Fairy Godmother

The sleigh touched down with a bump on the snow, and drew up to the front door. Madame patted her hand. 'And there you are. That is all we can do, we magicians. The best we can. I think you're ready now.'

She was halfway out of the sleigh before she realized what Madame had said. Ready? Ready? Good heavens, surely not —

But both her feet were already on the ground; before she could clamber back in, the Horse tossed his head and the sleigh moved off.

'Madame!' she cried, desperately, panic overwhelming her. 'Madame Bella! Please! Come back! You can't! I'm not — '

'You are as ready as I was,' Madame called over her shoulder, and the sleigh rose into the sky, over the treetops, and vanished among the clouds, leaving her standing on what was now her doorstep, now the Godmother of some Seven Kingdoms.

And she had never felt more alone, or been more terrified in her life.

Chapter 10

Deep in the middle of decanting a tincture, Elena heard the sound of something crunching in the garden, just outside the window of the stillroom. 'Crunching' was not the sort of sound you wanted to hear coming from the kitchen garden. She looked up, already prepared to yell at whatever was out there.

She was not sure just what it would be — there was supposed to be a barrier that kept things like rabbits and deer out, but sometimes the spells failed. And such spells did nothing to keep out other visitors, some of whom seemed to be of the opinion that the garden had been planted for their benefit.

There was a Unicorn in the garden, eating the new peas, daintily taking each pod and munching them up between his strong white teeth with every evidence of enjoyment. Elena thrust her head out of the window, indignantly.

'You!' she shouted at him. 'Shoo! I put out an entire flower bed of lilies for you lot, go eat those!'

The Unicorn looked up, and focused his attention on her. Then went cross-eyed with the immediate onset of the stupefied devotion every Unicorn was overcome by when in the presence of a virgin. His big brown eyes misted over, his ears swiveled towards her, and his ivory horn began to glow with magic. Unicorns, like the Fair Folk, were practically made of magic; Elena made a note to ask one of the mares later if the stallions who kept coming around would be willing to allow her to siphon some of it off. If they were going to plague her and eat her garden, the least they could do was to contribute to the cause, so to speak.

It was no use asking the stallions, of course. They went entirely idiotic at the sight of her. The mares went idiotic, too, of course, but only for virgin boys. Fortunately, those were in even shorter supply than virgin girls....

'Don't like lilies,' he said, absently, around a mouthful of pods he had forgotten to chew the moment he spotted her. Half chewed pods fell out of his mouth as he spoke. He had, of course, also forgotten that he was supposed to look noble. 'Like peas.'

'Well I don't care!' she snapped in irritation. 'You'll eat the lilies, and you'll learn to like them.'

'Ah,' the Unicorn replied, then dreamily turned and looked at the bed of pastel lilies on the edge of the garden. He turned his bearded head back to look at her. 'If I eat the lilies, may I lay my head in your lap?'

'No, you may not — ' she began, then at the sight of his ears drooping with dejection, changed her mind. She could spare a minute or two. 'Oh, all right.'

The Unicorn's head and ears came up, and his tufted tail flagged. He trotted over to the lily bed, and began eating with unbridled — well, of course, unbridled — enthusiasm.

A Unicorn would do just about anything that a virgin asked of him.

Elena finished her potions and dried her hands, before going out into the garden with a feeling of resignation. This was the fourteenth Unicorn loitering about, eating up the garden this spring. The first one had taken her breath away, and it was only after an entire afternoon spent petting him that she realized that he had destroyed the roses. She'd been warier at the second. She was getting tired of them now. Why had there never been Unicorns when Madame Bella was the Godmother here?

Maybe because she didn't qualify as a Unicorn extractor....

As soon as she sat down on the wooden seat that Robin and Lily had fitted around the trunk of the apple tree, the Unicorn knelt at her side and his head dropped into her lap, his round, brown eyes gazing up at her soulfully. With a sigh, she stroked his head and scratched behind his ears, while he moaned in ecstasy.

'Shouldn't you be making those sort of noises at a mate?' she asked, crossly. What was it about virgins that made them go so idiotic?

'Not until autumn, Godmother,' the Unicorn replied, shivering all over at her touch. 'Oh. Uh, I was sent. I'm supposed to tell you something.'

She waited, still scratching. Unicorns were not the brightest of beasts at the best of times — they tended to remind her of highly inbred lapdogs, to tell the truth, all beauty and no brains. There was no point in rushing him while the stray thought fluttered around in his thick skull like a butterfly in a box, and he tried to catch it.

At least once you told one something, he never forgot it. It might take him a while to remember what it was, but he never actually forgot it.

'Questers,' he said at last. 'In Phaelin's Wood. For the Glass Mountain. Three Princes. They came just after Karelina left. There's no one there to guide and test them.'

Ah. That explained why he was here; she'd had a message yesterday morning by way of Randolf that the Witch of Phaelin's Wood was off attending to a difficult birth that had a lot of Traditional