My Unfair Godmother

by Janette Rallison

  Haverton laughed along. I didn’t.

  King John turned to Haverton and eyed me severely. “I say, the maiden has a rather dour temperament.”

  “You just threatened to kill me,” I pointed out.

  “Business, my dear.” He motioned to Haverton. “We have decided not to carry the gold ourselves, so you must find someone who’s trustworthy to move it to our rooms.” He paused. “When we say our rooms, we actually mean my rooms. None of the gold is to go to your room.”

  Haverton bowed. “As you say, sire.”

  “Feed the girl and …” King John glanced at my jeans and T-shirt disdainfully. “Give her a proper dress to wear.” He waved a finger toward my head. “And have one of the chambermaids do something with her hair. It looks like she’s slept in a haystack.” With that, he turned and walked from the room.

  • • •

  Two guards took me to the kitchen for some food and watched me from the doorway while I ate. The kitchen was a welcome change. It smelled like spices, and the fireplace not only housed a cauldron, it warmed the room as well. Several servants worked at the long wooden table where I ate, some chopping vegetables, some kneading dough, and a couple plucking chickens.

  There’s nothing that will dampen your appetite quite like watching someone pull the feathers off a dead bird, but still, I ate. I’d hardly eaten anything the day before.

  While I devoured a bowl of porridge, the servants sent suspicious glances in my direction and discussed the dangers of magic.

  “Do you recollect old Jonas?”

  “Aye, he tangled with a fairy and she turned him into a wolf. Spent the rest of his days in the woods pestering folks that passed by. A mighty nuisance, that one was.”

  “And remember the tailor and his wife. They wished for a child and a fairy helped them. Their daughter was born as big as a thumb and never grew a stitch bigger.”

  “Whatever became of poor Thumbelina?”

  “Methinks she was blown away in a fierce wind.”

  “Nay, she was drowned in a rainstorm.”

  “Nay, ’twas worse than that. Something awful. A cat, perhaps.”

  I put down the chunk of bread I’d been eating. This was one of the stories my father read to me years ago. I knew the answer. “Thumbelina was captured by a toad but escaped on the back of a swallow and eventually fell in love with a flower-fairy prince and married him.”

  The servants gasped at my ending and shook their heads sadly. The cook went back to chopping onions. “I told you ’twas awful. Married to a fairy, unlucky chit.”

  One of the chicken pluckers nodded. “ ’Tis probably what the first fairy meant to happen all along—that’s why she cursed the poor child.”

  One of the vegetable choppers pointed an onion in my direction. “You best not accept more help from this fairy godfather. Fairies only help themselves, and that’s the truth of it.”

  A dough kneader pounded on her loaf. “But who can afford to offend a fairy? They’ll curse you as sure as rain if you do.”

  Everyone mumbled in agreement and they went back to their work, perhaps considering my hopeless state.

  After I finished eating, the guards took me to the chambermaid’s room. I had been hoping for a bath, but only got a basin of warm water, a gritty bar of soap, and a rag to clean myself. The maid washed the straw out of my hair in a bucket of water, and then I dressed in a long blue gown with sleeves so big I could have hidden tubas inside them.

  She braided my hair and put it up with ribbons. When she finished, she pronounced me “a marvelous beauty” and gave me a hand mirror to check her work.

  I stared at myself as though if I kept watching, my reflection would revert back to the old me, the me from the twenty-first century that had come here wearing jeans and tennis shoes. Instead I saw a fairy-tale maiden with large, worried eyes. I put the mirror down.

  The chambermaid left, but I stayed in the room alone, with guards keeping watch outside the door. I was used to the constant noise of the modern world: TVs, iPods, cell phones. The silence felt suffocating. I walked back and forth across the room, wondering if Kendall and my mom knew we were missing yet. I also wondered what Nick and our parents were doing now, and what they’d do if they had to stay here for an entire year like the fairy tale said.

