by Leslee Green
Linda’s hand shot out and her nails pressed into his arm. “I need the dress,” she said through clenched teeth (joking but serious).
Again, Blake was frightened.
Karen had only been waiting for her to ask. A twirl of the wand and the dress Linda was wearing blossomed into a majestic ball gown that was unmistakable. It came with long gloves and a petticoat and poofed out around her, filling the whole cabin, and Linda knew it was the one.
"And now, we're ready for the dance," Linda said, removing her cowboy hat.
“Dressed like this?” Blake asked, unsure if Linda knew what she was saying.
“Why not?”
“Are you worried about other people?”
“We’ll never see any of them again.”
“I’ll see virtually all of them again, some of them every day for four months.”
“So what? They’ll start calling you Cowboy Charming.”
Blake shrugged. “It all goes away at midnight anyway.”
“You see!” Karen said to Linda, “He gets it right away.”
“How did you even know that?” Linda asked.
“How could I not?”
"Midnight," Karen said, nodding. "Everybody knows."
“What would happen if you did it right after midnight?” Blake asked, “Would it last the whole 24 hours?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would end at noon?” Karen said.
“You don’t do magic in the morning?”
“Who does?”
Blake didn’t really have an answer.
“How do we stop this carriage?” Linda asked.
“Pull it over, Jimbo!” Karen yelled.
The carriage slowed.
“Alright. Let’s go dance.” Linda said, excited.
"But there's one last thing," Karen said.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, Linda, how could you forget?”
A twist of the wand and gentle sparkles were falling on Linda’s feet. Her boots disappeared and, when the light vanished, what was left was a pair of prismatic, shining glass slippers.
"Aww," Linda said.
Her heart was moved by them as she held her dress up to look, and thin tears formed in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Blake asked and put his arm around her.
“I just didn’t think I’d ever get to be a princess.”
“You’re not a princess.”
Her facial expression changed. “Alright,” she said.
“What?” he asked. “Not technically,” he said to Karen, explaining his point of view.
Linda informed him, “You’re supposed to say, ‘you’re a princess to me,’ or something like that.”
Blake thought about it, then said, “You’re a princess.... To me, you’re a princess.”
Linda’s eyes closed.
“Maybe we just don’t talk?” she suggested to Blake. “Thank you for this,” she said to her fairy godmother.
“You’re welcome.”
"Yeah, thanks," Blake said. "She didn't need it though because she was already a princess."
Linda shook her head at Blake. “It’s over now.”
Blake shrugged.
"It's too late," Linda added.
“Even Cinderella wasn’t a princess! She was a dirty, filthy little pauper girl.”
“Alright, it is time for you to stop talking.”
"Here," Karen said, being helpful, and with a flick of the wand, Linda's hat turned into a glimmering tiara.
"That's what I'm talking about," Linda said, placing it on her head and holding her legs straight to admire the slippers.
"I thought Cinderella was supposed to have small feet," Blake said.
Linda stared at him in disbelief.
Blake responded, “I just meant because it was supposed to be hard to find a match! Like they had to go around town and the shoe wouldn’t fit anyone else! I didn’t say you had big feet.”
Linda continued to stare, waiting for more.
“Your feet are fine.”
All Linda did was nod.
“What!? I have a big mouth! I’ll put my foot in it.” He said.
“Maybe you should put my foot in it because it’s so massive?”
“Is it a little hot in here?” Karen asked and opened the door, not waiting for the mouse to help her out.
Blake asked Karen, “Did Cinderella and the prince bicker like this?”
“They were a couple,” she answered as she slid on her belly to the ground, “so, yes.”
“Does that make us a couple?” Blake asked Linda with a smile.
“Hopefully that’s not the only thing,” she said, smiling a little, finally.
“What else is there?”
"Square dancing," Linda said as she pushed on Blake to get him out of the carriage.
Blake helped Linda out and they weren’t far from the rodeo grounds. They had stopped the carriage early but the mice had just driven them around the parking lot anyway, annoying people trying to leave.
But everyone who was leaving was gone now, and the rest were gathered at a dance where music and barbeque were wafting over from.
Linda stepped up to Blake and took him in a ball dancing pose, her in her flowing dress and him in his royal uniform. They did a slow box step to the far-off music, flinging the dress out into the air of the parking lot.
"Just like Cinderella," Karen said, satisfied with her work.
“More like Lindarella,” Blake responded.
Blake and Linda danced slowly while looking into each other’s eyes for just long enough to make Karen uncomfortable.
“Alright,” she said, “I’m going to leave now.”
