Twelve Dancing Witnesses

by Elizabeth A Reeves

  Why do something like this? What was their motivation? What did they get out of it?

  I couldn’t understand how a fairy could feel driven to be so devoid of all things fairies were supposed to be.

  Maybe all of that was a lie. Maybe fairies had never been anything more than control-freaks with Magic. Maybe we’d been overstepping our place for centuries. Maybe the entire idea of Fairy Godparents was flawed.

  The Bellatrices didn’t want me. Why would they? I couldn’t protect them, and I couldn’t help them. I had broken my promises to them and now only six of them remained.

  When I got back to my house, I left Agape at the stables and sent Flit inside. I needed time by myself. I had some hard thoughts to think to myself without any forgiving distractions. It wasn’t just that I’d failed. People I’d cared about had died.

  Under my watch.

  It was my fault.

  My kingdom, my friends, my actions that put them in danger.

  I walked past the new hillock where Shanti lay. The peace that lingered here still couldn’t touch me now, not with the enormity of my anguish.

  I didn’t deserve to feel peace.

  I needed to feel this sorrow. I needed to accept the truth.

  I was the worst Fairy Godmother of them all. I had believed that I wasn’t as bad as those that had willingly gone astray, but I was worse. I had convinced myself and others that I was capable of protecting them, of giving them good lives and Blessings and happy endings.

  I’d only spoken truth, but my failures had made every word a lie.

  I must have expected them. I wasn’t surprised when I stepped around the tree and they stood there, grinning at me. Their wings were outspread, their eyes full of gleeful malice.

  “Hello, Ferdie,” I said wearily. “Hello, Cooper.”

  A fire crackled in the middle of the clearing. Cooper and Ferdie had been taking turns poking things into the fire and returning with the flaming sticks and brands to, as they put it, make pretty designs against my pretty blue skin.

  I screamed. I couldn’t help it. There was no way I could swallow back the sound. I’d tried, but that hadn’t lasted any longer than my first, fleeting attempt to run away from them.

  They were taking their time. I didn’t have to guess that they were enjoying this, because they kept telling me how much they were enjoying themselves.

  “There’s not quite the same sort of satisfaction when you don’t take care of things yourself,” Cooper said, eyeing the end of a stick he’d been sharpening. “There’s an art to this sort of thing. It takes an artist to do it right.” He smirked at me. “Then, again, you were never much of an artist, Gracie.”

  I might not be able to hide my physical reactions, but I had no problem ignoring their little barbs and digs at my expense. Did they really think I cared what they said to me? Did they really think that I cared what happened to me now? Yes, I wanted to live, but I wasn’t convinced that I deserved to, not after Orionis.

  I just wished they would get over with it already.

  Cooper shoved his stick through my hand. I screamed and screamed. It felt good to scream. It let out some of my fear and rage.

  Until Ferdie slapped me across the face then continued raining blows down on me until I couldn’t scream anymore.

  “Careful,” Cooper cautioned him. “Don’t kill her too quickly.”

  I spat out a mouthful of blood. It missed Cooper’s face, but it spattered on Ferdie’s shirt and ridiculous feathered wings.

  He howled in rage and hit me again. “Look what you did, you foul cow!” He reached for an enormous branch and lifted it in the air.

  Cooper grabbed his arm. “Slow down,” he said. “Don’t you want her to suffer?”

  “She should have died last time,” Ferdie growled between his teeth, but he let the branch fall. He kicked me in the ribs instead. I retched on the ground at his feet, but they’d done this particular move enough times that I didn’t have anything left in my stomach to vomit up.

  “We’ll take care of those failures that left her alive after we’re done here,” Cooper said, grinning as Ferdie rubbed at the bloodstains on his shirt. “And then we’ll take care of those powerless twins.”

  Ferdie nodded. “We should have done it this way from the start.”

  Cooper shrugged. “Who knew they were so weak?” He grinned down at me and crushed my already injured hand under the sole of his boots. He ground down until I could feel the bones grinding and breaking under the strain. I tried to scream, but found that there was a point of pain too intense even for screaming.

  I’d been fumbling for Magic for hours, ever since I’d first seen Cooper and Ferdie in the woods, but they’d somehow been able to shut me off from it. It was like the strange sticky membrane I’d felt in Orionis, but much, much thicker. I couldn’t reach Magic and I was sure that it couldn’t hear me.

  Unless Magic’s silence was its response to my failure in Orionis.

  No. I shook my head wildly. No, that couldn’t be the truth. Not when fairies like Cooper and Ferdie could do anything they wanted and have apparently unlimited power.

  As if he could hear my thoughts, Ferdie created a sizzling ball of white energy and heaved it at me.

  It struck me in the middle of my chest.

  My back arched off of the ground. My arms and legs flew out in every direction. My head lurched back violently on my neck. I felt white hot agony all over my body.

  This was it, I realized. I was really going to die this time.

  I had nothing. I was battered and broken. I was far from anyone who might want to help me. I couldn’t reach Magic. I couldn’t reach anything.

  I was dying.

  And I was dying alone.