  I got to leave the room to eat lunch and dinner with servants—they regaled me with more stories of doomed mortals who’d had the misfortune to come across fairies. And I was allowed to leave the room to visit the garderobes, which were the medieval equivalent of the outhouse. Only they weren’t outside of the castle; they were smelly rooms with holes that emptied into some unfortunate place.

  When evening came, I was led outside to the barn by a procession of men. Haverton was at the front of the group, carrying a black bag that jingled as he walked. King John’s wizard walked next to me. He was a short, stocky man who wore black robes and gripped his wand in front of him like he wanted to poke someone with it.

  Hudson stood watch by the barn door. He opened it for us, catching and holding my gaze as the wizard pulled me inside. A few guards poured in after us. Each held a torch, which made me nervous in a barn full of straw. And it was full of straw. Several stacks stood taller than me—great uneven towers staring down at us. A stool sat in the middle of the stacks, looking small and forlorn by comparison. One of the guards set a spindle and a candle next to the stool. Its pale flickering light barely reached me. While I looked around, Haverton came up behind me, took hold of my arm, and clapped a metal band onto my wrist. I let out a startled yelp and pulled away in alarm, but it did no good. I was caught. A long, thick chain connected to the band. This is what Haverton had been carrying in his bag.

  I held my hand up angrily, glaring at Haverton. “I’ve got guards,” I protested. “Why are you shackling me?”

  Haverton went to a nearby beam, twisted the chain around it, and slid a lock through the links. “The king’s orders, m’lady.” He bowed slightly when he finished, then slipped the key into his pocket.

  The wizard stepped forward then, lifting his wand while he intoned something in Latin. He walked slowly around me and the beam, sprinkling reddish sand onto the floor. When he completed the circle, he tucked his wand back into his robe. “It shall hold her hence,” he told Haverton, and without further explanation, he turned and strode out of the barn. The guards followed after him.

  I tugged on my chain but I couldn’t walk out of the circle—I couldn’t even kick the sand with my foot. “What did he do?” I yelled to Haverton. “What does this mean?”

  He turned back. “ ’Tis nothing to fret about, m’lady—only a bit of magic to keep the fay folk from spiriting you off. They can’t cross that line. You’ll be safe.”

  Safe? I was handcuffed and trapped.

  Chapter 11

  This was what I got for telling the truth about who spun the straw into gold. I would be chained here all night, and even if Chrissy did come, she wouldn’t be able to help me.

  I sat in the circle for a few minutes, thinking. Perhaps the chain meant there wasn’t a guard outside, and if I could find a way out of this cuff, I could escape. I tried to slip my wrist out of the band, then tried to pick the lock using my hair pins. When neither of these worked, I yanked on the chain, hoping it had a weak link somewhere.

  I was tugging and rattling the chain so much that I didn’t hear the door open, didn’t hear Hudson walk over until he said, “They make those strong enough that a horse can’t break them. I doubt you’ll be able to.” He held a torch in one hand. It lit up the area better than the candle that was keeping me company.

  I let the chain drop back to the ground and put my hands on my hips, breathing hard. “Do you have a key?”

  “No. And I’d be executed if I let you escape. I’m supposed to be guarding you.”

  I lifted my chin. “Go ahead and ask me what my escape plans are. I don’t have any, because it’s impossible, and none of this would have happened if you had le
t me go last night.”

  He gave me a smirk that reminded me of the one Robin Hood wore. “Sorry, but who am I to mess up your fairy tale? Nice dress, by the way. Fit for a queen. Which reminds me—what do you think of King John now that you’ve met him?”

  “I think if he lived in our day, he would spend his time making tinfoil hats to keep aliens from abducting him.” I gave the chain another useless tug. “You know that none of this is my fault. Why won’t you help me?”

  He leaned up against a post not far from the one I was chained to. “I am going to help you. That’s why I’m here. I thought we should talk about our plans to find the Gilead.”

  I tried twisting the chain and then pulling on it. None of the links bent.

