The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

barkers advertising roasted melons and fresh fennel-bouquets for the discerning lover. Pedestrians, hoofed and web-footed and eight-legged and more, confidently ran after their paths. And on each burlap street-corner, a smaller version of their own Switchpoint worked busily away.
    Their little red path grew even redder as September and Ell embarrassed it by standing still.
    September laughed and ran ahead, grinning into the Pandemonium sun. The path leapt up and wove swiftly on, barely missing a lavender crepe streetlight and barreling right through a pair of imps haggling over a bar of green algae. A-through-L thundered after her, squashing the linen as he bounded down the street (which possessed the name of Onionbore) while all and sundry hurried to get out of his way.
    The scarlet path led them more or less north-ish, and though September loved the chase and the smell of broiling maple-blossoms and lime-liquor brewing, she could not help but notice that every alley and avenue they sped through seemed to point directly at a small, unassuming building covered in wide, fluttering golden flowers--not silk flowers, but real ones, that covered walls and fences of green briars and black thorns. The only citadel in Pandemonium that grew and lived and was not sewn. Something about it glowed strange and baleful. September did not like to look at it. Ell could not help looking. But mercifully the scarlet path stopped short and began unraveling itself backward, the way they had come, neatly balling up its excess thread as it went.
    A rose-colored jacquard building leaned over them, its walls embossed with fine flowers and paisleys and curlicues. A great sign arched over the doorway. In flashing green lights it read:
     
    THE SILVER SHUTTLE
    NICKELODEON
     
    One of the green bulbs guttered a little.
    “Are those electric lights?” said September.
    “Of course,” said Ell softly, as if in awe of the flickering glow. “Fairyland is a Scientifick place.”
    “I suppose the Marquess did that, too.”
    “No, in fact, she abhors electricity. The Inventors’ Guild did it. A terrible racket went up for days out of Groangyre. The lightning-sylphs were complicit, somehow. They made a mysterious sort of bargain with the glass-ghouls and voila --electricks! Modernity is certainly a fascinating thing. The Marquess said it was wicked, but if we wanted to engage in such un-Fairy-like behaviors, it was our funeral. This is a brave place, September. In the shadow of the Briary, it defies her.” Ell peered into the cool, shadowy lobby, rich with velvet and plush and brass banisters. “And they serve lemon ices.”
    September chipped off another pair of her sceptre’s rubies to gain admission to a film called The Ifrit and the Zeppelin. She passed them over to a friendly young dryad in a red uniform and a smart bell-hop’s cap. September knew she was a dryad because her hair was all of shiny green needles like a pine tree, sticking out in bushily under her cap. Also because dryad begins with D, and Ell greeted her by praising the distant forest. The dryad's eyes shone silver. She had very plump cheeks and smiled both when September asked for tickets and when she paid her rubies.
    Shyly, September said: “If you are a dryad, where is your tree? Are you terribly unhappy here, so far from the forest?”
    The ticket-dryad laughed, and the sound of it was a little like rain falling on leaves. “Didn’t you know, little love? Film is made with camphor, which is a tree. In the cinnamon family, to be exact, which is large and boisterous and gossipy. I run the projector, and my trees run through my fingers all day long! Just because a thing is transparent and silvery and comes in big reels doesn’t mean it’s not a tree.”
     
    Thankfully, the theatre was generous and the ceiling was high, soaring up like the inside of a cathedral. Ell settled comfortably in the rear row and licked his lemon ice daintily. The lights lowered. September leaned