one could charge you for birth them , snuggle up little harmless lies told to spare look or pull through face or keep a acquaintance from hassle .
Of course , nothing is really harmless . Sometimes narrate the truth can bang the Earth about its ears just as much as any Trygve Halvden Lie . But you must always be heedful when you chew the fat that footling store where Trygve Lie are kept . They are always looking for a style out .
The first lie September assure was very unsubdivided indeed . It was such a tiny Trygve Halvden Lie , in fact , that if you were not attend carefully , as we are , you would sure enough miss it . She told it on a rainy , blustery , squalling day , which is just the right sort of day to embark on down a foreign and secret path . Long , cindery , smoky- colored clouds rolled and rumble over the Nebraska prairie . The storm fell in silver streamers , stirring the athirst earth into a thick soup . September baby-sit in her mother and father ’s home , looking out the windowpane at the sloshy drops plunking into mud puddle the size of fishing ponds . Everything shine with the eerie , eddy visible light of the heavy sky . Her conversant fields look quite like another universe .
September had a al-Qur’an open on her lap but could not decoct on it . Her cup of afternoon tea had gone altogether cold-blooded . The pink and yellow flowers on the grip had wear almost to white . A sure small-scale and amiable dog-iron wind over next to her , hoping to have his belly scratch . September did not notice , which deeply break the dog . Her female parent interpret the newspaper by the flame . Her father nap quietly with a checkered cover thrown over his poor wounded leg , which never could heal quite right , no matter how many tenacious trips into the urban center they took to visit his doctors . A bubble of thunder burst and spat . September ’s mother bet up , leaving off an interesting clause about a modern new route that might run very near to their house , and necessitate her daughter :
“ What ever are you think about , dear ? You seem quite lost in your head . ”
And September , very only , answer , “ Oh , nothing really . ”
This was wholly , thoroughly , hugely untrue .
September was thinking about Fairyland .
Now , you might say that September had been lying all along , for for sure she never differentiate her parent about the wizardly state she had visited twice now . That is what grown- up kind who are very interested in expert terms call a lie of deletion . But we will be generous and forgive September for leaving her dangerous undertaking out of dinnertime conversation . How could she ever explain it all ? Mama and Papa , you might be concerned to know that I flew aside to a state of Witches and Wyverns and Spriggans , fought the wicked Marquess who was in charge ofit all , and gain — 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 gear up it all up again . Shall I do the washing up ?
No , it seemed best to leave behind the thing where it lie . And where it lay was deep inside September where no one could take it from her and ruin it by stare at it too closely . When she feel afraid or alone , when her father was in such tremendous pain in the ass he could not bear to have anyone near him on account of the direful racket of their breathing and thinking and take back , she could take her memories out and slip them on like a shawl of fabulous gem .
Poor September . Everyone has their unseeable cloak of all thing past . Some shimmer and some float . Some cut all the direction down to the bone and far still .
If you could only discover the piffling trumpet of that lie , calling all its brothers and sisters to muster up !
And muster they did . What was September to do when her teachers asked her to drop a line a composition on how she had spend her summer vacation ? Five paragraphs on I brought my begetter ’s shadow back from Fairyland- Below where my own shadow had draw out it over from the warfare in France and I carried it all the way home to put it back together with his body again ? Certainly not . Like all the other student , she wrote a nice essay on the unusually hot August she had pass bring the harvest in , learn lacework and how to repair the Pteridium aquilinum on Mr. Albert ’s Model A.
Yes , Mrs. Franke , that was all . Nothing interesting in the fragile .
And when Mrs. Bisek , who teach forcible education , point out on how fast September could run now , could she possibly pipe up up and declare : I have had good praxis while transmigrate with a herd of wild bicycles , as well as escaping several alarming animate being ? Out of the question . It was all up to help oneself her Padre memorize to walk by rights again , of track . Together they made endless circuits of the acreage so that he could get secure . And bad of all , when Mr. Skriver , the chronicle instructor , asked if anyone knew the story of Persephone , September had to burn the interior of her cheek to keep from crying out : I go bad to Fairyland on a Persephone visa and I ate Fairy food and both of those put together intend I shall go back every year when the seasons change . Instead she countenance one of the fille whose fathers work at a bank building in Omaha and wore voguish little gray hats answer , and get it wrong at that .
All around her , the children September had known since her first solar day of schooling were growing up . The girls crop tall through the hall and talked about their boyfriends in the same thrilled and thrilling feeling you and I might use to talk over wonderful flying dragons . They shared the occult secrets of keep one ’s gold tomentum utterly golden and one ’s ivory pelt absolutely unclouded . Some of the boys had scrap of beard or moustache coming in , of which they were very gallant . September was shut out from the mystery story of golden hair and ivory skin , induce neither . Nevertheless , she was arrest tall , too . She would soon find herself taller than all but three or four girls her age . Her face was turning into the boldness it would be when she was grown . But she could n’t see it , for no one can see themselves change until they have already done it , and then suddenly they can not call up ever having been different at all .
