by E. Archer
“Who will love you like I? Who will expect nothing more from you than your presence, and will cherish you for it? I am the source of everything that keeps you. Your American playmate will move away. Your brother will drain your admiration and return you nothing. Why do you focus so intently on them?”
Tears stood in Daphne’s eyes. “You’re not my mummy. Don’t be like this.”
The Snow Queen stilled her icy tendrils and opened her arms. “Come here,” she said. “Give your aunt a hug.”
Ralph called out a warning. But Daphne was too far away to hear him.
She floated closer to Chessie, limply entered her embrace.
The Snow Queen folded her cold radiance around her.
Daphne cried into her arms. It had been a long, lonely quest, and it felt so peaceful to be crushed. “I’m done with my wish; let’s go home,” she said.
“Hush, hush,” said the Snow Queen. “You’ve found Ralph and Cecil, so you can live with me in my tower now. You can be my child. Every day will be sunny.”
It sounded like perfect peace, after so much tumult.
“Will I get to go home eventually?” Daphne asked. “Can I play with my friends again?”
“Of course,” the Snow Queen said slowly.
“And my brother? You’ll make him better?”
“You have rescued him and Ralph. Your wish is done, so they will be sent away.”
“Will they be okay?”
“You won’t need to shed a single tear for them.”
Daphne looked down at Ralph and her brother, piped in Chessie’s silver glow. “I want to be with them.”
From his vantage point Ralph watched Daphne begin to glow. The tendrils of frost shied away from her.
“We’ll discuss this later,” said Chessie.
“No,” Daphne said without lifting her gaze from Ralph below. “You must promise he’ll be safe.”
“I will not hear it, Daphne.”
Daphne began to struggle in her aunt’s grasp.
Ralph gasped, for he could see, distant in the darkness above, the squadron of Sleet Mermaids floating down, like jellyfish in a tide.
“You will stay,” the Snow Queen said soothingly.
With a screech, Daphne ripped free of the Snow Queen’s grasp and tumbled toward the cottage. The Sleet Mermaids brandished their ice-flamed fingertips and streaked toward the stricken trio.
CHAPTER XLI
“You will have nothing to leave me for once they’re dead!” screamed the Snow Queen.
Daphne shrieked as she plummeted. As she called out, she erupted into a golden explosion. When Daphne struck Ralph’s bed, her warm globe enveloped him and Cecil.
The Sleet Mermaids who weren’t able to check their fall in time burst into clouds of steam as they hit the hot light.
Ralph and Daphne and Cecil basked for a moment in the sphere, and then watched its ruddy light expand. The Snow Queen and the Sleet Mermaids were hazy beyond its perimeter, like figures seen from underwater.
Outside the cottage window, Ralph watched the ice of the Snow Queen’s tower disappear. Columns of water sprayed the golden dome as the frozen tower melted away. As the sphere expanded, he saw the Snow Queen trapped in its membrane for a horrible moment. Then, with a screech and a pop, she vaporized.
Ralph, Daphne, and Cecil clutched one another while the tower melted. And as the sphere dissipated, they saw that Daphne’s heat had melted all the land around them — there was no longer any frozen wasteland, only damp plains.
With the Snow Queen’s hold broken, they were able to pick themselves up and make a first few tentative steps over the muddy terrain. The group found themselves in a warmed but bleak land, without food or shelter; there was no time for mourning or mulling. His strength regained, Ralph propped up Cecil on one side and took Daphne’s hand on the other, and together they began the trek to the borders of the Melted North.
CHAPTER XLII
The Battersby children were in trouble. Deep, deep, trouble.
Gert’s scolds resounded through the castle corridors. Provided the family ever found a way to get down from the tree, Daphne would be required to attend sixth grade at the Sacred Heart Scottish Girls Academy, a school that doubled as an anonymous lockdown for troubled celebrity children and was rumored not to even allow its students to own laptops. She would also be attending Les Petites Filles Etiquette Camp after school instead of participating in any school plays. All princess costumes and pink shoes were to be stricken from her closet.
