by Tamsyn Muir
“Then we have nothing to say to each other,” said the fairy.
Princess Floralinda, in a rush, tried to explain her situation; but the fairy sat there in the wet sunshine unmoved. “I am a bottom-of-the-garden fairy,” it said. “My area is nominally children who need to be taken to Fairyland and removed just in time for their mother to bring a new baby home. I’m going to get in terrible trouble for being here,” it added, somewhat passionately, “only each time you finish the job you have to find a new garden where exactly one child has been born, so I’m obliged to always be on the move. This whole business has been simply ruined by modern society. Children are so knowing right now. I wanted to be the fairy who put the underneaths of mushrooms on, or made buttercups able to reflect whether or not you liked butter, or something chemical and practical; but they said the industry was saturated, so here I am, at exactly the wrong time professionally; and I’m sure to get into a most dreadful bother, and nobody ever trusts me.”
At this point it stamped its little foot and started crying again, which was quite nice, as its voice was not so pretty as its little weeping sounds.
“But perhaps you could help me escape,” said Floralinda feebly, who had a pounding headache, and was feeling rather the worse for wear. “I am so tired of being in this tower. The dragon yells at all hours, and there were a great many princes but none of them did very much, and I’ve had very bad times with goblins, and I’m—so—lonely.”
Not having known how lonely she had been, Floralinda began to cry herself. It was not the great hysterical yowls of before, but an exhausted kind of lying-back-to-cry where the tears squeezed out of her eyelids. At this the fairy stopped its crying, displayed the first flicker of interest, and dragged itself over to her—finding it could not fly on one wing, it made a sort of hop-skip-jump attempt, and nimbly climbed up the remaining panels of silver gauze.
“Are you truly a princess?” it said.
“My mother is a queen and my father is a king,” said Floralinda sadly, “and what’s more, they’re even married to each other.”
“It’s just that the tears of a real princess can be very useful,” said the fairy, with the attitude of someone aware that they could be being rude. “Apart from being pearls if she’s good and frogs if she’s bad, I mean; they’ve got properties I understand to be solvent and even medically valuable. Of course I’m only an amateur.”
And—though Princess Floralinda was a bit outraged—the fairy reached forward, and took some of her tears, and applied them neatly to the broken wing. At the briefest application of princess tears, all the glass-like chambers of the wing seemed to run together, as if they had been held close to a flame, and the ripped-up parts were made whole again; but the lower part which had been ripped off did not grow back.
“Well,” said the fairy practically, “that’s something; perhaps if you could cry something other than tears of loneliness, it would be even better. Could you cry for a broken heart, do you think?”
Princess Floralinda thought she could not cry for a broken heart, certainly not on command. But the fairy had become a bit friendlier, and up close was certainly so pretty that it was hard to be angry. Such beautiful little features—such cunning little pointed ears and nails on each finger and toe—such eyes, iridescent, like the chips of opal in her grandmother’s rings. It said, “Then could I prevail upon you to carry me down to the bottom, or to lower me down on a string?”
As there was nothing in the room that could be lowered down any further than two or three flights at best, and as the difficulty of getting to the bottom was the problem whole and entire, Floralinda supposed not.
“There’s nothing for it,” the fairy said. “I shall have to wait to bathe in the light of the full moon, and we’ve just had one, so it will take weeks. The wing will grow back then, and by that point you will be gone, so at least I’ll have full use of the tower.”
A great hope seized Floralinda.
“Oh,” she gasped, “oh, do you really think that I will be gone?”
“Naturally, yes,” said the fairy. “Those are goblin bites on your hands, aren’t they? They’re quite infected. Goblins are filthy. You’ll be dead in a week.”
At Floralinda’s new bout of tears, the fairy said a bit diffidently, “Cheer up; you might die earlier.”
“Oh, please,” managed Floralinda, “please, I really don’t want to die; it would break my mother’s heart, and there would be such a fuss over the funeral, and I wouldn’t even be there in the coffin, and my aunts would say dreadful things—oh, please! Don’t you have any fairy magic that could make me well, or couldn’t you take me to Fairyland, or call the birds and beasts to help us?”
