Faerietale

by Stephanie Rabig

  FAERIETALE

  by

  Stephanie Rabig

  Colleen Toliver

  and Angela Barry

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  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2012 by Stephanie Rabig, Colleen Toliver, and Angela Barry

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the authors' work.

  Prologue

  Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Cinderella. She was beautiful in her own way-- an angular, interesting face-- but her two older sisters were delicate and lovely and drew all the suitors, and all of their father's attention and gifts.

  Now as it happened, Cinderella's next-door neighbor was a powerful woman, one schooled in the ways of forest magic. And she foresaw that Cinderella would one day be Queen.

  At first Cinderella could not help but laugh-- her family was poor, too poor to live anywhere near the palace. And besides, the Prince did not even accept a harem anymore. He had married a kind, lovely woman named Gold-Tree and they were quite happy together.

  So Cinderella did the chores and forgot Mother Miriam's prophecy, until the day when Gold-Tree was poisoned and killed by her vengeful mother. The Prince mourned and refused to bury her, using the strongest magicians to keep her body whole, preserving her forever in a glass coffin in the room next to his own. He vowed to never marry again.

  But the Royal line had to continue, and the Queen was direly ill. For her last wish, she begged her son to marry, if not for love, then simply to produce an heir.

  He reluctantly agreed, and held a ball that anyone could attend.

  Mother Miriam fashioned for Cinderella a beautiful dress and sturdy, fragile-seeming glass slippers. Though she was not the loveliest girl at the ball, she was the most clever and the most confident, and soon won the Prince's attention.

  As a condition of marriage, she moved Mother Miriam, her two sons, and her infant grandchild into the palace.

  And then came her seventeenth birthday. She went to pay her respects to Gold-Tree, as the newly-crowned King expected everyone in the palace to do at least twice a season. Seeing a needle sticking out of the dead girl's fingertip and remembering what Mother Miriam had taught her of forest magic, she broke into the coffin and removed the needle. Gold-Tree immediately sat up, expression owlish as she asked what had happened.

  The King was overjoyed to get his true love back. What little attention he'd paid to Cinderella dwindled to almost nothing. And Mother Miriam told her what she already knew-- the prophecy of her ever being Queen was fading.

  Cinderella thought of it often, over many long days and nights, and finally decided that it might be something to be lived with. She would never rule, but she and any children she might bear would always be well cared for. Or at least she told herself this. She repeated it silently over and over, even as she tried to ignore how much it grated when the King forever complimented Gold-Tree on her beauty while never saying a word to her about her cleverness and passion. Even after she gave the King two healthy children, a boy and a girl, nothing changed. Though she had granted him the heirs he so needed, she was not his favorite, or even his friend.

  But all was not lost for Cinderella. Mother Miriam's eldest son had been killed in a hunting accident, but her other son was a young man now. He was kind and handsome, and the rejected Princess was pleased to see some of the looks she gave him returned in kind.

  Then an assassin's potion felled the King. He had made a mistake, drinking from a new goblet of wine before ordering his tester to do so, and it cost him his life.

  Less than three days after her husband's untimely death, Gold-Tree nearly ate from a plate of cookies prepared for her by an unknown well-wisher. She was startled and unhappy when Cinderella stopped her and lectured her for the mistake. Her only response was, "But they're a gift, Cindy! In a time of mourning! Surely they're all right!"

  Word spread of how unprepared the young Queen was to rule. Complaints went unanswered. Gold-Tree ignored anything that confused her, which left much of the day-to-day business of the palace and the kingdom undone. And word got to the neighboring kingdom, who had long coveted Faerietale's lands, and they prepared to take over the ill-led territory.

  Cinderella confronted the other woman at last, telling her that war would come upon them if she did not become a stronger ruler.

  "Oh, pish-posh!" Gold-Tree replied. "It will be fine, Cindy, you'll see. I just have to get the hang of this."

  "There is no getting the hang of it in a job like this!" Cinderella argued. "This isn't . . . isn't mucking out stables or practicing a spell! They will declare war!"

  "That's silly. They haven't ever done so before; why would they start now?"

  Her concerns dismissed, Cinderella went to Mother Miriam for help.

  Knowing that she would not be suspected in Gold-Tree's death-- having been the one to save her in the first place-- Cinderella lured Gold-Tree to a secret chamber in the palace, where Mother Miriam waited. They first turned her to a Shadow, draining her life essence, for an experiment-- to see if Cinderella could use it to become a more charismatic, well-loved ruler. Steeling herself against her former friend's cries, Cinderella finished the process, and then took Gold-Tree's life as quickly and mercifully as she could.

  Looking away from her grisly accomplishment, she met the eyes of the young man she'd come to care for so much. There was no understanding on his face, no comprehension of the fact that she could never save this kingdom as long as Gold-Tree drew breath. Only horror and disgust.

  Though she knew she should point him out, should alert the guards, she held her tongue. It was only after she was certain he'd had time to escape that she revealed what she'd seen to his mother.