And above all the bustle of thirteen- year- olds becoming fourteenyear- olds floated the heavy and powerful rumour : The war would be over soon . Everything was going to go back to normal .
Spring melted over the farms outside Omaha like butter in a goat god . Sharp , green Day full of sheer white clouds . September could not help smiling a little smile , all day long and in her sleep , too . Waiting for Fairyland was like wait for a razzing George Bush to fruit . One day you thought the whole matter was dead and Leslie Townes Hope lose , and the next you were drown in berries . But the fruit always total . That is what September told herself . Of course , faith and forbearance are very strong put-on for a heart to learn . It would be easier for our girl to learn how to somersault off a trapeze than to conceive that the dastardly , dashing creation tends to do things whenever it pleases , on its own persnickety timetable and not that of yearn untried people . She watched April rumble through like a undimmed , loaded railroad train and May burst in close behind , ardent and noisy and full of rolling , boisterous birds .
Her 14th natal day came .
September ’s Father-God felt well enough to help with her nowadays . It was a present so howling it fare all the way round again to terrible and so terrible it sped through to marvelous with a quickness . September felt so nervous and excited her peel flashed inhuman and then tingly and then hot as a stove .
September was going to read to beat back .
On the morning of September ’s natal day Mr. Albert ’s creaking , nettlesome Model A Ford sat out in front of the firm like an old horse quick for the slipstream again . A little orange ribbon flutter in the malarkey , tie round the burlap Aroostook Potato Company discharge that covered the spare bike . The Model A could not claim to be young nor fast nor good- looking , but it made fantastic snarling noises . Alongside her female parent , September had worked her finger into almost every part of that engine . Now those finger nip with readiness , remember valve and pistons . With some coaxing and bargaining , she roll in the hay , the aged beast would roll down the road to town , grouch plenty all the way .
And now it was hers .
At least for the afternoon .
The consequence it became her own , September saw the Model A as quite a dissimilar beast . It was no longer a task to be finish by supper , but a glorious monster , a mystifier smelling of gasolene with a lot of portion like teeth . She bear on the battered , accordioned vent — the rouge had not deliver the goods its battle with fifteen Nebraska winter . Once it had been vestal , dark , wintry K . Now it looked like a pelt , with spot and band of bare metal and rusting testify through . The black fenders curve up and over piebald front wheels , hoist the near- flat spare part and boastful froggy headlight . The chrome had not stargaze of shine since Mr. Albert had whacked it up against a beech tree a month after he buy the matter . The cracked windshield sparkle in the hot sun . It had a cloth top you could pull over your pass , but the sidereal day glowed so warm and still that September knew they would n’t trouble with it . Not today . She would push with the wind in her tomentum and get a marvelous roadster ’s sunburn .
“ Hullo , ” September whispered to the Model A , just as she would to a crabby honest-to-goodness knight who did n’t desire her apple , give thanks you very much . “ Do n’t be afraid , I shall sample very hard not to crunch you or wallop you in any way . Of course , I can not predict , but I am ordinarily quite careful when dealing with terrible railway locomotive . ”
Her Fatherhood eased himself into the rider stern , his side a little crimson and flushed with the effort and the sunshine and the flurry of a birthday . He tighten the strap of Mr. Albert ’s drive goggles over September ’s head and pull the extra pair down onto his own great , lovely nozzle . September could hardly breathe . Her excitement jump and sputtered in her as though the railroad car were already speeding down the road .
Now , a Model A does not go and halt the way automobiles whose conversancy you and I have made do . It has a good number of lever tumbler and valve and switches , and operating one is something like puppetry , something like lion taming , and something like dancing . September ’s mother pointed and explained the peculiar working of the out of practice beast with an engine for a sum .
“ Now , ” she tell bright , her warm , firm voice full of confidence in her daughter . “ There are important rule in drive an automobile , convention from which no one , not even your own mother , is exempt . ”
“ order me the prescript , ” sound out September with that hidden slight smile her mother could not render .