The fairy didn’t think much of that idea; it didn’t seem to rate birds or beasts very highly. “Fairy magic is mostly wish-based, and very particular and contextual,” it said. “As I said, if you were a child without modern biology textbooks or access to a free-thinking nanny, I might do a great deal. It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the idea. I think the limitations of fairy magic are really restricting us in this day and age, and I’ve said so, and proved so. No, fairy magic won’t make you well, and I can’t take you to Fairyland and wouldn’t if I could.”
Floralinda sank back into the pillows again, her head and her hands hurting, feeling white with dismay. She was exhausted. Maybe she was dying. She had never died before, and the closest she had come was contracting chicken-pox and six colds and very mild scarlatina. “Perhaps,” she whispered, “perhaps I’ll live, and you could go and get a doctor, or at least tell someone where I am?”
“I think that would probably annoy the witch who put you in here,” said the fairy frankly, “and I have enough trouble in my life without annoying witches. You must understand that it is really none of my business.”
“That’s very hard on me,” said Floralinda.
“I would blame the princes,” said the fairy. “Princes aren’t what they used to be. They’re soft. Fancy not coming to look for you, just because twenty-four of them were eaten up already.”
But Floralinda had not been able to blame the princes. It seemed hard lines for them too. If she had been a prince rather than a princess, and had been told, ‘Get out to that tower and have a go, there’s a good prince, don’t get precious about yourself,’ she would not have liked it either. All the big strong fat princes had probably been crunched up already, with just the small weedy princes left over, or worse the small chubby princes, for whom it would have been twice as unfair. She said this, and the fairy said she was being soppy.
“If you tell me your name,” it said, with the air of someone conferring a great favour, “I might whisper it into a bluebell, and the bluebell might whisper it to a foxglove, and the foxglove might whisper it to a daisy, and daisies will tell anyone anything. That can hardly be tracked back to me.” (And this seemed to please the fairy, being relatively easy and not really any skin off the fairy’s lovely nose.)
“My name is Floralinda Amelia Melisande Augustina Eleanora Selina,” said Floralinda.
“Ho, ho! Daisies will make absolute Whispers-down-the-Lane of that,” said the fairy. “My name is Cobweb.”
Which made Floralinda happy, because it was just like in her Shakespeare.
Her head still ached, and her eyes kept closing of their own volition, and talking seemed harder than it ever had when she had been back home and had talked nineteen to the dozen all day to everyone. She did not know what to do now that she was dying; but she bravely held on to hope.
“And you are sure, Cobweb,” she said, “that I can’t make a wish? Perhaps if it’s a very small wish, you’ll find you’re able to grant it?”
“Have a go,” said Cobweb indifferently, “but do keep in mind I think the whole thing’s a bit embarrassing.”
“I wish that I might be rescued,” wished Floralinda.
“Too large a wish; make it smaller,” said Cobweb, after a moment.
“I wish that I didn�
�t have to die,” wished Floralinda.
“You are misunderstanding ‘smaller’,” said Cobweb.
“I wish that I might be safe,” wished Floralinda.
“Too woolly,” said Cobweb. “You’re not listening. Try to get as close to ‘How I wish Mummy would come home from the hospital soon, and bring me a dear little baby,’ as you can.”
Floralinda did not know if her mother was in hospital, though of course she hoped not; but she did not quite want her mother to bring her a dear little baby, which sounded as though it would create problems. The whole matter of who was in current possession of the christening robe would be brought up all over again. Her head felt as though it was full of broth, and none of her thoughts were floating to the top.
She thought back to all the days and days of tally-marks in the diary down the back of the armchair, and she thought of the tops of the trees of the forest spread out beneath the tower window, and of the ceaseless, unending cries of the diamond-tipped dragon on the first floor. She thought of the taste of wheaten bread and the taste of white bread, and of oranges, and milk, and water. She thought of how she was always afraid, and how when she wasn’t afraid she was bored to tears, and how no matter whether bored or afraid she was always in pain.
