The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “About that, yes.”

  “You’ve found her? You’ve found the pumpkin woman?”

  Dandini’s triumphant smirk gave him the answer without any need for words, and for one utterly reckless moment Charming could have kissed him. Then sanity came back, and instead he clasped Dandini’s hand and pumped it up and down.

  “Wonderful!” he said. “Wonderful! Dandini, you’re a miracle worker!”

  Dandini freed his fingers. “My, aren’t you strong!” He shook his hand. “Much more of that and I’d have been quite useless! But honestly, petal, it wasn’t that difficult. In fact, it was Buttons who gave me the ideal – all right, I know you don’t approve, but he’s nearly twenty-one now, and he’s a very clever boy. Well, Buttons and I went fishing the other day – we’ve got this little lodge down by the river, you know the one. Didn’t catch a thing all day, except nearly our deaths when it started to rain, but that’s another story . . . Oh, listen to me, digress-digress; it’s a deplorable habit. Anyway, Buttons said that the reason why we didn’t catch any fish was because the bait wasn’t up to the mark. Very choosy creatures, fish, he said; they’ll only rise for something they really want, and if you haven’t got it, you might as well pack up and go home. So I thought what about applying the same principle to the pumpkin woman?”

  “Bait?” Charming was beginning to lose track.

  “Precisely. Now, we know she’s got a big thing about being Rell’s fairy godmother, don’t we? Bit of a complex, if you like; fancies herself in the part. So I thought what little bait can we dangle that a fairy godmother couldn’t resist? And the answer was obvious.”

  “Was it?”

  “Of course! So I dangled it. ‘Wealthy and influential patron with own coat of arms seeks Fairy Godmother for newborn baby son. Usual perks, plus generous bonus, to the right candidate. Apply in the first instance to Duke Emerald—’ ”

  “Duke Emerald?” Charming interrupted.

  “Me, dear.” Dandini put a hand to his own heart. “Just my little joke. They’ve always been my favourite gems because they go so well with my eyes. So anyway, Duke Emerald’s got a little Dukeling, so he simply has to have a fairy godmother for it, doesn’t he? It’s the ultimate fashion accessory.” He beamed. “All it took was one teeny-weeny little advert in Ideal Gnome, and up she popped. Easy as saying boo to a footman.”

  With a conjuror’s flourish he produced a small business card from the ermine-trimmed sleeve of his coat and slapped it into Charming’s hand. The card was circular, shining faintly with stale fairy-dust, and had a stylized pumpkin drawn on one side.

  “Dead give-away, isn’t it?” Dandini said. “And quite crass. Read it, petal, do.”

  Charming turned the card over. In an ink whose colour could best be described as fainting mauve, it announced:

  Gifts, Wishes and Spells by

  ROSA RUGOSA

  Fairy Godmother to the Gentry

  Fully Trained & Experienced, At Home and Overseas:

  All Tastes Catered For and Religions Respected

  The Hemlocks, Murkwood (3rd Clearing)

  Also Fresh Fruit & Veg In Season – Pumpkins a Speciality

  “Rosa Rugosa, indeed!” Dandini said disdainfully, leaning over Charming’s shoulder. “If that’s her real name, I’ll marry Araminta.”

  “But it is her,” said Charming softly.

  “Oh, I think we can rely on that, dear heart. There was a covering letter as well, but if you read that you’ll probably be ill – it’s got enough syrup in it to stun an entire hive of bees.”

  Charming was still staring at the card. In a voice of faintly dangerous relish he asked, “Where’s Murkwood?”

  “Oh, we don’t need to send that far to find her. She’s got another job as well, much nearer to here. Receptionist at the Ogre’s Castle Country Hotel and Conference Centre; it’s part of that new Leisure Experience, you know, where old Grimboots used to hang out until that macho foreigner chopped his head off for him. He’s on the Experience’s board of directors now; the foreigner I mean of course. I saw him just the other week. Quite the tycoon now, but he still can’t drum up the manners to pass the time of day with me . . . anyway, that’s all by the by, isn’t it? What do you want me to do about the pumpkin woman?”

