The Fairy's Tale

by F. D. Lee

  Bea glanced furtively around the room. No one seemed to be listening to them, but you could never tell. Informers were everywhere. Joan shuffled on her seat, suddenly nervous.

  “We should leave,” Melly said.

  The three walked towards Bea’s, subdued. The streets were emptying. Curfew was due to begin.

  “The Mirrors really are breaking, aren’t they?” Joan asked, once they were safely away from the bar.

  “I think so,” Bea replied, dropping her voice. “The other day I ran into some fae. I think they were Anties– but the thing was, everyone else there seemed to agree with them. They were openly talking about the end of the Chapter.”

  “They think it was better back then,” Melly said.

  Bea looked up at her friend, shocked.

  Melly was older than either Bea or Joan. She had let slip once, after a long night of drinking, that she had been working before the Redaction – a dangerous thing to admit to. Bea had asked her about it the next day, but Melly had denied everything, and then Bea had gone to watch another Plot.

  “Was it?” Bea asked.

  “What?”

  “Better?”

  Melly wrapped her arms around herself. Her voice was so low Bea had to strain to hear her. “It was… yes, in a way. We were free. We had control over our lives. Anyone could create a story, though of course not all of them were any good. But yes, it was better, at times. Until the Mirrors started to crack.”

  “They’re breaking now,” Joan shivered.

  Bea glanced over her shoulder. The spire of the GenAm glowed white in the darkness. It loomed over the overcrowded city, always visible, always reminding you what could happen if you stepped out of line.

  “What I don’t get is why,” Bea said, and then wondered where the thought had come from.

  “The Anties,” Joan replied, glancing over her shoulder.

  “I suppose so. But the Mirrors have only recently started to break – I mean actually break, not just crack,” Bea said.

  “And?”

  “Well, I mean, the Anties have been around for ages.”

  Melly frowned in the darkness.

  “Maybe it’s taken this long for it all to build up?” Joan suggested. She didn’t sound like she was convincing herself, let alone anyone else. Her voice dropped. “I heard there’s no more spare Mirrors.”

  “They’ve been saying that for years,” Bea said.

  “They’ve not replaced the last one though…”

  “Let’s just get back to Bea’s,” Melly said. “I think we need to have a chat.”

  They walked on in silence.

  Bea thought about her Plot. It wasn’t just for herself, was it? She wasn’t doing this just to prove a point, even if the point was one that needed proving. The Mirrors were what was important. Get the belief in, and the Teller would fix the Mirrors. Bea didn’t know how he did it, but so far he always had.

  And it was an easy Plot. Three acts, no real obstacles to overcome except the ugly sister and a half-hearted Love Lost And Found at the end. If she could only make the Happily Ever After she could take her Book back to the GenAm, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t let her train to be a godmother.

  And then it wouldn’t have all been for nothing. If she could make it work, she wouldn’t be the selfish little fairy who had left her family after her father died, just because she was angry and frightened and in pain, thinking she would find a better, safer life in the city. She wouldn’t have to feel so guilty because all her Dreams would Come True.

  “We’re here,” Melly said.

  Bea woke up from her thoughts and led her friends past the sleeping form of Ivor, his filthy arms splayed over the counter like the contents of a spilled chamber pot. They walked across the lobby, Melly’s heels clacking on the floor. After what felt like a lifetime, they reached the relative safety of the staircase.

  “So,” Bea said, “what do we need to have a chat about?”

  “Look,” Melly sighed, “you weren’t there.”

  “Where?”

  “Before the Great Redaction. You seem to think all the rules were written just to spite you. But when we could do what we wanted we were uncontrollable,” Melly said, resting her hand on the bannister and then pulling it away. She looked at her fingers, alarmed to see they were covered with a fine, tacky coating of something thick and pungent.

  “It can’t have been that bad,” Bea said. “How can being free to follow your dreams be bad? That’s the basis for nearly all the Plots.”

