Fairy Godmother

'Oh, I do my best,' Lily replied, with a shrug. 'It's good to be where people appreciate that.'

The last of the tour took them to the byre at the bottom of the garden, with the stable beside it. There was a donkey in the stable — presumably unmagical, since it gazed on both of them with supreme disinterest and went back to the hay in its manger. It was an old beast, by the grey of its muzzle.

In the byre were two red-brown milch-cows with mild eyes, who were equally disinterested in the two humans. Well, that explained where the fresh milk and cream were coming from. Fortunately, they didn't say anything. Elena wasn't at all sure she could cope with talking cows as well as talking chickens at the moment.

Altogether, this would have been exactly the sort of situation where Elena would have been happy as a servant. She certainly had never envisioned herself as the mistress of such a place. It was a little daunting.

And when you added in the talking animals —

How am I ever going to be able to eat meat again ? she wondered with sudden dismay. But then, she remembered just how incredibly stupid the chickens had sounded. She had always known that chickens weren't bright, and the fact that she could understand what they were saying to each other hadn't changed that. All that was different, really, was that instead of merely intuiting the meaning of their calls, she actually knew it.

It occurred to her, as Madame Bella opened the garden gate and beckoned her to follow out into the woods surrounding the cottage, that there was another aspect to all of this. In the tales that she knew, there were often animals that were, well, more than mere animals. Whether they were magic beasts, or from the Faerie Realms, they were always the equal and sometimes superior in intelligence to humans —

— like that little humpbacked horse that had drawn Madame's cart last night, for instance.

And now she would be able to speak to them, as Madame could, which was probably Madame's entire reason for giving her the dragon's blood to drink.

Madame followed a path winding among the enormous trees of this forest, and Elena followed her, though once they got under the deep shadows cast by the heavy growth, she looked back at the sunlit gardens longingly. Elena was town-bred, and in fact, since Madame Klovis had taken over the household, she had never been any farther from her house than the market-garden. The trees she knew were all tame things, neatly trimmed and confined to gardens, surrounded by seats or planted in jardinieres. These were wild trees, huge, taller than the clock tower, so big that three girls could have stood around them, stretched out their arms and barely have been able to touch their fingertips together. The thick bark was green with moss, and beneath their branches the woods lay in a murmurous twilight. Anywhere that there was a gap in the canopy, the undergrowth ran wild — where there was no place for the sun to penetrate, mushrooms made little colonies, moss carpeted the ground and the fallen tree limbs, and the occasional odd, pale flower bloomed.

Every time a twig snapped or a bird called, Elena jumped. And it didn't help that she could understand what those birds were saying, either, because it was mostly, 'Hey! Hey, hey, hey!'

So what were they shouting about? What was lurking out there, hidden in the tangles of vines, behind the fallen trees, in the shadows. Bears? Wolves?

Worse?

'Madame Bella?' she whispered, not wanting to make any noise louder than that. 'Where are we going?'

The Godmother glanced back at her. 'I need to show you to the Faerie Folk — their official representatives, that is; my Brownies don't count. Most of them can't abide salt and cold iron, so they cannot come to us, we must come to them.'

Elena shivered. The Brownies were one thing; they were small and earthy, and impossible to be afraid of. But there were all manner of Faerie Folk that she wasn't at all sure she wanted to be 'shown' to. Dangerous creatures dwelled in the Faerie Realms, and even when they were marginally friendly to mortals, they were chancy to deal with; unpredictable and easily offended. What if she offended one of them?

Perhaps worse, what of one of them took a fancy to her? No mortal could resist Faerie glamour; she could be lured away, only to discover, when her Faerie lover tired of her, that when she tried to return home, she would turn into a withered old crone, or even die, once she set foot outside those charmed precincts. For while weeks or months had passed for her, hundreds of years would have passed in the mortal world.

But it was too late for misgivings now, for there was a glow ahead of them that was not sunlight breaking through the heavy canopy, and there were bright and dark figures moving in that glow.

As they neared the spot, Elena saw that it was a clearing in the woods, ringed with palid mushrooms, carpeted with deep green moss studded with tiny golden flowers. In the center, two stumps and a tightly entwined series of ancient vines formed a pair of thrones, cushioned with leaves so dark a green they looked at first glance to be black, and ornamented with huge, trumpet-bell flowers in of pale pink, pale blue, and cream. Two tall, thin, impossibly beautiful creatures sat in those thrones, creatures with leaf-pointed ears, cascades of silver-gilt hair, and garments of that damasked silk that only the Elves could weave. Their skin was so pale and translucent they could have been carved from moonstone, but their enormous, curiously slanted blue eyes were alive enough as they watched Madame and Elena approach.

Surrounding the thrones was a crowd of other creatures, most of which Elena could not put names upon. There were Unicorns, silken-soft and cloven-hoofed, and tiny, perfectly formed, perfectly naked winged women no more than a foot tall. There were tall, shrouded creatures that seemed to bring a deeper shadow with them, and Elena instinctively knew that she did not want to look under their cowls. There were green-skinned women clothed in leaves and flowers, and men with goat-legs, tiny horns half-hidden in their curly brown hair, and sly, knowing eyes. And those were just the ones that Elena could see.

Madame led her to within twenty paces of the sylvan thrones, and stopped, making a deep, but not servile, bow. 'Majesties, this is my Apprentice, Elena.'

The two on the thrones, who evidently must have been the King and Queen of the Elves in this Kingdom, if not all of the Faerie Folk, turned their impassive gaze on her. And, after a long moment of scrutiny, nodded.

'A good choice, Madame Bella,' said the woman, whose musical voice was as lovely and indescribable as her face. She stood up, and beckoned to Elena, who reluctantly came nearer. 'So, Apprentice, have you been warned? Do you know the dangers as well as the duties?'

'I left that to you, Majesty,' Madame Bella said, serenely. 'As is the custom.'