Fairy Godmother

Through the sitting room they went, and the candles in the antechamber went out by themselves as they exited.

Well, it is a dream, after all.

Hob went through one doorway, and Madame Bella led the way through the other, to that staircase that Elena had glimpsed. With Madame in the lead, and Robin following behind, Elena climbed up to the next floor — and the candles in the sitting room also went out by themselves.

At the top of the stairs, it was quite obvious that Madame liked an old-fashioned sort of house, with no hallways, just one room leading into another. This one was meant for display, apparently, but Elena could not quite understand what the theme was, or even if there was one. Shelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling, and there were objects carefully arranged on them. But what odd objects! A cap made of woven rushes. A fur slipper, but quite the smallest that Elena had seen, clearly made for an adult woman, but the size of one meant for a child. A knitted tunic that was made of some coarse, dark plant fiber. A golden ball. A white feather. There were hundreds of these odd objects, and Elena would very much like to have looked at them further, but Madame Bella gestured to her left, and Robin was already carrying her bundle through the left-hand door.

'Your rooms — the vacant ones — are that way, dear,' Madame Bella said, and covered a yawn, which triggered a similar yawn from Elena. 'The two suites are identical, mirror-images, so I know you'll be comfortable. Good night.'

And with that, she passed through the right-hand doorway, leaving Elena to follow Robin on her own. So she did, and once again, as soon as she left the chamber, the candles in the sconces on the wall behind her went out of their own accord.

I really do have the most remarkable imagination.

The first room was a sitting-room, and Elena very nearly stopped right there, for it was fitted on two sides, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves. And they were all full. She stopped dead, and stared hungrily, only vaguely aware that there were other furnishings here.

'Mistress?' came Robin's plaintive call from the next room.

I'm dreaming, she reminded herself. These books aren't real. And for a moment, she felt her eyes burn and her throat close, and the dream didn't seem quite so amusing anymore....

'Mistress?' Robin called again, and she sniffed and hastily wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron, and hurried on to the next room.

If Madame Klovis could have seen this room, she would have turned a rainbow of colors with envy.

To begin with, it was carpeted with quite the most beautiful rug that Elena had ever seen, the sort of thing that many people would put on a wall, not a floor. It looked like a meadow of the deepest green, dotted with flowers, and was softer underfoot than kitten-fur. The furnishings were of that same old-fashioned style of the rest of the house, but not even Madame Klovis would have discarded these in favor of the newer styles, for they were carved so beautifully that every piece was a masterwork of art. The twin wardrobes were made to look like castles covered with vines so realistic that Elena half imagined that they had grown there instead of being carved. The dressing-table resembled the stump of a giant tree, supported by carved, sinuous, bare roots. The chair beside it was made in the form of a little throne of vines cradling a moss-green velvet cushion, and the divan beneath the window matched it. There were tapestries on the walls portraying a magical forest full of fantastic animals and birds, flowers such as she had never seen. The bed, curtained in heavy green velvet embroidered with thousands of flowers, with a counterpane to match, could have slept four comfortably. So perfectly was it appointed that the headboard had a candle sconce built into it at the right height for reading in bed, and there was a bookshelf already full of books beneath it.

Robin stood anxiously in the middle of the room, her bundle at his feet. 'Would you like me to unpack for you, Mistress?' he asked, as if he wasn't entirely certain just how one did unpack.

'Oh, heavens no, Robin, thank you,' she told him quickly. 'I'm quite used to waiting on myself.'

'Very well, Mistress,' he replied, sounding relieved. 'There's a nightdress beneath your pillow. Good night, Mistress.'

And before she could reply, he had whisked himself out, so quickly, he might have actually vanished.

A nightdress beneath my pillow! This dream really was extraordinarily detailed! She set her bundle aside, and turned down the covers, revealing three magnificent goosedown pillows, encased in snowy white linen. And beneath the center one, there was, indeed, a nightdress, such as she had not worn since she was a child.

Madame Klovis would have died of envy on the spot.

It was made of pale green silk, tied at the neck and wrists with silken ribbons in a slightly deeper hue, and bordered at all hems with lace three inches deep, made of silk thread as fine as cobwebs. When Elena pulled off her coarse, workaday clothing and slipped it on over her head, it caressed her skin like a soft sigh, and felt so light and ethereal it was as if she was wearing nothing at all.

She folded up her clothing and set it on the chair — even if this was a dream, she was not going to start being untidy! — then climbed into the enormous bed. She sank into the feather mattress with a sigh, as the candles in the rest of the room, saving only the one in the sconce in the headboard, went out of their own accord.

She reached at random for a book, and got something called The Natural I Historie of the Lives of Curious Beastes, which sounded impossibly dull. But —

This is my dream. If I decide the book is going to be interesting, it will be!

And so it was. The first 'Beaste' in the book was the Unicorn, which evidently led a much more complicated life than she had ever imagined. For a start, it was only male Unicorns who were attracted to virgin maidens; females were only drawn to virgin, chaste men, which, the author observed, were more difficult to come by. 'So it is of no usse, to even attempt the capture of the femalee of the species,' he concluded.

He then went on to the courtship rituals of these shy creatures, and it was at that point that Elena found she was having a great deal of difficulty in keeping her eyes open.