"Sorry," Linda said and stopped dancing.
“Don’t be sorry!” Karen said, “Don’t you know what fairy godmothers are for?”
"I absolutely do not," Linda said.
"Okay," Karen said.
“Do you want to take the carriage?”
“No, thank you.”
“You’re going to walk all the way back to Stagecoach?”
“Nope.”
Karen glanced up into the night sky and a pair of sharp, brightly glowing wings exploded from her back. She hopped off the ground and rocketed up into the sky with an incredibly loud roar, and then could be seen turning into a speck of white fairy dust that ripped across the sky with a brilliant comet trail behind it.
"That was cool," Blake said.
Linda nodded, still looking up at the sky.
Blake and Linda attended the dance, wearing their outfits. People made jokes to them, but these were country people and they only did it with good spirits, laughing along with them and appreciating the look.
Little girls surrounded the dress and touched it, not leaving it alone. Their mothers pulled them away and apologized while the girls asked if they could have dresses like it. The girls sat with their parents but looked at it from across the room.
Linda ate a barbequed rib and the dress was magic so no sauce got on it.
She was sad that it would be gone at midnight but, knowing that it would be, she danced the night away in Blake’s arms until it got late and then she tugged on him to walk her out.
Out front, Blake agreed to come see her before he left to drop off the cash she needed, which she promised to pay back though he wasn’t concerned with it, convinced that he would have a good season.
Four horses driven by two men pulling a sparkling coach, really glowing now in the dark, rolled up to them while some passersby looked on and wondered. Blake lifted Linda by the waist up into the carriage and she slipped off one of her glass slippers, handed it to him, and kissed him.
“Oops, I dropped this,” she said.
She took off her other slipper and admired it, sitting back comfortably in bare feet as the coach drove her back to the Stagecoach Stables. The wind coming in through the window grew colder as the night did, and Linda looked out the window up at the night sky, seeing the stars pinned to the dark like sparks from a f
ire dashed across black cinder.
It felt like magic.
At the stables, Linda held the slipper and the mice climbed down from the coach and made their way towards the field.
“Goodnight, guys.”
They waved back at her.
When midnight struck, the horses shrank back into mice and scurried off, though she could not see them in the dark, and Linda’s clothes changed back.
Lastly, the pumpkin shrank and popped and turned back into a chewed up plastic jack-o-lantern sitting on the ground.
Linda picked up it and dropped it into the air and punted it hard out into the open field, out of sight.
“What a night!” she shouted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Carl dropped excrement onto the floor right next to Linda’s boot in a quantity that didn’t even make sense.
“How is that even possible?” she asked, snow shovel in hand.
Carl had made his way back to the Stagecoach sometime in the night and she found him eating weeds near the parking lot the following morning.
As she cleaned a horse stall, and he insisted on being in it with while she did, stealing leftover oats, she felt a little less frustrated with him than usual and gave him a pat on the head.
“Knock, knock!” Blake hollered as he entered the barn.
Linda left the stall to greet him, removing her gloves.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “By royal decree, I must find the girl who fits this slipper. Have you seen her?”
He held out the clear glass slipper as it glimmered wildly in the light.
“Oh, sorry, I don’t know whose slipper that is. My feet are too big for that so, you might want to try my step sisters? They’re in the office.”
“Are you sure? The girl I was looking for was supposedly the most beautiful girl in the land. I think she was a princess!”
“Hmm. Nope, sorry, I’m definitely not a princess, I’ve been told.”
“Oh, really? That’s too bad because I have this envelope full of cash for her.”
Linda laughed and took the envelope. “So you do know the way to my heart!”
Blake laughed too.
"I'm going to pay you back," Linda said.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m buying the mule, he’s my mule.”
“Hinny, actually, and I know you don’t want to buy Carl.”
“Yeah, but I know that the old lady isn’t paying you.”
“She’s not, but I have a new plan.” Linda smiled devilishly. “Two words: private lessons.”
“Sign me up!”
“I’m doing them on my own time, for cash.”
“I thought you didn’t have your own time.”
“That’s going to change.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’m not going back to the way things were, not after what I’ve seen. I’m demanding a day off per week or she can deal with this place herself and, on some weeks, two days off.”
“Woooow.”
“But more importantly, with all the money coming in, I’m going to make sure my stepmother takes it, with receipts, so that she is paid back in full and, eventually, The Stagecoach falls back to me.”
“Don’t you have to pay off a mortgage or something first?”
“No. She needs to get paid off and I’ll take the stables with the mortgages, then I’ll deal with them myself.”