  Mother Miriam sighed, then took a small vial from around her neck and smashed it to the floor. Frightened, but hardened enough now to not show it, Cinderella asked what she had done.

  The necklace, Mother Miriam told her, was the talisman that kept an old family curse from affecting her son. Only in the forest, the birthplace of their magic, would he be himself now, she said. Should he roam the villages, should he ever return to the palace, it would be as a wolf.

  The new Queen nodded in understanding, and looked at the blood still coating her hands. Cinderella-- Cindy-- had died with Gold-Tree. From this point forward, she would be the Red Queen.

  They cut away most of Gold-Tree's hair and dressed her in drab peddler's clothes. Then they spirited her into the Shadow City to be burned with the day's dead. The former Queen was unrecognized by the men who disposed of the body.

  On a shelf in her quarters, the Red Queen keeps one of the glass slippers she wore when she was an eager young girl on her way to the ball, hoping to win the Prince's affection. Inside the slipper is a pair of Gold-Tree's earrings. She keeps both as a reminder of how useless it is to be a kind, meek person. And she rules over Faerietale still.

  Chapter One

  Once Upon a Time...

  "Finally. They should've sent a stronger Fae with me; this last spell almost didn't work."

  Tink tried to resist the urge to flail wildly at Aida. For the past week, the other Fae had been hounding her about how important this job was, and how everything had to go exactly right, and how it was such a pity that two Fae were needed for magic this strong because she'd much rather handle everything herself and make sure there were no mistakes.

>   Sizechanging a Fae child and sending him or her to the mortal realm was done once a year. It was an honored tradition; one that she herself had actually been part of when she was an infant. So, her Queen had said, it would only be right that she take part in the ritual again now that she was grown.

  The tricky part was that the King's second wife had come to them some months before. She knew of their ritual, and had asked that instead of raising the next child they brought over as their own, they give him to her. Gold-Tree had yet to bear the King a child, and Cinderella would surely use the little one they brought back as a strike against her. They were all sworn to secrecy, and Tink was sick of it. She wanted to dart around and gather food and rest by the river and play games with Peter, not get roped into Kingdom politics, of all the pointless things.

  But here she was, having worked tirelessly for hours on the Sizechanging spell with the most infuriating Fae in all existence.

  At least it was done now. The mortal baby was hovering safely next to them, giggling and laughing, and the Fae infant was safe in the mortal's bassinet. The last spell had involved granting enough of their magic to the mortal to allow him to fly-- or rather, float; they would control his motion and take him safely back to Faerietale.

  The Fae, unfortunately, was not nearly as happy as the mortal about this whole ritual-- probably because they weren't close to him anymore-- and he started to cry.

  "Time to go," Aida said, and then she paused, peering into the mortals' window instead.

  "What? Everything's fine!"

  "Tink. . ."

  She was going to bribe a mortal to step on her yet. "Would you calm--" Then she joined her at the window, and her mouth dropped open. There was a mortal woman, standing by the bassinet. She was breathing hard, her eyes wide in horror, and she took a few faltering steps back.

  "The glamour," Aida hissed. "You did cast the glamour, didn't you?"

  "Of course I. . ." Tink began, but then she trailed off, because there would be no point to such an easily disproven statement. The woman clutched at her chest, choking, her gaze still on the Fae. They'd chosen a Faery child of the same age and general appearance to make the glamour easier to maintain, but without that mask of course differences could be seen, especially by the boy's own mother.

  "Tinker Bell, you are the most useless Fae to ever exist!" Aida snapped, as the woman let out a strangled shriek and dropped to the floor. "Oh, it's no wonder you hang about with that flying boy all the time; he doesn't know our ways and how pathetic you are at them! How could you forget the glamour?"

  "Probably because I was distracted by you! If you'd quit nagging and left me alone for two minutes. . ."

  "Then you would've done something even more stupid! Up," Aida said, as a man came into the room.

  Tink heard his footsteps, fast at first and then slowing to a stop. He must've seen her. The cry he gave then made her feel guiltier than a thousand lectures from Aida ever could.

  She was still nattering on, but Tink ignored her, watching the window. To her surprise, the man's face suddenly appeared there, and he leaned out so far that she was certain he would fall, reaching for the child.

  "Come on," Aida said, her nose wrinkled up in disgust. "Too late to do anything about it now."

  She hovered back and Tink flew with her, the child between them, leaving the man behind. He howled, rage and grief and terror, and the infant began to cry. Tink almost felt like joining him.

  Was this what her ritual had been like?

  No. The glamour would've been cast then. And she would've gotten everything right as well, if it hadn't been for Aida.

  Didn't matter now, she thought. What was done was done. And the important thing was that since Aida would surely tell every Fae far and wide about her mistake, she would never get called upon to participate in something like this again. They would deliver this child to Cinderella, and then her own life could get back to normal.

