The Fairy Stepmother Inc.

by Maggie Hoyt

He gave me a thin false smile and replaced the padlock on the door.

  “Who keeps the key?” I asked. “In case of emergency?”

  “We are not far from the Indigo Goose. The publican knows me. I am sure he would be willing to hold the key for us. In the name of fairness.”

  I nodded. If Clarrie were really in trouble, of course, there wouldn’t be time to run to the Goose and back. I’d examined the padlock, however, and it was a common model. I was certain I had a key that would fit it. I just didn’t want Lord Piminder holding on to the real one.

  I held out my hand, and as we shook, Terence stepped up behind his father, sweat dripping down his face.

  “Until tomorrow,” I said. “Don’t worry, young man. I am positive Clarrie’s fairy godmother will help you marry your sweetheart.”

  Terence turned a shade greener, although maybe that was just heat stroke. As we walked away from the tower, I heard him ask, “The back door—it is locked, isn’t it? Does it use the same key?”

  “It does,” Lord Piminder answered. “But you remind me I have not checked it. Go see if it is locked.”

  My breath caught, and I turned around, hoping I was keeping my expression free of panic. What if he sees the twine coming out from under the door? What if he kicks it, or trips on it? What if he sets the whole thing off?

  I held my breath as he examined the padlock on the back door and gave the door a good tug. I slowly exhaled as he returned.

  “It’s locked,” Terence said. He had neither noticed the twine nor heard everything crash down. “Do you want me to take that to Lonzo?”

  Lord Piminder gave him the key, and Terence ran off down the hill. Piminder nodded to me and turned away, gesturing to his valets to accompany him home.

  I gave him a few steps before I shouted, “Are you going to clean that mess up?”

  He merely waved his hand dismissively and kept walking.

  I shrugged. “It’s your littering fine,” I called back.

  He stopped abruptly and gave a terse command to his valets. I was quite certain he swore. I turned away with a grin on my face and joined Fan and Maribelle in the dispersing crowd.

  “Oh, bravo, Evelyn! This is so exciting!” Maribelle gushed.

  “That was really awesome, Mom. You totally humiliated him with the crates. I looked around. People were giving him some really dirty looks. Did you plan that?”

  “The crates were in the tower. I filled them with cloth and newspapers so he’d make a spectacle trying to inspect them.”

  “Well, I think you won that round,” Fan said. “I hope so,”

  I said. “Lilla Babcock will throttle me if this doesn’t work.”

  “Oh, I don’t see why! Clarrie’s going to have the chance to meet her fairy godmother!” Maribelle said.

  “I still wouldn’t want to be her,” Fan said. “It would be so boring to sit in that tower all day. I hope she at least brought a book to read. And what if you did all of this, and your fairy godmother turned out to be that little man? Honestly, this fairy story is the worst to be in, and I had frogs fall on my head.”

  Now that the Piminders had left and their men were occupied, Mr. Sherman approached the huddle.

  “Hello, Mr. Sherman,” I said.

  “Well done so far,” he replied. “Are you going home now?”

  I shrugged. “I know it’s unlikely, but if Lord Piminder does plan on sabotaging Clarrie somehow, it would be while she’s in the tower. I don’t feel good about leaving it unwatched. Besides, if Clarrie gets ill or needs help, someone has to be here to get her out of the tower.”

  I still wasn’t sure how Lord Piminder could cheat. I’d tried to examine the spectacle from his point of view, and it was simply a matter of whether he believed Clarrie had a fairy godmother. If he didn’t, victory was his. If he did, what could he do? But although I suspected Piminder was overconfident, I didn’t think he’d leave things entirely up to fate. He could have someone steal the gold before she left the tower. He could, I supposed, try to discredit Clarrie—make it seem like she’d had a male visitor in the night. I didn’t think he was quite that sinister, but he certainly didn’t mind ruining the Babcocks financially. At any rate, I wanted the tower under observation.

  “I’ll take turns with you,” Mr. Sherman said. “My wife is on to her next engagement. I’m happy to watch the tower.”

  “Thank you. I’ll come back in a few hours and give you a break. Maribelle, it’s on you now. Get us a crowd for tomorrow.”

