Instead of Three Wishes: Magical Short Stories

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Oh, she thought as she sat down, I wish I hadn’t told him where we lived. I wish I hadn’t.

  Left behind, the elf prince was nonplussed. When he recovered, he propped his elegant briefcase on the top of a postal box and opened it wide enough to pull out a small Persian carpet, which he threw down on the sidewalk. He stepped onto it.

  “Home,” he snapped, and disappeared.

  Selene and her mother lived in a housing development several miles beyond the suburbs of New Duddleston. The builder who had bought up the farm on the outskirts of the city had intended to build an entire community of different-size houses and apartment buildings. He had laid out the roads, and then paved all the driveways. By the time he began building the houses, he had run out of money. Only a few of the smaller ones had been finished when he went bankrupt, leaving the owners of those houses surrounded by vacant lots covered in weeds with driveways that led to no houses and roads that went nowhere.

  Selene’s mother was one of the owners. She had used her savings to buy the house and had hoped to take in a lodger to help with the mortgage payments, but so far no one had been interested in such a peculiar neighborhood. She and her daughter lived frugally on a monthly insurance check and waited for someone else to buy the land and build houses to go with all the driveways.

  “Hello! I’m home!” Selene shouted as soon as she was in the door.

  “I’m in the kitchen. Did you have a good day at school?” Her mother had her wheelchair pushed up to the kitchen table. In front of her was a plate of crumbs and one remaining half of a scone.

  “Hey,” said Selene, “I thought I told you to eat those up yesterday when they were still fresh.”

  Selene’s mother smiled. “I ate as many as I could. And you know that I always think your scones are better the longer I wait.”

  “That’s only because you’re hungrier when you finally eat them. I bought the stuff to make more. And I got your prescription filled. Do you want a pill now?” The wrinkles around her mother’s eyes showed that she was having a painful day.

  “Yes, please, dear,” she said. “I’m a little sore. Did you have any trouble getting the prescription filled?”

  Selene was reminded of the peculiar man outside the pharmacy. “Not with the prescription,” said Selene. “They know me at the pharmacy.”

  “But you did have a problem?”

  “Not a problem, really. But I ran into a nutty old guy.” Selene described her encounter with the elf prince. She provided a skillful caricature. “Still, I wish I hadn’t told him where we lived.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. He has probably forgotten all about you by now.”

  The next morning, as Selene was pulling on her coat before going to school, the doorbell rang. She opened the front door and found a shockingly green small man on the front step.

  “Your gift,” he said, “from Prince Mechemel of the Elf Realm of South Minney.” And he swept a bow all the way down to his toes and waved it out across the stubbly crabgrass to the street. A golden coach and six black horses stood at the curb.

  “Zowee,” said Selene. “Is that for me?”

  “Our master sends it to you and hopes that you will accept it as repayment of his debt to you.”

  “Oh.” Selene paused. “Look,” she said, “that’s really nice of him, but could you…take it back? I really appreciate it and everything. It’s very beautiful, but the coach would never fit in the garage, and I don’t have anywhere to keep the horses. Tell him I said thank you, though.” She carefully closed the door.

  By the time she had walked to the living room window that overlooked the front yard, the leprechaun, the coach, and the horses were gone.

  “Zow-ee,” Selene said again, and went to tell her mother all about it.

  “It’s a good thing we don’t have many neighbors,” her mother said. “They’d wonder.”

  The next day the doorbell rang again. This time when Selene opened the door, there was an elegant woman with deep blue skin and dark green eyes. She was wrapped in a sea green cape that covered her all the way down to her toes and puddled there at her feet. In one thin, beautiful hand she held a set of keys on a silver key ring.

  “Our master entreats you to accept these as repayment of his debt to you.”

  She held out the keys. Selene started to ask what they were for, when she caught sight of the mansion newly arrived on the lot across the street.

  “Oh, my,” she said. “Is that…?”

  “For you,” said the blue woman with a happy smile. “Do you like it?”

  “It is a beautiful house,” said Selene.

  “Palace, really,” said the hamadryad. “It’s got those gates in the front. I don’t really remember if that makes it a palace or a château, exactly. I know that if it had a portcullis, it would be a castle, and it doesn’t. But it does have those little turrets at the corners, so I think that means it’s not a château.”

  Selene was silent.

  “I’d definitely call it a palace,” the hamadryad assured her. “You do like it?”

  Selene said that she thought it was a lovely palace, she really liked the gold turrets at the corners, but she lived alone with her mother, and they could never use that much room.

  The dryad looked so crestfallen that Selene rushed to say, “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that we’re really very comfortable here.”

  “It’s got central heating,” the dryad said wistfully.

  “We couldn’t afford to pay the bill,” Selene said sadly.

  “And really lovely plumbing. Much nicer than we have back at the castle.”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Selene. “But thank you, really. Please tell Mr.—His Highness that all this isn’t necessary. He doesn’t owe me anything.”

  She smiled at the dryad, and the dryad smiled sadly back and went away. The lovely white palace with the gold roof dissolved into mist and disappeared.