  “Oh yes, freedom,” Melly sniffed, wiping her fingers down the yellowing wall. “We were free alright. Free to interfere, free to trick and free to frighten away all the characters.”

  “So what really happened?” Bea asked.

  Melly paused on the step. “You know what happened.”

  “No one knows what happened.”

  “Let’s get inside.”

  Bea hastily climbed the last few flights to her floor and opened her door. Melly and Joan stepped into her bedsit and sat on her faded sofa.

  “Will you tell us?” Bea asked, grabbing a saucer for Melly, who had already lit a cigarette, to use as an ashtray.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Joan said, but she didn’t make to leave.

  “There isn’t anything I can tell you that you don’t already know,” Melly answered.

  “Yes, but if we already know it then you’re not telling us anything new,” Bea said, thinking her way through the carriages of fear on the witch’s train of thought, “and if we don’t tell you what we know and what we don’t know, then you won’t know if you’ve actually told us something we don’t know, and what you don’t know we don’t know won’t hurt you.”

  Melly stared at Bea, her cigarette hanging from her lip in defeat.

  “Did that make sense?” Joan asked.

  “Yes,” Melly said slowly, “but it probably shouldn’t have done.”

  “So will you tell us?” Bea asked.

  Melly sighed and crossed her legs, smoothing out the folds of her black skirt so that it hung like a lost moment. When she was satisfied, she began speaking.

  “The Great Redaction happened because we lost our focus. We were too proud, too certain of ourselves. We’ve always used the characters’ belief to keep the Mirrors open, but back then we went too far. It started in the 5th Chapter, when we stole babies and soured milk and killed cattle and worse, much worse. The characters did the only thing they could.”

  “They stopped believing,” Bea said.

  “It may be closer to say they stopped retelling. They started all their infernal experimentations. They built bigger cities. They watched the stars and played with numbers and tried to understand the world they lived in. Then they made those machines that eat the water. Now they can guarantee their harvests, travel the Shared Sea. They’ve got mechanical locks to bar their doors and lamp oil to keep the lights burning through the darkness. They didn’t need our help anymore, and they didn’t want our stories. They stopped talking about us, stopped telling tales around the campfire. We were lessened.”

  “But all that stuff’s ages old,” interrupted Joan. “Everyone knows the problems with the Mirrors began with the King and Queen. That’s the 7th Chapter, not the 5th.”

  “She’s right,” Bea said. “The King and Queen mismanaged the Plots and the characters stopped believing. That’s why they gave up their Chapter to the Teller. Everyone knows that. Don’t they?”

  “Does it matter? None of the old Narrators were any good,” Melly said. “The Teller Redacted all the old stories because they didn’t work. You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like. We were falling apart. The city wasn’t like it is now, even with the Mirrors and the Anties and the Beast. Back then it was madness. We all thought Yarnis was going to come back, that there would be another war. And then the Teller came along. Yes, he brought the Beast and Redaction, but he also gave us the Plots, and they work. And he fixes the Mirrors
, no matter what the Anties try. The GenAm keeps it all running. Even the white suits are useful, in their way. Look, we all know it isn’t perfect, but what’s the alternative?”

  “Freedom,” said Bea instantly.

  “Freedom? The freedom to starve? To kill ourselves fighting over the few remaining characters who believe in us? The Teller Cares About Us.”

  “The Teller Cares About Us,” echoed Joan, dutifully.

  Bea kept her silence.

  Melly sighed. “Look. Whether you’re a cabbage fairy, or an FME, or the even the Narrator, it won’t change the truth. The truth is the Teller, whocaresaboutus, took control and saved us. The truth and the blood were blacked out and rewritten into Just Punishments and True Love and Wicked Old Witches and all the rest of it. And that’s all there is to it. Yes, it’s contrived and boring, but it’s easier too. The characters accept these stories. The Mirrors are healing.”

