by A W Hartoin
“It’s fine.” In truth, my leg had been hurting so much for so long I was getting used to it.
Mom came over and said, “She needs to go to bed.”
“I’m not three. I’m not going to bed.” I shook Dad’s supportive hands off and hobbled to Lucrece and Horc.
Lucrece looked up and squinted at me over her glasses. “Matilda, you—”
I gave her a hard look. “Did you find the spell?”
She and Horc’s eyes got all shifty, very spriggan-like.
“I was just going to inform you that we’ve found it,” said Lucrece.
“I found it,” said Horc.
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“I’m your grandson. Impertinence goes with the territory.” Horc smiled at me. The meat was still in his teeth. As if I didn’t feel bad enough already. “The spell requires food.”
He looked so happy, I was afraid to ask what kind, but since I could hardly stand up I couldn’t afford to put it off. “Meat?”
“Pork. My favorite.” He swayed back and forth with dreamy eyes.
“Let me see that.”
There it was, written in Emerald’s neat block lettering: raw pork tenderloin. Fantastic. Just the words made me feel barfy. I swear I could smell Lrag’s last potion. It was one of those smells that once you’ve smelled it, that’s it, you’ve got it in your nose for life.
Marie bent over us. “There’s a boucherie near the boulangerie. How much do you need?”
“Five thumbs and, ick, some fresh pig blood. Can you get that?” I asked.
“I can get anything.” Marie straightened up. “Alright, you two ankle-biters, let’s go.”
“Ankle-biters?” asked Judd. “I’m fourteen.”
“Whatever.”
“Wait,” I said. “There’s a note at the bottom. It says this spell shouldn’t be done within twenty-four hours of any other spell. Unless there’s an extreme emergency.”
Dad put up his hands. “I’d call this extreme. Lrag is pink.”
I knelt by Lrag’s pallet and put my head on his chest. I couldn’t exactly hear his heartbeat, but I could feel the thump beneath his ribs and his breathing was regular, if a bit shallow. “We’ll wait.”
“Why follow this rule?” asked Mom, her cheeks red. “You never follow any others.”
“Adele,” said Dad and he folded her into his chest.
I wanted to protest. I did follow rules and I would’ve given her an example if I could’ve thought of one.
Mom was crying full out and Dad mouthed to me, “Go have dinner.”
“It’s not fair. Some rules are stupid,” I protested.
Mom peeled herself off Dad’s chest and turned to me. “You have got to start listening.”
“Fine. You do the spell then.”
Mom stuck her finger in my face. “You’re just like my mother.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Grandma Vi wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“And look what it got her. She’s dead.”
“That was an accident. A bluejay could happen to any fairy,” I said.
“I told her a thousand times to stay away from that nest. She was so reckless. I hated her recklessness.”
“Then you must hate me, too. Because I’m just like her.”
“I didn’t say I hated her,” said Mom.
“Yes, you did.”
Dad steered Mom away from me and Marie opened the door.
“Out you go,” she said.
I turned to Iris. “Let’s go.”
“What?” she yelled and Mom burst into tears again.
I made a fork-to-mouth motion and Iris got it. Tess put out her finger for us, but I flew past it in a rage. Marie stepped into the hall and I flew next to her, so mad my fingernails were cutting into my palms.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” I asked Marie.
“Are you going to bite my head off?”
“No.” For some reason that made me even madder. As if I would yell at Marie. The fact that I was actually yelling at the time didn’t occur to me.
“I had a mother once,” said Marie.
“Was she a total pain in the butt?”
Marie laughed as we went under the archway to the living room. “She wouldn’t have been much of a mother, if she hadn’t been.”
Rebecca and Evan were sleeping on the sofa. Rebecca still had her coffee cup in her hands. Marie charged in, pried the coffee cup away, and bonked her on the head. Rebecca jolted upright. “What is it? What happened?”
“You were sleeping again,” said Marie. “You’ll never get on the right schedule at this rate.”
Rebecca groaned and fell over into Evan’s lap, startling him. “What is it? What happened?”
