Southern Charms

by Trana Mae Simmons

  The red and gold full-skirted gown might be a trifle low-cut, baring her shoulders and a goodly portion of her breasts. But Fatima had always been of the school that if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Despite just coming off a few months of spoiling herself, she’d only gained a couple pounds, and the gown tapered to a suitably small waist. The skirt flared out, filled by several layers of alternating gold, red, and black net skirts. It ended just-below knee, exposing a nice length of black net stocking on her shapely calves. She adored the high-heeled red slippers sparkling on her feet.

  Propping her hands on her hips and tilting her head, she asked Pandora, “Do you see anything I need to give attention to?”

  The cat yawned, no doubt bored with the perfection of her mistress’s presence. Fatima sniffed at the cat, then quickly peeked out the tent flap again. Despite what Ellie had said about finding a group of friends to occupy her until circus time, she was strolling around alone.

  That poor young woman spent entirely too much time alone. She was alone sometimes even when she rode with her ranch hands or spent evenings with her sister and mother.

  Especially that mother! Fatima’s irritation mounted at the thought of how Elvina ignored Ellie except for berating her about the ranch’s finances whenever they were together. Her lips thinned even straighter when she thought of how Ellie catered to her stepmother as though it were Ellie’s obligation and Elvina’s due.

  Time for a change in this young woman’s life! A drastic change.

  Fatima had chosen her spot well—back behind the animal cages. She assumed Ellie would stroll among the poor caged beasts, her heart aching for their restricted existence. At least this circus manager made sure his animals were well cared for.

  Fatima waved her wand and made her tent visible to Ellie. As though she herself hovered overhead, she knew what Ellie saw—a bright red and white striped tent appearing out of nowhere amid a cloud of sparkling magic dust. Sure enough, Ellie halted as though she’d run into a brick wall, a stunned look on her face. She rubbed her fists in her eyes and dropped them, peering at the tent in disbelief—another typical reaction.

  Fatima stepped out of the tent. “Hello, Ellie, my dear,” she said. “I’m your fairy godmother. I’m here to grant your wishes.”

  Chapter 3

  Good grief on a greased slide, she was going bonkers! Ellie always feared there might be something strange about her. Hadn’t her family sent her off to be adopted rather than keep her? Now visions threatened her sanity.

  She turned to run. But the woman of the evening who had stepped out of the tent appeared in front of her, blocking her path. How had she moved so fast? The woman carried a black, polished stick with a silver tip on it in one hand and a determined look on her face.

  “Now, Ellie, dear,” she said.

  “How do you know my name? I don’t know you! I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Ellie tried to back away, but the woman pointed that stick at her feet, and they wouldn’t move. “Let me go!”

  She didn’t know how the woman had frozen her feet—nor even how she knew that’s what she had done. Oh, diddly! She’d be danged if she let herself believe for one second that the woman might possibly be carrying a magic wand.

  “Let me go, gosh darn it,” she repeated as the woman stepped closer. “I’ll—I’ll scream!”

  “Ellie, please,” the woman soothed. “I’m not going to hurt you. Like I said, I’m your fairy godmother.”

  “There’s no such things as fairies! I demand you let me go!”

  The woman sighed and shook her head. “Ellie, sweetheart, I’m not that sort of fairy, but you’re wrong about them not existing either. What I am, is, I repeat, your fairy godmother. And I’ve come to bring you happiness.”

  “You’re not making me happy right now,” Ellie insisted. “And the only way you can do that—make me happy—is to release me and leave here yourself.”

  “Give me five minutes, Ellie. Then I’ll—”

  “You’ll promise to leave?” Ellie asked when the woman fell silent.

  “Well, no, but I’ll try to convince you that I’m telling the truth. There. That’s what I’ll do. And you’ll see that I only want you to be happy, my dear.”

  Ellie jerked frantically at one foot, but it was stuck to the ground as though glued. Hurriedly she bent down and tried to unlace her shoe. She’d run away barefoot if she had to. But without her button hook, it would take her forever to undo her shoes, and indeed she only succeeded in making the laces tighter. A few seconds later, she wobbled and plopped onto her behind.