“ Some are easy : Go on Green , stop on Red . Use your mirror , they ’re there for a reason . wait both ways before turning . Brake into a turning and accelerate out ofit . But most of the rules have to do with not kill the car while seek to get it start . sustain thing started is always such a trouble ! But , like so : the brake must be on before you could get down . This seems half-witted , but it ’s important . Turn on the gas valve and press the spark lever — that ’s the one on your unexpended , dear — all the way up . It ’s fire that arrive at a elevator car go , my love , fervor and fuel . Now commit the throttle valve lever — on your right field , darling — a little ways down . conceive of a clock , where the throttle is the hour hand . Put the hour mitt at four o’clock . See how at four o’clock the accelerator pedal sound down all by itself ? That ’s how you make love you ’ve got it right . You must bend the carburettor — that shiny pommel there — one full turn closed , then one full round heart-to-heart . Put the gear in neutral — electroneutral means neither forrader nor backward nor immobile nor sluggish , and it is the stead from which you must always lead off . Closed before capable . Brake before beginning . Now , at last , move around the key to ON . But it is not ON yet , no matter what the key say ! draw the carburetor perch back , and iron out this clitoris on the floor which is the appetiser . Wait for the locomotive to turn over — that sound like it is clearing its pharynx and will presently start talk up a tempest — and have the rod go . ”
September thought the rod and release would slip smoothly into office with fulfill sounds and clicks . Once you have a go at it what to do , well , doing it would be no trouble ! But it was not like that at all . It took all her strength to drag the throttle lever tumbler into emplacement . She thought her wrist might snap before the gearshift would consort to moil into neutral . The Model A pettifoggery and rinse and shudder awake , but not all at once . First she gave too much gas ; then she was too slow to press the starter after yank back the carburetor with both hands and her shoulders put into it in solemn . No wonder Mr. Albert thwacked that beech tree .
September ’s beginner put his warm brown hand over hers and let the spark lever down a piffling . There were more unknown Scripture — clutch and give-up the ghost and shift , like the car was a body and quite alive , if a little fed up with stomach ache or cough .
Had she been less excited by the phlegmy holloa of the Model A , September might have remark how much she had grown for touch the pedals with her feet and see out the windshield while sitting up very straight and proper and not promote on gravid books . But the car jangled and her meat jangle with it . When she free the bracken , there certainly was much clutching and choking . September lease out a whoop of delight that was swallowed up in the raggedy protestations of the engine , and off they rattle down the dirt road , bouncing and jostle and knocking and bonging . When it came clip to agitate gears , the Model A bolted forward woodenly . When it came sentence to slow down , it whined and sputtered . September did not care . She leaned into the road , clay splosh her goggles , laughing into the May lead .
It was , after all , so very like ride a Wyvern .
Nothing else happened that day .
The sun set without queer happenings and no sooner than she could nictitate , September once more lived in a world without the Model A , as if none ofit had ever happened . The wonderful , monstrous , noisy car go away back to Mr. Albert ’s garage . No jazz of any color came step on it up behind the exhaust- clap of the car . When she lie in bed that night , she could still palpate the vibration of the locomotive engine in her bones , like when you have drop the whole Clarence Shepard Day Jr. swim and the angelic rocking of the body of water lulls you to sleep long after you ’re full and dry . I shall not worry just because the Green Wind did not come today , she cogitate over the echo of shift gear shivering her skin . Aunt Margaret says vexation only turns down the bed for bad news .
Instead of fretting over a day here or there , she would prepare . The place that fearfulness took up in her heart she would fill with preparation and preparedness . She was a seasoned Adventuress now , after all . It would never do to keep turning up in Fairyland like a helpless lamb with nothing but the wool on her back . Grown- ups did n’t just look around for things to happen to them . They made plans . They anticipated . They saved up and looked out and packed in . September slept very well that night . She dream of neatly replete bag and lists with every particular checked off .
The first and most authoritative of these preparations began with a mason jar under her bed . September had been saving penny for some time . She was her mother ’s girl and that signify a stinting girlfriend with a impuissance for accumulate what she never love if she might call for . But now her efforts had a clear role : September was quite fed up with the trouble of own needs in Fairyland but no way . It was no dear than her own world ! Worse , in fact , since she hardly had a notion of what money meant over there at all . But she would have no more First Kisses sell on the opened market this time , nor rubies wedge out of a Fairy scepter that might well have been an oversize logarithm back in Nebraska . She would never be a rich girl , neither here nor there , but she could at least make a go at convincing magic folk that a bit of bull was as dependable as a kiss .
And so September offered herself up to all her neighbors : no job too big or too messy , assure no complaining ! She fed sheep and crybaby and weed kitchen garden . She pinned up washing like blowing white sails on sea oflong grass . She write letter for Mr. Killory who could n’t read and was n’t about to start check now . She count after the stale , crabby Powell body of work cavalry , fed and watered and comb out them while they snorted in pointed disapproval . Mrs. Powell gave her a half- dollar as pretty as a plate when the large roan turned up fraught after they ’d long gift up on the impression . She hold over her female parent ’s errand for Mr. Albert , driving round the county to fetch or deliver or buy . Dimes and atomic number 28 and centime went into her jolt , filling it up like glinting kettle of fish .
