by F. D. Lee
It was one of only two possessions that Seven had brought with him to Llanotterly, in addition to his charm and good looks and his strange ability to convince those around him he could make their wishes come true.
He rummaged through the desk’s drawers and pulled out a sheet of crisp white paper and a bunch of pencils, wrapped with a red ribbon, which he untied carefully and laid on the desk.
He started to draw. He drew from memory. He had a good memory, something which, all things considered, was far from a blessing.
The pencils moved quickly across the paper, scratching back and forth in deepening shades of grey. He leaned low over the paper, concentrating all his energy on his work.
The candles flickered and dripped wax, having nothing better to do.
Eventually he lifted his head and looked at his creation. The face of a young woman stared back at him from the paper, a slight smile playing on her lips. She looked as if she was about to say something, and that once she had you would laugh. She looked happy.
Seven stared at the picture, his strange eyes unreadable – eyes that, now he made no effort to mask them, were from edge to edge only the deep blue of the dead ocean.
He swallowed hard, as if he was trying to imbibe something foul tasting but necessary, like a child sipping medicine, and pulled another sheet of paper from his desk.
Chapter Eighteen
Bea was waiting in Sindy’s room.
The eye of the imagination is no doubt focusing on one of two possibilities:
The traditionalist is probably seeing a small box room, with bare unpolished floors and a narrow, wrought iron bed, the springs of which squeak and stab in the night like a mouse with a vendetta. In the corner there might be some hint at talents unused, like a piano or a dressmaker’s doll.
Why not include a tattered sketch of the girl’s dead mother on the old tea chest that serves as her bedside table? It can sit next to a stump of candle, the wax cheap and dirty and given to filling the room with a greasy smoke that clings to clothing and stains the whitewashed walls. This room is barren and desperately sad.
Alternatively, some will have assumed the room is pink. It is, they might predict, a pink made up of a hundred different shades of pink. Rose curtains, possibly dotted with flowers or butterflies, drift lazily in the breeze, their carefully hemmed edges brushing against a soft cerise eiderdown that covers a coral pink sheet on a wooden bed whose frame is painted a gentle rose. A teddy bear, well loved, missing an eye and with an amaranth ribbon tied around his ears, sits happily on the bed.
In fact, Bea was sitting in a slightly cluttered room that was in terms of colour palette neither the dismal beige of totalitarian poverty nor the headache-inducing pink of every shorthand description of a teenage girl. The walls were covered with plain, tasteful wallpaper. A small dresser sat in the corner near the window, its surface hidden under jars and pots of lotions and creams.
Bea eyed her bag. The Book was in there, causing it to bulge ominously.
She ran her hands through her hair, trying to ignore the enormity of what she was doing. There would be no getting out of it if the Redaction Department found out – this was definitely breaking with the Plot.
But what choice did she have? The introduction had gone spectacularly wrong, and she only had a few days before the Ball. All she needed to do was meet the girl, unofficially of course, and convince her to attend the Ball without an introduction. If she could do that, it would still be alright. Once the wedding had happened and everything was Happily Ever After this minor redraft would hardly matter. It probably wouldn’t even make it into the Book, and then she could begin her training as a godmother.
Bea’s train of thought was derailed by the sound of the front door opening. Sindy called out a general hello to the household and began climbing the stairs.
Bea covered the mirror on Sindy’s dresser with a scarf and gathered her wits.
Sindy opened the door.
Bea smiled.
Sindy screamed.
Bea’s wits made a dash for it in all the confusion.
“Hello. I’m Bea,” Bea said, “I’m your Fiction Man-, er, that is, your godmother.”
Sindy frowned. “Mrs Morecombe is my godmother.”
“No. I mean yes, I’m sure she is. But I’m your special godmother. Um. I’m a fairy, you see. Er. Ta dahhh!?” Sindy continued to look uncertain. Obviously a little more was needed. “That means I’m here to help you.”
This explanation wasn’t helped by the fact that Bea, with her large bag at her feet and scraggly, homemade dress, looked not too dissimilar to someone who’d been caught mid-burgle.
“If you’re a fairy,” Sindy asked, approaching the question cautiously in case it turned around and bit her, “why haven’t you got wings?”
Bea smiled, relieved – she knew this one.
“Because, you see, I’m a garden fairy and we simply don’t have wings – that’s the flower fairies.”
“But I thought all fairies had wings and were a little more… er… little…” Sindy blushed crimson. “I mean you’re quite…. That is…. I didn’t mean you’re… oh dear…”
“Well, garden fairies are a lot hardier than the other tribes,” Bea said kindly. “Actually, any fae could be a godmother. Though you can try telling that to some people. It’s like if your mother was a baker that wouldn’t automatically make you a baker, would it? And, actually, I happen to think that fairies, especially garden fairies, are particularly well suited to being godmothers. Perhaps because godmothers are meant to be fair, ahaha?”
In the sight of Sindy’s absolute mystification Bea made the mistake of continuing. “Because, you know... we should be fair to the people we meet, I mean. Not fair as in pretty. You’re the one who’s supposed to be pretty. Not that you’re not pretty…”
Bea stumbled into silence, wishing it had been higher up on her itinerary of must see locales when going off-Plot with the heroine.
