She pushed away from me. “That was the queen,” she said, defeated.
“The queen?”
“The Fairy Queen,” she mumbled.
“Can she hurt you without even being near you?”
“The queen can do anything she wants,” she said, wiping sweat off her forehead. “So don’t even think about it.”
“Think about what?”
“Going to her. I know that’s what you want to do.”
“She said she could help.”
“But she won’t. Listen to me, Katy. Since you found the box, she knows who you are, she knows you’re a witch, and she wants you for your magic. So stay away from her. It’s your only chance.”
“But I can’t, don’t you see?” I heard the note of hysteria in my voice. “I have to get rid of the wishes. It’s too tempting to just snap my fingers and have anything I want. Every wish I make is going to take me further and further away from who I really am and what’s really important to me.”
“I know,” she said. “I came to the same realization. And like you, I thought she would do the right thing.”
“But she didn’t?”
She laughed ruefully. “What do you think? Look, you don’t want to end up like me, granting wishes that you know are only going to hurt people. Being alive without actually having a life.”
“How do you know that’s what’ll happen?”
“It’s what always happens, at least to witches.”
“Then you are a witch,” I said.
“I was. A shape-shifter. I’m just a servant now.”
“To me?”
“No, to her. Her. You saw what she can do.”
“Yeah. She was in your mind.”
“No joke. And sticking pins into the rest of me for telling you to stay away from her.”
“How long have you been . . . like this?” I asked.
“Three hundred years, give or take.”
“You’ve been the queen’s servant for three hundred years? What about your family?”
“After I went to see the queen, I never saw them again.”
We sat together in silence for a while. Finally I spoke. “What did you wish for?” I asked. “All that time ago?”
She shook her head. “I wanted to be pretty,” she whispered. Then she laughed, a sad, miserable sound. “Now no one cares what I look like, anyway. They just all want their wishes to come true. That is, until they do.”
I picked a daisy off the grass and pulled its petals off. “If you didn’t have to be a fairy, what would you do?” I asked.
“I’d go to school.”
“Really? Why?”
“You wouldn’t know.” She smiled. “School’s just another thing you don’t think is important because you’ve already got it. But I haven’t, okay? I don’t have friends and teachers and books and a future. I don’t have anything, really. So yeah, I’d like to go to school.” She lowered her eyes. “If you must know, I’d like to be like you.”
“Like me?” I could hardly believe it. Someone actually thought my life was worth having. That it would be cool to be me. It’s funny how differently people see things.
“How’d the queen talk you into becoming a fairy?” I asked.
She turned away. “You don’t understand. There’s no choice. Not for me. And probably not for you, either. I’m sorry, but she knows you now, and she wants you. Unless you run and keep on running, it’s over.”
I put my arm around her. This time she let me, without so much as a dirty look. “I’m not running anywhere,” I said.
“Then she’ll hurt you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll hurt her first.”
“Right. And for your next trick, you’ll speak from beyond the grave.”
“You don’t know that.”
She smiled. “So are you planning to attack the Queen of the Fairies?”
“Not me, Artemesia. Us.”
“Oh, please.”
“Why not? I think the two of us could fight her if we had to. I’m a telekinetic. You’re a shape-shifter—”
She pushed me away. “No, I’m not!” she shouted. “Not anymore. She took what magic I had away from me.”
“But you turned into the fairy-tale fairy. On Snyder Avenue. Bibbity bobbity boo, remember?”
She looked abashed. “That’s the one thing I can turn into,” she said. “She allows me that one trick.”
“Why?”
“Never mind.”
“Well, that’s crazy. If you can shift into Fairy Barbie, you can shift into something else. Anything you want.”
“You don’t get it. I’m nothing but a slave, and she knows it.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “I touched you. I’ve felt what you feel. You’re nobody’s slave. Not in your heart.”
She swallowed. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Still, even if we went through with this suicide mission, what could you—we—do?”
She had me there. “I don’t exactly know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what kind of magic the queen has.”
“She has whatever you have. That is, she’ll take your power and use it against you. That’s what she did with me.” She looked up at me through lowered brows. “I wasn’t exactly a pushover, you know. I tried to fight her.”
“But you didn’t have me with you.”
For the first time, I saw the trace of a smile in her eyes. “You’re pretty confident, aren’t you?”
“I come from a long line of smart witches,” I said. “I’ll bet you do, too.”
“The smartest,” she agreed.
“So together we’ll think of something.” I stood up and held out my hand to her. “Are you with me, Artemesia?”
She grasped it and bounded to her feet. “Call me Artie,” she said.
“I’ll show you where she lives,” Artie said as we walked through the Meadow. “But I don’t think we should go in there unprepared.”
“Okay, but how are we supposed to prepare?”
She thought. “The best thing would be if we knew her name,” she said. “Knowing a fairy’s name makes her vulnerable. That’s why the queen doesn’t tell anyone what hers is.”
