by Laura Kenyon
“Alliana’s the girl who offered you the fifty-cent scone. She’s my, umm, alter ego.” She plopped down into an orange chair and winked. “One of them, anyway.”
Dawn stared at the scones. She could see the slivers of orange rind popping up all over the place, as if they were struggling to rise up against the dough and fly into space. What was Elmina talking about? Had she lost her mind? Is that why she’d disappeared? What other reason could she possibly have for cutting off all ties, opening up a third-tier bakery in a rundown part of Regian, and making up “alter egos” like some sort of magical schizophrenic?
“I’m not crazy,” Elmina said, cupping her mug with both hands. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Dawn’s bottom lip fell prematurely. There were so many things she needed to ask her, and to tell her—about Angus Kane and Donner’s curse and Belle’s baby and the triad and the Charmés. But when she finally found her voice, Dawn’s words had nothing to do with any of that.
“Was it true love’s kiss?” she blurted, grabbing the second chair by the back but not sitting down. “Was it Hunter’s kiss that broke my curse or did you construct it to expire on a certain date three hundred years later?”
Elmina stared ahead, then asked how “true” the love could be between a comatose woman and a man she’d never met before.
“Then why three hundred?” she blurted, all of her most deeply buried questions pouring out at once. “Why couldn't you have put me to sleep for five? Or ten? Or just long enough for Jacara to die and her spell along with her? Was my life really worth more than the hundreds of people who perished either during the curse or right after? And how could you just abandon us? How could you abandon me? My best friend was gone and my parents were dead and the whole world was different. You couldn’t have even left a phone number? You know, just in case I felt like razoring myself or my mother-in-law attempted to cook me?”
Dawn jerked the chair and glowered, causing her tea to topple over. “And now I find out that all this time, you’ve been a few blocks away baking cookies in some hole-in-the-wall pastry shop? Disguising yourself as some pretty young waif so you could sample all you wanted and never gain an ounce? What were you—”
Her fire started to sputter as the yellow-tinged liquid spread to the left side of the table and poured over the edge. “How could you—”
The years of isolation rushed back up from their crevices. “Why did you abandon me like that?”
Finally, the silence hooked over them like the crest of a wave. Elmina didn’t move for a full minute. Then she tossed two napkins over the spilled tea and started tracing the rim of her coffee mug with one finger. She closed her eyes and let out a hiccup of a laugh. Her head shook from one side to the other.
“What on earth is funny?” Dawn demanded.
“Do you know how old I was when you were born? Twenty-six. I didn’t even know how to cast spells without a wand yet.”
Dawn narrowed her eyes. “You can cast spells without a wand?”
Elmina shook her head and laughed again. “Child, you may have been born in the eighteenth century, but you really have no idea how much things have changed in the past three hundred years, do you? You were too busy chasing after that Lima boy and torturing your poor mother to pay any attention. What people call a pureblood today is like a newborn fairy in my time. Thank goodness Jacara—that’s the hussy who cursed you in the first place—”
“I know who she is,” Dawn snapped, instantly regretting her tone.
Elmina’s eyebrows rose. “Okay. Well anyway, if she was around today, with all these mortals and a handful of so-called fairies with their watered-down magic…” She shivered to illustrate a point. “Well, she’d have the world in chains. She was the most powerful fairy in a time when magic was a thousand times stronger than it is now.”
“What does that have to do with anythi—”
Elmina clacked her mug against the table and leaned forward. The cap of her apron ballooned open like the rim of a basket. “So to answer your question, Miss Ungrateful, that’s why it took three hundred years for my rookie spell to change hers. She cast a spell to kill you; I changed a few lines to make you sleep instead. But overriding someone that powerful isn’t like frosting a cupcake. And your parents really wanted you to see your eighteenth birthday.”
She leaned back and nibbled on one side of her mouth. “You're lucky I managed to cast it at all without making you explode. Bits of baby all over the throne room and my head on a stake. Would that have been more to your preference, Your Majesty?”