  The strangest thing was I couldn’t let go of the image of the entire world going up in white hot agony. That it wasn’t just happening to my body, but to all of them…

  Amanda.

  Joette.

  Erika.

  Kayla.

  Caroline.

  Leigh.

  Dallan.

  Astraea.

  My parents.

  Ceraphine.

  Talia.

  My supervisor, Muriel, who was one of the few good Godparents out there.

  “I’m sorry,” I tried to whisper, though my face was frozen in a rictus of agony. “I always knew I was going to fail.”

  Why?

  No. The deepest part of me did no accept this.

  I was not a failure. I wasn’t a disgrace. I wasn’t ready to die and I sure and Forbidden Word wasn’t about to let stupid Ferdie and ridiculous Cooper destroy my world.

  I screamed, this time in rage, this time in defiance. I was not the loser here. I was not the failure. I was not the disappointment. I wasn’t weak or stupid or unlovable.

  I was me.

  I was enough.

  There was power in me. I just had to find it.

  “Just die,” Cooper shouted.

  “No!”

  I was done making myself small so they would want me.

  I grabbed hold of the white, arcing heat that flowed through me. I clenched it in my bloody, broken fists. I dragged myself to my feet and I stared my abusers in the eyes.

  “No,” I said. “You don’t decide when I die.”

  They came towards me. I could feel them gathering their strange, twisted, bound Magic around them. I reached out my hand and flicked it out of their reach. I twisted the chains they held Magic in and set it free.

  They paused in horror, not able to see what I had done, but feeling the Magic slip away from them.

  I opened my hands and cast the white fire back towards them. They howled and screamed, falling to their knees, but I knew that it was nothing compared to what I could do.

  “Magic,” I called, “my friend. What should we do to these pitiful creatures?”

  Magic surrounded me, heavy like a storm cloud, it rested on my shoulders, encircled my waist. It whispered in my ears.


  “Yes,” I agreed.

  I raised my hands, reached into myself, and blew one, long breath into them, the way Shanti had breathed. But what I gave them wasn’t Peace.

  They howled as their Magic was stripped away from them. Their wings dissolved. Their Magically maintained youthful faces aged before my eyes. They withered and crumbled before me, no longer fairies, not quite human, but some miserable creature caught between. Ancient, yet undying.

  “This is better than you deserve,” I told them.

  Even in their fear and weakness, they rushed towards me, their minds still bent on murder.

  I clapped my hands together and the world disappeared in a halo of light.

  I awoke on the forest floor. The scent of ozone was in the air. Perhaps a storm was coming.

  No, I realized, that scent was from me.

  I wiggled my fingers and turned my head. I distinctly remembered my hands being destroyed, but they were fine and whole.

  In fact, my entire body felt fine. Excellent, really.

  Maybe a unicorn had found me and healed me again.

  I raised my head and pulled myself up off the ground. My body didn’t hurt, but it did feel strangely heavy and off balance.

  I looked down and saw two strange smears of ash on the leaf litter of the forest floor.

  I swallowed hard as I realized I was looking at the remains of Ferdie and Cooper.

  My memory was returning to me—the way they’d tortured me, the way I’d been unable to accept death, the way they’d leapt to the attack even when they’d already lost.

  Power crackled along my arms. I looked down at them. Blue flames danced across my skin. The strangest thing was they didn’t feel weird or wrong or new. They felt familiar. They felt right. They felt like something I’d always had, but I’d simply forgotten.

  “Grace!”

  Above the treeline I could see two shapes flying. I recognized them immediately. Dallan and Astraea. Of course, they would be looking for me. They would have heard about what happened in Orionis.

  Too bad they hadn’t come before Ferdie and Cooper. Maybe they’d still be alive.

  No use thinking about that. I’d never wanted to kill anybody. Now that I had, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d lost a piece of myself.

  They’d already taken too much from me.

  “Here,” I called. “I’m all right… but Cooper and Ferdie are dead.”

  I heard Dallan and Astraea land nearby and walk towards me. I turned my head to see them step into the small clearing where I stood. A teasing beam of sunlight chose that moment to pierce the canopy and shine down on me. I blinked up at it, feeling strangely bemused. I wiggled my fingers in the stream of light. I could feel energy in its touch, not quite Magic, but something else.

  In fact, I could feel the energy in everything around me. Even the rotting leaves beneath my feet whispered of life.

  “Grace,” Astraea gasped.

  I turned and smiled at her. Dallan stood half a step ahead of her, but both of them appeared to be frozen in place.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t know how… but, I fought them off.”

  “Grace,” Dallan whispered.

  I frowned at the strange note in his voice. “What?”

  “Your wings,” he breathed. “They’re so beautiful.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dallan was right, my wings were beautiful.

  The funny thing was that I didn’t feel like I needed them anymore. They were no longer a sign of worthiness to me, I realized, just a milestone in any fairy’s development. I just had to accept my power and who I was, and there they were.

  My wings were not like any I’d seen on any other fairy. Maybe that was because I wasn’t quite a fairy anymore. I was something different, something more. I was closer to Dallan and Astraea than fairy.

