Read The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There for Free Online

it more.”
    And she opened the midnight covers. Inside, like a bookmark, lay a thin and beautifully painted square notepad with two sheaves left inside, the rest ripped out and used up long ago. Its spine shone very bright against the creamy pages, its edges filigreed with silver and stars. It read:
    MAGIC RATION BOOK
    MAKE DO WITH LESS, SO WE ALL CAN HAVE MORE.

CHAPTER IV
    A D OOR S HAPED L IKE A G IRL
    In Which September Meets the Sibyl, Has Her Hair Done, Acquires a New Coat, and Takes a Step into the Dark
    Let us say that the world is a house.
    In that house, a wide and lovely place where all is arranged just so, the world that you and I know, the world which contains Omaha and Zimbabwe and strawberry ice cream and horses with spotted rumps and Ferris wheels and wars in Europe, would be the front parlor. The first thing you see when you arrive, the room which stays clean for company’s sake. Fairyland would be a richly decorated bedroom, full of toys and gold-stitched blankets and the walls all painted with dancing green scenes, connected to the parlor by a long, cluttered closet and several stairs.
    There may be other rooms, too, that we have not visited yet, exciting kitchens and thrilling dining rooms, positively breathtaking libraries, long sunny porches soaking in light. But we are not investigating those other rooms today. Today we, and September with us, are looking for a certain door, set far back in the wall. It is a little door, painted gray, with a silver knob that desperately needs polishing.
    Most houses worth their windows have basements, and the world does, too. Dark spaces under the busy rooms, lit only with lightbulbs hanging by the ceiling from lonely cords at the bottoms of creaky staircases. The world keeps a great number of things down there—liqueurs and black beers brewing for summer, barrels of potatoes and apples, jams glowing like muddled gems in their jars, meats curing, pickles pickling, bundles of long green herbs, everything working, everything steeping, everything waiting for spring. So, too, are there boxes kept down in the cellar of the world, all nicely labeled with pretty handwriting, all the things the dear old planet packed away from its previous lives, pyramids and ziggurats and marble columns, castles and towers and burial mounds, pagodas and main streets and the East India Trading Company. All of it just sleeping down there in the dark, tucked away safely, until a fuse blows in the upper house and somebody, a little girl, perhaps, has to venture down those creaky stairs and across the lumpy earthen floor to turn the light on once more.
    Fairyland-Below is such a cellar, and the Sibyl is that little gray door, so small you might miss it, if you were not already looking so carefully.
    *   *   *
    The land between Moonkin Hill and Asphodel is called the Upside-Down. No one ever named it that in an official capacity—no one ever cut a ribbon over the place and put in a plaque. But everyone who passed through called it so—and September did, too. So would you, if you found yourself wandering around in it, for it looked just as though some mischief-minded giant had ripped up the land and put it back inside out and upside down. Roots grew up like trees from soil as rich and soft as whipped butter; bright orange carrots and golden onions and purple turnips and ruby beets sprang up everywhere like hard, squat flowers. Here and there yawning pits opened up where hills might properly have risen. Even more rarely, the foundations of little houses sat squarely on the ground, a glimpse of their green or blue porches just showing, disappearing down into the earth like crowns of radishes. A low mist gathered, dampening September and everything else. The mist, too, traveled upside down, but that makes little difference when it comes to mist.
    A road wound through the Upside-Down, made all of bright, cheerful blue cobblestones. The painted side faced down, and September walked upon naked