by Unknown
It felt strange to be eating the ball supper instead of preparing it, and even stranger to have the prince approving of both my cooking and my secret wish. Even with thoughts of fairy plots filling my mind, I savored each taste, making notes to myself of tricks I wanted to learn after I got out of this bargain.
If I could. This was about more than one mother’s romantic wish for her daughter. Official declarations or no, people believed in fairy godmothers. A thousand seemingly innocent wishes granted, with consequences coming years or months later, so no one connected the wish to the tragedy…
“Can you take the shoes off?” Prince Theodore asked.
I shook my head. Thorns prickled my forehead, as though they’d been listening.
“May I try?”
The shoe felt glued on. But glued, not nailed. I gestured for him to pull harder.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
If I’d spoken to the prince in the commanding tone my gesture implied, I’d have been jailed for treason. He pulled. The shoe moved ever so slightly. He pulled harder. I thanked the fates that my forced muteness kept me from screaming aloud.
Silk stockings tore, and took a layer of my sole with them. One shoe slid free. Theodore looked up at me and grinned.
“One more, and then you can help me with this cursed coronet.” He tugged at it. “It looks made of the same stuff as your shoes, and it won’t come off either. I may have to shave myself bald. Your other foot, please.”
Just as he took hold of the second shoe, the palace clock began to chime midnight.
What had my fairy godmother said about midnight? I was hardly falling upon Theodore and declaring him my one true love. Surely thwarting the Fae’s plan couldn’t be as simple as not getting betrothed tonight?
Then the pain started. Not one thorn. Dozens, digging deeper by the second. Blood trickled down my forehead. The prince dropped my foot.
“Good God! Ella!”
I clawed at the wreath. Petals flew, but the thorns clamped down. They were going to kill me unless I begged Theodore to marry me right that instant. I’d be able to speak those words, I knew.
I ran. If the thorns were going to impale me, better somewhere far from here, where I couldn’t succumb to the curse. And where Theodore wouldn’t have to watch my punishment.
I’ve scalded myself with boiling fat and burnt myself on red-hot iron, but nothing hurt as badly as those thorns, unless it was my flayed foot. Half blinded from blood and the sudden change from bright ballroom to night, I stumbled from the castle’s paved paths onto cooler grass. My head and foot were both on fire. Surely thorns couldn’t pierce my skull?
The last chime faded away. I’d done it. I might bleed to death now, but I was free of my fairy godmother.
“Look at you, you naughty girl. You’ve gotten blood all over your pretty dress.”
My godmother’s voice dripped poisoned honey. Her hands gripped my arm, pulled me forward.
“Most girls dream of marrying a prince. Of course, you’re not most girls. You’re the seventh generation of a hopelessly romantic family. Wishes right down the family tree, in every generation. Everything was going so well, until your mother died before her wish came true. Do you know what happens when you leave a wish unfulfilled?”
I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. My head spun. My body felt too heavy to carry, and wintery cold. And it had all been for nothing.
I expected my fairy godmother to strike me dead, or at least turn me into something slimy and easily squashed. Instead, she led me to a cottage and pushed an overstuffed chair under me before I collapsed.
“This will never do,” she said. I felt both revulsion and dizzying relief as the thorns slipped from my skin and the crown of roses crumbled to dust. The remaining shoe dropped from my stinging foot.
“Playing hard to get? That really isn’t necessary. Oh, don’t expect me to believe that you were really running away! You two were getting along so well, dancing so close, whispering sweet nothings to each other. You’re really quite fond of the boy, I can tell. You’ll have just enough time to get yourself prettied up before he arrives. The washroom’s in there. I’ll take care of the dress. Go on now.”
I didn’t move. Some part of me took satisfaction from the small defiance. Most of me was just plain exhausted.
My fairy godmother’s lips thinned. Her mirrored eyes tried to lock onto me. I closed mine.
“Very well.”
She didn’t touch me, but the air around me might as well have grown hands. Something swept through my hair, combing out the tangles and sticky blood, and leaving it smooth. I felt bathed in air, cleansed and once again rose-scented. I sighed and opened my eyes.