Being prepare think standing at the ready at any moment , should Fairyland come for her — and this was how she gestate ofit in her deep heart : a whole world drifting ever closer in a beautiful chariot of air and light and ocean , a whole globe come to gather up her . Thinking everything over and lay her fairy- habits out one by one like butterflies in a tray , September had to admit that shifts and apparel were not the most hardheaded of traveling clothes . She had only one pair of trousers , but they became costly to her — don them meant that she would soon be tumble over stone walls and chase after down blue kangaroos . They mean going and doing and daring .
September also took her father ’s temperature every day , though when he offered her a dime bag for being such a unwavering nurse , she would not , could not take it . She postulate after his pain as though it were a visiting congener and recorded the answers in a little ledger given to them by his doctor . He went to Omaha every three months . Ever so lento those doctors were straightening his leg . There was nothing to be done about the piece of bullet lost somewhere in his second joint . September watch him go each time from her window , vanish in the long , satiny Packard transmit by the Veterans ’ Association . Each time she had the peculiar thought that he was under a spell just like hers , compel to leave home and return to a unknown city over and over again .
While she did her humble work from farm to farm , September thought often of the Sibyl who ward the entrance to Fairyland- Below , where her vestige had made its home . The Sibyl had have intercourse her work , how she had live since she was a kid that the work was as much a part of her as her own heart . What is my body of work ? September thought , and not for the first metre . What can I do that is useful ? What have I done since I was diminished that comes as innate as guarding to a Sibyl ? She did not know . It was probably not institute kitchen vegetables or force a automobile . The Killorys ’ bleating sheep and half- unsighted cock seemed to order her with their black eyes that she was not so good at looking after them that she should make a liveliness ofit . The fraught roan did not descend to share an opinion in any way . September considered herself quite good at meter reading and thinking , which was mostly what her father had done in his classroom before the war . She could , it sure enough seemed , depose Danaus plexippus moderately well . But these did not seem to lend up to what one might call a professing . September roll in the hay that some girls work hard at training to be a tone married woman and a female parent to child that would one day be bear . But her mother did all that and also made airplanes vaporize with just a spanner and her own good brain . September also wanted to do wonderful thing with her own good brainpower . It was no easier to wait for such a profession to become clear than to break looking for signs of Fairyland around every Oliver Stone wall and fence post .
September strain to fill up up her good brain with these sorts of thing , to fill it so full that she only could not suppose about anything else . May relaxed into its heyday and songbirds . June took the summertime ’s truncheon and sprint down its dry , golden course . The self-aggrandizing hay wheel of the Nebraska lunar month looked in through September ’s windowpane at Nox . And once , but only once , she held her jar of coin in the moonlight and thought lastly the terrible matter she had not permit to total in , no matter how it knocked on the doors of her heart . Maybe it ’s because I am getting previous . Maybe Fairyland does not want me because I have been trying so hard to be a grown- up person and comport in a grown- up fashion . Maybe Fairyland is for nipper . I am fourteen now , which is ever so much more than twelve . I have jobs even if they are not very practiced ones . I can get a gondola and retrieve to record Father ’s temperature at the same time every day . Maybe I am grow too big — no , worse , maybe I am incur too usual to be allow to go back .
She woke that dark with a start , sure she had pick up a Wyverary ’s inscrutable haroom right next to her .
But there was nothing . In the ardent , still dark , September holler .
C H A P T E R I I
EXEUNT, PURSUING PUFFINS
In Which September Fails to Mend a fencing , Runs a Border , Misuses Prepositions , and Meets a Very Nice Dog call Beatrice
The first twenty-four hours of July stick out of layer hot and contrary . September woke early , so early that the sky still had a little pink and yellowish in it when she shut the threshold quietly behind her . She headed out to the neat job of trees at the far boundary of their property . She was wear down her beloved dark-green work- trousers , which , trueness be told , had gotten both threadbare and too short for her , and a faded buttoned shirt with a pleasant red and orangish chequer on it . She carry a hammer hooked into her swath loops and , in her deep olive pockets , a little case of nails , two slice of butterscotch candy as well as a paperback book of account concerning Norse mythology which she ’d had to bend near in halfin parliamentary procedure to gibe . Her jam jar of coin catch one’s breath in the felon of her arm . September aimed to read about mistletoe and eight- legged buck for a while , then mend a space of fencing that had screw up down in the last rainstorm . The fence in question part their attribute from Mr. Albert ’s much big spread . Her father had advert it the dark before , abstractedly , sadly , as though there were no point in trying to pay back it , what with the human beings going on the way it was and rainwater coming anytime they pleased . When September finished with the fence , she was to take the Model A into town and purchase a good issue of things on a list her mother had made out . Mr. Albert had a list , too , and Mrs. Albert and Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Whitestone down the means as well . For herself , September had decided to expend some of her cherished coins in ordination to buy a compass and perhaps some other provisions that might prove useful in Fairyland .
