Fairy Godmother

Fae, as such things go. The Great Fae, they've no need of mortal foods, for they create such things out of their own power if they choose — we little Fae, who haven't the magic, either feast at their tables or live as mortals do by the work of our hands.'

'But surely the Godmother — '

'Ah.' She laid a finger alongside of her nose and nodded. 'Well, here's the thing. Aye, Godmother Elena could use magic for suchlike things if she chose, but she don't choose. And that's because she's a saving wench. She don't see the need to do with magic what can be done with hands, ye see. There's only so much magic that she has, without gathering more, and she reckons she can't always count on gathering more. Am I making sense?'

'You mean — ' He groped to understand Lily's words. 'You mean, magic is like rain, and sometimes there's a drought, and you can't always tell when a drought is going to come so you — you save it in a cistern?'

'Very like!' Lily applauded. 'Now not all Godmothers think like ours. There's plenty who do a lot more with their magic. But Madame Elena always thinks, 'what if something really terrible happened, and I didn't have the magic to fix it,' every time she goes to do something. So there you are.'

'I — see.' And actually, he did see, though it seemed a rather novel and perhaps parsimonious approach to him. After all, what was the point of having magic if you didn't use it?

But then again, what if she did go about squandering magic, then didn't have it to turn him from donkey back into man again? He'd supposed that he'd have felt very differently about her approach if he'd been the one feeling the 'drought.'

'Now, one of our Godmothers, one we served a long time ago, was like that,' Lily continued thoughtfully. 'Using her magic to do this and that, cleaning her rooms and appearing and vanishing where she chose and suchlike. And something bad did happen. The Kingdom of Lorendil was invaded, and a Black Sorcerer took the throne and held it for three generations. And our Godmother didn't have the power to stop him because she'd used so much of it on things we could have done, traded for, or done without.'

At the name 'Lorendil,' Alexander found himself feeling cold. Even in Kohlstania they had heard of the Black Beast of Lorendil, a Sorcerer whose atrocities were the stuff of nightmare. 'Could she have?' he asked. 'I mean — she was a Godmother, but he was a Sorcerer....'

'We'll never know, will we?' Lily countered. 'But Lorendil was her responsibility, and it went down on her watch, and it took a Prophecy, a Child of Prophecy, and a Sorcerer to set it all right again.'

He pondered that for a moment. There was just so much he didn't know about magic —

'Well, in that case,' he said, finally, licking the juice of his last apple off his fingers and wiping them clean on the napkin his luncheon had come wrapped in, 'let's get back to these apples.'

They filled that cart as well, and a third, before Lily decreed an end to the harvest for that day and they headed back to the cottage. And that was when something odd occurred to him.

The kitchen that he had sat in this morning was huge. It should have filled the entire ground floor of the cottage.

Except that it hadn't, for Rose had come in from what was clearly another room, and Elena had been sitting at a table that had not been in a kitchen.

'Lily,' he said hesitantly, as they neared the building. 'That cottage — '

'Is bigger on the inside than the outside, I know,' she said nonchalantly. 'No worries. You'll get used to it after a bit, and not even think about it.'

'Ah,' he replied. And tried not to, because the very idea made his head begin to hurt. How could a building be bigger on the inside than the outside? It sounded mad, and yet he knew that his own eyes had given him contrary evidence.

Hob came to take charge of the cart and its contents, and Alexander and Lily proceeded on to the kitchen yard, and if Alexander had thought that the aromas issuing from that chamber had been delicious this morning, they made his mouth water this evening.

But Lily drew him away from the kitchen door to one of the outbuildings. 'Men's bathhouse,' she laughed, pushing him at the door. 'Go make use of it. And when the weather is too cold to bathe at the pump, you can come here, but you'll have to fire the stove yourself.'

It was his first bath since he had left home.

He would have lingered, except that he was far too hungry. Even so, to revel in hot water was something of a revelation. Now he felt wholly human again. Hob had washed him down regularly as a donkey, and what had happened to the donkey had, of course, happened to the human. In fact, washing him as a donkey seemed to clean his clothing as well. But that was no substitute for a real hot bath.

Nor for real clean clothing, with the scent of the hot sun that had dried it still in the folds. He walked alone into the kitchen with some of the same euphoria that had buoyed him this morning.

There he found that the others were already sitting down to their dinner, the Godmother sitting at the kitchen table among them. And that surprised him a little. Ladies did not eat in the kitchen among their servants. But then, again, this was no ordinary lady, nor were these creatures strictly 'servants.'

Quietly he took his own seat, and held his peace while they talked of the day. The Godmother kept sending odd glances in his direction, and though he kept his mouth shut, he wondered what was going through her mind. Did she regret her decision to allow him to remain himself? But why?

Whatever the cause of her behavior, she said nothing to him. And eventually, he gave up trying to figure out what was in her mind, and just listened.

And ate, of course. The food was marvelous, and the results of today's work appeared at the end of the meal in the form of a huge apple pie.

Robin's food had always been good — it was just a great deal better eaten like a civilized man, on a table, in company with others. However strange that company might be.

Strange company, indeed. While casual talk of what must be done over the next