  Hudson’s gaze drifted to the mounds of straw behind me. “The nice thing about having most of the guards either busy shoveling straw in here or sent into the kingdom to buy straw for tonight was that there were fewer men guarding the king’s quarters. I actually got to snoop around the king’s sitting room. The Gilead wasn’t there, so it must be in his bedroom. Probably near his window so it can get some light.”

  “How nice. I hope his future wife remembers to water it. I’ll be someplace else.”

  “After a royal wedding, everyone will be feasting—except for the kitchen staff who’ll be busy serving everyone. I could sneak into his bedroom then and take it.”

  I stopped pulling on the chain long enough to mull over this possibility. “And we would be able to go home right after that? I wouldn’t actually spend a night married to King of the Froot Loops?” Dinner as the queen, I could manage. Anything else, I didn’t want to consider.

  Hudson rubbed his thumb against his bottom lip, thinking. “Bartimaeus the Proud won’t be invited to the wedding. Assuming I can get hold of a horse, it will still take a couple of hours to ride to his village to give him the Gilead. I’m not sure how long it will take him to send us home. We’ll probably have to round up your family and come back to the castle for that.”

  “So the plan is I marry King John so you can get the Gilead, and then you’ll ride off and I might never see you again?”

  He dipped his chin downward. “You can trust me.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “I trusted you in the police station. That worked out real well.”

  His gaze connected with mine, completely serious. “This is different. We need the Gilead to get home, Tansy.”

  I yanked the chain again and only succeeded in hurting my wrist. “I don’t know how most guys flirt with girls here in the Middle Ages, but King John keeps threatening to kill me. Funny, but I don’t find that romantic.”

  A voice with a distinctly Irish accent came from behind me. “Well, lass, every relationship has its downsides.”

  I turned around and saw the leprechaun standing eye level in the nearest straw mound. “Clover!” I said with relief. I pulled the chain as far over as I could go in his direction. “Clover, you’ve got to help me!”

  He strolled down the straw, lifting the brim of his hat to better see me. “Technically I’m not allowed to help. I’m just supposed to check up on you.” He pulled a pencil and a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “Chrissy even gave me a checklist.” He stopped at the bottom of the straw mound and looked me up and down. “Your hair is fashionably done. Check. Wearing a stunning gown. I guess so, if that’s the sort of thing you like.” He marked it off on the paper, then returned his gaze to my face. “Makeup. Nope. I’d better fix that.” He snapped his fingers, but whether anything changed on my face, I couldn’t tell.

  “Clover, listen to me for a minute.”

  Clover cocked his head. “I suppose your eye shadow is too bright and Her Excellence of Fairyness wouldn’t approve.” He let out a grunt. “I’m a full-fledged leprechaun and she’s using me as a bloomin’ makeup artist.” He snapped his fingers again then considered me. “Now the lipstick is too red. We can’t have you look like a ruddy barn tart, can we?”

  Hudson had been watching us in surprised silence, but now he spoke. “You’re the leprechaun that sent me here, aren’t you?”

  Clover snapped his fingers again. “Better,” he said, and made another mark on his paper. “Makeup done. Check.” He folded the paper, slipped it into his pocket, then turned his attention to Hudson. “At present, I’m a leprechaun for hire, but I’m not taking new clients until I’m done with this assignment. If you’re interested after that, and you have the gold to pay, I can leave you my card. I’ve started me own business: the You’re in Luck Leprechaun Agency.”

  Hudson put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes. “I was outside Tansy’s house and you sent me to Sherwood Forest with a gang of thieves.”

  Now Clover studied him in earnest. “That’s because you’re one of the Merry Men.”

  “No, I’m from the twenty-first century and I was just over at Tansy’s house doing homework with her brother.”

  Clover cocked his head, unconcerned. “Well, you seemed merry enough at the time.”

  “Trust me,” Hudson said slowly. “I’m not merry right now.”

  Clover reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the short stubby wand Chrissy had given him. The number on the top read “1.” He rattled the wand as though this would change the reading. “What a blaggarding mess. This means I left one of the Merry Men in the twenty-first century. Well, that’s not going to look good on the assignment evaluation at all.” He examined the wand, dissatisfied, and shoved it back into his jacket. “What were you doing hanging about with the Merry Men? Were you trying to trick me?”