With all the lists neatly tucked into her back pouch , September looked out toward the ribbon of leafy birch in the far aloofness , their white trunks picture starkly like uppercase letters . Their shade beckoned gorgeously , black and deep and coolheaded . It was a long manner of walking and September could not whistle or anything of the variety . rather , she took out her book to take as she walked , descry her path out of the corner of her eyes . September could do well-nigh anything while take : take the air , brush a horse , pull ragweed out of the herb- bed , scratch the teacup and gravy boats which by now had almost no paint on them at all . The composition was very dry , but it hardly mattered when Valkyries and goats with mead in their udders were underway . A lady named Skadi was going about choosing a husband just by looking at the branch of all the gods when that rich , thick shade fall over the pages . Time to walk along the fence until the ruined bit spill out its wire and wood all over the place . September took out one of her butterscotch and popped it into her backtalk .
All those gods ’ legs and butterscotch and red-hot morning sun might have maintain September from ever seeing the rather declamatory mortal and even larger blackguard walking along the other side of the fence . To be bonny to our female child , the other person walked very softly . In fact , she did not walk so much as sizzle wordlessly into nothing and reappear again a piddling ways farther down the fence while her dog trotted to keep up . We can only thank the tangle of storm- buffet fence for micturate its entering just then and not a mo later . For when she ensure the wreckage over the top of her Koran , September put Skadi and her gods- legs away and seem straight into the crackling , electric , blue eye of an enormous cleaning lady and a tall , bored- search greyhound .
September could not justly tell whether the cleaning lady herself was tremendous or if it was only her armor that made her seem so . But how fearfully hard and uncompromising she must have been to assume up under it all ! alloy close up her tall , all-embracing body like the wicket of a train , twisted up in snarls of telegram and bolts and incandescent knob . In the pith , where her ticker should be , a great miner ’s lamp shine with blistering electric light , throw off the pale low sparks . Her shoes were made of railroad caterpillar tread bent and buckled into shape . Huge black half- pipework prickled with rivets hunched over her shoulders . Her hand , half the size of it of all of September , sported rough glove burn out of two single cloudy diamonds . Inside the facets , lights flickered on and off , cold- black and searing white . Even the woman ’s tomentum was a tangled mass of electrical wire , bound up in a expectant knot . A few fibril blow in the picnic , charge little discharge hiss down into the dirt . She held a immense , old- fashioned lantern in one hand with a egg of ignominious burning where the fire ought to have been . In the other she brandish a gravid hook turn up with intricate , beautiful metals like carving on an ancient whalebone .
The greyhound , as tall as a lion and double as work-shy , stared with the same fiery blue eyes , but his pelt rippled the flies away without armour , soft and grizzly and white with black speckles . His expression was the doleful , skittish one wear down by all his breed .
September stared . The wire- woman stared back , much less alarmed , as September was rather little and not throw off electricity like confetti .
Then she vanished .
The empty air where the charwoman stood down and wriggled for a minute , and then all was still . The greyhound give September another long , half - interested , houndly look which seemed to say : A dog ’s study is never done and is that butterscotch I smell ? He get up , arch his back into a quick stretching , and padded off down the fencing line .
September decamp after him . She need n’t have ; the electric peeress crackle back into existence three or four long steps away . She lift up her hook and seemed to catch an invisible something in the July air , yanking and wind it against a atrocious opposition . Beads of froth yellow sweat shot from her brow .
“ safe aurora ! ” aver September , and feel goosy . Was this woman from Fairyland ? She seemed Fairyish . She felt Fairyish . The air around her boiled with an intolerable heat and she smelled like scorched metallic element — but also , absurdly , like acquire things , mushrooms and dandelion greens and pine sap . What else could she be ? September had never experience anything like her . For sure she knew how to go away .
The greyhound grabbed hold of the end of the long hook . He rumble and haul on it , and together with his mistress they worked free what ever had become stuck in the sky . The lady mopped light- sweat from her eyebrow with a very obviously chequer hankie . The pattern was nearly the same as September ’s shirt .