“Alright,” Blake said, smiling at her ambition, “and you’ve got this great mule to help you do all the work.”
“That’s right.”
“And I’m getting a great deal on boarding him here.”
“You can just leave him here, Blake, I won’t let them charge you. I’ll take care of him.”
“Sounds like a plan. I kind of had a plan of my own, though.”
“What was it?”
“You come with me.”
“Where?”
“On the road.”
“And just leave everything behind?”
“Yup.”
“But what happens with the stables?”
“You just let it all go.”
“And then what happens, Blake?”
“Then, that’s it. The end. We live happily ever after.”
“I’m not ready to do that, Blake.”
“I know. I’m just letting you know that there’s plenty of room in the bed of my truck.”
“That’s... not super appealing.”
“I meant because that’s where I sleep some of the time, not that I was going to haul you around back there.”
“I know.”
“What if I bought a mattress?”
“You’re going to haul a mattress around the country?”
“I don’t know.”
She smiled at him. “I’m kidding. I’d love to camp out in a truck with you, Blake, but as long as there’s still a chance I can get this place back, I’m going to stay and fight for it.” And then her smile faded away again. “I’ll miss you, Blake.”
“I’ll miss you too, but it’s not like I’ll be gone forever.”
“No, you won’t, but...”
“But what?”
“But, I mean, me and you...”
“You never heard of a long distance boyfriend?”
“A long distance... what?”
“I think you heard me.”
“Yeah, but I want you to say it again.”
He kissed her instead and the brim of his cowboy hat pushed the brim of hers and knocked the deep brown Stetson off the top of her head.
As she picked it up, she was reminded of where it came from.
“Oh, Blake, I never told you!”
“That that’s my cowboy hat?”
“You knew?”
“That I met you a long time ago? Yeah, I figured it out.”
“What did you think when you did?”
"That you were that little girl I met? My first fan? At first, I thought it was kind of weird, but now it's not so bad."
“Okay.”
Blake laughed. “No, it’s great. Makes it seem like this was destiny or something.”
“Yeah.”
The breeze played with Linda’s hair and she held a kiss with Blake one last time, missing him already.
As he drove away, the squeak of the springs of his truck had grown so familiar that she knew she would miss the sound, now that she would no longer hear it.
“Cute goodbye.”
Linda knew the voice behind her and turned to greet the woman.
“Hello, fairy godmother. Or should I say, ‘Karen’?” She asked sarcastically with a cheeky wink.
“You should definitely say Karen. That’s my name.”
“Oh. Well. Hello, Karen,” Linda said, embarrassed.
“Do you think people don’t have names?”
“I know people have names!”
“Alright,” the woman said, dropping it, “you ready for what comes next?”
“What more is there? Blake’s gone. We’re together now, kind of.”
“A woman’s whole life is not defined by her man, Linda.”
"In a Cinderella story, it is."
“Not this one.”
“What else then?”
“You just told Blake how you’re going to get the Stagecoach Stables back, but you’re going to need help taking care of the place, with all the new horses and students taking up your time.”
“Too bad Blake can’t stay and help.”
“He’s doing his own thing for now, and you’ll do yours.”
“Are you going to make me some more mice-men helpers?”
“No, no, I’d have to keep changing them back. You need a real man. I found one that can help you.”
"Cool. I'll be sure to tell Blake that I don't need him because ‘Karen found me a real man'."
Karen chuckled at Linda. “I’ll bring him by sometime. You’ll like him, he’s quite charming.”
Linda let out a deep, meaningful sigh. “Alright.”
“What is it?”
Linda looked around at the barn; the dirty, yellow sunlight scattered across empty stalls and soiled hay, all of which she was very used to.
“It’s just not much of a happily ever after. Blake is gone. I still live with my wicked stepmother and stepsisters. I’m not getting married in front of a castle.”
The old woman smiled, amused. “Maybe there’s more to the story,” she said.
"Maybe," Linda said and readied her snow shovel to pick up after Carl.
"Not everything works out instantaneously with the flick of a magic wand, Linda," Karen said.
“Too bad.”
“No, it’s not too bad. You have a great story ahead that you would miss out on if things were that way. Magic is useful, but there’s a reason it only lasts until midnight.”
“Alright,” Linda said, reluctantly accepting what she was saying, “Where will you be?”
“Around,” the old woman said as she headed for the door, “Fairy godmothers are always around.”
Linda scraped at the barn floor and heard the woman’s footsteps as she exited, then the sound of her wings springing forth and flinging her up and away, tearing a hole through the sky.
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