In the centre of the square stood a statue of a lady September knew well by now, patted together from cream-colored crumpets. Below her benevolent gaze, a long table groaned with food: apple dumplings and apple tartlets and candied apples and apple chutney in big crystal bowls, huge roasted geese glistening brown and gold, giant potatoes and turnips split and steaming, rum cakes and blackberry pies, sheafs of toffee bundled together like wheat, squash soup in tureens shaped like stars, golden pancakes, slabs of gingerbread, piles of hazelnuts and walnuts, butter domes carved like pine cones, a stupendous broiled boar with a pear in his mouth and parsley in his hoofs. And pumpkin, pumpkin everywhere: orange pumpkin soup bubbling in hollowed-out gourds, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, frothy pumpkin milk, pumpkin trifles piled up with whipped cream, pumpkin-stuffed quail, and pumpkin pies of every size cooling on the clean tablecloth.
No one ate at the table or guarded the feast.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own
, by Catherynne M. Valente.
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