I didn’t know, but knowing that Elly was at the root of a fairy tale made me have some hope for her future, at least.
ST. MARY MAGDELEN’S DAY, JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367
My daughter is the same age I was when I started writing this story of my life. She is not very like me, as I remember being. She is bad-tempered, quick to strike, eager to continue the fray. She hates her stepsisters and brothers with a hot, even anger. She doses their food with nutshells, boils their woolens to elf size, spreads oil upon the floor outside their rooms to make them fall. They detest her, and she glories in their dislike. Her animosity and their slothfulness seem to have kept her alive. If any one of them had been capable of decisive action, he, or she, would have killed Elly. I look at her and I marvel. So like her father. She would rather have passionate hatred than lukewarm affection.
“What are you looking at?” she snarled at me.
“The indomitable human spirit,” I replied.
“Go domit somewhere else,” she returned. “I’m sick of you always looking at me.”
Perhaps I, too, would be sick of someone always looking at me.
“What was it like when your father was alive?” I asked her.
Pain, then, in her face, swiftly passing but sharp while it was there. “He was … he was very good to me,” she said. “I think he loved me.”
“I know he did,” I said. “He told me so.”
“She says he didn’t,” she gestured toward her stepmother’s window. “She says he only pretended, because I didn’t have a mother. She says nobody could love someone as bad-tempered as I am. He only pretended. He thought he owed it to me.”
“That’s not true. He loved you. Very much. I remember once when you were a tiny baby, only a few months old, I saw him bend over your cradle and tell you that he loved you, and it was not owing, it was real.”
She sat very still, like a cat that is too frightened to move, afraid I would take it back. Her stance made me think of an old friend.
“There used to be a cat here, named Grumpkin,” I said. “He was a great favorite of mine. He must have died a long time ago. It’s been sixteen years.”
“He did die,” she nodded. “He was my mother’s cat, and Papa said she left him to me when the enchantment took her away.”
I gulped. So Edward had told her that! Poor Edward. He had been curious, and knew it. He had blamed himself.
“Grumpkin slept on my bed sometimes. He lived to be very old. I cried when he died. But he fathered lots of kittens, and I’ve still got one of his sons. Daddy named him Grumpkin the Second as though he were a king.” Her voice had changed. All the hostility had left it. It was for that one moment as open and communicative as a child’s.
“Why did the enchantment take your mother away?” I asked, wondering if I’d been right.
“Because Papa got curious about her,” she said. “He said it was all his fault.”
Oh, Edward. Edward. “Let’s go see Grumpkin’s son,” I suggested, getting up from my chair.
“I have to take out the ashes,” she said, not thinking, merely expressing her habitual contrariness.
“No,” I told her. “Not anymore. While I am here, I will be sure the maids do it.”
Brought to herself, her lip curled into its usual sneer. “How come you can tell the maids what to do and what not to do?” she asked. “You’re not the mistress of Wellingford. You’re only an aunt.”
I had figured out who I was that morning. Even I, who had never cared for children’s stories, could not have failed to notice what role I was playing. In the twentieth, I had seen Disney, after all. Though Elly and I were not privileged to be attended by singing mice, it did not surprise me greatly that this segment of my life had gained a spurious immortality, a glossy, oversimplified and untruthful half-life.
I shook my head at Elly, trying hard to get her to smile. “No, my child. You mustn’t tell anyone at all, but I’m your fairy godmother.”
She laughed at me, thinking I was joking. It was a genuinely amused laugh.
ST. MARTHA’S DAY, JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367
I have my Grumpkin back again. The son is like Grumpkin I, except that he has one white foot. When I picked him up, it seemed almost that he knew me, for he reached out his paw to touch my face as the other Grumpkin used to do. As I write, he is beside me, purring, opening his eyes every few moments to be sure I have not gone away. Though Elly values him, she does not care for him. I saw her slap at him, for no reason except to see him blink. Strange. With her, the having is enough. She uses or ignores. She does not maintain. In that, she is more like Lydia than she would like to think.
Though Lydia is too lazy to take charge of Wellingford herself, she does not seem to resent my doing it. In any case, I have not asked her permission. During the past days the maids have ceased to grumble: they, the household, and the household linens are clean. Elladine has had several baths (as have I), the floors have been swept, and the cook has been instructed to feed us something besides porridge and meat pies. There is plenty of food—it has been six years since the plague came and went again—but acquiring victuals from the gardens and orchards, from the sties and the poultry house and the herds, takes a little attention and good sense, neither of which Lydia seems to be capable of supplying. The small caches
