Fairytale

by Maggie Shayne

  ***

  Brigit

  April 1988 A Brooklyn slum

  Ten years had come and gone for Brigit since that horrible night. Ten years, and she’d been living on the streets with the homeless people like her. She was nineteen, now, but God, she felt so much older. Older than Raze. Older than Sister Mary Agnes had been.

  Brigit remembered it as if it were yesterday, every word, every line in Sister Mary Agnes’s face, and the sound of her aged voice rustling like dried leaves at the hand of the wind, as she read that ridiculous Fairytale night after night. Brigit still knew every word by heart. Sometimes she’d open the book, reading it in a whisper late at night when she couldn’t sleep, and she’d imagine Sister Mary Agnes there beside the bed, draped in that black habit from head to toe.

  So many vivid impressions, all instigated by one tiny scrap of paper. Why had she saved the thing anyway?

  Against her will, Brigit scanned the clipping, reading the words again, reminding herself why she had to go through with this scheme of Mel’s. Her hands trembled, and tears blurred her vision, but she blinked and made herself read.

  “Fire swept through St. Mary’s last night, destroying the church and leaving the children’s shelter heavily damaged. So far only one death is reported, that of Sister Mary Agnes Brockway, seventy-two, formerly of Queens. One child is still listed as missing, and Father Anthony Giovanni, parish priest, theorizes the nine-year-old girl ran away in panic. He does not believe the child’s body will be recovered by fire fighters as they search the premises today. ‘Brigit is a special little girl,’ he told reporters at the scene this morning. ‘Too special to be taken like this.’ “

  Special?

  Brigit folded the yellowed newspaper clipping exactly the way it had been folded before, and returned it to its spot in the bottom of the cardboard box where she kept her clothes. The physical act of putting it away helped her to put away the memories as well. None of them mattered. Not now. They might as well be as fictional as the Fairytale that lay in the box beside the clipping. The elaborate creation of some kind soul determined to placate a lonely little girl.

  Sister Mary Agnes herself might have created the book, for all Brigit knew.

  She’d called Brigit’s talent a gift. A miracle.

  “If she could see me now, she’d turn over in her grave.”

  “What’s that?”

  Brigit turned, looking through the sagging doorway with its peeling gray casing. The folding card table in the next room seemed to be holding Raze up as much as the stool beneath him. Even beyond the stubble, and in the shadow of his ever-present Mets cap, she could see the grayish tinge to his face. The green shirt that had once been part of someone named Bob’ s uniform, hung on Raze as if he were a stick figure. He coughed, and Brigit thought the rickety table would collapse.

  She swallowed her doubts, lifted her chin, and went to him, running her hands over his frail back until the spasm passed. He was old. When had Raze become so old? He’d always been the strong one, he’d always been the one to take care of her, right from the start. That awful night at St. Mary’s when all the other children had obeyed the sisters and joined hands and made their way out of the burning shelter. All but Brigit. She’d let go. She’d gone back, looking for Sister Mary Agnes. And she’d ended up trapped in an inferno more terrifying than anything that Dante fellow had dreamed of.

  Her hands tightened on Raze’s frail shoulders. He’d heard her screams that night. He’d come after her. Somehow, a man she assumed was one of the bums who slept in the park across the street, had pulled her out of that hell. And she’d been with Raze ever since. She’d been convinced that because he’d saved her from the fire, because he’d taken her from the orphanage, that somehow made her his little girl. And she’d loved the old man with all her heart from the instant he’d rescued her. He’d wanted to return her to Father Anthony. But she’d cried and pleaded and begged to stay with Raze, and he’d been too soft-hearted to send her back.

  Razor-Face Malone had become the only family she’d ever had. He’d saved her life. So now she’d do what she had to do to save his.

  “Come on, Brigit,” Mel called from his spot in the corner. “Break’s over.”

  She nodded in response to the slightly whiny voice. Mel sat on the bare floor, back against the naked lath wall, legs crossed. His gray chauffeur’s cap was too big for his puny head, but managed to look jaunty anyway. And besides, it covered the bald spot.