Come fall, Cecil would be remanded to the Admiral Scribner Academy, in a location so dull that I can’t recall its name. Once it became clear that the fulfillment of Cecil’s wish meant that the servants had been released with full pensions, he lost car privileges, had his allowance reduced to one hundred pounds a week, and was grounded to his own wing until the end of the summer.
As Ralph wasn’t, strictly speaking, a Battersby child, how to punish him was less clear. But, as Gert and Gideon saw themselves as the parental figures in his life until he could be lowered to the ground and sent back to New Jersey, they certainly thought it suitable to give him a lengthy admonishing. He was in a position of authority, the other children had placed an implicit trust in him, a trust that had been abused. He had been the crowbar that had allowed Chessie to pry open the family, and they knew they couldn’t expect truly civilized behavior from him, but they had come to expect at least common decency.
The moods of the Battersby parents were aggravated, of course, by the matter of the missing Beatrice.
Lined up before the large window at the foyer (which enjoyed a rather spectacular view of leaves and open sky, as it was now in a tree a mile above the Earth), the children allowed themselves to be pried of every bit of information they had. Gert gasped to learn that Beatrice had been discovered sneaking into Cecil’s wish from the ramparts of their very castle. She put her hand to her throat when she learned that Beatrice had been transformed into a circlet. She stood and paced when she found out that Beatrice, along with her other children, had been in a quaking castle chamber during a massive fairy rebellion. She fainted when she learned of the chamber’s collapsing. Once she came to, she demanded to know everything they could tell her about what had happened to Beatrice in the chamber. That was when things started to get murky.
“I bet she left somehow,” Daphne proposed.
“Yeah, she probably got out,” Cecil said.
“Maybe she was in Daphne’s wish with us, and we didn’t run into her,” Ralph proposed, his face ashen, realizing how feeble his suggestion sounded.
“Oh my child, my child!” Gert said, gesturing at the sky outside the window and falling to her knees.
Which was when Beatrice walked in.
She looked gorgeous and otherworldly, the way people in retouched photographs do; all the blemish and detail had been rubbed away, and she had been bathed in her own essence. Her white skin was paler than ever, and her severe black hair hovered in a floating frame for her face. Once he got over her sudden beauty, Ralph was struck by the oddity of Beatrice emerging from within the castle. Ralph, Cecil, and Daphne had woken up on the roof muddy and cold, but she glided from her own chambers as if she had just taken a glorious nap.
“Beatrice!” Gert said, rushing over with Daphne at her heels.
Beatrice fixed them with a severe look that stopped them in their tracks. “Mother, please, I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
“I was in Cecil’s wish, but I got out. I’m here, don’t worry.”
“You’re in big trouble, young lady. We strictly forbade you from speaking to Chessie, and you —”
“I was trying to save my brother, Mum. If you’re going to get mad at someone —”
“Don’t you dare interrupt me while I’m talking to you.” Gert tried to look stern, but the castle shifted in the stratospheric winds and she nearly lost her balance.
“He lied. He said none of us should talk to her, but he did, an
yway.”
“What?” Cecil said. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? And just because I wanted to do the world some good, instead of staring at my own navel like a self-indulgent goth, and because I was willing to risk everything for it, you’re going to turn on me?”
Beatrice raised a hand tiredly. “Look, we’re going to have to deal with this. Cecil got his wish, Mum, and Daphne made a wish to save him. They’re back safe and sound, and I know you’d rather we hadn’t wished at all, but it’s worked out, and I’m sure we’ve had all the learning and life experience and so forth that a wish is supposed to provide. After all, we got the same opportunity you did when you were a child.”
“You had a wish once, Mummy?” Daphne asked.
“Beatrice,” Gert said. “Oh my Beatrice. I’m so glad you’re back.”
“I’ve brought someone with me,” Beatrice said abruptly.
“Oh?” Gert said curiously, until she saw who was exiting Beatrice’s wing. “No. Beatrice, darling, you didn’t!”
