by Alex Flinn
“What was wrong with her?”
“I had no idea. It seemed like a sleeping sickness I’d seen on my travels, but there was no fever or cough. The princess simply couldn’t stay awake. And worse, when I left her chamber to get help, I found that all her sisters were similarly stricken. They did not want to leave their beds, and when the governesses forced them to, they dragged around the floor as if half dead.”
I wondered how all the princesses would have been so close in age. Were they sextuplets? Octuplets? But I figured Kendra wouldn’t appreciate the interruption.
She continued. “We all ministered to the princesses, but none got any better. On the third day, though, I noticed a startling change. A pair of Manya’s dancing slippers was missing.”
“How strange.” A missing pair of slippers wasn’t my idea of high intrigue. My eyes wandered again to the spider. It had moved to the underside of the table and was starting to make a web. As Kendra talked on, I concentrated on the spider, the bit of thread emanating from its spinnerets. I wanted it to come over. Could I make it do so by just wanting it? To do magic without Kendra noticing was my goal.
“I looked everywhere for the lost shoes,” Kendra said. “The princess had gone nowhere, so nothing should have moved. Finally, I asked one of the other ladies’ maids if she had seen them. To my surprise, she reported that a pair of her princess’s shoes was missing also!”
She paused when she said this, as if expecting some reaction. I had none, so I said, “Hmm.” I was still staring at the spider, willing it to come toward me, concentrating all my love and hate, joy and longing into that one task.
“After polling the other maids,” Kendra continued, “we found that, indeed, each young lady was missing shoes. A search ensued, and finally, we found a pile of slippers down the rubbish chute. Each pair had been danced into rags!”
I saw the spider’s thread disengage itself from the table to which the spider had attached it. I tried to contain my excitement, to concentrate.
“It was so strange,” Kendra said, “because Manya and all her sisters had done nothing but sleep. And, a few days later, another pair of shoes disappeared from each closet.”
The spider raised a tentative leg and started the long journey down the table.
“The tsar was so concerned about his daughters’ illness that he offered a reward: Any man who found the cause of his daughters’ malaise could choose a princess to marry. Many young men came to take the test, but none could solve the mystery. Those who failed were brutally dispatched. Meanwhile, another twelve pairs of slippers were danced to rags.”
The spider reached the ground and began to traverse the gleaming marble floor.
“One day,” Kendra said, “I was out in the garden gathering flowers when a young man approached me. ‘You are the maid to one of the princesses, I believe?’ he said.
“I nodded, for I recognized him as a boy I saw sometimes in town, a boy who worked in the blacksmith’s shop. He said, ‘Then, perhaps, you can help me. It’s about the princesses. The challenge the tsar has made. I want to try.’
“‘You shouldn’t,’ I told him. ‘It’s a good way to lose your life.’
“But he told me he was very much in love with Princess Svetlana. He knew this could be his only chance to marry her. I asked him how he could be in love with her. He would barely have seen her. Svetlana was the oldest daughter and thought to be the most beautiful.
“But he told me I was wrong. Svetlana was an avid horsewoman. When her horse needed new shoes, she came with the groom. In fact, she came when any of her sisters’ horses needed shoes also. ‘She is so kind,’ said the blacksmith’s boy, ‘so modest, not a haughty princess at all. She even has smiles for the lowly groom whom she accompanies. She treats him as well as a lord. Perhaps if I could win her, she could love a poor peasant too. This is my only chance.’”
The spider lifted first one leg, then the other, walking toward me, getting closer as Kendra continued with her story.
“I told him I didn’t understand how he expected me to help. After all, if I knew what was making the princesses sick, I would already have solved the mystery. But he said, ‘I think you have other skills that would help me.’
“I knew,” Kendra said, “what skills he must mean, my witch skills. But how had he found out? I had done everything in my power to hide my abilities, for if I was discovered, I would be at best run out of town, at worst, tried as a witch. ‘I do not know what you mean,’ I said.