  “The quicker you finish up, the quicker you get a warm bed and some medicine for Raze.”

  “You don’t have to keep reminding me of that.”

  “I think I do,” Mel said, getting to his feet. “Hell, with your talent, you should have been into this scam years ago. You could’a been rich by now.” He gave a sharp, slanting nod and a wink. “You stick with me, and you’ll get that way soon enough. I got connections now.”

  “No.”

  He shrugged and paced the room. He was better off than she and Raze. But he got that way because he was a crook. Oh, she knew, she wasn’t much better herself. But aside from pinching a few groceries and a wallet here and there, she’d been fairly honest, out of respect for Sister Mary Agnes, and the things the nun had taught her. Not for any other reason. Not because of morality or values. Hell, with the way the world treated people like her and Raze, she didn’t figure she owed anyone anything. She’d do what she had to do to survive.

  And when she wasn’t surviving, she’d race through the alleys and vault mesh fences and cartwheel in the gutters. Because she had to. Raze said she had too much energy and she’d explode if she didn’t let it out.

  Not today, though. Today she was tossing Sister Mary Agnes’s teachings aside, using all that pent-up energy to make her hands obey her mind. She was taking the step that would brand her as much a criminal as Mel was. And still, there were men far worse. At least Mel had never hurt anybody. His game was the con, though he had yet to score big, as he put it. Deep inside, Mel was good. If Brigit didn’t believe that so firmly, she wouldn’t be doing this.

  Lately, though, he’d been keeping some bad company. These connections he kept talking about. One of them was a man named Zaslow, a man Brigit knew was evil just by looking at him—as if she really were half-fay and could read a man’s heart by plumbing the depths of his eyes. This entire scam had been Zaslow’s idea. Fencing stolen artwork was, Mel claimed, Zaslow’s specialty. So when Mel had offhandedly mentioned Brigit’s “gift” in one of his endless efforts to impress the man, a plot had been born.

  Raze coughed again, and Brigit caught her breath. He was getting worse.

  “I know, I know,” Mel said, a touch of mockery in his voice. “You’re only doing it this one time. You keep telling me. But you wait ‘til you have that money in your hands, kid, You wait ‘til you smell that green, and then we’ll see if you’re so damn noble.”

  Brigit closed her eyes. There was no sense talking to Mel. He’d been a small-time con all his life, and he’d convinced himself she was his ticket to wealth untold.

  But she vowed, she swore on Sister Mary Agnes’s memory, that she would only do it once. Just this one time, and only because Raze’s life depended on it. She didn’t like being even remotely involved with a man like Zaslow. It made her feel soiled and low.

  Raze hadn’t wanted her to do it, even this one time. He’d fought tooth and nail against her going along with this thing. He said it was wrong, plain and simple. But Brigit didn’t see that she had any choice in the matter. Raze was dying.

  He was dying. That talent she had for seeing things in a man’s eyes had shown her that when she’d looked into Raze’s. And she’d known then that she’d do whatever it took to save him.

  She sighed and crossed the floor of the condemned apartment to the easel that seemed as out of place here in this ruin as a diamond in a dime store. A color print of the Matisse was Scotch-taped to the crumbling wall. She clamped her jaw against the memories the sight of it evoke
d; memories of Mona Lisa on construction paper, hanging crookedly above a small wooden bed, and of the awed expression Sister Mary Agnes wore when she stared at it. Better not to let the thought of that horrible night enter her mind now, or her hands would start shaking. She had to finish. Now, while the afternoon sun was still slanting in through the broken windows, giving her so much light to work by.

  Brigit drew a breath, squared her shoulders, took one last glance at the Matisse nude, and then surveyed what she’d done so far on canvas. It would be a perfect likeness. She didn’t know how she knew that, she simply did. And she didn’t know how she could wield the brushes and match the colors the way she did, either. There was no technique to it. She’d never had an art lesson in her life. She just studied the image she wanted, kept it focused in her mind’s eye, and...and painted.

