The Boy Who Lost Fairyland by Catherynne M Valente

Author:Catherynne M Valente
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

Thomas breathed in great awful gulps. Would it work? It wouldn’t work. Would it? It couldn’t. It could. Never. Never. Perhaps?

Tamburlaine showed him how to rip out the page so that it was all one piece, with a very straight edge and no tears through any of the words. She showed him how to fold it as small as it would go and put it in the scrap-yarn wombat’s mouth. He could feel the paper poke through the loops in the yarn and press into Blunderbuss’s stuffing. Down, down it went, into her fuzzy heart. It wouldn’t work. He would feel something if it were working. But maybe the magic was only in the writing. Maybe it was already outside of him, whispering its work where he could not hear. Please, please, please.

The troll inside Thomas peered up through his eyes like a child pressing his face to a shop window. Tom and Tam held their breaths.

Blunderbuss’s left eye was a pearly magenta diamond-shaped button with a thistle carved on it (which had belonged to one of Gwendolyn’s spring dresses) and her right was a thick round brass button with a sailing ship stamped on it (which had come from one of Thomas’s peacoats). This meant that she always looked as though she was winking at something secret and funny. She looked that way now, and Thomas couldn’t help it—he winked back, as he so often did when the world was baffling and only something big and soft and grabbable could make him feel better.

And Blunderbuss winked back.

The chocolate-colored yarn over her magenta eye bunched up like a real eyebrow and shut. Then it sprang open again. Next, the bold blue yarn over her brass right eye tried it. Finally, the scrap-yarn wombat waggled her pea-green and tangerine ears. She waggled her maroon muzzle. She waggled her lilac tail. She pounded her gold and turquoise front feet on the bed, then her white and black back feet. She dropped her front half down and wiggled her motley, patchwork rump in the air. At last, Blunderbuss the wild and wonderful wombat opened up her cherry-red mouth, showing two long, powerful cloak-clasp teeth, and gave a chittering cry, like a pig and a songbird snorting and singing at the same time.

Blunderbuss gave a great leap, which was slightly less great than she expected it to be as wombats have quite short legs, but can never seem to remember the fact, and pounced onto Thomas, knocking him to the floor. She landed on his chest with a weight like a heap of cannonballs, her dense, muscley chest crushing him, her breath smelling like wet wool and a little, just a little, like bush grasses and a blazing hot sun beating down on dry dust.

“Troll! Troll Troll!” the scrap-yarn wombat chortled. Her voice was just perfectly rumbly and throaty and grumbly, like wool all frayed and felted together. “Yes! No! Yes. Yes. No. No. Maybe! Green. Pineapples. Gin.” Blunderbuss banged her front paws on Thomas’s chest, making him cough all over again.

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