  A tear of fright escaped, and she swiped it with the back of her hand.

  “Oh, please, Ellie.” The woman knelt beside her. “Don’t cry. I truly don’t intend to frighten you. Won’t you give me those five minutes I asked for?”

  “You and your tent appear out of nowhere in a cloud of sparkling dust, you glue my feet to the ground so I can’t run away—” Ellie swiped another tear. “—but you don’t mean to frighten me? What do you do when you do want to scare a person?”

  “I—”

  “Meower!”

  Ellie twisted her head sharply and saw a huge—decadently huge—fluffy white cat stalk through the tent flap. It was so large she could hear its footsteps on the hard-packed earth. It walked right up to her, gave the woman a look that Ellie could have sworn said you’re-lucky-I’m-here, and climbed onto Ellie’s lap. Rising onto its back legs, the cat licked Ellie’s chin with a raspy tongue, then settled into Ellie’s arms when she instinctively closed them. Her purr rumbled only slightly lower than a train wheel’s clickity-clack, but it soothed Ellie’s fright.

  “That’s Pandora,” the woman said, relief in her voice. “And I’m Fatima.”

  Ellie stroked the cat, her fingers losing themselves in the silky, feathery hair. She loved cats, although she didn’t know where the love came from. Elvina claimed to be allergic to them ever since Ellie brought a tiny kitten into the house to nurse it one winter. Elvina never came into the kitchen, anyway, but she heard about the kitten from Darlene and swore it bothered her when she ate in the adjacent dining room. Only Darlene’s pleas had allowed Ellie to keep the kitten in the kitchen until it was ready to return to the barn.

  “Hello, Pandora,” she murmured. The cat rumbled on and lifted its head so she could scratch under its chin.

  Before Ellie could protest, Fatima lifted her wand. The tent moved over and settled around them. Frightened at the enveloping enclosure, Ellie scrambled to her feet with Pandora still in her arms. The cat kneaded its claws in her arm, the action more comforting than hurtful, and Ellie was grateful to realize her feet were now free.

  “I—” Ellie cleared her throat. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “Hardly anyone does,” Fatima acknowledged with a sigh. “But magic is real. Here, watch this.”

  Ellie cringed as Fatima raised the wand again, but when the shower of gold sparkles from the silver tip subsided, the tent was filled with beautiful white roses. For the first time Ellie noticed the red silk walls. Outside it had variegating red and white stripes, but here inside, one color covered the walls. It draped and flowed all around them, caught here and there by diamond cluster pins, which shone in the light from candles burning inside crystal vases.

  Somehow she knew those diamonds were real, also. The money to buy all that silk and those jewels would pay for every ranch and steer in her part of Texas!

  The roses stood out starkly but beautifully against the silk. Their scent wafted pleasantly instead of overpoweringly around them, and Ellie breathed deeply. She loved roses. Elvina thought they, too, made her sneeze, but since she never came into Ellie’s room, Ellie kept a fruit jar in there full of blooms from the plants Darlene tended when the blossoms were in season.

  Lifting her head from Ellie’s arm for a moment, the cat opened its eyes and meowed.

  “Oh, Pandora, I know you like yellow roses better,” Fatima said in a peeved voice. “But they don’t go wi
th the red silk walls.”

  “Meow.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Fatima waved the wand, and sparkles engulfed the tent. When they cleared, the walls had changed from red to white, the roses to yellow. If Ellie hadn’t been able to make herself accept the first spectacle, this new change threatened her very composure.

  She’d never fainted in her life, but blackness threatened on the edge of her vision.

  “Ellie!” Fatima stepped close and placed an arm around Ellie’s shoulders. “Here. Sit down.”

  Fatima pointed the wand at the floor—which Ellie now noticed was covered with a beautiful, thick carpet of gold—and a fainting couch in yellow and green patterned silk appeared. Ellie stiffened. No way was she going to actually lie down in front of this...this...whatever she was.

  “Meow!”