  “I won’t let you down, Evelyn,” she said fervently, grasping my hand.

  “Right. Um. Thank you. Well, good work, team. Let’s break. Disperse.”

  That had gone rather well, I thought as Fan and I walked home. My distraction had worked. They’d paid so much attention to the crates, they never noticed my fireplace setup or the thin twine hugging the wall. Lord Piminder had made a fool of himself tearing up those crates. Nevertheless, nerves still clawed at my stomach because none of it mattered. I hadn’t hidden real gold in the fireplace, and no marriage proposal was coming to bail Clarrie out of handing over a sack of brass.

  At sundown, Mr. Sherman and I stood in the field a few yards from the tower. He’d come wearing a rather oversized tunic underneath a long overcoat, as well as a stocking cap pulled down over his ears, which combined with his large round spectacles made him look a bit like one of those gnomes people put in their gardens. I raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “My wife,” he said. “She’s always worried I’ll catch a chill, even when it’s warm out.”

  “You really don’t have to stay, Mr. Sherman,” I said.

  “You can’t stay awake all night,” he said. “One of us can sleep while the other watches.”

  I frowned, hoping he wouldn’t see it in the dimming light. At some point, I needed to pull the twine and send the brass crashing down—and deliver some message about it becoming worthless in the wrong hands—and I couldn’t let Mr. Sherman see me. I hadn’t expected him to be this dedicated, but he was like a very skinny, squeaky bulldog. As long as he really did go to sleep …

  Fanchon helped me carry two garden chairs and a stack of blankets from home.

  “Aren’t you going to want a lantern?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Then we’ll be totally blind outside the lantern’s circle. Our eyes will at least adjust to the starlight.”

  I took the first watch, sitting in my chair with a blanket over my knees, watching the stillness. I’d debated when I should trigger the falling brass. I wanted Clarrie’s excitement to be fresh, but I also couldn’t be caught by early gawkers, so I’d decided to wait until a few hours before dawn. Mr. Sherman would have a turn watching, and then after we switched for the second time, I would work my fairy magic.

  My few hours passed uneventfully. I woke Mr. Sherman and curled up uncomfortably in the chair, the armrest digging into my back. I dozed off picturing Fan walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, his leering face taunting me.

  I awoke to Mr. Sherman shaking my shoulder.

  “Evelyn! Evelyn!” he whispered.

  “Already?” I mumbled as I tried to work the kinks out of my neck.

  “Shh! Look!” He pointed toward the tower.

  A light bobbed across the field and climbed the hill toward the tower.

  “Someone’s there!” I whispered.

  “We need to know who it is,” Mr. Sherman replied.

  The light crossed in front of the tower and headed toward the stairs that led to the floating door.

  “We can hide in the woods,” I said and crept off toward the trees.

  Neither Mr. Sherman nor I was stealthy enough to creep through a forest in the middle of the night without stepping on at least a few sticks. Luckily, our visitor was oblivious to his surroundings.

  I watched from behind a tree as the visitor set his lantern down at the top of the stairs and began to fiddle with the lock on the door. We were close enough now that I could see the visitor
a bit more clearly. He was indeed male, tall, and slender, and although I could only see his back, that was enough for me—I’d already been clipped by those shoulders once today.

  “That’s Terence Piminder,” I whispered.

  “That’s where I would have laid my money,” Mr. Sherman said. “I thought he was too interested in the back door earlier.”

  Terence had succeeded in removing the padlock and now carefully pushed the door open a crack.

  “We have to stop him!” I said and probably would have burst out of the forest had Mr. Sherman not grabbed my arm.

  “He’s going to interfere!” I hissed.

  “Exactly! He’s going to intentionally sabotage an attempt at loan repayment!”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. I noticed his eager expression, eyes distortedly magnified behind his spectacles. My jaw dropped.

  “Courts have voided whole loan contracts for something like that,” I said.

  Mr. Sherman nodded.

  I looked back at Terence. He’d peeked his head through the door and was now slipping into the tower.

  “I’m not going to let him hurt Clarrie,” I said to Mr. Sherman.

  “Of course not. But we do need proof.”

