The Fairy Godmother Page 6

  After all, how could a horse and cart be flying in the air like this? When had she ever heard of a flying cart?

  But a little voice inside her, stubborn—or perhaps desperate—insisted that this was no stranger than things she already knew were true. Well, how can Witches fly about on broomsticks? Even Madame Fleur can do that; I saw her, once. Only once, and in the company of (she presumed) another Witch, but still—

  “Madame Bella, what’s keeping us in the air?” she asked, hesitantly.

  The Godmother gestured at the little horse, who tossed his head. “I prevailed upon my little friend Sergei,” she said, cheerfully. “He’s part of his own set of tales, but when he’s not needed there, he often helps out the Godmothers and Wizards. His mother is the Mare of the East Wind, you know.”

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  “Oh,” Elena said, at a bit of a loss, for in fact, she didn’t know. She hadn’t even known there was such a thing as the Mare of the East Wind.

  “Oh, silly of me, of course you don’t know.” Madame Bella chuckled. “And there you see why I need an Apprentice; I’m getting so muddle-headed, it is more than time that I stepped down, before I try to put a magical lamp into Cap’O’Rush’s hands! Sergei and his mother are from another line of The Tradition, another set of Kingdoms and tales. Take it as read that Sergei is a sort of magical creature rather like one of the Faerie Folk and with equal powers.”

  “A magic horse. Like a—” She strained her memory, but could not think of another such. At least, not one with power enough to make himself and the cart he drew fly.

  “Like a Wizard?” she hazarded.

  “No, more like a dragon,” Bella told her. “Or a Unicorn.

  His mother is truly powerful, much more so than he is; but then, she is more than half a spirit creature. She was mated to a mortal stallion once, for some reason that escapes me.

  He has two brothers who are really remarkable to behold; quite the most handsome horses I have ever seen. But sad to say, they have not a smidgen of magic in them; he got the lot. Didn’t you, Sergei?”

  The little horse tossed his head and whickered. It sounded rather like a snicker.

  “Yes, I know, you got all the brains in the family, too,”

  Bella laughed. “Which is probably why you are your mother’s favorite child. It’s quite true though,” Bella continued, turning back to Elena. “Sergei is rather brilliant and terribly crafty, which makes him invaluable to us. For in

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  stance, had your stepmother unexpectedly returned, I am fairly certain that he would have found a way to get you away from her long before I did.”

  The horse whickered again, and Bella clapped both hands to her mouth in feigned shock. “Sergei, you would not have!”

  From the bray that came out of the little horse’s throat, whatever it was, Elena was entirely certain that, yes, Sergei would have.

  She wished Bella would tell her, but the Godmother just shook her head. “Just as well that nothing happened, then.

  Your town would never have gotten over it, and The Tradition would have been kinked for years. That sort of thing can have serious consequences, dear, and a grave flaw in The Tradition gives an evil one room to move in. I’m not saying that would have happened this time,” she hurriedly added, “but just that you have to be very aware when you cross Tradition lines or break Tradition that you do it in a way that impacts the fewest people.”

  “I thought that The Tradition was only important for—for the special people,” Elena said hesitantly.

  “Oh, no—The Tradition rules everything in the Five Hundred Kingdoms.” At least Bella didn’t sound at all impatient with Elena for asking so many questions. “Why, for instance, do you think that everyone in Otraria loves King Colin and Queen Sophia? That no one would ever whisper a word of treason about them, even though the only army he has never does much except march in parades and the only guards he has are old men inclined to nod off at their posts?”

  Elena shook her head. “The Tradition?” she hazarded.

  “Exactly. Goose-boy Colin brought a smile to the face of The Fairy Godmother

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  the Princess Who Could Not Laugh, and that brought joy back to Otraria, as well as won him her hand and Kingdom.

  Now, precisely because of this, The Tradition makes certain that everything in the Kingdom runs sweetly and smoothly, from the happiness of the King and Queen down to the weather.”

  “Oh, surely not!” Elena objected. “Surely the weather isn’t affected!”

  “You think not?” Bella laughed, but there was a sad sound to it. “Then early in your training I should take you to a Kingdom that is laboring under an evil ruler, a despotic one.

  You’d see then that The Tradition guides everything down to the least and seemingly insignificant detail. Otraria is happy, Colin is a good King who rules well and wisely, and so—the land is fertile, the people are content, the weather is perfect in every season, because The Tradition creates a Kingdom to match the King and Queen. It would be very, very hard for an evil Witch or a dark Wizard to move into Otraria now; in fact, the only way that one could would be either by an invasion, which would take a very great force of arms, or by a combination of magic and treachery. Believe me, when it comes to the latter, that will not happen while I am Godmother here, nor as long as any Apprentice I train is overseeing things.”

  There was a steely tone to Bella’s words that made Elena sit up a little straighter and give the old woman a sideways glance. Not that she could see very much in the dark but—she had the feeling that if she could see Bella’s face, she would discover that the slightly dotty old woman that had offered her a position had transformed 68

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  for a moment into something very like the iron-spined general who commanded Otraria’s tiny army. Both of them might be old—but they knew their duties, and they would drive themselves and everything and anyone under their authority to see to it that those duties were performed.

