"This is a tub for washing your courage," Lye said...
"I didn't know one's courage needed washing!" gasped September...
Lye poured a bucket of golden water over September's head. "When you are born," the golem said softly, "your courage is new and clean You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not so many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true." ~from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
Lye is made of soap and has "truth" carved (in nice schoolteacher writing) into her forehead.
September is from Omaha and is a traveller in fairyland. After her bath, September wonders if her courage has shined up at all. She examines herself but isn't sure. Maybe that's in the next chapter.
I can so relate to courage that's grunged up with living. Thankful (sometimes only in hindsight) for the spit and polish of truth, from friends, even when it involves putting strange things in my mouth.
We all had kalmari with dinner out last saturday. The two girls loved it. Young Adventurer swallowed his piece whole, but came away suspicious that it might have actually tasted good, had he dared taste it. He's so my son.
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