“But he told me his aunt was a witch. He knew how they functioned. He had seen how things changed when I was about, the way the crows followed me and the horses reacted around me. And he said, ‘I saw how Ivan Vangeloff’s horse went lame when Ivan angered you.’
“There he had me. Ivan had been my beau, my ex-beau, a shopkeeper’s son. When he had glimpsed pretty Katrina in the town square, he called upon me no more. I had seen his horse in the blacksmith’s shop, and, forgetting myself, I had bewitched it. Now I was paying the price. I would have to help the boy.”
The spider came closer and closer. If I could perform spells upon animals unnoticed, I could probably do the same on people. A very interesting possibility. Come to me, I told the spider with my thoughts. I have no wish to harm you. Not you.
“So it was settled,” Kendra said. “I would use my magic to give the blacksmith’s boy—his name was Alexei—the power of invisibility.”
I gasped. “You can do that?” It was all I could do to hold my gaze on the spider, for this seemed the most wonderful power of all. To go anywhere, spy on people, even.
“Of course,” Kendra said. “It is just another way of changing shape. If one can shift one’s own shape, it is nothing to change the shape of another, even to nothing.”
“Wow.” I sighed in amazement. The spider walked still closer, and I wondered if I could change its shape. If I made its legs longer, altered the color a bit, would it be a harmless daddy longlegs instead of a poisonous brown recluse? Could I transform its nature by shifting its appearance?
And, if so, could I change who I was, become an outgoing, happy girl, a winner instead of a loser? I’d have to ask Kendra sometime, maybe later, after I’d listened to her boring story about how having magic powers was somehow a bad thing.
“That night,” she continued, “Alexei arrived, announcing that he would solve the mystery of what was happening to the princesses. The staff snickered, for the boy was small and pathetic. He was put up in a guest room, but as soon as the castle had gone to bed, I snuck him into Manya’s room. Then, I made him invisible. The next morning, when the castle woke—except for the princesses—Alexei declared that he had the answer.”
Kendra paused, and I knew I was supposed to say something.
“What did he tell you?” The spider was close enough now that I could make out details. Its legs were short and wide, bent like a crab’s. I remembered a daddy longlegs I’d seen. Its legs were slender, arched like the supports on a bridge. I didn’t know how to change one to the other, but I’d try.
“The blacksmith’s boy said he had followed the princesses through a secret trapdoor hidden beneath one of their beds. He did not say how he’d been able to do so without being seen, and of course, no one knew.
“Under that door, he said, was a staircase, and down that staircase was a canal. The princesses, dressed in their best gowns and dancing slippers, traipsed down the staircase and entered the gondola. The gondolier took the princesses (and, unbeknownst to him, the blacksmith’s boy too) down the canal to a secret dock, where they were met by twelve young commoners who escorted them to a secret ballroom where they danced the night away. At dawn, the princesses boarded the gondola again and went back to their rooms to spend the day in sleep.
“‘Impossible,’ said the tsar. ‘Why would my daughters sneak out at night to dance with commoners?’
“But that nig
ht, we stayed up to watch the princesses. On my watch, one of the princesses got up, as if looking for something. But when she saw me watching, she fell back into fitful sleep.”
Kendra’s words got lost as I concentrated on the spider, then on the magic words I had learned and the ways I could use them. My vision blurred, but I struggled to remain focused. Just as I was about to give up, one of the spider’s legs began to stretch, then another. The spider wobbled on its path, but finally, all eight legs matched. It skittered toward me, its body elongating as it went, the violin marking leaving its back. Success!
“The next morning,” Kendra said, “we reported what we had seen. The tsar had the room checked and found the hidden door. The canal. ‘It seems you are right, young man,’ he said. The young man chose to marry the princess, Svetlana.”
I tore my eyes away from the spider. “What’s wrong with that? You said your magic backfired, but that’s a happy story. A poor blacksmith’s boy marrying a princess—it’s like Cinderella.”
“Ah, but Cinderella’s prince wanted to marry her. That’s why he searched the kingdom. Svetlana did not wish to marry the blacksmith’s boy, and when she heard her father’s declaration, she ran sobbing from the room. Indeed, all her sisters did. They wept all day, but, that night, the first of the royal guests were to arrive, and their father commanded the princesses to dry their eyes and come down to greet them. When I was fixing Manya’s hair, I asked what was wrong.”