That fluffy cloud of a dress was back, and infuriatingly spotless. The shoes were gone, thank goodness. So was the flowery crown, but I had a horrible suspicion that the invisible hands would find some other way of making me obey. Something that wouldn’t leave bloodstains on the dress.
Despite my godmother’s glare, I actually started drifting off. I woke at the pounding on the door.
My godmother didn’t move to open it. She just stood there smiling while a royal guardsman kicked it open and Prince Theodore rushed in, my discarded slipper in his hand.
“How nice of you to return my property, your Highness,” she said.
“Ella! You’re as pale as paper. And there’s blood in this shoe. Are you all right?”
I smiled, tried to stand to greet him, and fell back into the chair.
“Poor thing.” My fairy godmother sighed. “It’s every girl’s dream to dance with a prince. She must be overwhelmed from awe.”
“From blood loss, more likely.” Theodore caught my hands in his. His were so warm. “Let her go.”
My fairy godmother laughed. “I’m not keeping her!” The door slammed shut. The bolt slid home. Outside, I could hear frantic guardsmen pounding on oak. “I’m keeping both of you. Just until you agree to marry each other.”
Now I sprang up. Rage can work wonders for blood loss. Theodore’s hand went to his hip—he’d clearly rushed out without a sword, and was regretting it.
“Two families making wishes for generation after generation...Your Highness, haven’t you wished for a girl unlike the court beauties? And what girl wouldn’t wish to have you for a husband? Would it would be so dreadful to grant my goddaughter’s wish? If you offer, I’ll grant her leave to say I Do.”
“What would be dreadful, Madam, would be to grant your wish. Dreadful for the entire kingdom.”
The coronet flared. Theodore gasped. His hands flew instinctively to pull off the burning circlet and jerked away, blistered. The smell of burnt hair overpowered the scent of roses. I stamped my foot.
“What is it, my dear? You want this charming young man to marry you? To grant your wish?”
I didn’t look at her. I looked at Theodore, willing him to understand what I was trying to tell him. At the word “wish,” I nodded vigorously.
You don’t grow up to be a successful prince without being able to pick up on nuances. Prince Theodore went down on one knee before me.
“Miss Ella,” he said, as charmingly as he could manage despite the pain, “would you give me the honor of granting your greatest wish?”
My fairy godmother looked ready to burst with triumph. The band on my throat loosened.
“I do!” I shouted.
Prince Theodore ripped off the coronet—now dull—and flung it away. The frilly gown became my old brown dress and apron. The cottage door crashed open, and the guardsmen grabbed hold of my fairy godmother. She twisted in their grip, looking incredulous.
“So that’s what happens when a wish goes unfulfilled,” I said. It felt so good to speak aloud again! “It limits your power. That’s why you wanted me back before midnight. And when your victims actually say no to you...well, I doubt you have the power to turn a pumpkin into pie right now.”
“But...you said ‘I Do!’ I granted your wish!”
&nb
sp; “My late mother’s wish, not mine. My wish is to become the prince’s chef, not his wife. No offense meant, your Highness.”
“None taken. I do hope that you are capable of turning pumpkins into pies?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I’ll officially welcome you to my staff tomorrow.” He gestured to the guardsmen to take the fuming fairy godmother away.
“You look better in the apron,” said the Prince. “More like yourself. I don’t mean that disrespectfully...”
“I understand, Your Highness. And you’re right. I feel more like myself.”
We looked anywhere but at each other.
“It might not have been so bad, granting your mother’s wish,” he said.
“Maybe not. But I suppose there are alliances and things to be considered.”
“There always are. Miss Ella?”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Please, call me Theodore. I give you official permission.”
“Thank you...Theodore.”
No, it wouldn’t have been so bad, if it hadn’t been for the fairy’s machinations. Perhaps in a few years...
I bowed, and Theodore and I headed back to the castle. Home. I smiled.
One wish at a time.