  “But that’s not true,” Bea said.

  “Well, no,” Melly conceded. “Not anymore, because the Anties have started messing around with the stories. Which is exactly why you must promise me Bea, promise me you’ll report this Anti. I’ll speak up for you, explain that you didn’t realise what he was. Please, Bea.”

  Bea stood up and walked over to her window. She stared out at the night-time city, watching as the lights brightened nearer the centre. And somewhere behind her was the wall, and beyond that the Sheltering Forest and her birthplace. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass, wondering if she was destined to spend her life caught between the place she’d run away from and the place she was running to, never quite escaping one nor reaching the other. It was exhausting.

  But there was no denying it. She might have an Anti in her story. The heroine hadn’t seemed at all pleased to meet her. Worse still, she’d gone against the Plot at every turn.

  She turned back.

  “Alright. I promise. This is too much. You’re right.”

  Melly visibly relaxed.

  The three women sat and chatted for another hour or so, covering safer and thus more boring topics until Melly made her excuses and left. Soon after, Joan stood up to leave as well, stretching her little arms in a yawn.

  “Hold on,” Bea said.

  “Oh?”

  “Joan… I’m not going to stop the story. I can’t. No – please listen. How can I possibly stop it now? Do you really, honestly think the GenAm won’t get the Redactionists involved?”

  Joan lifted her eyebrows. “Well… not normally. But Melly said she’d speak up for you.”

  “But what good will that do? Melly’s more senior than you and certainly me, but she’s not a Plotter. She’s not a Redactionist. Why would anyone listen to her? I’m up to my neck in it, Joan.”

  “But he’s an Anti. If you report him, they might be grateful.”

  Bea shifted on her feet, a guilty look on her face.

  “Bea…?”

  “It’s not just him. There’s more,” Bea began…

  “Why in the name of all things writ did you show her the Mirror?” Joan cried.

  “I don’t know – it seemed like a good idea at the time! I’d already broken the Plot by going to see her early. And she wasn’t even happy about marrying the King.”

  Joan began to say that it couldn’t be that surprising. As far as she was concerned, she would be more than a little shocked to hear her entire future had been mapped out for her, but then she saw the look on her friend’s face and decided against it.

  “I always thought they liked to be told what to do,” Joan said diplomatically. “Isn’t that why they believe these stories in the first place?”

  “But that’s just it… I’ve never had direct involvement before. Maybe it’s always like this.”

  “Well, you’re right about one thing: you definitely can’t tell the GenAm now. What do you know about the Anti?” Joan said, her tone of voice suggesting the heavy weight on the end of her conversational fishing line was going to be a boot.

  Bea made a face. “He’s smug and handsome. He knows it too.”

  “Is there nothing else? Didn’t you say that he sounded very old-fashioned? I’m sure that must mean something. And, I mean, he’s blue. There’s got to be something in that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a blue fae before.”

  Bea dropped her head back and stared at the ceiling, trying to gather her thoughts. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t actually know anything – we’re not allowed to know anything.” Suddenly Bea sat up. “He did say something to the ugly sister that seemed strange. Not what I imagined an Anti to say, I mean. He said he’d lost someone.”

  “Was it your heroine? That might explain why he doesn’t want your Plot to finish.”

  “Nooo,” Bea answered, thinking of the ugly sister, “I don’t think so.”

  “So who did he lose?”

  Bea drummed her fingers on the arm of her sofa. “He didn’t really say anything clear about it, but it sounded like he’d loved whoever it was.”

  Joan shook her head. “That doesn’t fit. If he’s so good looking and confident and charming he can’t be capable of loving someone. All the really good guys are a bit awkward or shy – you know, repressed. It’s always the charming ones that end up being bastards. C’mon Bea, you know that.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Alright then, how about we have a look in your Book? Perhaps there’s something you’ve missed, you never know.”

