Fairy Godmother

if it had been his.

But all around the cottage grounds, separating it from the forest, was a meadow left to grow as it would, where he was allowed to graze when he was a donkey.

He already knew that his 'boundary' was the edge of the wood; that was where he was turned back any time he tried to pass on his own. But the meadow was wide and irregularly shaped. He hadn't seen most of it yet, and there were probably places where he could be alone for as long as Hob didn't actually come looking for him.

For lack of anything better, he wandered out through the kitchen-gardens, over the stile, and into the bottom meadow. He thought there was a pond out there.

Sure enough, he found, when he'd waded through mist and grass for a bit, that there was a pond fed by a lively little stream, rimmed with willow and birch. Someone — Hob, perhaps — had tied a little boat up to the bank. It was far too small to take someone of Alexander's size and weight, or he might have gone for a row, just because the boat was there. But if he sat down on the bank, he couldn't see the cottage from here; maybe he was no good at pretending that he wasn't held in this bizarre captivity, but at least, he wouldn't have it thrust in his nose.

Blackbirds sang a few experimental notes in the reeds, and off in the woods, he heard a cuckoo. It was peaceful here, and somehow soothing to the aches in his soul. He sank down on the bank and watched the sun come up, the clear, thin light streaking across the hazy blue of the sky, as the birds began their morning carol.

He let his mind empty of everything. He had never done that before. But then, he'd never been at a place in his life where he could. In Kohlstania, he'd been Prince Alexander, one day to be Commander in Chief of the Army, currently standing duty under the present Commander, and second in line for the throne. In the Academy, he'd been Cadet Alexander, Squad Leader and Prefect, responsible for the behavior of all of the Cadets subordinate to himself. He'd always had things to remember, duties to perform.

Here he was no one and nothing. His rank mattered not at all, his titles were meaningless, his value only so much as paid for the food he ate. And for today at least, he had no responsibilities at all.

There was a curious freedom in that. Perhaps that was all that freedom really was, in the end, the knowledge that you had nothing and were nothing, and thus, had nothing to lose or gain. 'Free as a bird' was synonymous with 'tied to nothing' after all.

So he sat and watched the new day unfold as he had never quite watched a dawn before. And for an hour, at least, he stopped being 'Prince,' stopped even being 'Alexander,' and just was.

The sun swiftly burned off the mist, the sun dried the dew off the grass, and he lay back on the soft grass and stared up at the sky. He thought about going up to the cottage for breakfast, but since he hadn't been working like a dog, he wasn't particularly hungry. I'll just lie here a little, he decided. After everyone else has gotten food, I'll slip up there and get what's left. If I get hungry. If...

And somehow, he slipped into a drowse without ever noticing that he had done so.

He dreamed — or thought he dreamed — and in his dream, he opened his eyes at a little sound, and looked into a pair of extraordinary eyes. They were an intense violet color, and belonged to a creature that was about the size of Hob, but nothing like him. This was a girl, a very young child, wraith-thin but bright with health, clothed, so far as he could tell, in nothing but water-weeds. There were water-lilies in her streaming wet hair, and she gazed down at him with all the solemnity of a judge.

'Why are you so unhappy, son of Adam?' she asked, in a voice that reminded him of the sound of a brook flowing over stones.

'Because — I want to be free,' he replied without thinking. 'I want to go home, before people forget I ever existed.'

'Ah,' the child said, looking wise. 'Are you sure that is what you want?'

'Of course I'm sure!' he replied. 'I'd do anything to figure out how to get out of here!'

'Oh, that is a dangerous thing to pledge, anything, son of Adam,' said the child. 'You are lucky I am a small Fae, and have so little power. I could do you a mischief with that pledge, if I were minded.' She gurgled a laugh. 'But it is a lovely day, and I am a lazy Fae, as well as small. And — ' She tilted her head to the side, considering. ' It is in my mind that you are the thing, maybe, that our King called for, on a day not unlike this one, on a spring morning, when a girl old in pain but young in power came to be weighed and judged and gifted. So I will give you what you ask, the thing that will help you, though it may not seem that way at first to you.' She stood up, and held out her hands, which seemed to fill with light.

And then she spilled the light over him. It floated down on him in incandescent motes that filled him with warmth as they touched him.

'Mortal, here's the key to free you,' she half-sung, and half-chanted. 'See yourself as others see you!'

Then she suddenly lifted up on one toe, spun in place, and vanished with a tinkling laugh and a glow that blinded him.

There was nothing standing above him, and no sign there ever had been anything but dream.

He blinked, and raised a hand to rub his eyes. 'Maybe I am sickening for something,' he muttered to himself. What kind of a daft dream had that been?

His stomach growled, and he sat up; and maybe some of the leaden lethargy had lifted. He was hungry, anyway.

Breakfast first. Then — see what would happen, on a day when nothing was happening as he had come to expect.

He got to his feet and brushed himself off, and really saw the clothing he was wearing.

Each day that he had spent as himself, he had awakened in it, and despite all the heavy labor he did while working in it, the clothing looked exactly as it had the moment he had been transformed into a donkey. The first day, after he had washed, Lily had taken it from him and given him coarse, common laborer's clothing; he'd taken back his own and put it on damp when she'd washed it. After that first day, he had refused to surrender it. But now, as he brushed grass and bits of leaf and twig from the tight military-style breeches and tunic, he paused in dismay.