  Alice had found the gun while she was looking for Narnia.

  Her mother had been reading her The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for a bedtime story, and she'd been fascinated with the idea of another world hiding somewhere in the normalcy of the house. So she'd poked into every nook and cranny-- closets first, naturally, since they didn't own a wardrobe.

  She'd had to pull up a chair to get to the top shelf of her mother's closet, and then put a box on top of the chair to reach the very back. Her mother would've lectured her for a month if she'd seen her.

  The gun had fascinated her. It had seemed such a strange thing for her calm, always-smiling mother to possess. Finding it had been even more fantastic than finding Narnia-- she'd been half-expecting to stumble onto a different world, after all. This was something completely new.

  She'd tried to picture her mother walking into a gun shop and buying it, couldn't. Had finally decided that it was something left over from her father, who'd traveled on to somewhere else a couple of months before she was born. She'd never gotten any answers as to exactly where he'd gone. Maybe to Heaven, maybe to a big city, or maybe he'd found his way to one of the magical places her mother was always reading her stories about.

  She would hold the gun and try to picture his face. She had red hair where her mother had black; her father had to have red hair. Both she and her mother had brown eyes-- no clue to his features there. Her mother was tiny and was always telling her that she grew like a weed; maybe her father was tall.

  Alice knew her mother would've panicked to walk in and see her holding that gun, but it had always been a source of comfort. Until the night when she'd shoved the chair in front of the closet, thrown the box on top of it, scrambling up so fast she'd toppled to the floor and immediately jumped up and started to climb again, sobbing--

  Shaking her head, she finished bagging up the order she'd been working on. Tom gave her an odd look and then went back to talking to Kimberly, who was eagerly chattering about the gun her father had given her for her eighteenth birthday.

  She didn't think of the gun in the closet every time someone mentioned a firearm-- she'd go insane during hunting season if that was the case-- but sometimes. . .

  Giving the customer her usual 'happy to be of service' fake smile as she handed over the burger and fries, she then got to work on the next order, wishing that one of her coworkers would actually talk to her for once.

  Tom was an artist: she'd tried her hand at drawing during high school, and though she hadn't had any real aptitude for it, she still loved looking at other people's work, loved discussing the craft.

  Kimberly was such an outdoors girl Alice was surprised she hadn't convinced their manager to let her wear her hunter's vest in place of her uniform: though she hadn't held on to her mother's love of fantasy stories, she fondly remembered the nature walks they used to take; still took them herself at least once a week.

  Nina was pregnant: Alice had made most of her money in high school through babysitting, loved kids.

  But none of them really spoke to her. Not out of hostility or anything, they just . . . didn't.

  She'd tried once or twice to join in their conversations, but they'd always looked so surprised that she was actually saying something that she'd backed off again. She liked to think of herself as a friendly person, but the truth was that she was pretty quiet until she fully knew and trusted someone. And by the time that happened, they'd gotten used to thinking of her as a wallflower.

  Didn't quite know how to break that. She remembered one of the most popular girls at her school, Maryann Hartley, and how she'd seemed to be able to strike up a conversation with anyone, anytime. She'd even talked to her a few times.

  Luckily, she'd managed to not make an utter fool out of herself. Like all of the other popular kids, Maryann had been attractive. But unlike some of the others, she'd been kind, and Alice had harbored a crush on her for her freshman and sophomore years, until the older girl had graduated and headed off for greener pastures.

  She'd been realistic about the chances
of them ever getting involved, but she had fantasized about them at least becoming friends, especially on the days Maryann had actually spoken to her.

  But of course that hadn't happened, and she'd returned to sitting in the back of every classroom and finishing her homework, wishing that she could just open her mouth and talk for once. She didn't mean to seem standoffish, but if she tried to explain--

  If she tried to explain, she'd trip over her words and her coworkers would go from thinking she was quiet to thinking she was nuts.

  Now don't start that, she told herself. Besides, it probably had nothing to do with her. They just knew each other from high school and were staying within their comfort zones, that was all.

  Glancing at the clock again, she smiled. Almost time for her to leave.

  On the walk back to her apartment, she noted that another 'for sale' sign had been put up. The small house could've been described as cozy once upon a time, now the paint was peeling and the yard was in disarray. It still looked better than the other houses on the block.

  One of these days, she thought idly, she'd pick up a winning lottery ticket and move to a huge mansion and spend her days sipping margaritas and ordering the butler around.

  She grinned, wondering if rich people even had butlers anymore. The word had always struck her as so amusingly old-fashioned.

  Then she waved to Sean and Michael, the twins who lived across the road. They were in their driveway playing basketball again, which meant they made a few shots before one of them tackled the other and started a wrestling match on the lawn. They'd apparently been playing for a while today, judging from the grass stains all over their shorts and tank tops.

  They waved back, and then Michael grinned mischievously and bounced the basketball off the back of his brother's head. Sean whirled around and got him in a headlock.