June 2016

Chapter 3 - Hello, Goodbye and Manythanks

In Which September Nearly Drowns, Meets Three Witches (One a Wairwulf), and Is Entrusted with the Quest for a Certain Spoon

Salt water hit September like a wall. It roared family in her eyes, snatched at her hair, dragged at her feet with cold, purple-green hands. She gasped for air and got two lungfuls of freezing, thick sea.

Now, September could swim quite well. She had even won second medal at a tournament in Lincoln. She had a trophy with a winged lady on it, though she had always wondered what use a flying girl would have for swimming. The lady should have webbed feet, September was sure. But in all her after-school practices her coach had never impressed upon her the importance of practicing her butterfly stroke while being dropped from a great height without any ceremony at all into an ocean. With Fairy ooze in one's eye. Really, September thought, how could they leave something like that out?

She floundered and dipped beneath the giant waves, only to bob up again, spluttering, gulping air. She kicked hard, struggling to get her legs properly under her and orient herself towards the shore – if there was a shore – so that the waves would carry her towards land – if land there was – and not away from it. Riding the crest of a horrid wave sickening upwards, she turned her head as fast as she could and glimpsed through the last, stubborn streaks of ointment a fuzzy, orangish strand off to the west. Against the will of the water, she hauled her body around until she was more or less pointed at it and stroked as fast as she could on the swell of the next wave, letting it push her and punch at her and drag her – whatever it liked, as long as it was closer and closer to land. September's arms and legs burned and her lungs were seriously considering giving the whole thing up, but on she went, and on and on until quite unexpectedly her knees knocked on sand, and she fell face-first as the last waves slid up past her on to a rose-coloured shore.

September coughed and shook. On her hands and knees, she threw up a fair bit of the Perverse and Perilous Sea on to the beach. She squeezed her eyes shut and shivered until her heart stopped beating quite so fast. When she opened her eyes, she was steadier but elbow-deep in the beach and sinking fast. Thick red rose petals, twigs, thorny leaves, yellowish chestnut husks, pine cones, and rusty tin bells littered the shoreline as far as she could see. September scrambled and tripped and waded through the strange, sweet-smelling rubbish, trying to find some solid ground beneath the blackberry brambles and robins' eggshells and wizened, dried toadstools. The land was not very much more sold than the sea, but at least she could breathe – in sharp, jerky gulps, as the brambles pricked at her and the twigs pulled at her hair.

I have not been in Fairyland nearly long enough to start crying, September thought, then bit her tongue savagely. That was better; she could think. And the flotsam of the beach did seem to get shallower as she pushed through the wreckage. Finally, the wreckage was only knee-deep, and she could trudge through it like so much heavy snow. At the far edge of the shore were tall silvery cliffs, spotted with, stubborn little trees that had found purchase on the rocks and grew straight out sideways from the Cliffside. At their tops, great birds wheeled and cried, their long necks glowing bright blue in the afternoon light. She stood alone on the beach, breathing heavily. She rubbed her eyes to get rid of the last of the gnome ointment out, where it had hardened like sleep dust. When September's eyes were clean of salt and gnome, she looked back down the beach in the direction she had come from. Suddenly, the beach didn't look like rose petals and sticks and eggshells at all. It glittered gold, real gold, all the way down to the violet-green water. Doubloons and necklaces and crowns, pieces of eight and plates and bricks and long, glittering sceptres. These shone so brightly September had to shade her eyes. No matter how she walked, to the left or right, the shore stayed firmly golden now.

September shivered. She was terribly hungry and dripping rather dramatically. She wrung out her hair and the skirt of her orange dress on to a huge golden crown with crosses on it. The jacket, mortified that it had been so distracted from its duties by a mere momentary drowning, hurriedly puffed out, billowing in the sea wind until it was quite dry. Well, September thought, it's all certainly very strange, but the Green Wind is not here to explain it anymore, and I can't stay on the beach all day like a sunbather. A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet. She looked out at the rolling purple-green waves of the sea once more. A stirring that she could not name fluttered within her – something deep and strange, to do with the sea and the sky. But deeper than the stirring was her hunger and her need to find something that bore fruit or sold meat or baked bread. She folded up the stirring very carefully and put it at the bottom of her mind. Tearing her eyes away from the stormy waves, she began to walk.