The Fairy Godmother Read online

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  decide that you won’t work, after all. I didn’t fall off the turnip cart yesterday, young man.”

  Alexander shook his head impatiently, unable to comprehend just what that was supposed to mean. “I pledge it. My word of honor. Feed me, and I’ll work.”

  The little man hmphed and glared at him.

  “Word of honor. My word as a Prince of the Blood and a knight,” he repeated, his temper starting to rise. Just who did this dwarf think he was, to question his word?

  “Just now you’re an Ass of the Blood, and more like the thing the knight would use to carry his squire’s bags,” the little man observed, crossly. “And you certainly weren’t acting like a knight when you tried to run the Godmother down. But the Godmother said you might make that sort of pledge, and that I was to accept it if you did. All right, then. Pledge accepted.”

  He left the bucket of water, went off somewhere, and returned with a pottle of hay and a great wooden scoop of something. Alexander felt his nostrils widening again as he greedily drank in the scents, and identified them as not only the best clover-hay, but a scoop of grain as well. The oats went in the manger, the hay in a hay-bag the little man tied to the side of the stall, and then it was a matter of a moment and the little man had the bridle off as well.

  Alexander had no thought for him; his nose was deep in the grain and he was on his first mouthful when the man hit him—lightly, this time—between the ears.

  “Mind!” the man said sharply. “You’re a man, think like one, ye gurt fool! Eat too fast and ye’ll founder!”

  Curse it! He’s right. So though his empty stomach was cry

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  ing out for him to shove the food as quickly down his throat as he could, he did nothing of the sort. He chewed each mouthful slowly and carefully, counting to twenty before he took the next—and he wasn’t taking big mouthfuls, either, just dainty little bites. He didn’t shove all the grain in first, either; he alternated. One bite of grain, one mouthful of hay torn from the net, one sip of water.

  He would never have believed that anything could taste as good. It surprised him, actually; he’d expected the hay to taste like—well, hay. It didn’t; it was a little like dry cake, a little like new peas, and there was just the faintest hint of nectar; in fact, it tasted like new-mown hay smelled, utterly delicious. As for the grain, it was earthy, a little bit truffle-flavored, and a lot like bread-crust from the best bread he’d ever eaten. Well, no wonder horses seemed to enjoy these foods so much! It made him wonder what grass tasted like.

  When the little man was certain that he wasn’t going to eat fast enough to make himself sick, he took himself off with a grunt and a word of warning.

  “I’m not going to leave you tied up tonight,” the man said,

  “but remember what I said about running away. Try and run off, and you’ll soon find yourself in more trouble than you think. If you’re lucky, someone will eventually figure out you belong to Madame Elena. If you aren’t, the work you’ll be doing will make what I have planned for you seem like mild exercise. And if by some chance you actually manage to get into the deep forest—”

  Something about the relish with which the little man said that made Alexander look up at him. He was grinning. It was not a sign of mirth.

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  “—let me just say that the packs of wolves in the forest would find donkey-flesh quite the tastiest thing to come their way in a long time. Fancy yourself being able to take on a wolf pack in your current shape?”

  Since Alexander had no illusions about being able to take on a wolf pack in human shape, he shook his head.

  “And that’s just the wolves. There’s other things in there you’d rather not learn about.” The little man slapped him on the rump. Alexander elected not to protest the insult to his dignity. “So be a good little Prince and stay where I’ve left you.”

  Only then did the little man walk out, leaving Alexander alone again. Only now he had a full stomach, and the ability to pick a clean spot to lie down in, and when he did so, he slept the dreamless sleep of the utterly spent.

  It was Alexander’s fourth day of working for the little man, whom he learned he was supposed to refer to as “Master Hob,” and he ached in every limb.

  He had thought, when he underwent his training as a knight, that he had worked hard. He had certainly exercised until he was ready to drop, and he had certainly gone from dawn to dusk—but it was not this bad. He had thought that he had exerted himself when he had been in the military academy. And he had indeed done hours of drilling in all weathers, but that had been nothing compared to this.

  They had gone out every single day at dawn and he had spent every morning hauling deadfall out of the forest. This meant that he was hitched to a tree, and had to pull and strain until he pulled it loose from the undergrowth, then had 268

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  to drag it all the way back to the cottage, where the little man unhitched it at the woodpile. Then they went back after another tree.

  Then, after a break for a meal, he spent every afternoon but one hauling stones to build a wall—the one he did not spend in hauling stones, he spent hitched to a cart on a trip to and from some village nearby. Relatively nearby, that is; he had never before appreciated the difference between being the one doing the riding or driving, and being the one doing the pulling.

  Then, after a final meal, he spent each evening until twilight with panniers over his back, in the company of someone he was supposed to call “Mistress Lily,” tramping about in the forest again, this time so that Mistress Lily could pick wild herbs and berries and bits of things he couldn’t identify.

