Fairy Godmother

sandwich. It was ham and watercress. Very good ham. In fact, she hadn't had ham quite this good since she was a small child. 'Yes, please,' she said in a small voice. Overhead the sky was a deep black strewn with the brightest stars she had ever seen. Beneath the cart was nothing but darkness.

Which was altogether better than looking down on houses no larger than toys.

'Well, where to begin?' The old lady sipped her tea. 'I suppose I should begin with this. Elena, I am your Fairy Godmother.'

Elena blinked, and a thousand thoughts raced through her head. Uppermost was, then where have you been all this time when my stepmother was starving and beating me? The thought did not have the heat of anger in it — yet. But in a few moments, it would.

'Actually, to clarify, I am the Fairy Godmother to this entire Kingdom,' she continued, and Elena was suddenly glad that she had not blurted out what had been in her head. A Fairy Godmother to her was one thing; a Fairy Godmother to all of Otraria was quite another. Being angry now would be like being angry at a thunderstorm because it happened to rain on you. 'You do know about the King of Otraria, I presume? And his Queen — who used to be the Princess Who Could Not Laugh?'

Elena nodded.

'Well, that was my doing — the goose, and all those people stuck to the goose and each other.' She smiled, and patted her hair with every sign of pride. 'One of my best efforts, I think. So, in that case, you already know how tales come true — for some people.'

Something about the way she said that made Elena repeat it. 'Some people?'

The old lady nodded. 'Indeed. You see, whenever there is a person whose life begins to resemble a tale — the brave little orphan lad, the lovely girl with the wicked stepmother, the princess with the overly protective father — something begins to happen, and that something is magic.'' She paused, and ate a dainty quarter of sandwich. 'Magic begins to gather around them, you see, and in fact, there are even certain people to whom that begins to happen from the moment they are born. That magic begins to try to force their lives down the path that their circumstances most closely resemble, and the longer it takes for that to happen, the more magic begins to gather around them.'

Elena sat stock-still, her cup clutched in both hands, thinking about that tension she had been feeling for so very many years. Was that — the magic?

The old lady peered at her, and nodded with satisfaction. 'So. You have felt it. Good, then you understand. That magic has been trying very hard to propel you down the path of a tale to a happily ever after, and you've been well overdue for that ever since you were sixteen.'

'But — ' Elena began.

'Among the many other things they do, the Fairy Godmothers are supposed to help that sort of thing along, like midwives,' the old lady continued, right over the top of Elena's 'but.' 'Which is why we always turn up when something goes horribly wrong, to counter the Bad Fairy's curse or the invasion of an Evil Sorcerer. But quite often, I'm afraid, in fact more often than not, circumstances around that special person are just not going to allow the happy ending that the magic is pushing for. Take your case, for instance. You do realize what was supposed to happen in your life, don't you?'

Well, of course she did! How could she not? She'd daydreamed it often enough. 'On the Prince's birthday, there would be a great ball,' she said, automatically. 'I would get a gown, somehow — my mother's spirit would weave it of flowers, perhaps, or — '

She looked penetratingly at the old woman.

' — or your Fairy Godmother would conjure it out of the rags left from your mother's old gowns, yes, or Brownies would sew it and leave it for you in the garden. Exactly. And then?'

'Well, I would go to the ball, and no one would recognize me, the Prince would fall in love with me and I with him and he would take me away and I would live — '

They finished in chorus, 'Happily ever after.'

'Exactly so. Unfortunately, my dear, in your case, though your stepmother and stepsisters are fully wicked enough to justify that sort of happy ending, Prince Florian is a mere boy of eleven.' She paused just long enough for Elena to begin to feel horribly cheated somehow, then continued. 'Nor are you the only girl to whom this has happened with this particular tale. All over the Five Hundred Kingdoms, down through time, there have been countless girls like you for whom the circumstances were not right. Their destined princes were greybeards, infants, married or terrible rakes, or not even Princes at all, but Princesses! And the magic keeps gathering around them, trying to make it all work — oh, and by the way, we call that, The Tradition. The way that magic tries to set things on a particular course, you see. And there are dozens and dozens of other tales that The Tradition is trying to recreate, all the time, and perhaps one in a hundred actually becomes a tale.'

Elena nodded, pushing off that feeling of being cheated with all her determination. 'All right, I do see, but — '

'So all of that magic is building up around the person — you, in fact — like a snowball rolling down a hill. It just gets attracted, the same way that white cat hair is attracted to a black velvet bodice, you know.' Now the old woman was watching her, closely. For what?

'I see, but — '

'It never goes away. Sometimes, it just builds up to the point where a magician notices it, and it gets — ' she waved her hand vaguely ' — siphoned off. Sometimes neatly, with the person's consent, and to the benefit of the person, though the effect of that is that it leaves them quite ordinary. Nothing magical will ever happen again to her — or him — but at least their life will go on rather as everyone else's life goes on. And if the person's circumstances are truly dire, usually the magician who benefits by the magic gives them a helping hand to a set of better circumstances, which, of course, breaks The Tradition so that the magic stops building up around them. And sometimes — it is siphoned not so nicely.' Her expression darkened. 'If that happens, Elena, they are generally left dead, and if they aren't — well, believe me when I tell you that they are worse off than if they were dead.'