Marie rolled her eyes. “Get up. You have to work in two days. You can’t be jet-lagged forever.”
Evan yawned. “Alright. Alright. Dinner?”
“Yes. Go set the table and try not to fall asleep on the stove.”
Evan pushed the still groaning Rebecca off his lap and staggered into the kitchen. Marie followed and pulled a beautiful casserole out of the oven. I landed next to the stove and had to balance myself on the salt grinder. Evan got a pile of dishes and left.
“Are you alright?” asked Marie.
The stove swam before my eyes, but I said, “Better than my mom thinks. I bet you weren’t like her. You’re not afraid of everything,” I said.
“True, but I was afraid for my children.” Marie grated some parmesan cheese on top of the casserole. The smell was heavenly.
“Did you stop them from doing everything and make lists of disasters, so they’d be terrified all the time?”
Marie chuckled, cut a clove of garlic and rubbed it on the inside of a wide wooden bowl. “I took a different tack than your mother.” She tore up some romaine lettuce and tossed it in the bowl.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I told them about my life. I thought maybe they could learn from my experiences.”
“What happened?”
Marie whisked together olive oil and thick balsamic vinegar. “They made different mistakes. Just like you’ll make different mistakes from Adele.”
“My mom doesn’t make mistakes. Ask anyone.”
“I just watched her make one. Now go find the Marfisis and tell them I’ve made dinner,” said Marie.
I turned around and screeched at the sudden appearance of five bodies standing directly behind me. The Home Depot fairies stood in a row—they really liked rows—and failed to react to my ridiculous screeching.
“Where did you come from?” I asked with my hand on my chest.
“The Home Depot,” said D. He was the first in line.
I threw my hands up. “We know that.”
Marie laughed and chopped up a weird purple tomato. “You asked.”
“I meant where have you been today, D?”
“We fixed the Eiffel Tower.”
“You fixed the Eiffel Tower? The whole thing?”
“Yes,” said D.
“What was broken?”
“An elevator, three computers, fifteen insufficient power couplings, an access panel, sixty-eight frayed wires, a toilet, a bathroom door—”
I held up a hand. “You did all that in one day?”
“And a transformer casing, a sausage rotisserie, the lighting—”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “There are only five of you and you’re tiny, even compared to me.”
“Size has nothing to do with it. What did you do today?” asked D.
I stared at him. None of the Home Depot fairies ever asked me or anyone else a question. I wasn’t even sure they knew my name.
“What did you say?” I asked just to be sure I wasn’t reading his lips wrong.
“What did you do today?” asked D.
Got my wings handed to me. Again.
“We got attacked at Notre Dame by both sides of the revolution and barely escaped with our lives.”
“What’s broken?”
“Just us.”
D and his compatriots formed a huddle. I looked up at Marie and she shrugged. Then D broke from the group. “How is Miss Penrose?”
My mouth dropped open again. If D noticed my surprise, it didn’t show. Actually, nothing showed on the Home Depot fairies. They had no expressions that I’d seen.
“Um, she’s okay. How did you know about Miss Penrose?”
“We know.”
That clears it right up.
Marie filled her arms with the salad and dressing. “You worker bees are full of surprises. Time for dinner.”
The Home Depot fairies marched away in their beloved line and I hovered next to Marie.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“Coward.”
“I’m hardly a coward.” I stuck my bandaged foot out at her. Was that the foot of a coward?
“Courage in battle is one thing. Courage with family is another.” Marie stomped out of the kitchen while I grumbled. I wasn’t afraid of my mother. Who with any good sense would be? Mom was a gardener, for crying out loud. I glided behind Marie’s head, dodging this way and that, looking for Mom. Unfortunately, she was already on the dining table, spreading a blanket so we could eat picnic style. I landed next to Tess and wobbled. I was so tired, the tablecloth looked like a pretty nice bed. I almost laid down, but saw Iris, who was perched on Tess’s finger and looking worried. I smiled and straightened up. Iris grinned back and rubbed her ears. Mom saw her and then she saw me. She blew out a breath and pursed her lips. Dad flew in carrying dishes and utensils. He handed me the plates and mouthed, “Be good.”