“‘Don’t you see?’ she asked. ‘We don’t want to marry the blacksmith’s boy or anyone of Father’s choosing. We do not wish to be auctioned like cattle. Svetlana was—is—in love with the groom. That is why she went with him to the blacksmith’s shop. In fact, we all have secret loves, commoners we visit at night. But now that we are discovered, we will be married to princes. We shall go far away and never see our darlings again.’ She sighed. ‘If only I could dance with Viktor just one more time.’ And, again, she began to weep.”
The spider was within inches of me now. I reached out, and it crawled onto my hand. I stared at it, marveling at its coffee-bean-shaped body, its sunburst of legs. I had done that, changed one thing to another. I turned away so that Kendra would not see my smile.
“And so it came to pass,” she said. “Svetlana married the blacksmith’s boy, and each of her sisters also married a man she did not love. The end.”
Mesmerized, I reached out to touch the spider.
“Ouch!” It bit me on the knuckle.
“What is it?” Kendra asked.
“This spider. It bit me.” Already, I could feel the venom seeping into my system. “Help me, please.”
Kendra looked at it. “Oh, don’t be silly. It’s a daddy longlegs. Humans aren’t affected by their bites.”
“But it’s not a daddy longlegs. It’s a brown recluse. I . . . changed it. Unless you’re saying it’s turned into a real daddy longlegs. Then it won’t hurt me.”
Kendra reached out toward the spider, and then, with a tiny tap, changed it back to its true shape. She placed it on the ground and shooed it away. Then she glanced at my hand.
A small, white blister began to form, but with the touch of her finger, that too was gone. “No. It is still a brown recluse. You can change a thing’s appearance, but not its nature. Perhaps that, along with my story, is enough learning for today.” She nodded at me. “Run along.”
And I did what she said. What I had learned was valuable indeed: Any harm I did to myself, I could undo.
As I walked toward the door, I made certain to stomp upon the spider until it was just a brown blot on the floor.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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9
That night, I decided Kendra was crazy. Oh, sure, she’d recognized what I was, taught me magic, and made me the powerful witch I was becoming. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t also crazy. Or senile. How could she say magic wasn’t a positive thing? Even in the story she’d told, magic had ended the carnage.
Of course, Kendra was still my best, my only friend. I needed her. And I needed her to teach me too.
I thought about what I’d done with the spider. I’d been able to change its shape, if not its nature. I could do that to people. Changing their looks would be enough. That way, I could keep Gennifer and Jennifer the same shallow girls they were—trapped in fat, bacne-ridden bodies.
If you can’t change their nature, something mean inside me whispered, you can’t make someone fall in love with you. Greg never will; you will find out the hard way.
Stupid. I told myself I didn’t need to change anything. Greg had loved me for myself all along, all the time we were friends. He just got sidetracked. He was shallow. Boys were. He wanted a prettier girlfriend. Since I was going to be the most beautiful girl in the world, he’d have to love me. I’d just have to get beautiful Jennifer out of the picture, to be sure.
I knew I’d have to change her appearance as I did my own, slowly, gradually, so it wouldn’t be obvious, even to her.
As I drifted off to sleep, I made my plan. I would put it into action in language arts, the one class I had with Jennifer and not Greg.
The next morning, I stood by my locker, brushing my hair. I’d recently installed a stick-on mirror, so I could admire myself between classes. My classmates still didn’t notice the difference in me, but I did. I straightened up. Greg was passing by, alone for once. I met his eyes with confidence, then looked away on my own terms.
Maybe that’s what I needed, to be on my own terms. Probably Greg would eventually get tired of Jennifer on his own without any help from me. She was really stupid. It was silly of me to want to hurt her. After all, if Greg didn’t like me for me, what good was he? Maybe I should—
“Hey, watch it, ugly!” Someone slammed into me.
“Sorry.”