“So how do we find out?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, man.” Part of me was beginning to wonder if maybe our half-baked plan needed more thought. But then, Artemesia had been the queen’s captive for three hundred years, and this was probably the first time she’d ever felt any hope of getting away. If I bailed now, I might never convince her to stand up to the queen again.
“Maybe we don’t need the name,” I offered. “We’ll find some other way.”
In the near distance, Mr. Haversall and Dingo the dog were ambling toward us. The old man waved.
“Who’s that?” Artie asked.
“Mr. Haversall’s the docent who leads people through the fog on holidays,” I said. “But he’s here all the time, anyway, walking his dog.”
“Is he a wizard?”
I nodded. “A rainmaker.”
She raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t look very magical.”
I laughed. “That’s what’s great about the Whitfield families,” I said. “Nobody looks magical, but almost everyone is.” I waved back. “Hi, Mr. Haversall,” I said. “And Dingo.”
“Woof.”
“Dingo says greetings,” his owner translated, tipping his cap to Artie.
I introduced them. “Katy says you’re a rainmaker,” Artie said.
“Ayuh. But Dingo here’s the real magician. Isn’t that right, boy?”
“Woof,” Dingo said.
“Er . . . Mr. Haversall here will tell you that Dingo’s the reincarnation of a great wizard.”
Artie rolled her eyes
. Fortunately, the old man didn’t see her. “Ayuh,” he agreed. “The last time Dingo passed away from life, he’d had enough of being human. Too many worries, isn’t that right?”
“Woof,” Dingo affirmed.
“So he made it so’s he’d come back this time as a dog.” The old man winked at Dingo. “No problems, no complications. Just three squares a day, long walks in the park, and a soft bed at night. Right, boy?”
“Woof,” Dingo said. It was all he ever said. He raised his paw.
“Dingo wants to shake hands,” Mr. Haversall said with a chuckle.
Artie was sighing and crossing her arms, so to keep from hurting Mr. Haversall’s feelings, I knelt down and held out my hand to the dog. “Hi, Dingo,” I said. “Shake?”
He put his paw in my hand. Esmeralda Ludovica Angelique Brittany von Schlaffen, spoke a voice in my head.
“Huh?”
Remember the name.
I looked in Dingo’s soft doggy eyes. “Er, okay,” I said uncertainly.
“What’s that?” Mr. Haversall asked in a loud voice, cupping his hand to his ear.
“Nothing,” I said.
I swear, Dingo’s eyes blinked once, slowly, as if he were saying, Good girl. Then he lifted his leg on a tree trunk and went on his way. Mr. Haversall tipped his hat to us again and followed him.
13.
Artie led me to a bank of caves cut into a hillside near where I’d found the fairy treasure.
“The Fairy Queen lives in a cave?” I asked as we walked toward them.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Artie said.
Some of the entrances were small, no more than crawl spaces obscured by rocks and tall grass. Others were as tall as men. “She knows we’re coming,” Artie said, putting a hand on my arm.
“Okay.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to ask her to take my wishes away,” I said. “And to release you from any power she has over you.”
“And what if she doesn’t do what we want her to?” she asked.
I thought about it for a moment. “Well, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m not going to live out my life as a fairy,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”
I looked at the cave entrance before me. It was the biggest of the lot, wide and vaulted like the ceiling of a cathedral. I didn’t know if that was a natural phenomenon or an optical illusion, but I could tell from a hundred subtle things—a weird, moving coolness in the air, a slight shift of light—that we were about to enter a place of powerful magic.
“Still with me?” I asked.
Artie nodded. “I guess.”
“Let’s go.”
As soon as I spoke those words, a thousand bats flew out of the cave toward us. There were so many of them that they obliterated my whole field of vision. I ducked, covering my head and closing my eyes as their leather wings flapped around my face.
Artie screamed.
“Take it easy,” I said. “Bats aren’t my favorite pets, either, but we can handle them.”
“Maybe you can handle them,” she corrected.
“You can too,” I said. “Better than me. Artie, you’re a shape shifter. Turn into a mouse or something. Bats won’t bother you if you’re low to the ground.”
She didn’t shift, but that didn’t matter because by that time, the bats had all flown away. “I told you, I can’t do magic anymore,” she said. “The queen took it from me.”
“So take it back. Now’s your chance.”
“That’s not so easy.”
I held her hands and faced her. “You’re wrong. Magic is easy. It’s believing you have the power to make magic that’s hard.”
“Whatever,” she said. Then she saw my face, and I think she realized that this was no time to cop an attitude. “Okay, I’ll try,” she said.
We walked farther into the cave. Artie pointed to a stream of water that was pooling around our feet. “I think she sent this,” she said.
“This?” It was hardly more than a trickle. “Are you serious? Why—”
Just then the walls caved in and ice-cold water poured in on us from all sides.
I flailed in panic. I can’t swim. The last time I was in a boat, it sank and I nearly drowned. “Artie!” I shouted, spewing water.
“I think this is a glamour,” she said.
