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

Author:Valente, Catherynne M. [Valente, Catherynne M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

AEROPOSTE

In Which September Discovers a Friend in the Circus, Reads a Number of Hands, Feet, and Faces, Tucks Into a Most Literate Lunch, and Hears a Perfectly Practiced Tale

A-Through-L swooped and soared down the gentle slopes of Almanack. September clung tight to his back. She had ridden him before—but then he’d walked, his bumpy, two-legged chicken-gait. His wings had been chained down horribly. And in Fairyland-Below she had flown as a Wyvern herself before turning back into a girl mid-flight. But this was the first time she and Ell had flown together. Laughter and tears and shouting got jumbled up on the way to her mouth and tried to come out all at once. A Wyvern was meant for flying—how clear that was now! She could feel delicate muscles under his skin moving gracefully, tipping into the air and dipping under it as if they were such good friends.

Down below, someone else was flying. Many someones—the lovely folded-paper trapeze artists and acrobats and elephants of the Stationary Circus, zooming and twirling and wheeling madly over their wide, boisterous ring. And in their midst, darting between them and leaping among them, was a someone with long black hair in a topknot and flowing tattoos on his back.

Someone blue.

Saturday had joined the circus.

September could not take her eyes away as they circled down. How could she not have seen him before? Saturday spun from the trapezes of the Stationary Circus, catching the slim arms of a newspaper girl, stretching out his long blue body in the rich peacock light of Almanack, his tattoos gleaming, his topknot fluttering behind him. An illustrated boy caught him by the ankles and tossed him up into a gorgeous arc; Saturday bent in half and touched his toes in the air, hanging perfectly still, longer than anyone should be able to hang. Where the tips of his fingers touched the tips of his feet, a blossom of dark seawater gurgled into life and then fell down to the ring below as rain. The Marid snapped flat, snatched the next bar as it came swinging toward him, and came to rest on a high platform, landing on one foot and balancing a sudden huge black pearl on his nose like a seal. He flipped his head back, caught the gem in his mouth, and blew a ball of glittering sea foam into the air like a smoke ring. The roustabouts down in the empty stands applauded with great, strong dictionary-hands. It was only a practice—but what a practice! The Marid smiled—and September had never seen a smile like that on the face of her shy, uncertain friend. His face blazed turquoise with exertion and excitement and exultation. He knew his own strength and it surged through him like a blue tide. He waved at the ringmaster, whose broad body was made of vivid postage stamps folded every which way. She blew Saturday a peony; he caught the deep orange flower with a quick blue hand. He wore

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