Fairy Godmother

They had gone out every single day at dawn and he had spent every morning hauling deadfall out of the forest. This meant that he was hitched to a tree, and had to pull and strain until he pulled it loose from the undergrowth, then had to drag it all the way back to the cottage, where the little man unhitched it at the woodpile. Then they went back after another tree.

Then, after a break for a meal, he spent every afternoon but one hauling stones to build a wall — the one he did not spend in hauling stones, he spent hitched to a cart on a trip to and from some village nearby. Relatively nearby, that is; he had never before appreciated the difference between being the one doing the riding or driving, and being the one doing the pulling.

Then, after a final meal, he spent each evening until twilight with panniers over his back, in the company of someone he was supposed to call 'Mistress Lily,' tramping about in the forest again, this time so that Mistress Lily could pick wild herbs and berries and bits of things he couldn't identify.

He had to admit that the little man worked just as hard as he did — he was the one hacking the brush away from the fallen trees, hitching them to the harness, and guiding them, and he walked the entire way. He was the one piling the stones into the garden cart, dumping them at the wall, and building the dry-stone wall himself. And it hadn't been Master Hob who had driven the cart to the village, it had been a second little woman whose name he did not know, for Master Hob had been busy with some other task.

If this sort of thing was easy work, he did not want to contemplate what the peasants outside of the grounds of the cottage would do with him if they caught him trying to escape.

But his memory was giving him some hints, with bits of recollection of things he hadn't paid a lot of attention to at the time. Donkeys with bundles strapped to their backs to the point where it was hard to see anything but four staggering legs and a nose. Donkeys hitched to carts that a warhorse would have been hard put to move. Donkeys so thin you could have played a tune on their ribs, their patchy hides showing raw, rubbed places and sores where flies had been feasting on them. He'd seen these poor beasts, often enough, in the streets of Eisenberg, the capital of Kohlstania, and in Polterkranz, the city where the military academy had been. He'd seen them, and his eyes had skimmed right over them. He certainly hadn't done anything about them.

He had plenty of time to think about them now; hauling things didn't take a lot of mental concentration. Why did you look right past us? said those sad, reproachful eyes in his memory. Why did you ignore us? Why didn't you help us?

But they were just donkeys, brute beasts, he tried to rationalize. They weren't men, they hadn't been men! They couldn't suffer as I am suffering!

Oh, no? replied that other, hateful voice in the back of his mind. Really? And it would force him to remember those thin bodies, those sores, those hopeless, glazed eyes.

Those thoughts, well, plagued him like the flies he'd been cursed with until another little man, this one called 'Master Robin,' had come out with a bottle of something that Master Hob had rubbed into his hair and hide. It smelled sharply of herbs, but whatever it was, it kept the flies away.

Nothing kept the thoughts away.

Nor was that all; it was only when he hurt the most that he thought about those donkeys. When he was resting, other thoughts swarmed him. What was his father thinking? Julian's palfrey must have gotten home by now. Riderless, with cut reins. What was the King thinking? What was he doing? Had he sent out riders to look for Julian — to ask after Octavian and Alexander? If he had, he would have found only that their trail stopped at the forest, and he could scour the forest all he liked, but he'd find no trace of any of the three of them.

Would he send to King Stancia? If he did, he'd find out that Julian, at least, was there. What was going on for Julian? Were the trials of the Glass Mountain over? Had he won the girl and the throne, or had he already started his defeated way homeward? And what would he tell their father, in either case?

The questions buzzed in his head like the flies, and tormented him. They were his last thoughts before he went to sleep at night, and his first thoughts when he awoke in the morning. There were other questions too, but they were not as urgent —

Still, when his mind wearied of going around and around in the same fruitless track, they did float to the surface. Just who — and what — was this 'Fairy Godmother' person? What did she want with him? It wasn't ransom, or anything else he could understand. It wasn't some sick desire to see him suffer, because she was never around, or at least, never around him. What did she want? What did she think she would gain from keeping him in the shape of a donkey? If she was this powerful a magician, what in heaven's name was she doing in this cottage out in the middle of nowhere? Why wasn't she ruling a Kingdom herself? It made no sense!

It all made his head ache — and none of it stopped the anger inside him from building, either. He worked it out during the day by throwing himself into the tasks he'd been given, but it burned in him all the time.

Such was the state of his mind and heart when, on the morning of the seventh day of his captivity, he woke — slowly, as ever, in the thin grey light of predawn — to find that he was himself again.

And the mysterious 'Godmother' was standing over him, magic wand in her hand.

Chapter 13

He lay there, staring up at her stupidly for a moment. His vision was a bit foggy, and more than a bit distorted; he had trouble focusing until he realized that his eyes were now on the front of his head, not the sides. He shook his head, trying to make his mind wake up. Then, of all the ridiculous things to be worried about, his first reaction was of horror — that he had come back as a man and was now lying there naked in front of her, at her feet, like some sort of — of —

Naked slave boy? the voice in the back of his mind suggested slyly.

But in the next moment, relief washed over him, for no, he was exactly as he had been when he was transformed into an ass in the first place. He was still wearing the same clothing, in fact, though it was a bit worse for wear.

He blinked again, his eyes still having trouble focusing. And the feeling of having only two legs again was extremely disorienting.