  He had to admit that the little man worked just as hard as he did— he was the one hacking the brush away from the fallen trees, hitching them to the harness, and guiding them, and he walked the entire way. He was the one piling the stones into the garden cart, dumping them at the wall, and building the dry-stone wall himself. And it hadn’t been Master Hob who had driven the cart to the village, it had been a second little woman whose name he did not know, for Master Hob had been busy with some other task.

  If this sort of thing was easy work, he did not want to contemplate what the peasants outside of the grounds of the cottage would do with him if they caught him trying to escape.

  But his memory was giving him some hints, with bits of The Fairy Godmother

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  recollection of things he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to at the time. Donkeys with bundles strapped to their backs to the point where it was hard to see anything but four staggering legs and a nose. Donkeys hitched to carts that a warhorse would have been hard put to move. Donkeys so thin you could have played a tune on their ribs, their patchy hides showing raw, rubbed places and sores where flies had been feasting on them. He’d seen these poor beasts, often enough, in the streets of Eisenberg, the capital of Kohlstania, and in Polterkranz, the city where the military academy had been. He’d seen them, and his eyes had skimmed right over them. He certainly hadn’t done anything about them.

  He had plenty of time to think about them now; hauling things didn’t take a lot of mental concentration. Why did you look right past us? said those sad, reproachful eyes in his memory. Why did you ignore us? Why didn’t you help us?

  But they were just donkeys, brute beasts, he tried to rationalize. They weren’t men, they hadn’t been men! They couldn’t suffer as I am suffering!

  Oh, no? replied that other, hateful voice in the back of his mind. Really? And it would force him to remember those thin bodies, those sores, those hopeless, glazed eyes.

  Those thoughts, well, plagued him like the flies he’d been cursed with until another little man, this one called “Master Robin,” had come out with a bottle of something that Master Hob had rubbed into his hair and hide. It smelled sharply of herbs, but whatever it was, it kept the flies away.

  Nothing kep
t the thoughts away.

  Nor was that all; it was only when he hurt the most that he thought about those donkeys. When he was resting, 270

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  other thoughts swarmed him. What was his father thinking? Julian’s palfrey must have gotten home by now. Riderless, with cut reins. What was the King thinking? What was he doing? Had he sent out riders to look for Julian—to ask after Octavian and Alexander? If he had, he would have found only that their trail stopped at the forest, and he could scour the forest all he liked, but he’d find no trace of any of the three of them.

  Would he send to King Stancia? If he did, he’d find out that Julian, at least, was there. What was going on for Julian? Were the trials of the Glass Mountain over? Had he won the girl and the throne, or had he already started his defeated way homeward? And what would he tell their father, in either case?

  The questions buzzed in his head like the flies, and tormented him. They were his last thoughts before he went to sleep at night, and his first thoughts when he awoke in the morning. There were other questions too, but they were not as urgent—

  Still, when his mind wearied of going around and around in the same fruitless track, they did float to the surface. Just who—and what— was this “Fairy Godmother” person?

  What did she want with him? It wasn’t ransom, or anything else he could understand. It wasn’t some sick desire to see him suffer, because she was never around, or at least, never around him. What did she want? What did she think she would gain from keeping him in the shape of a donkey? If she was this powerful a magician, what in heaven’s name was she doing in this cottage out in the middle of nowhere?

  Why wasn’t she ruling a Kingdom herself? It made no sense!

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  It all made his head ache—and none of it stopped the anger inside him from building, either. He worked it out during the day by throwing himself into the tasks he’d been given, but it burned in him all the time.

  Such was the state of his mind and heart when, on the morning of the seventh day of his captivity, he woke—slowly, as ever, in the thin grey light of predawn—to find that he was himself again.

  And the mysterious “Godmother” was standing over him, magic wand in her hand.

  He lay there, staring up at her stupidly for a moment. His vision was a bit foggy, and more than a bit distorted; he had trouble focusing until he realized that his eyes were now on the front of his head, not the sides. He shook his head, trying to make his mind wake up. Then, of all the ridiculous things to be worried about, his first reaction was of horror—that he had come back as a man and was now lying there naked in front of her, at her feet, like some sort of—of—

  Naked slave boy? the voice in the back of his mind suggested slyly.

  But in the next moment, relief washed over him, for no, he was exactly as he had been when he was transformed The Fairy Godmother

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  into an ass in the first place. He was still wearing the same clothing, in fact, though it was a bit worse for wear.

  He blinked again, his eyes still having trouble focusing.

  And the feeling of having only two legs again was extremely disorienting.

  “Wake up, your highness, ” she said, prodding him in the ribs with a toe, her tone of voice making the honorific sound very sarcastic. “I can’t leave you a donkey forever, much as I would like to. If I do, you’ll become more ass and less man with every passing day. Not that you weren’t an ass already,” she added matter-of-factly, “but it was a rather different sort of ass.”

  He really wasn’t thinking as she was speaking; he was really still waking up, right up until the moment she finished talking to him. Then, with a jolt, his mind started working.

  And he didn’t exactly think. Instead he reacted in the way he had fantasized he would in the first hours of his captivity.

  He leaped to his feet.

