The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (fairyland, #1)

The first book in Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland series follows twelve-year-old September, a lonely girl in wartime Omaha, Nebraska, whose father has gone to fight overseas and whose mother works long shifts at an airplane factory. The Green Wind, a spirit dressed in green, arrives at her kitchen window riding the Leopard of Little Breezes and invites her to Fairyland. She accepts, losing one shoe as she climbs out. The Green Wind explains the rules: No iron is permitted, the Worsted Wood is forbidden, and eating Fairy food binds a person to return annually. At the border between worlds, September solves a riddle to pass through; a jeweled key brooch that the jacket has grown follows behind unnoticed.

In the customs corridor, a gnome named Betsy Basilstalk stamps September's passport. The Green Wind is on the "Greenlist," a registry of those the Marquess, Fairyland's current ruler, has banned from entry. September passes under the Persephone clause, a customs exception for humans carried to Fairyland, classified as "Ravished" and bound to return yearly. The Green Wind cannot follow; he whispers a parting instruction to check her pockets and vanishes.

September plunges into the Perverse and Perilous Sea and swims ashore, where a signpost offers four paths: "To Lose Your Way," "To Lose Your Life," "To Lose Your Mind," and "To Lose Your Heart." Reasoning she is Somewhat Heartless and therefore safe, she follows the last path and finds three witches. Goodbye tries to recruit September in exchange for retrieving Goodbye's stolen Spoon from the Marquess in Pandemonium, Fairyland's capital. September sees through Goodbye's glamour and agrees on her own terms, asking for safe passage home and a future unspecified favor. In her pocket, she finds the Green Wind's gift: a crystal ball holding a green leaf.

She meets A-Through-L, a Wyverary (the offspring of a Wyvern mother and a Library father) who knows everything about topics from A through L. His wings are chained shut under the Marquess's law forbidding flight. September calls him Ell, and they travel toward Pandemonium. They stop at a bath house tended by Lye, a soap golem created by Good Queen Mallow, Fairyland's beloved former ruler whom the Marquess overthrew. At the Barleybroom River, Glashtyn (horse-headed water creatures) board their ferry to claim a child as tithe, seizing a terrified Pooka girl. September trades her own shadow for the girl's freedom. The Glashtyn cut it away, and the shadow stands as a dark girl-shape and rides off on the creatures' shoulders.

In Pandemonium, a city woven entirely of cloth, the Marquess speaks through a movie screen and orders September to the Briary, her thorny palace. The Marquess, a girl no older than September, proposes a bargain: She will hand over Goodbye's Spoon if September retrieves a glass casket from the forbidden Worsted Wood, a forest of distaffs wound in wool and silk, claiming the casket holds a sword. When September resists, the Marquess threatens Ell's life, and September yields, demanding the Spoon upfront. Outside, she discovers Saturday, a blue-skinned Marid (a type of sea spirit) imprisoned in a lobster cage, and smashes the lock with the Spoon. Ell refuses an offer to have his own chains removed, unwilling to fly while his family remains grounded. The three companions depart for the Autumn Provinces.

In the Autumn Provinces, where it is always fall, September learns all food in Fairyland qualifies as Fairy food; she has been eating it the entire time. Her body begins transforming into a tree: Her hair turns red and falls like leaves, and her skin roughens to bark. She enters the Worsted Wood alone and meets her own Death, a tiny creature barely a finger high because September is young. Death guards the glass casket but cannot sleep because no one sings to her. September cradles Death and sings her mother's lullaby until Death sleeps, then pulls the casket from Death's mouth. Inside is a copper wrench, a tool suited to her mother, a machinist.

Racing back as her transformation worsens, September finds the Marquess's blue lions have poisoned Ell and abducted both him and Saturday. A villager carries September out of Autumn into winter, reversing her transformation. She meets Mr. Map, Queen Mallow's former consort, who explains that the Lonely Gaol sits at the end of Fairyland's circular ocean current. September builds a raft from driftwood, using her cut hair as rope and her dress as a sail, and sets off alone.

On an island of Tsukumogami (household objects that gained sentience upon turning one hundred), agents of the Marquess throw September down a deep well. Despairing at the bottom with a broken leg and rising water, she smashes the crystal ball. The Green Wind appears through a loophole and heals her, telling her she was never chosen: She chose herself through every decision she made. He launches her free. She takes an orange lantern named Gleam as her companion and sails on.

She reaches the Lonely Gaol through a ring of storms. Using the Spoon to scry a vision in a tide pool, September sees the lions will bow before Queen Mallow's blade. She holds the Wrench high, and the lions submit. Inside, the Marquess reveals the journey was orchestrated and asks September to use the Wrench to uncouple the Gears of the World, mechanisms connecting Fairyland to the human world, so no child could cross between worlds again. September refuses. In a tower room filled with clocks, each set to send a visiting child home when it strikes midnight, the Marquess shows September one labeled "SEPTEMBER." September pries off the plaque, revealing the older name: "MAUD ELIZABETH SMYTHE."

The Marquess confesses she was Maud, a farmer's daughter from Ontario who stumbled into Fairyland, grew up to become Good Queen Mallow, and married Mr. Map. She ruled wisely until her clock's final tick snatched her home, twelve years old again, everything gone. Lye reversed the clock and pulled her back, but years had passed. Heartbroken, Maud became the Marquess and imposed oppressive laws. September uses the Wrench to restart the stopped clock. The Marquess collapses into enchanted slumber rather than be sent home, and the Gaol begins to crumble.

September frees Saturday but cannot move the unconscious Ell. A Marid can grant any wish when defeated in combat, so September wrestles Saturday across collapsing glass staircases and pins him against the iron gear. He yields, and September wishes them all away, safe and whole.

Everyone awakens healed in a golden wheat field. The Green Wind arrives freely, the Marquess's laws broken. He explains September has an hourglass rather than a clock: She must return home when the sand runs out but will come back every spring. The jeweled Key, which has followed her across Fairyland, arrives and turns in Ell's padlock. The chains fall, and Ell flies for the first time since he was a hatchling, weeping with joy. September sends the Key to unlock every chained creature in Fairyland. Saturday asks whether she saw "our daughter" on the Gear, but September vanishes before she can answer, her hourglass spent.

She reappears at her kitchen sink in Omaha, hands in cold soapy water, as though no time has passed. She puts on tea for her mother, curls up in her father's armchair, and falls asleep. Her mother comes home, smiles, and carries September to bed, not noticing that her daughter casts no shadow at all.