  My wings reflected that new truth. They were midnight blue, almost black in the shadows and contours, but blue where the light touched them. Handfuls of silver splashed across them like stars, adding to the illusion that they were made of the night sky.

  They were delicate, sensitive and nearly transparent in the membranes between the vanes. They looked somewhat as though they belonged on a dragon.

  Which, as many things did these days, felt fitting to me.

  I hadn’t had a chance to try them out yet. I was eager to, but I wanted to be able to take my time and enjoy my first flight, preferably with Dallan flying next to me.

  My wings were a very visible change for me, but it was the deeper, more fundamental changes inside of me that were on my agenda for the day.

  “Are you ready?” Astraea asked.

  I turned to see her watching me as I turned between two mirrors, trying to get a better view of my wings.

  “Is this what you expected?” I asked her. I didn’t mean just my wings, and I knew she would understand that.

  “We expected something, but not necessarily this,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  I considered that for a moment. “Different,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes. Yes, it would feel different.”

  There really wasn’t anything more than that to be said. I didn’t have the right vocabulary, the right words, to talk about the changes that were inside of me. The changes that were me.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, coming closer to help me fasten the back of my dress. That was a whole new trial, with wings on my back.

  I watched her face in the mirror. “Yes,” I said. I was sure. I knew exactly what I needed to do. Even if that sureness was new to me.

  Or merely a piece of the new me? Where was that line drawn? Did butterflies remember caterpillar toes? Did frogs yearn for tadpole tails?

  In a way it was nice to realize that self-discovery was a constant no matter who I might become.

  Astraea patted my shoulder. “Dallan is making sure the others are gathered. Near the portals, as you asked.” Her eyebrows rose questioningly.

  “Hopefully, we won’t need to use them, but they have to be an option,” I said. I straightened my cuffs and brushed off my skirt. “I guess I’m ready.”

  Flit scolded me from the doorway for forgetting him. He darted into the room and landed neatly on my shoulder. He paused to croon over my wings. He seemed to approve of them.

  The house had also adjusted quickly to my new wings. Within hours of my transformation, all my clothing had been adjusted to adapt to their expanse. Even my chairs had been adjusted without backs, so my wings wouldn’t be crushed. The narrower hallways had suddenly widened, making them more spacious for me to walk through.

  I wondered what sort of growing pains houses might have.

  I hadn’t expected my wings to be so malleable. I could wrap them around myself like a cloak, or bend them underneath me while I slept, though apparently that worked about as well as sleeping on my arm. I’d awakened to distinct pins and needles sensations in a limb I wasn’t used to having yet. The range of motion was much wider than I’d expected. Dallan and Astraea had explained that all that mobility and flexibility was necessary for flying properly.

  Well, I’d figure it out eventually.

  The old me would have been nervous right now, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t eager and excited either. I was resigned to what my role was now, accepting of who I was always meant to be.

  I didn’t want to imagine what it would have meant to my world if I hadn’t broken through and become myself.

  Grace.

  Well, today my world would discover just what that meant.

  Nearly a thousand fairies was more than I’d ever expected to see in one place. Compared to humans in our world, there were few fairies. Gathered together like this, it didn’t feel like we were scarce or rare. Wings and hair glinted from the crowd below as Astraea, Dallan, and I walked to the top of the hill that looked over the hollow in which several portals crackled and hissed.

  It was not far from here that my cousin, Gloriana, had stepped through into the human
world, determined to rehabilitate herself and return.

  I had full belief that she would manage it. And, if she didn’t, I would go through myself and help her, even if it meant giving up my wings.

  My wings were not what made me special. With or without them I would be the same creature. They were beautiful and visible, and I had wanted them for a long time, but I hadn’t fully understood that they stood for nothing. They were just a body part. Yes, I would miss my leg if I lost it. I would miss my wings if I gave them up. But they weren’t a part of the core me.

  That, once destroyed, could never be replaced or reborn.

  The hill wasn’t very high, just a few feet higher than the highest point of the crowd. It took them a moment to see us standing there, and a moment longer to recognize me.

  I’d waited my whole life to show my mother my wings, but now that I had them, I didn’t care what she thought when she saw them. I’d wanted to use my wings to prove to her that I was worthy, that I was special, that I was good enough.

  Hair and eye color didn’t make a person worthy. Wings were no different.

  I’d always been worthy.

  I’d never accepted myself.

  Because they’d told me not to.

  Sad that it took four hundred years for me to learn to trust myself and listen to the music of my soul.

  I stood there with the Voice of Mercy on one side and the Song of Justice on my other side. I lifted my head up, drew in a deep breath and said, “Greetings, fairies. I am the Breath of Grace.”

  They silenced and stared up at me. I knew they were wondering what all of this meant, why they were here.

  I found the faces of my parents in the crowd.

  “Maman, Father,” I said. “I know what you did.”

  My mother turned white and my father staggered as if I’d struck him with a physical blow.

  “I know why you did it,” I continued. “You knew what my uncle Ferdinand was doing in his kingdoms. You knew what it meant when those kingdoms were given into my care. I know that you were instructed to kill me yourselves.”

  The crowd gasped, milling around to look at my parents.