  Charming was still studying the card, and a smile was spreading slowly across his face. He wondered briefly what reward Dandini would most like for his success, then thought that it might be better not to speculate on such a question. And then, he thought of Rell . . .

  “We-ell,” he said, “There’s no need to hurry, of course. Matters like this must be handled with tact and diplomacy, after all. Bring her here to the palace, Dandini. Say . . . tomorrow morning? At dawn?”

  The sun was just showing its face when Rosa Rugosa, sandwiched between two burly guards who owed Dandini a special favour or two, was frogmarched unceremoniously into one of the palace’s largest, bleakest and most echoey rooms. She was protesting loudly and fluently, but when she saw Charming, seated in full regalia on his father’s second-best throne (which she didn’t know was only second-best), the protests died, spluttering, into a single, dismayed word.

  “. . . Ah . . .”

  “Ah, indeed, Miss Rugosa.” Charming stood up, and at a signal the guards departed, shutting the door with a portentous and well-rehearsed boom behind them. Rosa Rugosa looked desperately over her shoulder. Dandini, who had stayed, smiled sweetly at her, folded his arms and leaned back against the door.

  “Come forward, please,” Charming said ominously. “Stand in front of me.”

  Her face turned white, pink, white again, then she swallowed and tiptoed a few paces towards the throne, where Charming could see her more clearly. Fundamentally, he thought, the receptionist of the Ogre’s Castle Country Hotel and Conference Centre (“All Rooms En Suite, Your Comfort is Our Raison d’Etre”) was not classic fairy godmother material. Her hair had been painstakingly permed into the fashionable style of the season, her nails were painted (more subtly, admittedly, than Dandini’s), and she gave the impression that chic was her middle name. However, she had made some effort to look the required part, for her tailored business suit was made of gossamer (though very understated), there was a small, tasteful tiara on her head, and one hand held a silver wand with a discreetly elegant diamond gleaming at its tip. The effect was impressive – or at least would have been if she had not suddenly started to tremble violently at the knees.

  Charming smiled, not pleasantly, pointed to a strategically placed chair, and said, “Sit down.”

  She collapsed rather than sat. The chair had been set to put her at a psychological disadvantage: it was at just the right level below the throne, and was positioned so that she was obliged to sit at an awkward angle and crane her neck in order to see Charming’s face. As he resumed his own place on the throne she scrambled her courage together and made an attempt at a smile.

  “Your Highness . . .” There was a simper in her voice, disguising quivering desperation. “I am charmed to meet you, naturally, but I really don’t understand—”

  “Ah,” Charming said. “You recognize me, then?”

  “Well—” She laughed coquettishly. “How could I not? Moving, as I do, among the cream of society; in my work, you see, the Ogre’s Castle encourages only the most exclusive—”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever been there. But I congratulate you on your choice of a hiding place. Most ingenious. Who would think to look for a genuine fairy godmother behind the reception desk of a country hotel and conference centre?”

  “Your Comfort is Our Raison D’—” From habit she started to repeat the slogan before she could stop herself, but the unctuous words fizzled out as she saw his expression. She coughed genteelly. “Please excuse me, Your Highness. Dust, you know. I’ve always had a teeny tendency to be allergic . . . You were saying, um, something about . . .”

  “Hiding.”

  “Oh, yes.” Smile. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” />
  “Oh, no,” Charming corrected her. “I’ve found you. And now that I have, I want answers to some questions. Beginning with this one. Why did you do it?”

  She blinked, affecting surprise. “Do, ah, what, exactly?”

  Dandini made an extraordinary noise that might or might not have been a suppressed snigger, and Rosa did her best to look affronted. “Your Highness, I assure you that I really do not know what you mean!”

  “You knew about her, didn’t you?” Charming continued, ignoring the protestation. “That was why you didn’t come to the wedding, even though we sent you an invitation. You knew what she was really like – and you knew that I’d soon find out, too!”

  Rosa made one last attempt to dissemble. “Ah – when you say, she, Your Highness—”

  “You probably knew her as Cinderella. These days, she prefers to be called Rell.”

  “Rell?” Rosa’s face looked as if she had just bitten into a lemon. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I really can’t recall ever counting a person with such a name among my acquaintances.”