What was that supposed to mean? When wasn’t I good? I performed spells. I saved Iris from getting her ears completely blown out. What did he want from me?
Dad walked over to Mom and they put their heads together. Mom looked over Dad’s shoulder at me a couple of times. Then she flew over and gave me a fierce hug. “Go get the Marfisis.”
I wanted to yell that she was always mad and blamed me for everything, but a sharp look from Dad got me to say, “Where are they?”
“Judd’s room. They’re hiding on the second bookshelf between Victor Hugo and George Sand.”
“Hiding? From what?” I asked.
Mom glanced back at the window with its darkening Paris view. “Everything, I suspect.”
“Everything is an awful lot.”
Mom bit her lip. “An awful lot is right. Go on.”
Rebecca dropped into the chair next to Tess and her arm flopped onto the table. “Judd! Dinner! Don’t make me come get you!”
Tess scooted her chair out with a yawn. “I’ll get him.”
“What?” yelled Iris.
I fluttered up in front of Tess’s face. “I’ll do it. I have to get the Marfisis anyway.”
“Okay,” she said.
Rebecca’s brow wrinkled. “Okay what?”
“Nothing,” said Tess. “I think he’s coming.”
I fluttered past them very slowly. My wingbeats were half what they should’ve been and I could feel my leg swelling some more inside the thick bandages. Stupid thing. Just heal already. I should’ve been thinking how grateful I was to be alive, but I wasn’t. If my leg had to be all mutant for the rest of my life, it could at least have the decency to leave me alone.
Judd’s door was open. I sailed through and plastered a smile on my face. I didn’t know how much the Marfisis knew about Notre Dame. Maybe they had lousy hearing or had been hiding so deep in the bookshelf that they missed all the excitement. If so, I wasn’t going to be the one to enlighten them.
I flew straight to the bookshelf and hovered, looking for Victor Hugo. I spotted him on the middle shelf. The book, Les Miserables, lay tilted to the right next to Mauprat. Peeking out from the gloom was a fairy-sized book with a delicate hand on one side. I landed as softly as I could, but I must’ve sounded like a cinderblock dropping onto the shelf, because the book and the hand jerked back out of the light.
I leaned on the Victor book and let my wings droop onto the shelf. A soft puff of dust went up and I sneezed. I blew my nose and checked out the room to see if it’d been Judded up yet. It had. There were shoes and clothes, including underwear—probably dirty— everywhere. The room already smelled like feet and that noxious deodorant Judd insisted was cool. It smells more like toilet bowl cleaner to me. I would’ve thought a human’s sense of smell was different than a fairy’s, but Tess thought it smelled like dog shampoo. Speaking of dogs, Ellie and Nora were snoozing on the floor with their noses pointed at yet another rat hole. Snout marks marked the wall with big shiny dots and streaks. Rebecca would be thrilled.
Usually, the dogs sensed when I was in the room, but this time they snored away just like Judd who was on the bed with his mouth wide open. No wonder he didn’t hear Rebecca.
I brushed my hair back and walked in front of the dark triangle between the books.
“Hello! It’s Matilda. My mom says that you should come to dinner.”
There was no answer, not that I would’ve heard it, if there was. I turned my head to ask Iris, but she wasn’t there. For a second, I was off balance. Iris wasn’t there. She couldn’t tell me if there was an answer or breathing or whatever.
“Um, I can’t hear you. Come out,” I said, leaning in and trying to get my eyes to focus in the gloom.
The tip of a shoe stepped into the light. And what a shoe. It was made of brown watered silk with embroidered pink and yellow flowers over the toe and a large ribbon wrapped around the ankle twice and tied in a bow. I wished I wore something better than my boring old ballet flats. But really I didn’t have anything better. Mom could make anything, but her shoes were mostly practical. I guess it didn’t matter. Right next to the flat was Dad’s sock over my bandages. If anything could make my flat look good, it was that.
“Hello,” I said, trying to figure out how I could crouch down and hide my feet with my skirt.