Dawn loosened her grip on the chair but remained standing. In hindsight, perhaps her line of questioning had seemed a little bratty, but her lack of tact didn’t negate her point. Yes, letting her die would have broken her parents’ hearts. But she would rather have died than destroyed thousands of lives the way she did—both from that century and this one.
“Listen, it was certainly unfortunate that people died during the Great Sleep,” Elmina said, failing to hide her cringe at the contrived moniker. She stood up to grab two dishtowels and an assortment of cookies from the display case. “That was never my intention.” She continued speaking as she cleaned up the rest of Dawn’s spill and placed the cookies on the table. “But back then, the life of a princess was worth more than the entire kingdom she presided over.”
Dawn stared at the rainbow cookies but remained grounded. “It wasn’t right.”
“I didn’t say it was right,” Elmina said, her tone suddenly softer. She sat down and took a jelly-filled crescent for herself. “But it was a different time. And it wasn’t your choice. You were an infant. No one can blame you for it.” She paused and looked Dawn straight in the eye. “No one does blame you for it.”
Slowly, Dawn slid into the chair she’d been clutching, picked up a rainbow cookie, and turned it over in her palm a few times. She had simultaneous urges to cry, disappear, and give Elmina a giant hug. She’d never expressed these regrets to anyone. She’d never had the opportunity.
“And as for abandoning you,” Elmina continued, her tone suddenly sharper. “The only reason I’m here is because I couldn’t abandon you.”
Dawn’s response to this was immediate and scathing. Half a mile away or half the world, she said, turning the chocolate-covered rainbow into mush, Elmina had most definitely abandoned her. “The last time I saw you was the day I buried my parents. You showed up, gave me a hug and a pat on the head, and then disappeared. I had no one. You have no idea how depressed I became. How bad things got.”
“Oh, I know how bad things got.” Elmina shook her head but didn’t raise her eyes. “And just because you didn’t see me doesn’t mean I wasn’t there.”
Dawn squinted and thought about Alliana. Then she thought about the old man from the ferry. He had that same birthmark on the back of his left jaw; that’s where she’d seen it before. How many other faces did Elmina have? A castle guard? A ticket salesman? The coach of Day’s broomball team?
“I’ve been here this whole time—watching you mourn a past you couldn’t change, clapping as you cut ribbons with a man you so obviously despised, and pretending I didn’t see you shacking up with that cocky little twerp you always followed around like a minstrel groupie.”
Dawn’s eyes and mouth flew open simultaneously. Her chair screeched across the floor as she jumped to her feet. “What? Are you talking about Davin?”
Elmina scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Yes. Daaaaaavin,” she said, drawing his name out the way Dawn might have as a teenager. “Your parents would be so disappointed in you.”
“How do you know about—”
“Like I said, just because you haven’t seen me doesn’t mean I haven’t seen you.”
“But,” Dawn started, then shook her head. “Why all the theatrics? Why hide? The people of Selladóre needed someone like you to look up to when they lost my parents. You brought them here, but then you disappeared. You abandoned them. You…”
Da
wn trailed off as Elmina’s gaze grew more and more penetrating. She interpreted it as a mixture of disbelief and disgust.
“They needed someone like me?” she repeated. “Or someone like you?”
In that moment, the shop became so silent, Dawn could hear each individual raindrop as it pelted the windows. She lowered herself carefully back into the seat. She had no argument. Elmina was right.
“I may have looked different,” Elmina said, twisting the knife, “but I was there. I was on the ground helping the people whose lives I destroyed. I wasn’t sulking in my ivory tower, lamenting my marriage to the king who thought the sun rose and set with me, or the two beautiful children I never would have had were it not for the curse. I’m not the one who abandoned them.”
Dawn pulled her lips over her teeth and examined the floor. The events of Friday night and Saturday morning came storming back at her. Davin had called her a selfish princess. Hunter said she’d been blinded by her own bitterness. They’d both implied that Dawn had been so obsessed with her own problems that she couldn’t even recognize anyone else’s. And now here she was, beating her own grievances to death when she should have been recruiting Elmina to help Belle, and Cindy, and all of the innocent people in Marestam.