  “But there—that’s one of the things we do, you see,”

  Bella continued in a more normal tone. “We see to it that the conditions are fulfilled to make things as pleasant as possible for everyone. The main problem is that there is quite a bit of work, and not very many of us; there are Kingdoms that don’t have a Godmother or resident Wizard, Kingdoms where the assigned Godmother is overworked, or falls ill, or dies without an Apprentice in training.

  So things can, and do, go wrong. That is when The Tradition works against us, and for the evil folk of the world—

  The Tradition doesn’t care, you see, whether the outcome of a story is a joy or a tragedy; if the circumstances are there, it just makes things follow down set paths. And since we can’t fix them directly, we have to help the heroes who can.”

  “But why can’t you fix them directly?” Elena asked, now truly puzzled and confused. “If you have all this power—”

  “Ah. The answer to that is why you will be serving as my Apprentice for some time,” Madame Bella replied, wisely.

  “But the quick answer is that it would take all the magic of a hundred Godmothers working together to correct a single one of those problems if we had to go counter to The Tradition. We do not figure as heroes, you see. Whoever heard of a dotty old lady in shining armor?”

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  Elena giggled at that; why not? She was going to wake up, after all, and things would not be nearly so pleasant when she did, so she might as well enjoy this dream. And it was such a good dream—she would very much like to be a Godmother’s Apprentice. And it was somehow comforting to have an explanation for why her life had gone from bad to worse, no matter what she had done to try to change things.

  “And you have to remember that the evil ones are always on the prowl, looking for their opportunities to make The Tradition work to their advantage, and they have one thing on their side
that we do not,” Madame Bella continued.

  “Once one of them finds a place to work, they can concentrate on that one Kingdom, while we are spread out over many.”

  “How many?” Elena asked, sobering. This might be a dream, but it certainly sounded as if this Godmothering business was quite hard work.

  Not that she was afraid of hard work, for heaven’s sake!

  But she had to wonder just how many Kingdoms Bella was responsible for, if there were so few of the Godmothers.

  “At the moment, I am Godmother directly to two dozen of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, and I can be called upon to help with another twelve or fourteen,” Madame Bella said, and sighed. “And I am not getting any younger, alas. I have been looking for a good Apprentice for some time now.”

  Obscurely, Elena felt a surge of disappointment, even though this was a dream. So she had not been the only person that Madame Bella had considered!

  But in the next moment, Bella’s words made the disappointment vanish. “In fact, I have really been looking, in 70

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  one way or another, from the day that I became the Godmother for these Kingdoms. I have seen too much tragedy come into the world because a Godmother left looking for her Apprentice until it was too late. I must say, though, in all that time, I never had a bit of hope until I found you. And I was not going to even hope that you could be what I was looking for until after you passed your eighteenth birthday.”

  “Why then?” Elena wanted to know.

  “Because if ever you had a satisfactory end to your personal tale—if, for instance, you had found a sweetheart who had successfully taken you out of that house—it had to be by then.” Bella sounded melancholy. “Far too many of the young women I have watched over the years did, indeed, make that sort of end. Why it should be before the eighteenth birthday, I do not know. Perhaps it has something to do with being willing to—to settle for less, to stop dreaming—to give up on hope. And then, perhaps the magic around you arrows in on whatever you can get, rather than what you hope for. I don’t know for certain, because I have never asked those young women about what was going on in their minds.”

  Elena licked her lips thoughtfully, tasting the last, faint hint of sweetness from an iced cake upon them. Yes, she had recently stopped dreaming—or at least day dreaming—but it had not been until after that critical eighteenth birthday.

  Even then, could she really say that she had given up on dreams? Not when she had continued to look out her window at handsome young men and make up lesser stories, smaller dreams about them.

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  And in all that time, had she ever really tried to do anything about those dreams? Oh, she could argue all she wanted that her stepmother would never have given her the time to go meet a young man, but in her heart of hearts, she had to admit that if she had tried, she probably could have stolen the time, somehow, to go and meet one of those young men, to flirt a little, as she had seen so many other girls do.

  Why had she never tried? It wasn’t that she was shy. It wasn’t that she had some withered sprig of pride left, that insisted that Elena Klovis was above the common young men she saw in the streets. Perhaps, if she had seen a man that her heart had really longed for, perhaps she would have defied her stepmother and grasped for love with both hands.

  She sat back in her seat and thought, hard, about all the men, young and old, she had watched, and she had to admit that no, it had never been the man she had longed for—only the escape that marriage, marriage to anyone, represented.

  Well. That was certainly interesting. And perhaps a little disturbing— why was that true? Was it the men? Or was it her? Was she just as cold in her way as the Horrids, who cared nothing for the men who courted them, only the wealth or status that they represented?

  It was a nasty thought, and one that gave her pause as she considered just what all the implications of it were.