  He meant to lunge at her, at this vile Witch who had ruined his life. He had done it so many times in his mind, he would throw her to the ground and truss her up, then demand that she restore him his possessions and send him home—

  But his balance was all wrong. His legs didn’t work right.

  But after tripping and falling, he scrambled to his feet again, anyway.

  He made a grab for her—

  —and there was a sort of bang, and a flash of light—

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  —and he found himself flat on his back in the straw with a monumental headache.

  “As I was saying,” the woman said, calmly, but with an edge to her voice, and her blue eyes flashing with suppressed anger. “I can’t leave you in the donkey-skin for more than a few days without your mind becoming more donkeylike.”

  She looked down at him and shook her head. “Not that it would be a huge difference, apparently. So once a week or so, you’ll get to be a man for a day and—”

  He leaped to his feet for a third time, despite pain in his head that threatened to send him to his knees. This time he didn’t make the mistake of trying to attack her; instead, he just shoved blindly past her and ran.

  He blundered into the wall of the stable, but the clean, chill air braced him, and he staggered a few more paces, then broke into a real run, his steps growing more sure with every moment.

  In the thin grey predawn light, he got his bearings by the cottage. He could get away; the Witch hadn’t a prayer of catching him. After all, he knew the forest around here, now. He even knew how to get to the village. And while the villagers might not treat an enchanted donkey with any consideration, they couldn’t ignore the demands of a Prince of Kohlstania!

  He sprinted down the path to the cottage, then leaped the low stone wall around the garden and pelted for the road.

  In a moment, he’d be in the forest, under the trees, and she didn’t have a horse to chase him on, nor did she have a hound to track him with. He—

  —found himself pelting down the path to the stable.

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  He whirled, and reversed himself, running this time for the forest itself rather than the road. There must be some sort of spell on the road; fine, he’d get into the forest and get onto the road again later, he’d get to the village that way.

  That would be even better! She couldn’t possibly find him in the forest and—

  —he found himself running down the path to the stable.

  “So, how many tries you going to make before you figure it out, boy?” asked a voice to his right. He stopped, and looked. The little woman called Lily stepped out from between two blackberry canes, her head, crowned by a flat straw hat, bobbing with suppressed laughter. “You reckon we’re all as big a set of fools as you are? It’s you the enchantment’s on, not the path, nor the forest. You can’t leave here unless the Godmother lets you.”

  He heard footsteps coming towards him, and saw the Witch emerging from the stable and walking towards him in a leisurely fashion, a smug smile on her face. And rage completely overcame him.

  He seized a pointed stake supporting a plant and yanked it out of the ground; he hadn’t intended to kill her before, but this was clearly war, and none of the laws of chivalry applied! And if he couldn’t touch her, he was a prize-winner at the spear and javelin—

  He pulled his arm back to impale her at the same time he caught a kind of silvery flash out of the corner of his eye.

  And suddenly, he found himself looking at something very sharp, the tip of which was less than an inch from his eye.

  It was the shining silver tip of a Unicorn’s horn.

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  He clutched at his improvised spear, wondering if he could manage to duck under the threatening horn to kill it before it killed him—

  There was a second flash, and a second Unicorn in his path.

  This one was braced to charge, and the tip of its horn was pointed somewhat lower than
the first’s. Very much lower.

  He gulped, and his hands clenched hard on the stake.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the first Unicorn, its voice hard and angry.

  “That’s right. You aren’t a virgin,” the second said, in a tone of accusation. Then it snickered. “But try it, go ahead, and you’ll wish you were.”

  His mind raced for a moment. What did being a virgin have to do with—

  Oh.

  Of course. Unicorns were not only held spellbound by virgins, but they were the protectors of virgins.

  He remembered the things in the night-shrouded garden, the conversation he’d overheard. So—the Witch was a virgin?

  Not a big surprise, he thought sullenly, if this is how she treats real men.

  He dropped the stake, and the Unicorn imperiling his eyeball backed away a pace or two, without dropping its threatening posture. The Witch came up even with the second Unicorn, and placed a hand on its shoulder.

  Oh, yes. The bitch is a virgin, all right.

  It would have been funny, under other circumstances, to see how the Unicorn tried simultaneously to melt under the Witch’s touch and maintain its threatening posture towards The Fairy Godmother

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  Alexander. She would have been attractive, under other circumstances. He wouldn’t have minded tumbling her if he found her serving as pot-girl in an inn. But at the moment—

  “Now, if I may continue,” the woman said, one hand absently petting the Unicorn’s neck, “you will be permitted to wear your shape as a man from sunrise to sunset, when you will become an ass again.” He thought for a moment that she was going to make another one of those nasty comments, but she evidently restrained herself.

  “But just because you’re wearin’ your man-shape, my lad, don’t think that means you don’t work,” said that detestable Master Hob from behind him. “The same rules hold true whether you’re a man or a beast; if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”

  The Unicorns both seemed to wake up a bit, and became all threat again. And perhaps that was because Master Hob stepped past Alexander and shoved an axe into his empty hands.