“You’re right,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. Then, louder. “You’re right, Elmina. I was scared and bitter and I shut down when Selladóre needed me the most. I mourned it before it was actually dead, and I’m probably half responsible for how bad it got. For years I wished I’d just died when I was supposed to, and all those people went on to live and die when they were supposed to. But that’s not what happened, and I should have just sucked it up and moved on.”
Elmina stared, dumbfounded, for a minute. Then she got up, waddled behind the counter, and returned with two plates, two forks, and a gigantic slice of blueberry pie. Good God, how much sugar could this woman ingest?
“Something tells me we’re going to need this,” she said, unfolding a napkin for her lap. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m my own biggest customer.”
Dawn didn’t move at first, but eventually pressed her lips together, picked up the fork, and scooped a tiny blue sliver up towards her mouth.
“And do you still feel that way?” Elmina asked.
“What way?”
“Like you’d rather have died than lived?”
The pie halted two inches from Dawn’s mouth. It was a surprisingly difficult question, but—
“No,” said a voice she vaguely recognized as hers. Then, with more conviction, “No. I don’t. Because if I had, Morning and Day would never have existed. And despite everything—” She paused for a moment, but decided not to elaborate. “I don’t want to lose what I have now.” Elmina’s head craned to one side. “But that’s not why I’m here. I don’t need you to solve my problems, but I do need help solving someone else’s—a whole bunch of people’s actually. Pretty much the entire realm’s.”
Elmina’s eyebrows rose. Her head followed.
Dawn started at the very beginning, with Donner’s affair and Ruby’s misinterpretation of what Belle’s independence would do to the world. Then she told her about Belle’s baby, Angus Kane, the Charmés disappearance, and the need for Elmina to take part in Ruby’s triad. When she was finally finished, Elmina stared into space for a couple minutes, then shuddered like a bird after a heavy rain.
“Wow,” she said. “Okay. That does sound like a problem. But I have to caution you against following Ruby Welles too closely.”
Dawn lowered her fork. She had no great love for Ruby, and Rapunzel absolutely hated her, but Cindy always gave her the benefit of the doubt. “What do you mean? I don’t really think Ruby’s the—”
Elmina cut her off with a grunt. “This is what happens when amateurs overstep their authority. You’re all looking so hard at the forest that you’re not seeing the trees.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That magical rulebook, for example. The one you think said all broken curses would come back if Belle left Donner for good. Ruby’s interpretation of it couldn’t have been more wrong.”
“But—”
“That thing was written centuries ago—back when people thought the world was flat and fairies were part demigod, part demon. Once a curse is broken, it’s broken. Caput. Poof. Gone. All of the original magic goes back to the caster. Belle’s reconciliation with Donner didn’t stop his curse because she had nothing to do with it returning in the first place.”
Dawn had a strong inclination to explain the whole story all over again. Perhaps Elmina hadn’t been listening. Perhaps she missed something.
“I’m not saying Donner isn’t cursed. But I don’t think it’s his old curse revived,” Elmina continued, sucking both cheeks in so deep she almost looked emaciated. “I think this is a new curse entirely. And judging by the fact that only purebloods have that ability and Ruby is inexplicably powerless at the moment, my gut says that’s the massive sycamore tree none of you ladies are seeing.”
“But…” Dawn scrunched her face and ran both stories through her head. Then she crossed her arms. “Ruby said Angus used a charm to both take her powers away and to curse Donner. Are you saying that’s not possible?”
Dawn recognized Elmina’s expression immediately. It was the same look she used to give Morning when she was a toddler, spouting out ridiculously naive and adorable thoughts all the time—like the belief that the moon had a boo-boo whenever it was less than full.
“Magic isn’t like a layer of sunscreen you can just wash off. It’s much more formidable and complex than anyone—including me—can ever understand. The ability to remove another fairy’s magic isn’t just a rare power, it’s almost unheard of.” Dawn gripped her thigh with her fingertips. Elmina stood up and began clearing the dishes. “Do you want to know what I honestly think?”