  I nodded. “I can’t be seen. This is up to you. Follow him, or whatever you need to do. I’ll take the chairs and blankets home so it’s not obvious we were camping here all night. I’ll be back here before dawn.”

  Before Mr. Sherman could reply, we heard a loud crash—a crack, like the splintering of wood—from inside the tower. I could almost feel the blood drain from my face. The sack of brass had fallen. Terence had tripped the line somehow, and the sack had fallen into the fireplace, ready to be discovered by Clarrie’s erstwhile sweetheart. I was stunned—how was I supposed to recover from this? I didn’t have extra brass. Besides, Terence would know what I’d done. I had to chase him off now! Or should I pretend to be a fairy and reason with him? In a few seconds, my mind raced with panicked thoughts. Then, I heard another crash.

  The sack can’t fall twice, I thought.

  Mr. Sherman snuck up to the tower, hesitating only for a moment before he tiptoed up the stairs and peeked in the room. There was another loud crack. What was going on? I fidgeted impatiently.

  I decided to get just a little bit closer. I stepped out of the woods and stood with my back against the wall at the back of the stairs, with Mr. Sherman on the landing right above me.

  After the fourth crash, I heard a faint voice from the second floor.

  “Who’s there?” Clarrie called. “G-godmother?”

  At the same moment, Mr. Sherman stepped into the doorway. “Give that to me,” I heard him whisper. Give him what? What did Terence have?

  I wasn’t sure if Terence responded, because all I could hear was Clarrie. “What was that? Did you say something, Godmother?”

  “Hand it over,” Mr. Sherman tried again.

  “Oh, sorry, Godfather! Hand what over?” Clarrie asked. Then she gasped. “This is the part where you ask me for jewelry! But I don’t have a necklace or a bracelet. We don’t have money for fancy jewelry!”

  “You’re in over your head,” Mr. Sherman continued to whisper to Terence. “This is going to end badly for you if you don’t cooperate.”

  “Well, yes, I know that!” Clarrie cried. “I know I can’t spin straw into gold! But I don’t have any jewelry! What could I give you? Umm, Mother packed too much food for me. Would you like a corned beef sandwich? They’re very good.”

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Mr. Sherman said, “and you know what you’ve got to do. Now hand it over.”

  Clarrie wailed. “I can’t! I won’t do it! I won’t promise my firstborn child!”

  Suddenly, there was a muffled thump, and I heard wooden planks rattling and something scraping on the stone floor.

  “You’ll regret this!” I picked out in the hubbub, followed by “Give it to me!” and “That’s mine!” and “Ow!” One of the voices had to be Terence’s, but I couldn’t tell them apart. Had Mr. Sherman and Terence gotten into a scuffle?

  “No!” Clarrie exclaimed. “Please don’t be angry! Maybe—maybe I can guess your name! Um … oh, I can’t remember what my book said! Is it Grumblepilson? No. What about … Lumpygilson? No, that can’t be it.”

  Just then, I heard another thump, and Terence burst through the doorway. Only seconds behind, Mr. Sherman staggered out after him.

  “Stay away from me, you creepy fairy!” Terence whispered as he raced down the stairs.

  “Mr. Sherman, what’s happ—” I hissed.

  “I’m all right!” he said and sprinted off in pursuit.

  “Wait!” Clarrie said. “Is it Mumblewitskin?”

  Now that the two men were gone, the tower was completely silent.

  “It is?” Clarrie said, surprised. “I got it!”

  I heard the creak of Clarrie’s feet on the stairs. She cried out in anguish.

  “My spinning wheel! He must have destroyed it because he was angry with me!”

  Her spinning wheel? That must have been what I heard splintering! Had Terence come to wreck her spinning wheel? Why? Surely he didn’t believe she could really spin straw into gold. Unless … unless he was actually worried Clarrie might have a fairy godmother. I remembered his reaction when I’d mentioned him marrying his sweetheart. He was so concerned that he would have to marry Clarrie because of the fairies’ help, he’d sabotaged her the only way he knew how. He must have thought the fairies needed a spinning wheel to turn the straw into gold—because in the storybook, I realized, that little elf actually does the spinning.

