The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making Read Online Free PDF Page A

and a bed and a fireplace, whereas Here had only Fairy gold and a roaring, cold sea.
    Only the heart was left.
     
    You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.
     
    Besides, she could see smoke off in the distance, wafting upward in thin curlicues.
    September ran off towards the spiraling smoke. Behind her, the beautiful, four-armed woman who pointed the way closed her eyes and shook her birchwood head, rueful and knowing.
     
    “Hello!” called September as she ran, tripping over the last of the gold bricks and sceptres. “Hello!”
    Three figures hunched blackly around a large pot, a cauldron really, huge and iron and rough. They were dressed very finely, two women in high-collared, old-fashioned dresses with bustles, hair drawn back in thick chignons, and a young man in a lovely black suit with tails. But what September chiefly noticed was their hats.
    Any child knows what a witch looks like. The warts are important, yes, the hooked nose, the cruel smile. But it’s the hat that cinches it: pointy and black with a wide rim. Plenty of people have warts and hooked noses and cruel smiles, but are not witches at all. Hats change everything. September knew this with all her being, deep in the place where she knew her own name, and that her mother would still love her even though she hadn’t waved goodbye. For one day her father had put on a hat with golden things on it and suddenly he hadn’t been her father anymore, he had been a soldier, and he had left. Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
    These hats were not Halloween witch-hats, made out of thin satin or construction paper and spangled with cheap glitter. They were leather, heavy and old, creased all over, their points slumped to one side, being too majestic and massive to be expected to stand up straight. Old, knotted silver buckles gleamed malevolently on their sides. The brims jutted out, sagging a little, the kind of brims you might expect cowboys to have, the kind that isn’t for show, but to keep out wind and rain and sun. The witches hunched a little under the weight of their hats.
    “Hello?” September said, a little more politely--but only a little.
    “What?” snapped one of the women, looking up from her muttering. She held a beaten black book in one hand, heavily dog-eared.
    “I said ‘hello!’”
    “Yes, that’s me.”
    “What?” said September, confused.
    “Are you very dull or a very deaf?” said the other woman, flinging an alarmed lizard into the cauldron.
    “Oh!” cried the young man. “A little deaf child! How sweet! We should adopt her and teach her to write symphonies. She’ll be all the rage in town. I’ll buy her a powdered wig and a tricorn!”
    “I’m not deaf,” said September, who was very cross when she was hungry. “Or dull. I said hello , and you said nothing sensible at all.”
    “Manners, child,” said the woman with the book, her cruel witch’s smile curling up the corners of her lips. “If you haven’t got your manners, you might as well toss it all and become a witch.” She peered at the cauldron and after a moment’s disapproving stare, spat into it. “My name is Hello,” she continued as if nothing had happened. “So you see the confusion. This is my sister, Goodbye, and our husband, Manythanks.”
    “He’s married to both of you? How odd!” Suddenly their eyes narrowed and they stood very straight. September hurried to correct herself. “I mean--my name is September. How do you do?”
    “We do perfectly well,” said Goodbye coldly, pinching off one of the black pearl buttons at her throat and tossing it into the brew. “It all works out very nicely, really. My sister and I are very close, and very efficient, and when we were young it seemed like a great