  The cat leaped out of Ellie’s arms, and she realized she’d been squeezing the poor animal. It didn’t go far, however. It landed on the fainting couch and sat, then stretched out its left rear paw and started bathing it.

  Ellie directed her gaze at the wand, then the woman’s face.

  “Uh—look, Miss...Misses—”

  “Fatima,” she repeated. “Just Fatima. We only need one name in my world.”

  “Fata—Fata—”

  “No. No, no, no,” the woman interrupted. “The way you’re pronouncing it makes me sound obese, and I work extremely hard to keep my figure. It’s not easy, you know. Why, I can conjure up chocolate or bon bons at my very whim. Lucky for me, I enjoy grapes and oranges nearly as well as all those decadently over-sugared sweets.”

  “Look, I don’t care—uh—” Ellie placed a hand on her stomach. “Uh—chocolate and bon bons?”

  “Oh, my, yes. And truffles. Why, Ellie, my truffles are to die for. Here, try one.”

  She waved her wand and a thin china plate appeared amid the gold dust, hovering in the air and holding a chocolate truffle. Before she could stop herself, Ellie reached for the truffle and brought it to her lips. She could smell the wondrous odor of chocolate and almost taste it even before she took a small nibble. Chocolate and chocolate nougat melted in her mouth, and she finished the truffle in two more ecstatically delightful bites.

  “Would you like another one?” Fatima asked.

  “No, Fatima. I wouldn’t be able to fit in my clothes in the morning.”

  “Fatima,” she gently corrected. “Fa-tee-ma. We’re going to be friends, Ellie, and I do like my name pronounced correctly.”

  “Fatima,” Ellie repeated. “And I do have to agree that your truffles are to die for.”

  Fatima’s lips pursed in a self-satisfied preen. “It’s not just sweets that I’m good at conjuring up. Why, I have the right touch with anything I make. Cupid is a steak and potatoes man himself, and he says I’m the only one who can grill his steak to just the right combination of medium rare.”

  “Cupid?” Ellie blinked, then stared around her again. Fatima said something else, but Ellie let her babble on without comprehension as she adjusted her thoughts. For a moment there, she’d let that delicious truffle distract her and make her forget where she was.

  She was standing in a silk-lined tent amid the animal cages at the circus, talking to a woman who appeared out of nowhere and who carried a magic wand. Who used a magic wand, quite capably, from what she’d already shown Ellie. A woman with a beautiful Persian cat called Pandora and who talked about her friend, Cupid.

  Ellie had always been a reader, curling up in her room alone evenings while Darlene and Elvina did needlepoint in front of a winter fire. Reading late into the night as she made her way through the well-stocked library George Parker collected prior to his death five years earlier. She read of Greek gods and goddesses and even found tales of fairies and elves. In novels about Ireland, she read about Little People, including brownies and the vicious leprechauns, who horded their gold at the end of the rainbow.

  But she’d never believed. She knew the difference between fiction and reality—knew it well.

  Fiction was the dreams she had of visiting all the far-flung places she read about. Reality was her place at the Parker ranch. Her place as the orphan who should appreciate having an actual home instead of living in one of the always-in-need-of-funds orphanages, like she’d read about in some of Charles Dickens’ novels. Elvina alluded to her situation often enough.

  Fiction was wishes and hopes and buried dreams. Reality was the ranch she loved beyond measure, but to which she held no claim other than her ability to make herself indispensable to Elvina as a manager since George had died.

  And now she was losing her mind. Having visions of a prostitute who claimed to be her fairy godmother and a cat who communicated with her. Could she possibly come from a family who became deranged at an early age?

  “Ellie?”

  Fatima reached out and ran her hands up and down Ellie’s arms. The so-called fairy godmother felt real, not magical.

  “Ellie?”

  Ellie jerked back, arms flying up and knocking Fatima’s hands away.

  “No. You’re not real. This isn’t real. I’m not going crazy!”

  “You’re not going crazy,” Fatima assured her, then glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, dear. Here he comes, and I’m not ready yet for that part of this.”

  “Who?” Ellie demanded. “What part of what are you talking about?”