  Raze coughed again, a deep, racking cough that sounded painful. Brigit picked up a palette and a brush.

  ***

  Bridin

  1995

  It was time.

  Bridin knew it, sensed it the way birds sense the proper time to migrate. It was time to get out of this place. It was time to find her way back to Rush.

  She needed help. She needed her sister and Raze. The time had come to get a message to them. And the method came to her just as easily as the knowledge did. Brigit might not understand it, when she saw it. But Raze would. And he’d know the time had come. And even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Bridin would simply send the message on its way with a fairy’s wish clinging to its tail, and the same protective spell as the one cast by her mother over her book and her pendant, coating it like fairy dust to keep the Dark Prince from going anywhere near it.

  When she’d finished perfecting every last detail of the intricate painting that would be her message to her sister, Bridin clasped her pewter fairy pendant in her right hand, lifted it, and pointed its quartz crystal toward the canvas. In a strong, steady voice, she chanted:

  “By the powers of the fay Darker forces, keep at bay. To my sister, wilt thou flee. Bring my Brigit back to me!”

  Bridin felt the magic surge through her, down her arm into her hand, and from her hand into the crystal. It zapped from the glowing stone— a pale amber ray of light that suffused the entire painting for just an instant, and then vanished. Bridin sank into her bed, exhausted.

  There. It was done. Soon she’d be with Brigit again. And together, they’d find a way for Bridin to get back to Rush. They’d raise up an army there, and they’d send the Dark Prince back into the far reaches of the forests where he belonged. She’d free her people from his evil rule. She would.

  Part Two: If This Be Magic

  Chapter One

  Present day

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Reid. I didn’t know.”

  Adam got to his feet, carefully lifting the painting, his hands touching nothing but the frame. He eased it back onto its hook above the golden oak mantel. Then nudged it a millimeter at a time until it hung perfectly straight.

  Damn cleaning service. Damn strangers, sometimes a different one every week, coming in to clean the place. You could tell them a hundred times, leave them a thousand notes, and they would still forget. He missed the old days. He missed the full-time maid he’d had to let go. He missed having enough money to pay for her even more.

  Hell, he was only hanging on to the house by a thread. But to lose it would be to admit defeat...defeat to a man he’d learned to despise. And that was something he couldn’t do.

  He didn’t care to analyze his other reasons for clinging to this oversized money drain. Like the woods out back, it was something he didn’t care to explore further.

  He turned to the woman who was still trembling a little in reaction to his bellow when he’d walked into the study to see his prized possession on the floor. “No one,” he said slowly, resisting the urge to snatch the brass-handled poker from the rack of implements near his side, and shake it in her face. “No one touches this painting. Tell your boss that if one of her people forget that again, I’ll...”

  He gave his head a shake. He sounded like an obsessed fool. Then again, that was exactly what he was, wasn’t he? “Never mind. Just get the hell out of here.”

  “Yes, Mr. Reid. I’m sorry. I wasn’t told.”

  She backed through the tall double doors, pulling them closed, probably in a huge rush to get out of his sight. He couldn’t blame her, could he?

  He swallowed the panic he’d felt when he’d first come into the room to see the bare spot on the stucco wall above the fireplace. Everything else had been in place. The brass candle holders and the antique Navajo pottery on the mantel didn’t seem to have been moved. He bit his lip, and stared up at the painting. He ought to get rid of the damned thing before it drove him completely nuts. Short trip, he knew, but there was no sense rushing it. Getting this thing out of his sight might slow the deterioration of his common sense considerably. But he couldn’t sell the painting. He wouldn’t.

  It wasn’t the quality of the work that had so captured him the first time he’d seen it hanging in the Capricorn Gallery on the Commons a year ago. Though it was very good, it was the subject that enchanted him.