  “Then let me refresh your memory, dear Miss Rugosa.” Charming tilted his head on one side in a fair imitation of her earlier coquetry. “Pumpkins? White mice?” Playfully, he raised his right foot and tapped it. “And the teeny-weeny matter of a glass slipper . . . ?”

  Rosa’s jaw dropped. She wanted to say something, Charming could see she could. But the right words would not come, and all she could manage, at last, was, “Oh, dear . . .”

  Charming said, quite pleasantly, “Dandini, will you be so kind as to lock the door?” He held out a hand towards the dismayed fairy godmother. “Your wand, madam, if you please. And then we have some talking to do!”

  It didn’t take long to break Rosa Rugosa down. Once the first admission, that she did actually know Rell, was made, the rest followed fairly easily. There were one or two minor hiccups: the first an attempt to explain everything soothingly away, and the second a brief show of reproachful virtue that bordered on defiance. But then Dandini slipped away for a few minutes, to return dressed entirely in black leather, with several short lengths of chain (borrowed from the chief dungeon-master) draped significantly across the ensemble. He looked dangerous – though not, perhaps, in the way he intended – and as he stood twirling a set of manacles, and Charming let the word pain drop casually into the discussion, Rosa caved in.

  “Oh, dear.” It was becoming her favourite phrase, and she dabbed at her eyes, although without a scented handkerchief the gesture wasn’t as effective as it might have been. “I should have known that this would happen. I really should have known.”

  Charming was inclined to agree, but at the same time he wasn’t about to let her remorse influence him. “In that case,” he asked icily, “why did you do it?”

  “Well, you see . . . oh, this is so difficult . . .” Rosa sniffed loudly, then suddenly flicked him an uneasy look. “I hope she hasn’t gone so far as to tell you that joke about the three nuns and—”

  “The centaur. Yes. She told it last night. At a banquet.”

  “Oh dear. So tasteless . . . I did try to warn her that she would have to mend her ways and learn to be . . . well . . .”

  “Civilized,” Charming supplied.

  She managed a pained smile. “May we put it a little more genteelly and say, ‘cultured’?”

  “No,” said Charming, “we may not. She is uncivilized, Miss Rugosa, and she will never be anything else. I know it, and you know it, and it cannot be tolerated in the royal household any longer!”

  Rosa sniffed again, crestfallen. “But the power of youthful love—” she began.

  “Is no match for the power of middle-aged monarchy. In other words, my father, who intends to disown me unless something is done.”

  “Oh. Oh, well. Naturally, in that case . . .”

  “Quite. So, Miss Rugosa, I want a solution. And you will provide it.”

  Rosa nibbled her lower lip. “When you say ‘a solution’, Your Highness, I trust you don’t mean . . .” She raised her eyes to his and drew a finger across her own throat.

  “Of course not!” Charming paused, then added, “At least, not for Rell.”

  She blanched. “But you— ah— still wish to— now, how can I best put this . . . You still wish to make her your un-wife.”

  Charming smiled. “We understand each other at last. It was your spells that got me into all this trouble, so I think it’s the merest justice that your spells should also get me out of it.”

  “Um. Yes, I see . . . It— ah— won’t be easy.”

  “I didn’t imagine it would.”

  “Divorce is out of the question, I presume . . . ? Yes. Yes, I quite appreciate the . . . um . . . And banishment? That too I suppose would be . . . ? Yes, of course. In that case, Your Highness, there is only one solution. We must do a little tinkering with Time itself.”

  Dandini swallowed a yawn, suddenly looking interested, and Charming leaned forward on the throne. “Explain.”

  “Oh, dear . . .” Rosa waved her hands with vague helplessness. “It is not an easy spell, and so terribly draining . . . But if you insist . . .”

  “I do.”

  “Then we must plunge boldly into the pages of history, Your Highness, and, as it were, rewrite them. In other words, go back to the very day when you went in search of your lost beloved with only a glass slipper to help you in your quest.” Her eyes had misted sentimentally. Abruptly, she collected herself and frowned. “Only this time, we must make sure that events do not quite follow the same pattern as they did before . . .”

