Fairy Godmother

'Well, I like that!' Rose said indignantly from the door.

'Actually, I do like that,' Elena said thoughtfully, turning to go back inside herself. 'He could have done, or said, much worse. I believe we're getting somewhere, my thorny Rose.'

'I'm still not buying manure-proof umbrellas,' was all Rose said — but as she also turned to go back into the house, Elena caught a glimpse of a grudging smile.

Lily was already in the kitchen, setting out plates on the table. 'Take him out some fresh linens and things, would you, Lily?' she asked. She wasn't going to do so herself, not because she thought herself above the task, but because she wasn't going to give The Tradition a second chance at going down the bawdy-ballad path. Oh, no. That was still the easiest road, and if she was going to keep it from happening, she had to keep her wits about her at all times.

'Already have, Godmother,' Lily said with a sidelong look and a smile. 'When you told Hob to go off to the Horse Fair, we knew what was toward. Saw to it this morning, while he was down clearing the nettles out.'

She had to laugh at that, and she did. 'You know what I'm going to do before I do, don't you?' she asked the Brownie.

'Have to, don't we?' Lily countered, with a tilt of her head. 'Been serving Godmothers a mort of years now; you'll be our ninth, I reckon. Be a sad thing if we hadn't learned a bit by now.'

'Nine!' That surprised her; she hadn't known that the quartet had been doing this sort of thing for so very long. 'Are you weary of it yet? Have you ever wanted to — to — stop serving anyone but yourself?' There it was, the question she hadn't dared ask when she first became Godmother — did they want to be free? She didn't know what she would do without them but —

Lily laughed at her, and her fears dissolved. 'Bless you, no! What's a Brownie without a home? We're the Fae of housen, Godmother, not the Wild Fae of the woods! Oh, I'll admit that now and again we wish we had a whole family to serve, instead of just the one Godmother, but you've managed to keep us on our toes enough to keep us busy. That's why Hob brought back the extra beasts; he reckons we'll need them.'

'Ah.' She was a bit nonplussed at that. 'For what?'

'Oh,' Lily replied, waving her hand vaguely. 'Things.'

Robin came in at that moment, with an empty basket that held a napkin; evidently Lily had also sent down the Prince's dinner, figuring he would not want to come to the door for it tonight. Lily took it from the other Brownie, then continued after he left.

'Hadn't you noticed that some of the Witches and Hedge-Wizards of other Kingdoms have been asking you for help? We reckon you're going to get made Godmother of a couple more realms before the year is out. That means you'll be getting more people coming to you, and that means guests, and guests means a bigger house and more work. We think the house is getting ready to bud off a couple new rooms. There's a funny feeling upstairs, off the old Apprentice rooms you used to be in, and downstairs, too. The Library'll probably bud—expand first, and then all those books Madame Bella put in the parlor and the dining room will move themselves into the new space so we'll have proper places to receive guests.'

Lily said all of this so matter-of-factly that Elena's head reeled. The house — had she said budding rooms, as if it was some sort of plant? And the books were going to move themselves?

It was, in a way, one thing to work magic herself. It was quite enough thing to hear that it was going to be working without her intervention....

And was she really going to be given the keeping of other Kingdoms? But which ones?

In the course of an hour, once again, her life was taking on a brand-new direction, and one she had never anticipated.

If only she had a way to contact Madame Bella! Right now she badly wanted advice — she wanted to talk to an older, more experienced Godmother! She needed to learn more than Madame Bella had initially taught her, and she had the feeling she needed to learn it quickly.

But wait — there was advice, advice in plenty, already written down and waiting for her. She had only to find it.

'Ah — I see,' she said, carefully, and laughed a little. 'I suppose you must be used to it by now.'

'Oh, aye,' Lily said, cheerfully, but shrewdly, and she was watching Elena's face quite narrowly. Elena remembered something that Bella had told her.

'The House-Elves might seem common as clay and without any kind of magic sometimes; don't allow yourself ever to believe that. They're Fair Folk, as truly Fae as any you've seen, through and through; they serve us because it amuses them to, and this house and everything around it is their creation. If they wished to, they could snap their fingers, and it would be gone in an instant, and them with it.'

'I'll be in the library, I think,' she said. Then, a little nervously, 'It isn't going to do anything while I'm there, is it?'

'Bless you, no!' Lily replied. 'Whatever it does, it'll be while you're asleep. It knows that budding unsettles the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, and it's sensitive about that sort of thing.'

Oh my, she thought. She talks about the house as if it's alive. Then came a more comforting thought. But so is a tree alive, and I've no qualms about walking inside one of them to take tea with a dryad.

And like her house, the dryads' trees were all bigger on the inside than the outside. Perhaps that was what the cottage was; a kind of dryadic tree.

'Well, I'll be in the Library,' she repeated, more confidently now. 'All evening, probably.'

'Very good, Godmother,' Lily said, looking pleased out of all proportion to what Elena had just told her. 'I'll let the others know.'

Now what did I say that's made her smile so? Elena wondered, as she waved the