Fairy Godmother

The Ladderlocks story was more fantastical and less — but only a trifle less — unpleasant than that of Rosalinda. The mother of a Ladderlocks child would be overcome with a craving for some out-of-season food to the point where she could eat that and only that. Naturally, the only place her distracted husband can find this food would be in the garden of some Black Witch or Evil Sorceress. He would steal it, be caught, and pledge to give the woman his child to save his own life. On the birth of Ladderlocks — always a girl — the Witch would take her away, lock her in a tower, and among other things, forbid her to cut her hair...and the rest of that tale was familiar to any child in any Kingdom that Elena had any knowledge of. It might end well, but there was often a great deal of horror before the end came —

'I can't even bear to think about being locked up in a tower for sixteen years,' Elena replied. 'I don't know why the girls don't go mad.'

'Some of them do,' Madame confirmed. 'I know of one who hung herself with her own hair.'

Elena shuddered, and looked away for a moment.

'And then there's the dozens of poor young fellows who die at the hands of the Dark One before one of them manages to get to the tower,' Madame continued, frowning fiercely. 'A Ladderlocks is nothing more than bait for a deathtrap, and I won't have one of those in my Kingdoms, either!'

Elena nodded, knowing that even when a young man managed to get to the tower, climb the hair, and win the maiden, he still might not escape the Witch unscathed. They were almost always caught, and sometimes the poor young man who fell in love with Ladderlocks found himself blinded by the thorns around her tower, or sometimes worse than that. A Ladderlocks tale often had more tragedy than triumph about it.

It was a tale best prevented.

'I wish I knew why The Tradition was so set on having her' Bella replied. 'But as long as I keep draining her, at least until her first-born is actually born, the magic won't attract the other half of the equation.'

'The Evil Witch.' Elena nodded. 'She knows, of course?'

'I've drummed it into her head often enough,' Bella said grimly. 'And it will have to be her that prevents it; her husband is kind, sweet, gentle, handsome as the dawn, and as dense as a bag of stones. She loves him, but she knows very well that he is prime material for the loving but stupid husband who climbs the wall around the Witch's garden to steal her rampion. And it would not matter how many times she warns him about it, he won't remember. The Tradition can shove him about like a coin in a game of Shove Ha'penny.'

At that moment, Elena felt a surge of anger at The Tradition, that faceless, formless thing that pushed and pulled people about with no regard for what they might want or need. She met Madame's eyes, and saw that same anger there.

'Yes,' Bella said, softly, only just audible over the sound of hooves and wheels on the hard-packed road. 'I hoped you would feel that. I hoped when I took you as my Apprentice, that you were cut from the same cloth as me. Some Godmothers are only willing to assist in the making of the happy endings. I am of a different mind.'

'There will be no Fair Rosalindas in my Kingdoms,' Elena said, just as softly, but just as firmly.

Madame gave a quick nod, as if she and Elena had just made a pledged pact. And perhaps, they had.

'Good,' was all she said, then she turned her attention back to the road.

Madame changed the topic to something innocuous. Nothing more was said on that subject.

But then again, nothing more needed to be.

As harvest turned towards autumn, the days became noticeably shorter, and the air grew chill at night, Madame took to leaving Elena in charge of the cottage for several days at a time. 'Keep Randolf company,' was all she usually said, before she went off on whatever mysterious errands were taking her away. 'He gets lonely sometimes. He'll chatter at you about plays he's been watching; just nod and make appreciative noises, even if you can't understand half of what he's nattering on about.'

Elena was growing very fond of the Slave of the Mirror by this point; Randolf was perhaps the most artless person she had ever known. Despite everything he saw, and everything he had lived through, he maintained a kind of innocence. He had no pretenses, nothing about him was a sham.

Furthermore, he had beautiful manners, and was perfectly pleased to give her the one set of lessons she found it difficult to accept from anyone else in the household — the lessons in what he called deportment and she called 'fitting in.'

Madame just simply seemed to change everything about herself without thinking, depending on what costume she wore, from dotty old peasant woman to gracious Lady of exalted breeding and impeccable pedigree. Lily had just laughed when Elena had broached the subject, and advised her to 'just be yourself, and be damned to them as doesn't like it.'

And the haughty Rose, Elena thought, would be so critical that the lesson would get lost in the criticism.

Ah, but Randolf had not only been watching Kings and Queens for two hundred years or more, until recently he had been the prized possession of several queens of the evil sort. So, when Madame Bella was away, Elena would spend several evening hours in her sitting room, not merely keeping Randolf company, but learning from him.

'Just what does Madame do, off on her own of late?' she asked him one night, after a long and complicated session on Precedence. Randolf was not showing her anything but his own face at the moment; she had gotten so used to conversing with a disembodied head that it no longer seemed at all odd.

'Oh, you could ask her yourself, it's no secret,' Randolf said airily. 'But I can tell you easily enough. She pays visits around to other magicians in her Kingdoms; she's likely to start taking you about once you've mastered enough that you can meet them as an equal rather than an Apprentice. And she likes to keep an eye especially on