  Charming said, “I hope she knows what she’s doing.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry, petal.” Dandini glanced at himself in a handy mirror and adjusted the angle of his chains a fraction. “After all, her bona fides are sound enough. She fooled you.”

  Charming scowled. “She fooled all of us.” He returned his gaze to the far side of the room, where Rosa, enveloped in a fog of fairy-dust, was gesturing and muttering over something that lay on a purple velvet cushion on a small table. It had taken some nerve to creep into Rell’s room and remove the glass slipper from its customary place next to the port bottle beside her bed. Rell liked to drink her “bedtime bevvy”, as she called it, out of the shoe, and it was the worse for wear as a result, with several chips out of the rim and a crack down the length of the heel. But Charming had achieved it without waking her (not that anything short of a full-scale invasion could wake Rell before 11 a.m.), and delivered it to Rosa, who now was ensconced in an ante-room behind his own suite. There had then followed some ten minutes of chanting and the striking of dramatic poses (“To create the right ambience, Your Highness. We artistes are very sensitive to ambience”) before, finally, she got down to work. She had produced the fairy-dust from her handbag, together with a few other ingredients whose provenance Charming didn’t especially want to question, and the handbag itself (classic Magicci: patent dragon-skin and a clasp in the shape of a stylized M) now sat in the middle of the floor. Charming knew perfectly well that Dandini had had a quick rummage inside it while Rosa was occupied, and he was not surprised when Dandini leaned towards him and whispered,

  “She’s got a letter in there. A very interesting letter.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mmm. It’s from the management of the Ogre’s Castle. They’re making her redundant.”

  “Are they, now? I wonder why.”

  “Reading between the lines – and strictly ’twixt you, me and the guard-house cat, of course – I think she’s an embarrassment to them.” Dandini indicated Rosa, who seemed to be getting completely carried away by this time. “I mean, can you imagine the impression she creates at the reception desk? Pretentious isn’t the word, and the Ogre’s is very up-market: the kind of people who stay there can spot a parvenu at fifty paces. No, our Miss Rugosa wouldn’t suit at all, once they saw that she wasn’t really in their league. And if you ask me, that’s why she answered my little advert.”


  “You mean, she knew what she was letting herself in for?”

  “Of course she did. She’s been lying low ever since the wedding, hasn’t she? So why suddenly come into the open now? She needs the work, dear. She hasn’t got any choice. Rather sad really, isn’t it?”

  “Yes . . .” Charming was basically soft-hearted, and suddenly began to see Rosa in a different light. “Yes, it is. Well, if she can solve my problem, I’ll reward her. In fact, I’ll offer her a job at the palace. There’s sure to be something she can do.”

  Before Dandini could comment, Rosa Rugosa gave a loud sniff. They both looked, and were in time to see her emerging from the rainbow dust cloud and walking, a little unsteadily, towards them. She was carrying the glass slipper on its cushion, and to Charming’s surprise it looked as good as new. A faint aura glowed around it, then the aura died and Rosa let out her breath in a thankful sigh.

  “There,” she said. “All done. And, though I say it myself, quite, quite perfect. Très bien, in fact.”

  Dandini raised his eyebrows, but Charming ignored him. “And you’re absolutely sure that it won’t fit Rell’s foot?” he asked.

  “Certainement!” Rosa declared huffily. “I am, as I told you, Your Highness, an artiste!” She sniffed again. “Now, if I may just have a few teeny moments to make myself presentable, I suggest that we all put our minds to the next part of the spell.”

  “Of course,” Charming said. “There’s a dressing-room next door. Please feel free.”

  “Thank you. So kind.” She presented the slipper to Dandini, who took it with a straight-faced bow, and headed for the door Charming had indicated. “I shall return tout de suite.”

  “Do you know,” Dandini stage-whispered as she walked away, “she refers to herself as moi?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I only wish I wasn’t, petal. She did it twice while you were on your errand.” He put a finger in his own mouth and pantomimed being sick. “Fancy a little wager? I’ll bet my peridot ring against your topaz that she works ‘n’est-ce pas’ into the conversation within two minutes of her return.”