“Mum and Dad, Chessie. Chessie, Mum and Dad. I believe you remember one another.”
If Beatrice looked like a scrubbed clean version of herself, Chessie had slid in the opposite direction. Her ringlets fell limply around a sallow face. Her newly downtrodden appearance didn’t make her a scratch less terrifying to Daphne, who leaped behind a couch and began to wail.
“Gert, Gideon,” Chessie said, raising her palms. “Sister. Brother.”
Gideon positioned himself in front of his wife and children. “You’re not welcome here,” he said.
“That’s enough,” Beatrice said, standing protectively in front of Chessie. “It’s time we all had a talk about what really happened those years ago. We have little enough true family as it is. I don’t want Chessie to be like my birth mother was, only barely connected to us. It’s time we work this through. Let’s hear the truth.”
“She’s turned you against us,” Gideon said.
Beatrice shook her head, and then nodded. “If so, only through honest words.”
Chessie stared at her sister. “Gertrude, I’m sorry to have made you suffer.”
Gert sniffed. “Apology accepted. Now leave.”
“I’m more sorry for what I’m about to say.”
“That’s enough!” Gideon roared. “No more!”
“No!” Chessie said. “You can’t ask me to leave when we’re a mile up in the air. I have a right, Gideon, a right to speak to my family. It’s been long enough.”
“She’s right, Father,” Beatrice said.
Gideon put his arm around his wife, who had gone pale.
“It wasn’t Chessie’s fault way back then,” Beatrice began to say to Ralph.
“Let me, please,” Chessie said. “Cecil, Daphne, Ralph, I must tell you something. My son was lost, yes. I had organized a wish-granting ceremony for him, yes, on his sixteenth birthday. When I heard what he wished for, though, I refused to grant his wish. It was too risky. But Gert granted it, anyway.”
“You?” Cecil asked.
“Yes. It was Mother,” Beatrice said.
“She loved the adventure she went on when her own wish was granted as a little girl, and thought all children should have their own. When I was hesitant, she went ahead behind my back. And when my son didn’t return, it all changed. She was terrified I would try to get revenge, and she hid you away from me, barred me from seeing you.”
For a moment Gert simply stood before them, at an awesome loss for words. She looked at her husband, then her own manicured fingertips. “I … I couldn’t stand for you to see me after what I’d done, even my own sister.”
“Why didn’t you tell us the truth?” Cecil asked Chessie. “You could have sneaked a note to us; you could have told us while we were getting ready for our wishes.”
“By hiding her guilt,” Chessie said, pacing, “your mother — like Ralph’s mother — went overboard in the opposite direction. She disavowed all wish-granting, and would have nothing to do with me. Besides, you love your mother. Your love for your parents will be the most uncomplicated love you will have. Why should I take that away from you? Doing so wouldn’t get my son back … better you think me a villain than I turn you against your own mother.”
“You see?” Beatrice said. “You see why I had to bring her? It’s so unfair. You’ve been so selfish, Mum and Dad, messing up and then faking it, scape-goating Auntie Chessie when all she wanted was her family around her in the darkest moment of her life.”
“I was the family tramp, Mary was the dullard. You were a little queen,” Chessie said softly to Gert. “Our parents loved you the most. You had no idea what it meant to be disliked and opposed. And you took my son on a whim, because you thought the world could only be as kind to him as it had been to you.”
“Stop, stop,” Gert said, and sank to the floor.
“It’s over,” Chessie said, wrapping herself around her sister. “No more wishes.”
CHAPTER XLIII
Chessie finally got to come to dinner that night. Ralph, Cecil, and Daphne were all overwhelmed to sit down to dinner with a bedraggled and humbled duchess who had most recently appeared to them as a blazing demigoddess. Gert and Gideon, in the throes of navigating a shameful history long repressed, found it hard to make even their usual polite conversation. Beatrice, evidently not hungry, sat and stared at her plate. It was, all in all, a very unpleasant affair.