  Bea cast her eyes over her small bedsit, looking for her bag. She was certain she’d dumped it on the floor when she’d come home, but there was nothing there. She climbed to her feet and turned around. She went to her kitchenette and opened the cupboards with increasing freneticism.

  The Book. Where was the Book?

  Panic rising, she dashed out into the hallway and down the stairs to the front door, past the sleeping Ivor, and outside. She scrabbled around in the poorly lit street, but there was nothing.

  It was no good. There was no escaping it. It wasn’t in the house. It wasn’t in the street. She didn’t have her bag, and so she didn’t have her Book. Could it have been stolen? Would she have left it somewhere? Bea felt sick. As soon as anyone opened it and saw the Book they’d return it to the GenAm. Bea stood in the cold night air, trying to think.

  When had she last seen her bag?

  What had she been doing-

  Bea froze.

  She knew where her bag was.

  Bea climbed back up to her room, each step heavier than the last.

  “I’ve left my Book in the ugly sister’s tent.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s not in here or outside,” Bea said, trying not to scream. “I had it in the tent with me. I left so quickly.”

  “Can you get it back?”

  Bea thought about the cluttered tent, with its boxes and chests and cushions and throws. And everything else that she knew to be inside it.

  “Probably,” she said, dreading what she knew she would have to do, but dreading more the ramifications of losing the Book. “It’ll be right at the back of the tent, not easy to spot.”

  Joan tried a smile. “Well there you go then. Nothing to worry about. Just go back and get it.”

  Bea thought about having to go back into Ana’s tent, and what that would entail. “Not now. In the morning.” she said with feeling.

  “What about the Anti?”

  “He won’t be there in the morning.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s not the type.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” Joan answered, not at all sure herself but willing to let it go.

  Bea pinched her nose, trying to overcome the panic still coursing through her.

  “It’s a shame you don’t have any other clues, though,” Joan said, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  “Actually… there was something else,” Bea said, remembering the paper Ivor had given her. “What do you know about the 2nd Chapter?”
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br />   “Not a lot,” Joan said after a moment. “It’s hard though to know what happened before the Teller, whocaresaboutus. You could always go and ask the Index to let you look at histories, but they never say much. You can’t ask Melly. Not now you’ve promised her you were going to stop,” Joan added reproachfully.

  Bea nodded her head glumly. “That’s that then.”

  Joan poked her friend in the arm. Bea looked up to see the tooth fairy was grinning.

  “Not necessarily. I might know someone who can help. Get your Book back, then come and see me. The game is afoot!”

  Bea gave her friend a puzzled look. “The game is a foot? What game? Whose foot?”

  Joan thought for a moment. “I read it somewhere. I think. Maybe it’s a hand?”

  “Why a hand?”

  “Everybody needs a helping hand, don’t they?”

  Bea shook her head. “What about ‘best foot forward’?”

  Joan tugged on her straw-like hair. “That’s true. How about this: The game is definitely a body part of some description, quite possibly more than one, but either way all limbs are useful, so really we shouldn’t discriminate either in favour or against them?”

  Bea smiled and nodded, and wondered what would happen if she just turned herself in to the Redactionists.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Dawn was breaking as Bea came to Ana’s encampment.

  She paused on the edge of the forest, trying to quell the sense of unease slouching through her veins.

  She needed to get her Book back, and if possible, she wanted to speak to the ugly sister. And if she saw the blue Anti again she’d tell him what’s what. That was all there was to it. That was all it was. It wasn’t a big thing.

  Of course, the title for ‘most important thing right now’ was being hotly contested, with shortening odds on ‘how on Thaiana will Bea manage to get the heroine married to the hero’. However, as much as she was trying to ignore it, ‘should Bea even be trying to get the heroine married to the hero’ seemed to be coming up the inside lane with alarming speed.

  Bea chewed her lip, thinking about love and weddings and Happy Ever Afters, careful not to make any sound as she crept towards Ana’s tent.