“ And a skilful morning to you , kid , though by my clock it ’s midnight and by my mood it ’s a nasty one . ” She savvy her monolithic diamond hand into her breastplate and cast away a bright bit of reddish light to her frump , who jumped to catch it and crunched happily away . “ Too long before my shift ’s done and too much short letter bequeath to reel . Is n’t that always the way ? ” She smiled a aweary sort of smile . Her teeth flash copper .
September just could not think of anything to say . When that go on the affair she wanted to say but ought n’t usually jumped out of her back talk and that ’s just what it did .
“ You ’re not a Wind , ” she said bluntly , and then felt rude and reddened .
“ Got that proper , ” the lady pronounce darkly , and guttered out again . September gritted her teeth with thwarting . She looked around and scrambled back along the fencing to where the electric lady was coming once more into focussing . The dog gave a lilliputian yelping and follow .
“ What are you , then ? ” September said , not less bluffly . She consider a deep breath and bulge out again . “ I do have manners , I anticipate . It ’s only that when manners do n’t allow me say what I want to , I do n’t have anything else . And what I require to say is , well , you are from Fairyland , are n’t you ? You just have to be . ”
The noblewoman stuck her lure into the sky again , but this time , she hardly had to wriggle it doubly before she seemed slaked . She took out another lump of red luminance , put it into her own mouth like baccy , and chewed thoughtfully . “ Now , from ’s a funny word for it . It ’s a preposition and those are a jaggy business . Am I from Fairyland ? No , no , you could n’t say it . You ’d be wrong as a pen in a socket . Am I among Fairyland ? That ’s closer , but nope , still a bust . Am I out of Fairyland ? Am I next to Fairyland ? Am I regarding Fairyland ? It ’s no beneficial ! The trouble with prepositions is they need to stick pins in you . They desire to say how you get on with matter , where you are exactly in relation to this or that . preposition are the guardians of space and time — and ifi expend my manners , space and clock time and I had a words in schoolhouse and we ’re not what you ’d call bosom buddies any longer . preposition want to put you in your place , the trivial stickler . In my personal credit line of oeuvre — oh gracious , there ’s me punning ! — in my communication channel of work you ca n’t let anything hold on to you , not even watchword . actor’s line are the worst . Everything else runs on words . And there ’s drove of them , just running mad all over your business like ants . If you hold still long enough , they ’ll get you practiced . So I do n’t . ”
She crackled amobarbital sodium and sizzle out again . The greyhound pay back his incandescent middle on September .
“ We are throughout Fairyland , ” he said tardily . His vocalisation was soft as falling ash .
The noblewoman ’s staticky spokesperson returned before September could see the disconsolate lamp of her spunk blaze up in just the same place she ’d impart .
“ You did n’t go anywhere ! ” September exclaimed .
“ Well , sure I did , ” the woman said . “ I went a hundred thousand miles . Put a patch on the origin at the Spindle Substation . And now I ’m putting a electrical fuse in here at the Pomegranate Junction . Only it ’s not here , see . I ’m not here at all . S’what I mean about words . I ’m on the other side of the rim . But the Line is so backed up here you may see bit of me coming through even though you should n’t . ” Her blazing disconsolate center narrowed and she bent down to September , shake one gargantuan diamond digit at her . “ perhaps you ought to just go to layer right now , young lady , without any supper . Spying on Heisenbergian mechanics through the keyhole . Kids today ! ” But then the electric lady express joy . “ Do n’t look so appalled . I ’m just having my own little jokes . I do n’t mind if you see me . Linemen do n’t heed much . ”
“ What ’s a Lineman ? ” pass off September , glad to have something in all of that to guard on to .
“ I ’m one . My name ’s Boomer . My old boy there ’s Beatrice . He ’s a Cap . A Capacitor if you ’re inviting him somewhere formal . Keeps me grounded , holds on to the Line while I work it . ”
“ That ’s a girl ’s name . ”
Boomer shrug . “ He wish Beatrice . It ’s not my byplay what a Cap need to be squall . Howdy , you are just bound and specify to make me talk , are n’t you ? Use discussion like a somebody . ” Boomer clattered and fizzed as she settled down onto the dirt beside the fencing . “ Well , I ’ll stress but I do n’t have to like it . A Lineman work the Line . The crinkle between the worlds . Like when you desire to keep cows from wandering out and getting hamburgered by a string or bust ankles on oak rootage . If there was n’t a Line , anyone could just jump around between world like hopscotch . Toss their marker over the shabu and bounce right through , bid all her little friends after her in a row . Nothing but a mess and I ’ve get wind it materialise , back when . ”
“ But people do jump , ” said September shyly .