Still, Ralph found a new somber camaraderie in the group. Gert and Gideon, if desolated, at least weren’t being insincere anymore. Gone, too, were Chessie’s dramatics; she carried herself like a normal middle-aged woman. Daphne and Cecil were tired and vulnerable rather than restless and impulsive. Ralph enjoyed the quiet dinner, or would have if it hadn’t been for Beatrice’s peculiarity.
She was still newly luminous, and Ralph found it hard to wrest his gaze away from her and toward his roast beef, bites of which kept missing his mouth and falling into his lap. But she also didn’t sit quite right in her chair anymore. He couldn’t place it; nothing was technically wrong, but the subtle details were off. It was as if she were sitting in a distant dining room chair before a green screen and then edited in. She sank a little too far into her cushion, for example —
Beatrice noticed Ralph’s scrutiny and gave him one long wink.
Ralph leaned over a dish of whipped potatoes with mint sauce to whisper to her. “What’s going on?”
“I’m dead.”
Ralph almost spat out a mouthful of peas. “Sorry?”
“I’m dead. I’m a ghost. Here, watch.” She gracefully laid a fingertip on the back of Ralph’s hand — and passed right through it to the tablecloth.
She then pressed that same finger to her lips, asking for Ralph’s silence. Heart racing, he returned his focus to the roast beef.
After dinner, once the rest of the family had dragged themselves to bed, Ralph asked Beatrice to join him on a stroll through her wing.
“I died back at the end of Cecil’s wish,” she explained as they staggered their way along the swaying corridor. “And I’m in the Underworld.”
“The Underworld?”
“Yeah. It’s not too terrible, really.”
Ralph shook his head. “How does being dead feel?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask the real me. You’re talking to my phantom.”
“Oh!”
“I had no idea when I made my wish that I’d have my own ghost. It’s a nice perk, really.”
“Does Chessie know about this?” Ralph asked.
“Does she! She granted it. I wished to die, and I’ve been dead ever since, going about my wish the whole time you were helping Daphne.”
“You wished to die? Really?”
“Well, I wished to visit someone who was dead. My real mother, Annabelle, specifically. And apparently being dead was a prerequisite.” Beatrice wavered for a moment in Ralph’s vision, like a signal that had temporarily hit interference. “Ugh, I don’t know how long I
can keep this up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I keep fading more and more. You saw me sink into the chair at dinner. I’m afraid … I’m afraid that the real me is in trouble. I’m losing her.”
“Are you sure?” Ralph asked. As he did, the spectral Beatrice stumbled, and when he tried to catch her, she passed through his arms and vanished.
CHAPTER XLIV
Ralph knelt at the spot in the hallway where Beatrice had disappeared, staring stupidly into the stone floor. She was in need of aid; that was clear. He should go get help, whether from the Battersby parents or Cecil and Daphne. But could he really get them involved again? He had already risked their lives once, and they could have perished many times over back in the Snow Queen’s realm. No — it would be safest to enter the next wish alone.
He headed for the roof trapdoor, pausing every few steps to listen for Gert or Gideon. His guilt doubled as he realized that his parents must be worried sick. He had been intending to squirrel away a moment to contact them. But of course there was no reception at the top of a giant tree.
As he turned the corner, he bumped right into Chessie. She fixed Ralph with an inquisitive look. “Where do you think you’re going? And where’s Beatrice?”
“You granted her a wish,” Ralph said flatly.
Chessie nodded. “That was back in the heat of Cecil’s quest. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done it now, after that heartfelt reunion.”
“Were you going to tell Gert and Gideon?”
“I knew I would have to tell them once Beatrice’s phantom disintegrated. But surely you can understand if I’m reluctant to approach them. Disintegrating phantom daughters are upsetting, and I’m already on shaky footing with them.”
“You promised — no more wishes.”
“Ralph, stop this prudishness. I have perfectly good reasons for granting it, reasons which I have no obligation to share with you. And you must remember that, once Beatrice’s wish is finished, you get one of your own. Surely you haven’t forgotten our bargain.”