“A . . .” I wiped my wet hair out of my eyes. “A glamour?” I looked around. The cave walls were intact. My feet were dry. Even my hair, which had been soaking wet a second before, was dry. “That flood . . . It wasn’t real?”
She shook her head. “The last time I came here, she sent snakes and fire.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“The queen doesn’t play fair.”
Understatement of the year. “Well, that’s something we know about her, at least,” I said, trying to patch up my shaky confidence.
A curtain of what looked like stars appeared before us. I put my hand out and felt something like dry rain sprinkle over it. “Seems okay,” I said.
“It is. Just part of the magic here.” Artie pushed me aside and went through first. “If I remember, it’s just a kind of doorway. But better be safe. Wait a few minutes and see if I turn into a troll.” On the other side, she patted herself down. “Am I all right?”
“Well, you’re not a troll,” I said.
“Then I guess you’ll be fine.” She reached her hand through the stardust to pull me through.
“Thanks,” I said. I smiled at her, but the smile froze on my face as I noticed that Artie seemed to wink in and out of my sight as if a strobe light were focused on her.
“Are you trying to disappear?” I asked.
“What? No. Why are you staring at me?”
“Because you’re . . .” Then I saw my own arm flashing with light.
“That’s—” she began. Then her voice quieted into silence.
I had to shield my eyes from the light. “What’s happening to us?”
She flickered in a rush of light and shadow. In another instant, she was gone.
“Artie!” I rasped. “Come back!” Then I moaned as I watched my own arm disappear, and everything around me fade to black.
It was as if I’d been asleep and woke up to find myself in dazzling sunlight. Although I hadn’t moved at all from the damp gray cave, I was now in a completely different place, a vast room with golden walls and opulent furnishings, bathed in light from what might have been a hundred candlelit chandeliers. A whole different plane of existence.
“It’s like the Meadow,” I said.
“No,” Artie corrected. “It’s like hell.”
Nothing moved. Guards dressed in full armor stood still as statues, their faces covered by steel visors. On their shoulders rested long double-headed axes, each in exactly the same position, like exhibits in a museum. On one end of the room was a raised platform. A dais, I thought, or a stage, constructed of intricately arranged lengths of wood.
“Where is she?” I whispered. “The queen.”
“Shh. She’s looking us over. Deciding how to kill us.”
“Now, now,” chided a disembodied voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. “Let’s not be cynical, Artemesia.”
With that, an almost overpowering fragrance of lilies filled the room, and the area on top of the platform glowed with an unearthly light so bright that it hurt my eyes to look at it.
“Don’t be scared,” Artie said. “She’s just making an entrance.”
Finally, after my eyes stopped watering, I could make out a shimmering figure of gold and white in the middle of the fading light, as if it were taking the room’s brilliance within itself. Then in another moment she was standing before us, breathtakingly beautiful.
Her piercing blue eyes danced with amusement. Her lips curved in
to the most innocent of smiles. Beneath a diamond tiara, her hair hung down to her waist in golden waves. The hem of her gown covered nearly three feet around her in every direction. In her hand was a crystal wand.
“This is exactly how you looked on Snyder Avenue,” I said, astonished. “When you were showing me what you thought I wanted a fairy to look like.”
“Yeah. I told you, I’ve only got one trick. I can still shape-shift, as long as I turn into her.”
“But why would you want to be anyone else, dear?” the queen asked, her eyes twinkling.
I pushed Artie aside and walked forward. “I’m Katy Ainsworth, and I want you to take back the treasure I got when I found the fancy box in the woods.”
The queen’s mouth formed a lovely O. “You do not wish to have all you desire?”
“Not the way it works, no.”
She smiled indulgently. “But ‘the way it works,’ as you say, is the way fortune always works. Love always begets unhappiness sooner or later. Fame brings false, self-seeking friends. Gifts to others usually result in guilt or ingratitude. At least you didn’t wish for money. That would have brought with it all the baggage of your other wishes, plus more.”
“I think I know that now,” I said humbly. “At least I know that I already have everything I really need.”
“That’s splendid, dear,” the queen said. “Unfortunately, it’s too late for you. Darling, I’m afraid your life as a human being is over.”
“What? As a hu—my life?”
“Told you,” Artie muttered.
“Gone like the puff of a dandelion,” the queen trilled dramatically. “Isn’t that right, Artemesia?”
Artie hung her head.
I poked her. “Don’t believe her,” I urged. I threw out five fingers and the wand popped out of the queen’s hand and onto the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guards swing their axes down in unison and take a step forward. “Shift, Arty!” I whispered as I reached for the wand. “We can fight her now! Shift!”
“What? I told you, I can’t do that anymore!”
“But you can turn into her,” I rasped frantically. “That means you can turn into anything!”
“No, she can’t,” the queen said, snatching her wand just as my fingers had almost reached it. She made a show of dusting it off. “But I can.” With a minute movement of the wand, she sent a river of light pouring over Artie, dazzling my eyes. When the light subsided, she looked just like the queen.
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