“What about the puff of smoke?” Sindy said, rallying much faster than Bea. “Shouldn’t you have appeared magically? It’s not very, um, ‘godmothery’ to just be lurking in people’s bedrooms.”
“I wasn’t lurking. I was waiting.”
“What’s the difference?” Sindy asked, intrigued.
Bea waved her hand around airily. “Well, for one thing, I don’t mean you any harm.”
“But I don’t know that, do I?” said Sindy, and Bea realised that although Sindy might well be simple she was not actually stupid.
“Noooo. No, good point. If I was here to hurt you, wouldn’t I have done it already? I mean, it’s not like I’ve come armed or anything.”
Sindy’s eyes moved from Bea to rest on her bag, which sat potentially stuffed with weaponry at her feet.
Bea could see that, as far as escapes went, the situation had received the cake with the file in it and was now industriously sawing through the bars to freedom. Which was why, reasoning that she might as well hang for a sheep as a goat, she did something else she had always been expressly forbidden from doing.
“Look, how about I show you how we travel into your world? It’s sort of like magic. Then will you believe me?”
Sindy nodded, intrigued. Bea walked over to the dresser, pulled the scarf off Sindy’s mirror and stared hard into the glass. Her reflection, picking up on her mood, glared back at her with equal intensity. Sindy watched as Bea held out her hands, palm up, to the mirror’s surface.
Nothing happened. Sindy glanced around nervously, unsure if she was supposed to be doing anything. A minute went by, and then another, with no discernible change in the mirror – although the woman who claimed to be her godmother-fairy was looking increasingly pained.
Sindy was just about to ask a question when her mirror took on an entirely new aspect. The smooth glass turned to an inky milk-like texture, as if it would make a ‘glooping’ sound should she reach out and touch it.
And then the mirror was no longer a mirror, but a window. Sind
y leaned forward, speechless. She was seeing the Grand Reflection Station, a sight no character was ever supposed to see.
“Now can you take my word for it?” Bea asked, pulling her hands away from Sindy’s mirror, ignoring the queasiness that making a connection to the Mirrors always caused. The view of the Grand disappeared, returning the glass to normal.
“How did you do that? Is it magic?”
Bea rummaged in her bag for a mint leaf to chew. “No. Magic’s not really anything.” She saw the disappointment on Sindy’s face. “Well, I mean, it’s a special magic, I guess. It’s to do with images. You just picture, really hard, where you want to be. That’s why the older fae are better at it. They’ve been to more places, so it’s easier for them to picture where they’re going.”
“Seems like magic to me. So why didn’t you come in like that?” Sindy said.
“Because I’m not allowed to. I shouldn’t even have shown you that. The Teller, whocaresaboutus, doesn’t like my world and your world to get too close. But then,” Bea added pointedly, “most people are pleased to meet their godmother. If you believe me, that is?”
Sindy gave it some thought. Happily, she appeared to reach the decision that if Bea was indeed a criminal mastermind, she probably wouldn’t look like she was about to burst into tears of frustration.
“Do you promise you’re not a burglar?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Alright. But I’ll be checking to make sure nothing’s missing.”
“Fine, fine. Of course. Very sensible.”
Sindy stepped further into her room, noticeably checking the top of her dresser and the little saucer of coppers by her bed. If she could have counted her possessions aloud without being rude, she would have done so. As it was she had to settle for doing mental arithmetic, which meant she took on the appearance of a fish out of water.
A snide little voice in Bea’s head pointed out that even now, when Sindy might lose a beauty pageant to a half-dead halibut, she was still unbelievably pretty.
It wasn’t even that Bea was jealous.
She knew she wasn’t ugly, and anyway the heroine had to be beautiful or else the story wouldn’t work. It was just that Sindy was so pretty. She wasn’t alluring, or sexy, or even attractive. She was just very, very pretty – even as she snuck with poor stealth towards her jewellery box to check everything was accounted for. She looked like at any moment a little brown rabbit would hop onto her lap, or as if a bluebird was just waiting in the wings to join her in a duet. It was ridiculous. No one could really be that wholesome. Bea pushed the rogue thought down, to join all the other unwelcome whispers in the back of her mind.
“So, why are you here?” Sindy asked, her inspection of her room apparently concluded to her satisfaction.
Bea smiled her warmest smile and announced with no small flourish, “I’m here to help you marry the man of your dreams!”
“Will?!” Sindy cried out, her face lighting up like a thousand candles.
“Yes! No – wait. Who?”
“You’re not talking about Will?”
“Who’s Will?”
Sindy blushed. “His name’s William, or some people call him Billy, or Buttons, because his mum was a seamstress. He told me once he doesn’t like those names, but maybe you only know him as Billy or Buttons..?”
Bea ignored the memory of the man from the kitchen. “I’ve never heard of him before this moment,” she said, not exactly lying.
“Oh,” Sindy said. “I just thought, when you said you were going to help me marry the man of my dreams, I thought you meant Will.”
“Goodness no,” Bea exclaimed, going once more for the flourish, “I’m going to help you marry the King!”
