If I were wise, and if I had the conviction wisdom should lend me, I would seize Snow up and take her somewhere away from this pathological child she is going to marry. And yet, one asks, where? Where does one take a gloriously beautiful twelve-year-old girl who has not two tiny brains to rub together to make even one wee warm idea in her head? And when one gets her there, what does one do with her? No monastery would take her. No, that’s not true, given a sufficient dowry some monastery would, but she’d be miserable there. Marriage is her only hope. And yet …
Well. Beauty does not breed true. I said that before, when Elly died. Beauty exists in all ages, but it does not necessarily breed true. Mixed with dross, it becomes dross. I am only her grandmother, after all. I am not God, who presumably made her as she is for some reason!
ALL HALLOWS’ EVE
Tomorrow is the wedding. Tonight I was sitting alone in my warm, tapestry-hung room, with my cat on the bed and Giles next door, remembering Mama. I saw her last on Samhain Eve, so long ago, when Thomas the Rhymer got loose from Faery. I wondered if she would care that her great-granddaughter was being married.
“Fenoderee,” I whispered.
And he was there, sitting on the window sill, looking out at the night. Puck lounged against the bed, chewing at a fingernail. Call one, get both.
“I was thinking about Mama,” I said.
“Ah,” said Puck. “Well, she’s in Faery, looking well.”
I tried to think of something to ask about her, but I couldn’t. Instead, I wondered, “Was it the Dark Lord I saw in the witch’s glass?”
“It was,” said Fenoderee.
“Did he see me?”
“Carabosse thinks he may have. Israfel thinks he did, also. They’re both frightened for you, though they say it was probably going to happen, sooner or later. Once you went back to the twentieth, it showed up in the Pool that he would.”
Puck added, “They think the Dark Lord will come looking for you, manipulating things. Be careful, Beauty.”
“How much do you know about …” I started to ask, then shut my mouth, remembering they didn’t know.
“About your burden?” Puck asked. “We’ve known since almost the beginning. It’s not her fault, but old Clockwork Carabosse is one of the Sidhe, after all. She can’t get out of the habit of thinking of us Bogles as slightly subnormal. She thinks we don’t notice what’s going on under our noses.”
Fenoderee said, “I don’t know what made her think we wouldn’t see what she was up to. She and Israfel did it right there in front of us.”
I sighed. “I’m getting old, you know. I won’t last too much longer. They’d better start thinking of somewhere else to hide it.”
Puck nodded deliberately. “They’re cogitating, looking in the Pool, thinking deep thoughts, the way they do.”
“And I’m still just supposed to go along, is that it?” I was surprised to find myself still capable of a little anger!
“For now,” said Fenoderee. “Is that why you called?”
I shook my head. “No, it was just I was thinking about Mama. I was thinking of going to Faery to say hello, but when I returned here, wouldn’t a lot of time have passed.”
Puck nodded. “Oh, yes. No way around that. Your mortal part ages whenever you travel back and forth by magic.”
I wanted to see her, but I couldn’t risk that. If I died before Carabosse took away my burden, it might be lost forever. Besides, Giles and I couldn’t look forward to that much time together. Nor Grumpkin, either. “Could you take a message for me?”
He smiled.
“Tell her … I love her,” I said.
I think I do. Despite what she is and how she feels, I think I do. In my long life there have been few enough people, mortal or Faery, for me to love.
ALL HALLOWS’ NIGHT
Well, we have had a wedding. There was the mad young prince, all dressed up in taffeta and furs with a plumed cap, looking very handsome, and there was Galantha, Snowdrop, in silk and velvet, both of them standing outside the church door, exchanging their pledges. I had hired a local goldsmith to break up the coffin and melt down the gold into nice little ingots. That gave me a goodly sum for her dowry, and the King settled a house and land on his son. They have enough to live on; neither of them is bright enough to get into serious trouble; and I laid a happiness spell on them as a gift. It was the least I could do. The King is quite a jolly fellow, several decades younger than I, but gallant and well-spoken. He says to call him Zot, and that he’ll send word to me in England how the children get along. He flirts with me and tells me I don’t look a day over eighty.
After the pledging was done and the rings exchanged and the papers