  “No, I was trying to keep an eye on the suspects until the police arrived.” Hudson waved his hand to encompass me in his gesture. “Are you going to fix this mess and send us back?”

  “I haven’t the magic to send you back,” Clover said. “All this means is that now I’ve got a ruddy lot of paperwork to do, and then I’ve got to go find a Merry Man. Who knows how long that will take?”

  He buttoned his jacket with intent motions like he was about to leave. I moved toward him, forgetting about the chain until it jerked me back. “Clover, this whole wish is a mistake. You can’t leave us here. That isn’t fair.”

  Clover shook his head. “Mortals. You have no understanding of magic. You might mistakenly drive your car off a cliff, but mistake or not, you can’t undo the damage. When you made your wishes, you took hold of the steering wheel. Where your wishes take you … well, that’s your business. This fellow has to stay here with the rest of you until the fairy tale ends.” Clover took out a pocket watch and squinted at the time. “And speaking of business, I’ve got to go fill out a ‘Mortal in the Wrong Time Period’ report sheet.”

  I knew what to say to keep Clover from leaving. “I’ll give you gold.”

  He looked at me from underneath the brim of his hat. “Gold, you say?”

  I nodded. “In a little while this room will be full of gold. King John won’t notice if some is missing. If you help us, you can have an entire spool.”

  Clover walked down the straw mound, stroking his beard. “What sort of help would you be asking for in exchange for a trinket of that sort?”

  Hudson came up behind me. He was so close I could smell the scent of smoke from his tunic. Into my ear he whispered, “Haven’t you learned anything? If you’re going to ask someone for help, stick to your own species.”

  I whispered back, “My species has already disappointed me enough.”

  Hudson leaned closer to me. “You won’t trust me, but you’ll trust a leprechaun who couldn’t tell the difference between a Merry Man and a guy in jeans with a cell phone?”

  Clover tilted his head at me. “Do you want to do business or are you going to stand around all night murmuring sweet nothings to each other? Honestly. Mortals and their hormones.”

  “Business,” I said. I knelt down so I could be closer to Clover. “Look, there’s got to be some other way to get us home besides completing this fairy tale. I can k
iss a frog. I can tap ruby slippers together. But I can’t marry a crazy man, stay here for a year, and have his baby. I have things to do in the twenty-first century. Like graduate from high school.”

  “Oh, you won’t miss a year from your time period,” Clover said, as though that were my biggest concern. “Chrissy isn’t the best at time management, but she can still slow it down a bit. A week here is only an hour back in your own time period. In the twenty-first century, it’s still Monday morning on the day you left.”

  Which explained why Hudson had been here for three months yet I arrived here the morning after he’d been zapped from my house.

  And it meant Kendall and my mom didn’t know we were gone. They hadn’t started worrying yet.

  Clover went back to stroking his beard. “There is another way to get you home, but Her Excellence of Fairyness doesn’t like me to interfere in her wishes. If I decide to help you, you can’t tell her about it.”

  I nodded eagerly. “I won’t.”

  Above me, Hudson said, “Are you forgetting that you can’t lie without flames shooting out of your hair?”

  “Not volunteering information is different than lying,” I said.

  “You’re surrounded by straw.” Hudson rubbed a hand across his eyes. “I’d better ask the other guards to help me stockpile water buckets. I have a feeling there’s a fire in your future.”

  Clover kept stroking his beard, thinking. “I would have to do a bit of finagling with me poker chums. It wouldn’t be easy …”

  “Please,” I whispered. “Please?”

  Clover looked at me and sighed. “Mortal girls have a magic all their own. With one imploring eyelash flutter, they have the power to make men do foolish things.” Clover gave Hudson a meaningful look. “Be forewarned about that.”

  I didn’t think Hudson needed the warning. He was obviously impervious to my charms, or he would have helped me escape the first night.