Mrs. Marfisi emerged. She was dressed like I’d never seen anyone dress in a pink cocktail dress with her blond hair piled on her head. Behind her, Mr. Marfisi wore a tuxedo. Mrs. Marfisi’s eyes got all squinty when she saw my plain blue skirt and top. I’d thought they were okay until that very second.
“Bon soir, Matilda,” said Mrs. Marfisi, her gaze drifting down to my mutant leg and then popping back up.
“Bon soir, Mrs. Marfisi. My mom said to tell you dinner was ready, but if you have other plans…”
Like going to a coronation or royal wedding maybe.
“No. No,” said Mr. Marfisi. “We’re dressed for dinner.”
And I’m dressed for collecting garbage. Holy crap. Mom’s going to freak. She’s wearing old slippers.
“Right. Um. Can you do me a favor and wake up Judd? I’ve got to…do something,” I said.
“We’d be delighted,” said Mrs. Marfisi with a smile on her lipsticked lips.
“Great. We’re in the dining room. Got to go.” I zipped off. Suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore. I was from a family that wore worn-out slippers to dinner and every once in awhile had wood shavings in their hair. I didn’t even want to think about Horc and his incessant gas. I had to do something. The horen venom didn’t kill me, but the embarrassment just might.
I skidded to a halt on the dining table between Earl and Stanley. Earl was gnawing on a whole loaf of french bread like a crazed beaver and Stanley was asleep. I spun around, looking for Mom. There she was setting plates on our picnic blanket. It had holes, lots of holes.
Tess leaned over. She wanted to say something, but her mom was right there.
“Mom!” I yelled as I flew over. “The Marfisis are coming.”
“Great,” she said.
“They’re dressed for dinner.”
“Well, I’m glad they’re not naked. That would be awkward.”
I grabbed her arm. “Mrs. Marfisi’s wearing another fancy dress and silk shoes.”
>
“Why?”
“Mr. Marfisi said they dressed for dinner, like in a novel or something.”
“Oh no. I forgot that they did that. What’s he wearing?”
“A tuxedo.”
The color drained from Mom’s face. “He’s wearing a tuxedo to our dinner. Who are these people?”
“I don’t know, but we look like peasants,” I said. “Go change quick.”
“It’s too late.”
I pointed at her foot. Her big toe stuck out of a hole in her slipper and the rest was held together by threads. Mom shrieked. “I forgot shoes.”
“Go quick before they come.”
Dad landed next to us. “Here they come. Wow. What a getup. Check out that tux.”
Mom took off her slippers and looked around frantically, her face bright red. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re fine, Adele,” said Dad. “Most beautiful woman here.”
“I look like a disaster.”
Tess cupped her hand on the table and Iris slid off, landing with a thump next to her fork. I grabbed Iris and pushed Mom behind Tess’s hand.
“This is ridiculous,” said Dad.
“It is not.” I turned to the Marfisis who were flying through the archway with Judd.
Marie carried in the steaming casserole and placed it in the center of the table. “Dinner is served.”
“What is it?” asked Judd.
“Delicious.”
“That means fancy, doesn’t it?”
Marie bopped him on the head and went back to the kitchen. The Marfisis landed next to Dad and he put out his hand to shake. They both looked at his hand like they’d never seen one before. While the Marfisis had their backs to me, I waved to Mom. She peeked out from behind Tess’s pinky and then darted away to the bedrooms.
“Matilda. Iris,” said Dad. “Come on over.”
I got Iris’s attention and led her to Dad. The Marfisis bowed to us and we bowed back.
“I was just saying that in America we shake upon meeting someone,” said Dad.
“And we bow,” said Mrs. Marfisi.
Judd set Lucrece and Horc on the table and they came over, looking even less classy than the rest of us. I hadn’t thought to warn Lucrece about the Marfisis’ clothes, but judging from her style she wouldn’t have cared. She wore her favorite paperbag dress, the one with the stained hem. It looked and smelled like it had been wrapped around a hundred bologna sandwiches before she made it into a dress. Horc was hopeless. There wasn’t much you could do with dressing a boulder with legs.