Fairy Godmother

lamps to light in the Library, and prepared a simple Seeking Spell to help her find the exact books she needed. Or — was it what I didn't say?

But she couldn't spare any more time in wondering one way or the other. She had to find out just how it was that Godmothers were assigned more responsibilities — and what it meant to the Godmother in question when it happened.

The Seeking Spell led her to book after book, until she had a pile of them, twenty deep, on the table she used as a desk. She looked at them and sighed. It was going to be a very long night.

Alexander was racked with so many conflicting emotions that he knew better than to be around anyone else, so he strode rigidly off back to the stable. That woman's casual pronouncement had left him both elated and crushed. When he'd realized that Hob had brought back other work animals he had hoped — and simultaneously told himself not to hope — that his term of punishment was at an end. To learn that it wasn't made him want to howl.

But on the other hand —

On the other hand, tonight I go to sleep as myself, and wake up as myself. In a bed! Or at least, in whatever passes for a bed in that loft....

And he realized then that he didn't even know what was up there; he had never been there, and —

— and I guess I was just taking it for granted that Master Hob slept up there. But come to think of it, I never heard any footsteps up there in all the time I've been here, so it must be empty.

He'd gone back to the stable, of course, out of habit. It was nearly dark, and he 'should' have been in 'his' stall, waiting bitterly for the magic to turn him back into a beast.

Tonight, it wouldn't, and that felt — unsettling.

To shake off the feeling, he sought the ladder that led to the loft and climbed it. Might as well find out what his new domain looked like.

He pushed open the hatch at the top of the ladder, and warm, welcoming light spilled down around him. Blinking, he finished his climb, poking his head up into an odd, but quite comfortable room.

The attics at the Academy had been like this; right under the roof, so that you could only walk upright down through the center. This was a thatched building, but someone had gone to the trouble of putting in tongue-and- groove boarding lining the ceiling so that at least he wouldn't have wildlife dropping into his bed and belongings out of the thatch. There was one very tiny window at each end of the single long room, curtained, with the shutters opened wide to the night air. There was a table under each window and a brass lamp on each table. That made sense; you wouldn't want candles with open flames around so much hay and straw. The lamps looked very heavy; you'd have to work hard to tip one over.

In the center of the room was an odd box that looked like a brick stove, except there was no chimney. He couldn't imagine what it was, so he dismissed it for the moment from his mind.

His bed was on the right; somewhat to his surprise, it was a real bed. Somehow he'd expected a pallet on the floor or something similar. But no, this was a real wood-framed bed, with a dark wooden blanket-chest at the foot of it, neatly made up, faded blue linen coverlet and pillows and all, and if he wasn't mistaken, beneath the sheets and coverlet was a featherbed mattress.

To his left, the lamp shared the table with a floral-figured pottery pitcher and basin. And fitted in under the slope of the roof, down both sides, were shelves. There was clothing on those shelves, and a pair of sturdy boots he didn't recognize, along with the carefully folded and familiar pieces of his princely garb and his riding-boots.

And there were books....

Now that, he had not expected at all.

He hadn't laid his hands on single book except for that strange little history that Lily had given him since he'd arrived here. That, he had read from cover to cover, and had thought about it quite a bit. But here were more books, many more, and though he was not the bookworm that Julian was, he was still fond of reading, and he had missed it.

So the first thing he did, the first things he inspected, were the books.

Now, this was a stable, and these were (presumably) the quarters of a stablehand. He expected books about horses and mules and donkeys.

These were histories and practical books on magic.

And it didn't take very long to discover that, like the book that Lily had gotten into his hands, they were written from, and for, the very peculiar viewpoint of the Godmothers and Wizards.

The Godmother's Book of Days, read one, and that was the one he settled in with, reading propped up in his new (and oh, so comfortable) bed, after blowing out the lamp at the farther end of the room.

Elena glanced out the window of the Library after darkness fell, and frowned for a moment to see a square of light where she hadn't ever noticed a light before. Then after a moment, she realized what it must be, and smiled ruefully.

The room over the stable, of course. So the Prince was in his new quarters.

Probably nothing like what he's used to, she thought, then had to laugh at herself. Of course! Lately he was used to bedding down in straw at the clean end of his loose-box! A bed of any kind should seem like a luxury to him now.