“ Oh , they do ! Boy , and how they do ! That ’s why I ’ve pose a job ! The Line ’s perplex fallible spots . It ’s old and I ’ve got my suspicion about the morals of those what string it in the first place . It has to be fixed nonstop . Just while I ’ve been utter to you I ’ve knit up fourteen frays , spackled a winded transformer , spooled up twenty slacks , replace seven dark node , and nett a jam the size of Montana . ” Boomer squinted one centre . “ And I trust you ’re chic enough to know those are just words , words you infer because you live in a world that has a Montana and transformer and capacitors . It ’s not what they are . ”
“ Of naturally , ” say September , who had not realized that at all .
“ I ’m not from Fairyland . Never been there . But I ’ve seen it through the workshop windowpane , you know ? I go between , and I mind the Line . There was a bad break here a while back — a while back by my clock , not yours . And by here I do n’t mean your farm or Nebraska , really . Just here . Here summed up by Pluto and inchworms and balloons that rise because of helium . People have been coming and going like they got pip out of a genus Circus cannon . I do not like it , no ma’am . The Line’ll always be light in these parts . Structural defect . But it almost wore through totally last yr — I guess I ’ve get down that right-hand . sentence zone are my bedevilment and no lie . Last twelvemonth we almost mislay it , and now I ’ve got to tend to the droop . ”
“ Last yr ! I was in Fairyland then ! And my phantasm was steal magic ! A minotaur tell me the borders would have just melted into nothing if she ’d had her way . ”
“ You should always listen to minotaurs . Anybody with four breadbasket has to have a unfaltering bag on realism . The Line was all in tatters . It got so sorry you could just trip over a wall and end up who eff where ? And when the works go that wrong , you get bandit . worsened than computer mouse . If you see one it ’s too late . Beatrice does his serious to rustle them adept , but what can he do ? It ’s a foundational fact of the universe that everything leak . What come out when it bound , that ’s the only motion . ” Boomer spat . A flow of crimson lightning glittered out of her oral fissure .
September calculate down at her shoes . “ Am I a bandit ? I ’ve been cut through the Line . Twice . Four times if you count the take slip . ”
Boomer look at her meaningfully . September stuck her men in her pockets . But she looked up again and held the Lineman ’s regard . She was n’t sorry . She would n’t affect she was sorry . She supposed that made her a brigand for certain .
Beatrice ’s eyes scud like light bulb . He set out to wrawl : a farseeing , whistling , vacuous greenback , just exactly like a steam engine .
“ Here they come , ” snarl up Boomer , and heaved up , her metal dead body unfold like a mystifier .
“ Who ? ”
The prairie stood unruffled and green , except for a loose and fitful wind blowing the long grain and the glowering immature hint of the birch .
“ Were n’t you after a fart ? I detest Winds . Criminals and fugitives and psychopomps the whole stunned gasbagging lot of them . But for the Winds I could have retired with a courteous spread out beyond the edge of clock time by now . Up , Beatrice ! Speak ! ”
The greyhound rose up on his great haunch and bark once , twice , three times . His voice was no longer a steam locomotive engine but a unspeakable tolling bell . September clapped her deal over her ears — and a sound affair , too . The wind whipped itself up so boisterous and tight all the grain could do was stand straight up , stretch and taut almost to burst . The air seemed to tip and teeter and at long last come down over , spilling out a concourse of hollering , ululating , laughing , whooping creatures . puffin .
One by one they rolled up into fluffy round shot , undulate their flyspeck wings once or doubly , and crump back down onto their chubby venter , tumbling over one another like a wave breakage . Their round beaks gleamed shiny orangeness and gold . Some were tiny , no bigger than jacks . Some were much bigger , the size of hunting hound . Their eye fizz black and gullible and ruby-red and majestic as they crumple nearer — and at least some of those were not at all the right colouring material for birds ’ eyes as far as September make out . One by one they heft up up into the air again , coggle their wide webbed metrical foot against the sky like they were scrambling up a mountainside .
And dance on top of them , leaping from puffin to puffin , twirled a grinning young lady all in blue-blooded . She outwear indigo trouser with as much silk to them as a skirt , and when they rustled , ghostly pale gamey adept peeked out from the folds . She had on aquamarine opera baseball glove and sapphire- colored kick with crisscrossed icicle laces all the way to the knee . A farsighted , beautiful sky- colored coat spin out like a dress from a heavy silver belt at her waist , eddy with aquamarine sewing , trim in wild , woolly fur from some impossible , blueberry- colored sheep . Her recollective , cerulean haircloth fly every which way under a cobalt capital rimmed in the same blue shag . The jacket crown had an ice- spike on top ofit , like old pictures of the Kaiser . She fume a blue churchwarden pipe , blowing great foursquare and triangle and rhomb of blue bullet for her puffin to dip and plunk through .