Sindy burst into tears.
Chapter Nineteen
“Feeling better?” Bea asked.
“Yes, thank you,” Sindy sniffed, listlessly handing Bea back her sopping handkerchief.
“That’s alright. You can keep it.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Bea took a deep breath. It was going to be much harder than she thought to get the story back on-Plot. “Come on, cheer up. You’re going to be a Queen! How’s that for a Happily Ever After? Every girl wants to be a Queen, don’t they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Think about how much better your life will be. No more pokey little cottage in the middle of nowhere. Dresses, and, and, shoes, and… um…clothes. And True Love. Your very own Happy Ending, married to a King. It’s a Dream Come True.”
Sindy’s face crumpled. “I hadn’t… I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. I suppose I just always thought I’d marry Will.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to stop being friends with him,” Bea relented. “I’m sure the King could find him some work at the palace.”
Sindy stood up and walked over to the window, where not long ago she’d been standing watching Will.
Bea nibbled at her fingernail. She could see the expression on her heroine’s face as she looked out of the window. But Sindy really should see why it was such a good idea for her to marry the King – after all, what was the point of the story if not to improve her life?
Bea stood up and joined Sindy at the window. She looked down at the garden, and was surprised to see how beautifully it was planted. The majority of it was given over to a vegetable patch as necessity dictated, but someone had also planted little beds of wildflowers. They drifted on long stems in the late summer breeze and reminded Bea of things best forgotten.
“What about Ana?” Sindy asked suddenly.
“Who’s Ana?” Bea asked, dragging her attention away from the cliff of the past before she fell over.
“My stepsister. She’s fighting the King at the moment because he doesn’t understand ‘the inherent dangers of drawing attention to our kingdom and is more interested in lining his own pockets and growing fat off the blood of the people’. If I marry the King, Ana will be very hurt.”
The ugly sister. But she wasn’t supposed to do anything until the Ball. Why was it all going wrong? Bea bit her lip as she worked out all the different permutations of what Sindy had said. After a moment she gave up.
“You’d better tell me what’s been happening,” Bea said, already dreading what she was going to hear.
“…And so there’s a Ball at the end of the week which he says Ana must go to, but she refuses, and I’ve promised her I won’t go, but I’ve no idea what the King will do when she doesn’t turn up, and there’s no way I can go without her either. Sorry.”
Bea stared at the wall opposite, hoping it might have some words of advice. It remained unhelpfully silent.
“Right,” she said at last.
“Sorry,” Sindy said for the twenty-seventh time.
“Right.”
When Sindy opened her mouth to apologise again, Bea stood up and started walking around the room. Sindy joined the wall in keeping quiet.
“So. This is fine. It’s fine,” Bea said as she turned in circles. The bedroom wasn’t really designed for dramatic effect, but Bea wasn’t about to let that stop her.
She doesn’t want to marry the King.
“Now then. Let’s see about getting you to this Ball,” Bea said very loudly and deliberately, despite the fact that Sindy was barely half a room away from her.
“But-”
“Really, how angry do you think your sister would actually be? After all, if you marry the King I’m sure you can stop him cutting down the forest.”
Sindy’s eyes widened, making her look like a startled kitten. Rather ruining the effect though was the way she was also wheezing.
“Alright, maybe not,” Bea said, taking pity on the girl.
She turned around the room again.
“How about this: I get the King over here again, and you explain to him that neither you nor Ana can make the Ball, but while he’s here you both Fall In Love?”
“I don’t think that would work,” Sindy said.
“Why e
ver not?”
“I just… I don’t know why he’d fall in love with me.”
Bea paused in her striding to look at Sindy. She was girl of such natural beauty and grace that it would have been easy to believe she had inspired every permutation of the Spring Festival ever, including the rather alarming ones involving poles, ribbons and raw eggs.
But she doesn’t see it like that, does she?
And she doesn’t want to marry the King.
“Well, it seems there’s no way around it then,” Bea said, much louder than was necessary for the little bedroom.
Sindy perked up. “Really?”
“It certainly appears that way, yes.”
“Oh, wonderful!”
“Good, I’m glad you’re on board.”
“Thank you so much for helping me!”
“You’re welcome. Now then, where’s your sister’s encampment?”
“We’ll be so happy together-”
Sindy stopped, realising that, once again, something had happened which she wasn’t entirely sure of. Unfortunately for both women this kind of thing happened so often that Sindy simply took the default position that she was somehow to blame for the miscommunication. If she hadn’t, a lot of misery might have later been avoided.
“Ana’s camp?” Sindy whispered.
“Exactly. I’ll go there and convince her to attend that Ball.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
“It’s the only way to get this whole thing moving again.”
“I see.”
“So, then. We’re agreed,” Bea said in the face all the evidence. “How do I find your sister?”
Chapter Twenty
Bea crept up to Ana’s encampment as evening set in.
She’d had to walk, which had taken much longer than she would have liked. The trouble with the Mirrors was that you had to use them. You couldn’t, for example, go from the reflection in Sindy’s mirror to a reflection in Ana’s camp, you had to go via the Mirrors in the Grand, and Bea had no intention of straying so close to the GenAm.