  The next day Selene waited for the doorbell to ring. By the time she decided it wasn’t going to, she had made herself late for school. On Thursday afternoons she worked in the school cafeteria baking rolls for school lunches. She didn’t get off the bus until almost five-thirty and walked home through the pitch dark. She could see the lights in her house from a long way off.

  As she went inside, her mother called from the living room. “Selene, do come meet the delightful young man who’s come to marry you.”

  “Marry me?” She went into the living room. Her mother had her wheelchair pulled up to one side of the coffee table. On the other sat a young man, about Selene’s age, in a fitted maroon velvet tunic that was held in place by a wide belt across his thighs. He wore dark green tights and leather slippers punched full of tiny cross-shaped holes. His cape was thrown over one shoulder and artistically draped on the sofa beside him. It was also maroon velvet but was imprinted with a leaf pattern. Green lace leaves in the same pattern trimmed its edges. In his lap was a soft conical hat with a twelve-inch blue feather curling above it.

  The prince was very handsome, Selene had to admit. He had dark curly hair and very round blue eyes. He had the very cleft in his chin that is the prerequisite of fairy-tale princes.

  He stood up and bowed from the waist. “A great pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said the prince.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” said Selene. “Did I hear that you’re supposed to marry me?”

  “Yes,” said her mother. “It’s what’s-his-name’s newest idea. He thought any girl would jump at the chance to marry a prince.”

  “That’s the theory,” said Selene. She turned back to the prince. “Could you,” she said, “tell me a little about yourself?”

  They spent a pleasant evening together, Selene, her mother, and Harold. Until her accident, Selene’s mother had taught history at the high school. Since then, she had pursued her profession at home, sending Selene to the university library for enormous piles of books on the weekends. Now that she had a genuine fourteenth-
century prince on hand, she had endless questions to ask.

  Unfortunately, Harold couldn’t answer them. He knew quite a bit about the clothes people had been wearing when he’d last been in the human world, but he didn’t know anything about treaties or border disputes or religious schisms. All he could say was that he thought that a few heretics had been burned in his day, but he couldn’t remember which kind.

  “We had ministers to keep track of all those things,” Harold explained lamely. “I’m sure that if they were here, they could answer all your questions.” He looked around, as if he expected a prime minister or a chargé d’affaires to pop out from behind the sofa.

  “What did princes do?” Selene asked.

  “We gave treaties the authority of our names,” Harold said grandly.

  “How?”

  “Well.” The prince looked uncomfortable. “We signed them, you know, with our names.”

  They ended up discussing the elf prince’s court. Selene asked about the plumbing. Her mother asked about the central heating. Then they asked about the elf prince. Harold was surprised to hear that Selene’s impression of him had not been favorable.

  “He’s mostly really very nice,” he insisted. “I once dropped a flagon of red wine in his reflecting pool and he wasn’t angry at all.” Harold did his best to convince them of Mechemel’s kindness, his generosity, and his good humor. Selene was skeptical, but her mother pointed out that anyone who has recently had a fright can be forgiven a lapse in manners.

  “I think the passing cars must have disturbed him,” she said.

  “Are elves really bothered by iron?” asked Selene.

  “I don’t know that it actually hurts them,” said Harold, “but it does, you know, give them the willies.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Selene’s mother.

  “Of course, automobiles give me the willies, too,” admitted the prince. “Things didn’t move so fast in my day.”

  Harold spent the night in the spare bedroom. They sent him back the next morning.

  As she closed the door behind him, Selene’s mother said, “He was a very nice young man.”

  “He was sweet,” said Selene. “But what in the world would he have done if I’d married him? Gone out to look for a job?”

  “Poor boy, can you picture him trying to get one?” Her mother laughed. “What are your qualifications? Well, I look good in velvet and…”

  “Can’t read or write…”

  “Can’t type, can’t drive, don’t know what electricity is, never heard of a vacuum cleaner.”

  “He couldn’t buy groceries, cook dinner, or pay bills.”

  “If you wrote out the checks, he could sign his name,” Selene’s mother reminded her.

  “Oh, of course,” said Selene, “he would have ministers to take care of all that.” She added, “He’d do okay if he just came with a pot of gold.”

  “Oh, no,” said her mother. “That’s leprechauns.”

  Selene was late for school again. As she went out the door, she said, “This is the third gift we’ve rejected. Do you think His Highness the elf prince of wherever will give up?”

  Mechemel wasn’t giving up. He was getting out the big guns, going to the experts, checking with an authority on humans. He went to talk to his mother. She had a room at the top of the castle with windows on all four walls so that she could lie in bed and look out at the forest. She was old and a little frail, and she didn’t get around much, so she passed her time keeping an eye on daily activities in the forest and watching television.

  Mechemel climbed up the stairs to her tower. He sat beside her bed and twiddled his thumbs while he explained his difficulty. After a while he grew suspicious of her silence and looked up in outrage.

  “You’re laughing at me!”

  “Mechemel”—his mother’s laugh was a lovely sound—“this is the most foolish thing that I have ever heard in my life. I warned you about how fast those iron contraptions can go.”

  “It’s your fault,” said Mechemel. “You’re the one who wanted to keep your gold in a bank. Who ever heard of fairy gold in a safe-deposit box? Much less a checking account?”