A recollective honk break up the caterwauling puffin songs . In the center of the flock , one-half bouncing on the ground and half hoisted , shoved , comport , and jostled by the birdie , came Mr. Albert ’s Model A Ford . “ But that ’s my railroad car ! ” September corrected herself , but she was quite indignant that someone else — even if they were puffin — was driving it . “ I mean it ’s Mr. Albert ’s car ! What are they doing with it ? They ’re going to cave in it to pieces , that ’s what ! ”
“ Horse thieves ! ” Boomer said with disgust . She brandish her hook like an axe . Beatrice growl . It sounded like the turn of gears late in the earth .
The womanhood in blasphemous sighted September . Her grin develop wider ; her black eyes glittered . They barrel toward the fence . The air wriggled around the Lineman and her Cap , so hot it turned the back of September ’s leg painfully red . She stood her ground .
“ Girl , Ho ! ” the blue brigand yelled , in the manner of sailors sighting land . She salute smartly .
September saluted back . A smiling give away loose on her expression like a firecracker . Who could this be but the Blue Wind , a little late , but add up for her at last ? September forgive her immediately for her tardiness . Her center hammer around inside her like it intend to get destitute .
“ Wind , Ho ! ” she cry out . all of a sudden , all that talk of bandits and holding the Line seemed entirely , entirely unimportant . September laughed and waved giddily . She could n’t help adding : “ Have you fare to take me to Fairyland ? ”
The Blue Wind cocked her head to one side and hoot . The puffins hooted back . Now they were intimately on top of her , September could see each little bird clip in chic , shining armor of the sort you find in books about Spanish explorers . The armor was made ofice and caked in snow . Their own black plume stuck out of their helm as plumes .
“ Had n’t planned on it , ” shrugged the Blue Wind . “ Fairyland ’s a dreadful place . Why would you require to go there ? ” She laughed ; her laughter rocketed into the forest , recall and go apart against the tree diagram .
Several things happened all on top of each other .
The bandits shot up into the sky : puffin , the Blue Wind , the Model A , and not a few birch trees yank out of the ground by the dreadful , shearing air .
Beatrice overleap up to meet them , his long silver body arcing like a current , his acute tooth glow hot white .
Boomer dropped her hook and undo her fuzz . It was such a simple gesture September did not have it off what she was about until the whole mass of it came down and open : a lucre of wire sizzle with electrical energy , as wide and strong as the sail of a heroic ship .
September scream out and she did not know who she meant to warn : the frankfurter , the birds , Boomer , the Blue Wind ? But it did not count . Beatrice shoot at the underbellies of the skirt . They laughed chitteringly at him . He escape once , twice , three times ; they could go higher than he . He fell back to the priming coat , his snout twitch , yelp frustration like a puppy . As soon as her hound had got clean , Boomer threw her net in the bandits ’ path . September was sure they ’d be cooked to death — but the Blue Wind only giggled . With a wink for September , she birl around like an ice - skater on the back of a particularly bombastic puffin . The flow of chick narrow and squirmed and shrunk and passed directly through the gaps in the electric net — and so did the Model A , honk tinily as it jumped .
The tempest stopped abruptly . All was silent . Boomer place upright stockstill , her flashing adamant clenched fist clinch in choler around the wires of her electric hair . Beatrice howled his mournful train- whistle howling once more .
September tried to take in her breath . She looked at the Lineman . She looked at the Cap . She face after the Blue Wind , vanished altogether . A very sealed thought came on in her mind . Boomer would n’t let her get over over . She knew it . It was her job to say no . To blockade the way . Just like it was the Sibyl ’s Book of Job to say yes and enter the way . Just like it was her own line of work to commemorate her father ’s temperature and mind the meaning Powell horse even when she bit . You do your task and you mind your work . That ’s how the grown- up populace receive along — and grownup magic , too .
Before the Lineman could stop her , before Beatrice could get up on his haunches again , September clutched her jam jounce to her side , flash forrader , and leapt with all her might . She dive through the same gap in the lucre of crackling white- blue conducting wire that had swallow up the puffins , just wide enough for a girl . She shut her eye at the last second , blinded by the showers of glowing sparks and by a sudden sureness — she had n’t jumped severely enough ! The wires would catch her in a flash and turn her into smoke . Too deep , too recent !
September winked out of the domain like a firefly .
Boomer sighed . She give up the fencing post , which shatter in scourge before her keen foundation had a luck to touch it . The Lineman dropped the net of her pilus like a curtain and promptly blinked out again . This metre , Beatrice sizzle away , too , and the only thing left of any of them was a last , lollygag wisp of the hound ’s howl .
phantasy
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