So Floralinda raised her weak voice, and she was so ill and tired that the wish came out as—
“Please, God, please let things be different.”
“You’ll regret that one,” said Cobweb.
But Floralinda was already asleep.
Princess Floralinda had part of her wish come true immediately: with Cobweb around, things changed. It could not be said that they changed exactly for the better. Of course it was delightful to have someone to say, “Good morning,” to, and to be able to express a thought and have a response that wasn’t just made up inside your own head. Anyone who has been inside a sick-room for ages will know how good it is to see a new face. But although Cobweb was really delightful to look at, it didn’t have very nice manners, and wasn’t at all sympathetic, nor indeed particularly interested in Floralinda.
The wounds on her hands were much worse by evening. Her head and her arms felt hot, and she couldn’t sleep for all that she was oh! so tired; and she was hungry, but then when she tried to eat she suddenly wasn’t hungry and instead was fearful that she was going to be sick again. Cobweb was not a very good nurse, or even really any kind of nurse at all, and instead poked around the tower room and made little heaps of dust and brooded over the moss growing in the corners of the windowsill. Floralinda could hardly move her arms, which made it very difficult to get at the orange.
She humbly asked Cobweb if Cobweb wouldn’t mind peeling it for her; Cobweb obviously did mind, but nonetheless got very interested in the orange.
“This is witch-work,” it said. “And very powerful. You see here—the orange is really an orange—’tisn’t just gilt paper and sponge, done up to make you think it something else. (Fairy-magic can’t get over making things out of gilt paper and sponge. They should investigate the links between Fairyland and the men who make gilt paper and sponge.) Why, you could do anything with this—and you’ve been eating it?”
“Well, yes,” said poor Floralinda, “it’s good for your skin and hair.”
“Yes, yes; vitamins, and all that,” said Cobweb, “but also an unending supply of citric acid, which is a druggist’s dream. And you say that the milk flask always produces milk, and the water flask always produces water? Witches don’t know miracles when they create them. The opportunities! The implications! May I take them away, after you die?”
“I don’t see why you should,” said Floralinda, whom pain had made a little fretful. It seemed as though the light was very bright, and her hands felt very queer. The bite-marks had gone stiff and greenish; they bled, but also shed some nasty yellow-coloured stuff that Floralinda hated to see. She continued, “The witch gave them to me, and the flasks are bigger than you are, so you’ll have a time flying out of the tower with them. And I don’t care that they’re so wonderful; they can’t do much for me.”
“You are displaying a very small-minded attitude,” said the fairy, who seemed genuinely grieved by this. “Consider the orange-peel, which by itself has many very nice properties. Now, if you had a more educated brain (I cannot consider myself educated; I have only attempted to better my situation) you would have immediately said, ‘Why, if I had some liquor, or even very hot water, I could extract some oil from this orange-peel, which as everyone knows is antibacterial; that may well do my hands some good,’ and you wouldn’t be in such a stupid predicament.”
“Would it really do my hands good?” said Floralinda, doubtfully.
“Ye-e-s,” said Cobweb, appearing to regret the suggestion a bit, as it distanced the fairy farther than ever from securing the flasks for its own. “Well, it does depend, rather. Boiling the water would be necessary. Which is impossible, as you haven’t any source of heat—”
But Floralinda had pushed away the bedclothes, which was a relief as they were quite damp from her sweating, and although she felt rather dizzy she tried to not think about it, as thinking about things was often when the difficulties started. She wrapped her hands about with the silver gauze, although it made tears prick at her eyes, and unlocked the door. Floralinda felt the cool, still air on her skin from the stairway down to the thirty-ninth floor, and wrinkled her nose at a stink she was afraid was coming from the goblin that had broken its neck. It was such an awful smell that she was worried it would hurt her, and resolved to do something with the goblin later; but she was more interested in the brazier of coals, and the fire in them that never seemed to go out.