  I almost wanted to laugh. Clarrie, of course, wasn’t finding it funny. Well, I thought, this is as perfect a time as any to make the gold appear.

  I took my knife from my pocket and cut the line where I’d tied it to the nail. Then slowly I began to pull, gathering in the loose line. Finally, when the line was taut, I wrapped the end around my hand and gave it one strong yank.

  Wooden planks clattered on the fireplace floor, followed by a giant whomp as the sack landed on top of them. I breathed a sigh of relief. Clarrie stopped sobbing, and I listened as she moved debris out of the way to get to the sack.

  I heard her gasp. “Gold! It’s gold straw! Thank you, fairy godmother! Oh, thank you!”

  Now I hesitated. This was the moment to deliver a message, to tell her some rubbish about the gold only remaining pure in the hands of the worthy. But Terence Piminder was the perfect leverage—Lord Piminder would surely back down now to avoid a humiliating defeat in court. Besides, my fairy voice was weak, and since this wasn’t in the storybook, I couldn’t know that the crowd would believe it. It was best to keep silent—as long as Mr. Sherman really did return with proof. He would, I thought. He had to. I kept my mouth shut.

  I cut the line once more so that it fell down between the planks of the stairs, and gently shut the door. I replaced the padlock and returned to our chairs. It took a moment for me to locate them in the darkness, but eventually I ran into one and almost tripped. I stacked them, piled the blankets on top, and staggered home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS WE LEFT the house just a few hours later, Fan’s face was molded into a look of grim determination. I couldn’t let her do this, which was a pointless thought, since I really couldn’t stop her. Nevertheless, I took a deep breath and prepared for a fight, sanitized of course, by the fairies.

  “Sweetheart, don’t do this,” I said.

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Marry one of those three fools.”

  “I’m going to marry Damian. Whatever joke he comes up with, I’ll laugh at it.”

  I started to groan.

  “I’m not going to marry Justice, obviously,” she interrupted. “And Herb isn’t horrible, even though he did desert me after that man screamed at me, but I know he wants to sell Dad’s company, and I want to keep it. That leaves Damian.”

  “No! It leaves literally anyone else in the k
ingdom!”

  “Not according to the queen.”

  “She’ll get over it. There are more than three families worth a marriage alliance. The Kingsleys, for example. She’ll come around.”

  “But what if she doesn’t?”

  “Sweetheart, I promise if you marry Ethan, or whoever it is you want, I promise that I will offend Roompilda and the queen enough that they’ll blame it on me. Roompilda probably already assumes you just do whatever I tell you.”

  “But they won’t believe you made me do something I didn’t want to do. They’ll know you wouldn’t be mean to me, Mom.”

  “Fan, this is your whole life. Your whole life, married to this arrogant man who treats you like you’re stupid, and it only gets worse! He only gets less charming, trust me.”

  “Yeah, and you stayed with Dad because you didn’t want to lose me, right? Well, I don’t want to lose Ella.”

  “The queen won’t really stop you from seeing Ella. Ella wants to see you!”

  “But maybe she doesn’t,” Fan said, tears welling up. “Maybe she’s glad to be rid of me because I was so awful to her, and now the queen’s giving her an excuse to say, ‘Oh, sorry, Fan, but you’re not allowed to visit.’”

  “Fan, that isn’t true!”

  “But you don’t know that. And I’m not giving up on Ella.”

  “I understand, love. I just don’t want you to give up who you are.”

  She didn’t respond. Maybe she could only think of things the fairies wouldn’t let her say.

  We were the first people at the tower, and I immediately panicked that no one would show up. That’s because you got here early, I tried to reason with myself. Nevertheless, I paced about with my hands on my hips, praying that Maribelle had managed to drum up a crowd.

  Eventually the Babcocks arrived. Patrick waved at me tentatively. Lilla refused to acknowledge me. I tried to smile like everything was going according to plan. Then Maribelle hustled over to me.

  “I talked to everyone I could think of,” she said. “They all acted like they would come. They will, won’t they?”

  “I’m sure people will come,” I said. I couldn’t quite convince myself, but luckily Maribelle was more suggestible, as it wouldn’t help to have Maribelle melt down into a bundle of nerves at my side.