Where There’s Smoke
by Michael H. Payne
As I promised in the Introduction, here is another story in the continuing adventures of Cluny and her familiars. Michael is still a library clerk, college radio host, church cantor/guitarist, and webcartoonist, but he is now also a recipient of the Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award, for 20 years of “keeping a desultory eye on SFWA’s Circulating Book Plan.” That’s not as easy as he makes it sound, so congratulations are well deserved. This year’s Cluny story harkens back to her first two adventures: “Familiars,” originally published in SWORD AND SORCERESS 19 and reprinted in THE URSA MAJOR AWARDS ANTHOLOGY, and “Immolation,” originally published in the Ursa Major follow-up anthology WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Both these collections are available from Furplanet Books.
Sudden crackling twitched Cluny’s ears, memories sparking through her of harvesting termites from the fallen trees back home on her parents’ nut farm.
The sound kept growing louder, though, its vibrations taking on a supernatural edge that prickled her fur and pulled her out of her notes. Looking up from the floor in front of the bookcase where she lay sprawled across Magistrix Gosstelain’s treatise on the numenistic forces inherent within the mind/brain interface, she said, “Uhh, guys? I think we might have a—”
A cabbage-sized mass of flame burst into the air above Crocker’s desk, made him cry out and nearly tip over in his chair. “The fools!” came a shout, and Shtasith whooshed from the fireplace, his black and gold wings flaring. “They shall rue this attempted invasion of our inmost sanctum!”
But the fireball vanished with a camphor-scented pop, an envelope drifting down to settle on top of the evocation problem Cluny had given Crocker to solve. “Huh,” he said, picking the envelope up. “Anybody expecting any mail?”
Cluny scurried over the carpet, grabbed Crocker’s robe, and swung herself onto the desk’s blotter pad, her whiskers still ringing from the sheer—and unnecessary—amount of power she’d just felt flexing, piercing, and resealing the very structure of time and space, all apparently to drop off a letter. “Careful, Crocker,” she said, flicking her claws to summon the basic defensive spells the last few months had taught her to always have standing by.
He was squinting close at the envelope. “It’s addressed to you, Cluny. And it’s from—” His eyes moved to where the return address should be and went wide, his scent souring with fear. “OK, that’s it. We’re doomed.”
Shtasith swooped over to land on Crocker’s shoulder. “Silence, simian! Your histrionics do nothing but bring shame upon—” His neck snaked down to the envelope, and his eyes went wide as well. “This cannot be!” he hissed.
Unable to keep from scowling, Cluny cleared her throat. Crocker’s panicked gaze jumped to her, then he slapped the envelope onto the blotter pad, his hands springing away like it had suddenly become burning hot. The wavering letters in the center did indeed spell out Novice Cluny, Huahuo House, Huxley College. But the three words written in the upper left-hand corner made Cluny’s every hair stand on end.
~o0o~
“The Ifriti Ranee, is it?” Master Gollantz nodded at the envelope still lying where Crocker had slid it across his desk. “You haven’t opened it, I see.”
“No, sir.” Cluny fiddled with the edge of the pocket she’d sewn for herself along the front of Crocker’s robes, her human familiar shivering where he sat, Shtasith draped over Crocker’s shoulders like he was trying to hide his serpentine body behind Crocker’s head. “I mean, considering what happened the last time we were in the Realms of Fire, I...well, we may have panicked a little.”
The Magister Magistrorum’s brambly eyebrows rose, and Cluny felt her ears blush as she recalled their frenzied rush to the administration building: her clinging to Crocker’s robes, the letter wrapped in the strongest ward bubble she could muster; Crocker sprinting with the bubble tucked under one arm like someone much more athletically inclined; Shtasith darting ahead of them bugling, “Make way, imbeciles! Make way!”
Fortunately, at 3:30 on the afternoon of the autumnal equinox, the campus was far from crowded—orientation week didn’t even start for another ten days, and classes wouldn’t kick in till the week after that. Besides, Cluny figured that everyone expected odd behavior from Terrence Crocker, by all accounts both the most powerful and the most disturbed wizardry student Huxley had seen in centuries. And yes, those accounts were wrong in almost every respect, but one thing she’d learned from Shtasith over the past six months was how useful other people’s misapprehensions could sometimes be....