  “Perhaps,” Bella sighed, “Perhaps for the rest of those others, it was just as well. Every one of them discovered someone she truly loved, and in the end, they were happy.

  The Tradition works in small stories as well as large, you know.”

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  But if I had tried, would I have found a true love? she thought, somberly. It was hindsight, of course.

  “I certainly had plenty of opportunity to go that route myself,” the old woman continued, as if musing aloud. “It wasn’t as if I had a terror of a stepmother dogging my footsteps every waking moment of the day. I merely had two spoiled older sisters, and it wasn’t that I was their slave, it was just that they were too bone-lazy to take the task of housekeeper, so I did. I had plenty of time for myself, and I was the only one who decided what I would do and when I did it. My sisters had plenty of beaus haunting our house; I suppose I could have had, too, if I’d been in the least interested, but there wasn’t one of them that I cared to exchange more than a few words with.”

  “What about—” Elena hesitated “—after?”

  “After I became a Godmother?” Bella laughed. “Heavens, child, when would I have found the time to look out for a young man? I had so much work on my hands I hardly found the time to sleep! Ah—look! Down there! We’re almost home.”

  The old woman pointed down and ahead of them; Elena couldn’t see much; just a faint light, that seemed to be hidden among trees. But as soon as she spotted it, she realized that the light was getting closer, and the treetops nearer, very quickly indeed! She could see what was below them now, instead of it being a vague darkness, and all her fear came back. She clutched at the side and the seat of the cart convulsively, as they skimmed over the top branches, tiny twigs hitting the underside and the wheels, and then, while her stomach lurched with fear, they were above a The Fairy Godmother

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  clearing, in the center of which was a cottage with lights in every window and what was surely a garden surrounding it.

  Then as her breath came short and her heart pounded, they were no longer above it, they were dropping down quickly.

  Too quickly!

  She wanted to scream, but nothing came out of her paralyzed throat, and a moment later, the little horse’s hooves touched the ground in front of the cottage. Then the wheels set down with a bump, the horse halted, the cart rolled to a gentle stop, and there they were.

  Elena felt limp with relief; Madame Bella patted her hand.

  “There you are, my dear. Safe on the ground.” She laughed.

  “I know you don’t think it now, but one day you will let Sergei pull you across the sky without even thinking about it.”

  Oh, no I won’t! Elena thought, as her heart slowly calmed.

  Madame Bella climbed down off the seat, and it was obvious as she moved that although she sounded as lively as a much younger woman, she certainly moved like an old one whose joints pained her. Not excessively, just enough to slow her down a bit, and make life—difficult for her.

  She opened the garden gate, and the little horse drew the cart inside and up the garden path without being asked. But when he stopped at the front door of the cottage, Elena also jumped down from her perch on the seat. Dream or no dream, she wasn’t about to sit about while poor Madame Bella struggled with harnesses and straps.

  “Where is the stable, Madame?” she asked, coming to the little horse’s head.

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  “Around to the side—will you lift your bundle down for me?” the old woman asked.

  “I’ll bring it myself,” Elena said firmly. “And I will unharness the little horse.” Dream or no dream, she wasn’t about to show so little respect for a good old woman like Madame Bella as to make her do work that Elena was better suited to.

  Madame Bella smiled. “Bless you child; I am pleased to see you wishing to take up your duties already. Sergei won’t stay the night, but the cart should be put away. Sergei?”

  The horse whicker
ed and trotted off, going around the side of the cottage and taking the cart skillfully with him.

  When Elena followed she discovered a neat little stable, into which Sergei had already backed the cart. She had him unharnessed in a few moments; though he insisted on keeping the hat. She looked for and found a currycomb, but the horse shook his head at her merrily, and with a leap, vanished—upward.

  Yes, this was surely a dream. Bemusedly, and wondering when it would end, she picked her bundle out of the back of the cart, and for good measure, the basket of dishes and leftovers from under the front seat, and carried both of them around the corner and in at the front door.

  And there she got yet another surprise, for although the cottage looked small on the outside—cozy for one, but perhaps a little confining for two—on the inside, well, although it was no palace, it was certainly far larger than it appeared.

  Ah. This could be nothing but a dream. What she was looking at was simply not possible.

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  Before her was a modest antechamber, with a pair of benches flanking the door. Beyond that, was apparently a fine sitting-room, with furniture the equal of anything that the Klovis household had boasted. It was all of that older, heavier style, and had been so well-polished that it glowed in the candlelight. There were two doors beyond that within Elena’s vision, and a bit of a staircase. From all appearances, this place was about the size of the Klovis house.

  On the inside. On the outside, it looked to be a two-room cottage.

  I had no idea that I had such a good imagination.

  Madame Bella was talking to two peculiar little creatures.

  They were about the height of children—coming to just about Elena’s waist—but their hair was silver, and they looked like a pair of gnarled and wizened old men, dressed in leather trousers, immaculate linen shirts, and red vests.

  Both of them wore soft, pointed brown caps, and both were barefoot.