  A forest where flowers unlike anything real bloomed in riots of color. Where every boulder and every pebble were gemstones. Every swirl of tree bark, a work of art. Hidden among the twisting foliage, timid creatures of no known species peered at the spectacle in the central clearing. They only appeared when one looked at the painting from just the right angle. He’d owned it for weeks before he’d spotted all of them...and he wondered even now if there were more to be discovered. In the distance one could see towering castle spires, gleaming like silver beneath a jewel-blue sky. And in the clearing, in the very center, a pool of crystalline water with dense green reeds concealing the woman who bathed there. She was only a hazy outline. Tiny bits of flesh visible here and there between the reeds, slanted ebony brush strokes for her eyes, and swirling ones for her long, untamed hair. None connected. Just bits. An abstract figure. Scattered jet and peach-toned pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But if you stood back and squinted, you could almost see her.

  And when you looked at her that way, she seemed to be looking back.

  When he’d first laid eyes on the painting, he’d wondered if maybe he was finally having the breakdown he’d been expecting for so long. But that concern hadn’t stopped him from buying it. Nor had his shortage of funds.

  The woman...and the place. The mythical forest where she bathed. They were the ones he’d seen in that ridiculous dream he’d had when he’d been...what? Seven? Didn’t matter. He’d been convinced it hadn’t been a dream at all. That he’d actually visited this place while he was on one of his reckless treks into the forest. He’d been convinced for a time that he’d stumbled upon some secret doorway to an enchanted glade. That he’d talked to a fairy. That he’d seen his own future.

  Unfortunately, he’d felt compelled to run his mouth about it until his mother had suggested therapy and his father had taken the strap.

  Smack!

  You’re a man, Adam. My son, do you understand that?

  Smack!

  A man does not believe in fairytales!

  Smack!

  A man knows the difference between the truth and make-believe!

  Smack!

  Do you think you know the difference now, Adam?

  Yes!

  I don’t. But you will, Adam, you will if I have to take every bit of hide off your ass. You will.

  Smack! Smack! Smack!

  “Mr. Reid?”

  The woman’s voice broke the memory. Adam carefully unclenched his fists, stopped grating his teeth, reminded himself that the stench of stale liquor on hot breath wasn’t real. He blinked twice, and shrugged it off as easily as he always did. It was no big deal. It didn’t bother him anymore. Not in the least. His father’s brutal methods had made Adam tough, and they’d certainly taught him the difference between fantasy and reality. Dea
r old Dad. Probably didn’t even realize he’d done Adam a favor by being so cruel. He hadn’t hung around long enough to see the results. He’d sold everything he owned, including the house and property, and he’d walked out on his wife and only son.

  But Adam had his revenge, sort of. He’d made his own money, bought the place back. Brought his mother here to live out her days in peace, without a hard-drinking, hard-hitting husband to worry about. She’d died here, and Adam liked to think she’d died content. But he knew deep down, she’d never got over her husband’s betrayal.

  He knew exactly how she’d felt. Because the fact was, he was on the verge of losing it all over again, due to a remarkably similar kind of betrayal.

  But he wasn’t going to think about his ex-wife or her uncanny similarities to his old man right now, either. Right now he was thinking about that damned dream. Hell, that’s what he spent most of his time thinking about.

  His childhood dream had to have had a basis in something he’d read or heard somewhere. And Adam’s obsession to find the myth or tale that was its source had made him one of this country’s top experts on fantasy and myth. Hell, he’d made a career out of the knowledge he’d gained. He’d published books on the subject of fairytales and their origins.

  But even so, he’d never found the story that must have inspired his dream.

  Or the woman.

  Though he knew it had all been nothing more than a fantasy, he’d let the search for its source consume him. What could a seven-year-old have seen or read or heard that would have instigated a dream that real? That vivid? So lucid he’d been sure it hadn’t been a dream at all. There had to have been something.

  When he’d seen the painting, he’d become more convinced of that than ever. Someone else knew about this mythical land. Certainly the artist knew. Even knew the name of the forest in Adam’s dream. At the bottom of the painting, cleverly woven into the lush greenery so that it was all but hidden, was a single word. And Adam supposed most people would have assumed it was the artist’s signature, if they’d even been able to discern it. But Adam knew better. The word at the bottom was Rush.