“As I recall,” Master Gollantz said, tapping one long finger on the desk beside the envelope and snapping Cluny’s attention back to the here and now, “the Ifriti Ranee declared you blameless for what happened while you were disposing of the magical water you’d left all over her magma fields.” A tight smile twitched his beard. “I’ve even heard it said that the ifrit who was killed in the flood that day was not exactly her Majesty’s favorite person. Perhaps you knew Lord Hypabyssal while you were a denizen of the Fire Realms, Shtasith?”
“No!” The firedrake exploded from the back of Crocker’s neck, his wings beating faster than a hummingbird’s, Cluny’s link to him suddenly a tiny, itchy sandstorm in the back of her brain. The feeling was gone immediately, though, Shtasith’s snout curling as he settled unruffled onto Crocker’s shoulder again. “Do not sully the air of your lungs with that creature’s name, Master Gollantz! His final annihilation can only have brought good to the Elemental Planes, and I am proud to be associated with those who take the credit for that deed!”
Cluny blinked up at him, and Crocker gave him a sideways glance, too. “So, what?” he asked, waving a hand at the envelope. “You think they’re inviting us to a party?”
Shtasith’s snout curled even more, but Master Gollantz clearing his throat stopped any further comments. “Tell me, Novice Cluny.” The magister pressed his fingertips together. “What do you suppose would be the easiest and most effective way to discover what her Majesty has sent to you here?”
With a swallow, Cluny nodded and scampered down Crocker’s robes to Master Gollantz’s desk. So much had happened in the eight months since they’d accidentally summoned the Ifriti Ranee, but Cluny would never forget the gaseous stink of the Fire Realms and the panic it inspired in her: slinging spells she scarcely knew that first time to save herself and Crocker from getting sucked into the lava; her Majesty finally grabbing them, dumping them at Master Gollantz’s feet, then demanding they return to fix the damage they’d caused; their efforts during that second visit going awry somehow and causing the flood that had killed her Majesty’s cousin....
The envelope almost seemed to glow in the afternoon light
drifting from the windows lining the walls above Master Gollantz’s bookcases; a flex of her claws lifted the thick paper into the air, and a slash split open its top edge. Nothing burst from it—no death magic or fire imps or poison gas or anything—and narrowing her levitation spell, Cluny pulled out a folded piece of parchment.
Not a whisper from her two familiars behind her, but she could feel their magic wrapped around hers, the wonderful warm blanket sensation that came from Crocker and the much spikier power that Shtasith had brought to their partnership. “It’s—” She opened the page, turned it so the writing would be right-side up. “—an invitation?”
Master Gollantz sat forward, and Cluny read aloud: “To the Esteemed Novice Cluny, her Two Familiars, and Guest. Your Presence is Requested at a Show Trial to be held in your Honor the Evening of the Autumnal Equinox at Her Majesty’s Hall of Justice, downtown Darbijwe, the Fire Realms. Verdict of Not Guilty to be followed by Light Repast and Dancing. Dress: Optional.”
A moment of silence, then: “Huh,” from Crocker. “I guess it is a party.”
~o0o~
“It’s not a party,” Cluny said for what had to have been the fourteenth time.
Crocker frowned from under the floppy green hat he’d conjured atop his head and tapped the invitation resting on the desk’s blotter pad. “It says ‘light repast and dancing,’ Cluny.” He jerked his chin at the fireplace. “Besides, the Teakettle says they do show trials all the time in the Realms of Fire! And it’s not like we hafta worry about them finding us guilty when her Majesty already said we aren’t!”
Glancing at the fireplace, Cluny squirmed, feeling itchy again. Master Gollantz had volunteered to come along as their guest, an offer Cluny had immediately and gratefully accepted, and Shtasith had made several vaguely reassuring comments on the walk home about how her Majesty’s will was law in the Fire Realms and how she never reneged on a promise. But Master Gollantz had looked especially grim as he’d told them he’d be by their dorm room promptly at 6:30, and Shtasith had zoomed straight into the chimney when they’d gotten back, his fiery power all banked and broody in the back of Cluny’s head.