“Your face is sorry.” It was Jennifer, Jennifer with brand-new highlighting and a face full of makeup. “You just exist to get in my way, don’t you?” She shoved past me toward Greg, who’d stopped to wait for her.
Okay. Game on.
In class, we were reading Animal Farm aloud, painful because Mr. Cameron had students take turns reading and, apparently, some still couldn’t. I read ahead, pages ahead, but then he’d stop to discuss it, and I wouldn’t remember where we were. So, instead, I just zoned out as Colby Buckner read, “Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is ab . . . ol . . . ished forever.” I thought about pigs. The pigs in the story were supposed to be like the people in power. People were like pigs. If only the people who were like pigs could look like pigs.
I contemplated Jennifer, who sat two rows to the side of me. She wasn’t even pretending to read. Her eyes fluttered closed, then open. Her forehead drooped forward. Her nose was adorable, slim, and turned up. What if it turned up a little bit more . . . ?
She saw me looking at her and mouthed, Pig.
I thought of everything Jennifer had ever done to me, the insults, taking Greg, the snickering, taking Greg. Then I thought of everything anyone had ever done to me. All my life, I’d been an outcast, a pariah, and why? Because I wasn’t pretty enough? Because I was too smart to matter but not smart enough to play stupid? I closed my eyes, but I could see Jennifer’s face, Jennifer’s perfect, blue-eyed, laughing face, her enviable nose. Then, in my mind, it morphed into a pig nose. She squealed in horror, just like a pig, and held her lively, nail-polished fingers up to hide it. She squealed again, then started to cry. I smirked in satisfaction.
In the room, Colby was still reading. I put my head down, looking at Jennifer so she couldn’t see me.
She was still whispering to Gennifer. Her nose was still perfect.
Why hadn’t it worked? Guess I hadn’t done it right. Maybe
it was harder to work magic on others. But hadn’t Kendra cured her brother the first time out? Hadn’t I gotten the birds to fight off Nick and Nathan? I leaned my hand on my face and looked up.
Huh. My face felt different. My nose felt . . . piggy.
What? How could that be? I’d seen it so clearly in my mind, Jennifer’s face changing, not mine. Not mine!
Even as I held my hand up, I felt my nose hardening, my nostrils spreading even more. MY head was heavy, and I remembered reading that a pig’s snout weighed about a pound. I cradled my head in my hands like I had a headache, leaning to cover myself with my hair.
“Violet, will you read next?” Mr. Cameron asked.
I began to cough, still holding my hands over my face. I managed to gasp out, “Bathroom!” Around me, everyone was laughing. Without waiting for Mr. Cameron’s response, I bolted to the girls’ room, still coughing. I looked in the mirror and saw . . . my snout.
It was pinkish-white with black spots and stood at least three inches from my face!
What . . . the . . . ?
I ducked into a stall, shaking, and tried to bring up the magic. My thoughts were racing. How would I get out of here? What would Mr. Cameron say? Could I put my face back? I realized that, while anger had been an awesome motivator, fear was a terrible one.
Breathe. Breathe. Stop thinking about how you can’t leave the building like this. Forget how you left your backpack in Cameron’s class. Breathe.
Breathe!
I remembered the spider. How I’d changed its shape, slowly. If I could do that, I could do anything. Anything. Anything except give Jennifer a pig nose. I’d ask Kendra about that. Clearly, I still had a lot to learn about magic. Thank God for Kendra.
Finally, I felt my heart rate slow. And my breathing. It was hard to breathe through the snout. I sat on the toilet, breathing. Breathing. Breathing. Imagining my nose—not my nose, but Michelle Pfeiffer’s nose, Diane Lane’s nose, or model Brooke Shields’s adorable, famous nose. Yes, that was it. Perfectly upturned with not too much nostril. I’d once read that it was nearly impossible to achieve this surgically. But magic surgery had to be better. The breathing, the heavy pig snout, the concentration made me feel weak, almost light-headed, and the metal stall walls began to blur around me. I held my hands up to my face and felt the snout shrink beneath them. Relief! I straightened my neck, held my head up, opened the door.