“Of course,” Dawn chirped, though she wasn’t entirely sure.
“I think Ruby cursed Donner because she just couldn’t handle the thought of her version of ‘happily ever after’ falling apart. That’s where her powers went. Belle and Donner are icons. Beauty and the Beast. A front-and-center part of Marestam’s history. For someone like Ruby, their demise is akin to the Seven Wonders of the World toppling over one by one. It’s the beginning of the end. All she needs is the Charmés to follow, and her world is officially over. I’m not convinced that she misread that ridiculous rulebook intentionally. But when she realized her prophecy wasn’t coming true—meaning Donner wasn’t growing fur and Belle wasn’t racing back into his arms to save the world—she fulfilled it herself. And it opened a box she wasn’t powerful enough to close.”
Dawn let this theory seep in and roll around a bit. She thought about how awful Ruby had looked at the hospital—all frizzy and red-nosed and sneezy and unfashionable. Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry but … but I don’t think so. Ruby’s a mess without her powers. She wants them back, desperately. And I don’t love her, but I don’t believe she’d hurt an innocent child to get her way.”
“Nor do I. As much as I dislike that dogmatic diva, I don’t think she’s evil. Misguided, absolutely. Dangerous, you bet. But not evil. Like I said, even I can’t understand all of magic’s nuances. It isn’t all abracadabra and true love’s kiss. It’s unbelievably powerful. It’s finicky. It’s dangerous. And most of the time, it’s completely unpredictable.”
Dawn scooted forward, unable to believe she was even entertaining this idea. Were she and her friends really that blind—or that biased against Angus Kane?
“But if that’s true, why all the charades?” Dawn asked. “Why blame Angus? Why not just tell us the truth and end her spell so she could get her powers back?”
The dishes clanked as Elmina dropped them onto the counter and marched back, pressing both hands into her hips so she had two chubby chicken wings.
“Aside from ruining her perfect image?” Elmina asked, her voice betraying a significant level of di
sgust. “Because she probably doesn’t know how to break it. Because if she’s the reason Belle’s baby is cursed, then the only surefire way to break it is for her to die.”
Dawn was stunned. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “That implies she thinks one of us would actually kill her if we knew.”
Elmina stared at her, letting the silence direct Dawn’s thoughts. Rapunzel had threatened to kill Ruby for far lesser offenses, Gray would do almost anything for Belle, and there were few if any things a mother wouldn’t do to protect her child—even if it meant selling her soul.
“Ruby overstepped and is out of ideas that don’t involve dying,” Elmina finally said. “That’s why she needs the triad. Angus is just a scapegoat—a deserving scapegoat, but a scapegoat nonetheless.”
“But…” Dawn sputtered. “But what about all those charms he’s confiscated? Certainly with those he could—”
“I’m telling you, Ruby’s your girl. Charms don’t have that much power. It’s not unheard of for fairies to lose control of their own spells—especially if it was made in a fit of passion.”
“But what about Cinderella’s disappearance?” Dawn was getting agitated now. Her voice was getting louder and firmer. “And his move to get rid of the monarchies? Oh! And I’m pretty sure he planned for Davin and I to come back together just when—”
“Stop,” Elmina said, flapping her wings. “Are you really going to blame Angus for your affair too?”
“That’s not what I was saying,” Dawn growled, getting up from the table and mimicking Elmina’s stance. “I made a colossal mistake, but there’s more to it than that. Did you know Davin’s father didn’t fall asleep with the rest of the kingdom?”
Elmina’s head tilted to the side. Her hands moved off her hips and crossed in front of her chest.
“He was outside when the curse struck,” Dawn explained. “He built that whole distillery company and left instructions for his son to take it over three hundred years later. And when that time finally came, guess who was on Selladóre to tell Davin all about it?” She paused. Elmina was leaning forward now, poised to explode any second. “Angus Kane.”