  But the tent disappeared around her, leaving Ellie standing in the middle of the area alone.

  “I’ll be back!” she heard Fatima say, although she didn’t see even a tiny spark of fairy dust in the air.

  That settled it. Ellie had no further doubt she was on the verge of lunacy.

  There she was. Shane paused in his search, frowning for a second. He could have sworn he’d already scanned this area a few seconds ago and hadn’t seen Ellie. He had searched the entire circus, his height being both a help and hindrance. He could see over nearly everyone’s head, but Ellie was so tiny he wove his way through thicker presses of bodies to make sure she wasn’t hidden there.

  Now she stood there looking up into the air, hands on hips and dainty foot patting impatiently under the hem of her dress.

  “I want you to explain yourself now!” he heard her say.

  “Huh?”

  Shane re-scanned the area, trying to find whoever Ellie spoke to. But there was no one else around. At least, not in the area Ellie appeared to be talking to.

  To his right various animal cages held lions, tigers and monkeys. The elephants and camels were chained and tied to their posts, nibbling at hay or, in the case of one elephant, sucking from a tub of water with a long, snaky trunk.

  To his left the big top sprawled, the lengthening ticket line finally moving forward. At Darlene’s insistence when he ran across her and Rockford, Shane had redoubled his efforts to find Ellie. Darlene assured him that she would save two seats, but from the looks of the crowd, that might not be possible.

  The animal cage area had been the only place left to look, and he truly hadn’t thought to find Ellie here. Now he couldn’t figure out what on earth she was doing.

  “Come back here!” she said.

  Was she fey? He never asked his mother that much about her friend. How Rose Spencer had died. Perhaps her death had been the result of some brain fault. But he wasn’t even sure this woman was the missing heiress, so he better tread softly.

  He softly tread nearer.

  “Miss Parker?”

  The noise from a sudden disturbance over by the elephants covered up his words.

  “Fatima! Pandora!”

  Fatima and Pandora? Good lord, she’s talking to fictional personages. At least, Pandora is a fictional goddess. I’ve never heard of Fatima.

  Shane stepped closer. “Miss Parker? Darlene sent me to find you.”

  Ellie whirled, then distractedly glanced over her shoulder. He could swear she was still looking up into the sky. He caught himself before he shook his head in sorrow. From her actions, he alm
ost thought her delusional. If that were the case, even if she were his mother’s friend’s long-lost daughter, she would never enjoy the riches waiting for her. She lived in a different world—or soon would.

  “Miss Parker?” he said once again, voice tempering with compassion. “Don’t you want to go in and see the circus?”

  “There’s another circus out here,” he thought he heard her say.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry.” Even her voice sounded distracted and distanced. “I said—uh—I lost track of it being time for the circus while I was out here. It’s a beautiful night, and I was enjoying the peace and quiet away from the crowds.”

  A lion roared mightily just then, and Shane chuckled.

  “Peace and quiet? I believe it’s ended now, since it looks like they’re getting the animals ready to perform.”

  He nodded over toward the elephants, where a spangled and bejeweled woman patted the face of one huge beast. The lion roared again, sending a chill up Shane’s back. He’d never been fond of cats, and the larger they were, the more he disliked them.

  “Shall we go?” he asked.

  She took a step, then started to lift her head and gaze overhead once again. Seeming to catch herself, she stopped in mid-motion and smiled at him.

  “That’s what we came for, isn’t it? To see the circus?”

  He bowed politely and held out his arm. She slipped her hand in the crook this time without protest, and Shane turned to lead her around the big top. Before they had taken three steps, the lion roared again.

  It didn’t only roar; it appeared in front of them. In fact, it bounded toward them.

  Ellie screamed. Shane instinctively shoved her behind him, then threw his hands up and braced for the lion’s charge. It roared again, and Shane realized he had closed his eyes in anticipation of the assault.

  When he slit them open, the lion sat in front of him. This time when it roared, Shane saw straight down its throat, past the enormous white fangs and blood-red tongue—to the waving tonsils deep inside. He imagined he could smell the fetid breath, and maybe he could.