  “I know, dear.” She smiled apologetically. “But so many of these mail-order companies want to be paid by check or money order, and the sprites were complaining about the lines at the post office. I thought you’d send a leprechaun.”

  “Leprechauns are unreliable,” grumped her son. “They only have to meet one sharp character, and they hand over everything.”

  “Yes,” admitted the fairy queen, “but surely you could have sent a hamadryad, or even one of those human princes that are always hanging around.”

  “Hamadryads are even worse than leprechauns, and the princes, well…” He smiled ruefully at last. “There’s no point pretending that any of them were gifted with brains.”

  “And here you are fussed because the mortal girl thought the same thing. Stop sulking and admit that this is funny.”

  Mechemel stiffened and then stifled a snort. “You should have seen her face when I pulled out the wishes. She looked afraid for her life.”

  “She probably was, poor thing.”

  “What did she think I would do, turn her into a frog?”

  “She probably thought that you were a homicidal maniac.”

  “A what?”

  “You don’t watch enough television, Mechemel. It’s one of those humans that go around murdering other humans for no good reason.” She waved one hand at the television set on a stand beside the bed. It stood on a stand of crystal and carefully wrought gold. Its cord ran across the floor and out one window, where it dropped to the ground and was wired directly into one of Ontario Hydroelectric’s cross-country power cables.

  “I don’t understand how you can stand to watch that.”

  “Oh, it’s amusing sometimes. It’s so terribly dull, since the humans have stopped coming to court. There’s never anyone new to talk to. Watching them talk to each other is the next best thing.”

  “You should go out more.”

  The elf queen slipped deeper into her feather pillows. “It’s too much trouble. Things have changed too much in the last hundred years. Besides,” she added slyly, “look what happened to you.”

  “It’s all very well to snicker about it. The longer I owe her a favor, the more in debt I am. So…”

  “So what?”

  “So tell me what will make her happy.”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “But you’re supposed to know!” He threw up his hands. “And stop laughing!”

  His mother reached out a hand to pat him on the knee. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You find out a little more about her, and then we’ll think of something.”

  On Saturday, Selene was out in the front yard, sawing at a dead tree, when the elf prince arrived. The tree had been the builder’s one attempt to fulfill a clause in the contract that said “fully landscaped.” Stuck into ground packed hard by bulldozers and surrounded by weeds, the little tree had given up immediately and died. Selene didn’t mind the weeds—many of them were pretty—but the brittle branches of the dead tree depressed her, so she was cutting it down.

  She looked up from her work and realized a man was watching her from the sidewalk. “Are you the next silly idea of that ridiculous elf?”

  “No,” said Mechemel, and didn’t say anything else.

  Selene was terribly embarrassed. She looked from her saw to the tree and back to Mechemel.

  “Yes,” he said, “do stop dismembering that poor bush and invite me in.”

  “It’s a tree, actually.”

  “Bush,” said Mechemel. “Salix bebbiana. Or it was. All it is now is dead.”

  He moved past Selene toward the ramp that led to the front door. “Fortunately uninhabited,” he said as he went.

  Still carrying the saw, Selene followed him up the ramp and into the house. He waited in the hall while she went to fetch her mother. He looked startled when Se
lene rolled her in, but collected himself quickly.

  “I understand,” he said, “that you are willing to take a lodger?”

  Selene’s mother asked him for references, and he provided them. He told them that he was a visiting professor at the local university.

  “Waterloo or Wilfred Laurier?” Selene’s mother asked.

  “Uh, Waterloo.”

  “Lovely, perhaps we know the same people. You said you were in the history department?”

  Mechemel saw that he was on dangerous ground and retreated rapidly. He was new there; he didn’t know anyone; he wouldn’t actually be teaching in the department, just doing research.

  “Oh,” said Selene’s mother, disappointed. “Well, still. I’m sure it will be very nice to have you as a lodger. Did you say that you wanted to take your meals here?” she asked hesitantly.

  Mechemel shuddered. “No, thank you,” he said.

  So Mechemel moved in. Selene and her mother wondered about their new lodger. He came with very little luggage, just the one suitcase. He was always home at dinnertime, but he never seemed to eat. Selene cooked her mother dinner, and the two of them ate at the kitchen table, wondering what Mechemel was doing in his room.

  “Maybe he lives on store-bought cookies and soda,” said Selene.

  “It would be warm soda,” her mother pointed out. “He doesn’t have a fridge.” They didn’t see the leprechauns skipping up to the spare bedroom window, carrying trays of covered dishes. Mechemel was willing to sacrifice in order to get his debt paid off, but he was not going to eat whatever humans called food. Before he’d left the castle, his mother had told him dire stories about microwaves and things called burritos.

  Mechemel had been staying with Selene and her mother for a week before Selene did any baking. On Friday, Mechemel’s rent payment made it possible to buy an extra dozen eggs, baking chocolate, and five pounds of extra-fine cake flour. In the evening, she read through her collection of secondhand cookbooks and decided that she wanted to try a brittle chocolate crème de menthe gâteau.