But how to take a coal? Of course she might light a taper—there were plenty of pages in Monarchic Positions that could be burned, chiefly the endnotes—but fires wanted more fuel, and even a princess could see that she only had so many books and sticks of furniture. The coal would be essential. Floralinda picked her way back up the stairs—Cobweb the fairy sat on the end of the bed looking more like a blossom than ever, but quite a judgmental blossom—and went to her own picturesque hearth with the false front, where there was an ornamental poker, and ornamental tongs. She removed the bowl of painted pine-cones from the grate. The tongs Floralinda took in her hands, and oh dear, didn’t it hurt to use them!—but they opened and closed just as they ought to have done, which displaced quite a bit of dust. Thusly armed, Floralinda crept back downstairs, and with all the care she could manage, she took a coal from that spitting, greasy brazier, and brought it upstairs.
She put it in the unused hearth, and some of the dust caught fire, but otherwise the coal sat there safely with its little flame always burning. It made her face hotter than it had been, and her hands had bled; but there was fire. The coal did not get any cooler, and the flame did not recede.
How Cobweb stared!
“This place,” it said, “is a dream of combustion.”
Floralinda had thought combustion was a sort of garment they put over one’s corset in the old days.
“Yes,” said Cobweb, when Floralinda ventured this, “but you are not very clever.”
Princess Floralinda supposed not.
But the fairy got quite excited, for all that. It directed Floralinda to get a few more coals to heap up in a proper little fire, and to bring over the copper basin that sat in the wash-stand, and all the while it took about seven oranges’ worth of orange-peel—for the peel, as it turned out, grew back just as readily as the flesh did—and pulled it all apart. It was quite fun to watch Cobweb work: shaking out an orange-peel as though it were a blanket, and ripping this into shreds, more finely than even the tiny grater Cook uses to make powdered nutmeg with in your kitchen. The whole room began to smell like walking through an orange grove, and Cobweb’s pale hands were stained yellow, especially the underneaths of the tiny fingernails, and it sat before a fairy-sized hummock of wet grated orange-peel. Floralinda filled the basin with water, and rigged it up over the coals. Wh
en it was on a rolling boil Cobweb tossed the orange-peel inside.
“Most of the good stuff has already evaporated,” it said. “This isn’t really efficacious. If I had good-quality oil, or rubbing alcohol, we might do better. The witch didn’t leave any of that, did she? No? Bad luck—take it off the fire—use those cloths to guard your hands—now, take off that gauze, and plunge your hands in the water when I say so; it will feel pretty dreadful.”
When Cobweb gave the direction, Floralinda plunged in her hands. It was indeed pretty dreadful. She was sick again. She was also forced to look at her hands, and the wounds looked a fright; her hands were so swollen that she felt sure all her gloves would have to be remade at the glover’s. Cobweb made her keep her hands in the water until she really couldn’t stand it, and then she was allowed to take them out; and they looked simply horrid.
“You must do that three times a day,” said the fairy, who had grown quite pompous from bossing her about.
Floralinda gasped, “And will I live?”
“If you die, it will be an education,” said Cobweb reasonably.
“But if I die, I’m sure I won’t learn a thing,” protested the princess; to which the fairy explained—
“But I would have learned a great deal.”
Which did not really satisfy Princess Floralinda.
Come that lunchtime, she felt so horrible that she was certain dying was better than having to put her hands in a fresh mixture of citron-peel and hot water. That whole dusty little tower room reeked of oranges until she wanted to weep from it. If the late Princess Mellarose had felt herself killed by oranges, Floralinda felt sure that she was doubly dead from them; but the little fairy seemed so absorbed in skinning the orange over and over again, and arranging some of the long strips to dry in the sun, and amusing itself by separating the pith and the peel, that Floralinda did not feel it in her power to call a halt. But this time she was careful to keep the chamber-pot next to her, and began to anticipate the pain, which for a princess was shocking; for your average princess can’t anticipate pain, even if she has pricked her finger on a spindle half a dozen times, or slept on hard peas for half a year.
