Copyright © 2017 Rosamunde Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover by Got U Covered.
Contents
Why There Are No Such Things as Fairy Godfathers
The Hideous Hero
The Sword Trick
Acrea
Sun, Shadow and Storm
Voel and the Rose Princess
About the Author
Dear Reader
Also by the Author
Why There Are No Such Things as Fairy Godfathers
Find out why no one has a fairy godfather in this humorous tale.
Ariadne listened, chagrined, while her ladies-in-waiting giggled hysterically behind her. They were clustered by the balcony door and held on to each other like they always did when he appeared. It wasn’t as if they had never seen him before. He’d been coming since she was sixteen. Ariadne unballed her fists and tried not to look angry as she rose from her dressing table. She tried not to show how embarrassed she truly was. She knew the rules and how touchy fairies got. One show of ingratitude, and you could sleep for a hundred years.
“Times change,” she said defensively, tossing her dark ringlets while she walked across her room toward her fairy-godfather who was waiting by her door. His hands were on his hips as he evaluated her. He didn’t look like a father. He was tall and fit and much too young, his clothes were much too tight and glittery too, and he exposed too much skin. He was wearing a bright green spandex leotard. His hair stood up in purple spikes on his head. A white boa was draped around his neck, and his boot heels were higher than hers.
“He’s just as good as a mother to me,” she lied, stopping in front of him.
She curtsied before her guardian under whose protection was every curl on her head and every pleat in her gown. If she were ever going to be married, she would always need to stay on his good side. She was already twenty without one marriage proposal. She was starting to get anxious.
He walked around her, tapping his teeth with a black painted fingernail and looked her up and down. He touched her hair, then her cheek, then the neckline of her dress. She could feel the magic against her bare skin as it changed her hairstyle, her make-up and her clothes. She wanted to roll her eyes. Her gown had been perfectly fine, not that anyone would ask her to dance anyway. No one ever did. One. Two. Three. Four. . . she counted to ten trying to calm herself. She plastered a smile on her face and turned to her ladies.
“How do I look?”
They all gaped and gawked like they always did. Like it mattered.
“Here,” he told her and waved his arm as a full-length mirror appeared in front of her.
She did look ravishing. She smiled a little.
“You doubted me?” he asked, raising a brow and glaring at her.
“Of course not,” she said quickly, hearing the petulance in his voice.
“Teensey. Weencey,” he called, and two little fairies appeared, “watch curl number 2bg and ringlet 7kl; they have minds of their own, and no excuses this time or else.”
He frowned fiercely, making his eyeliner smudge and his lipstick run, and the two little fairies squealed in terror and disappeared.
Then he snapped his fingers and three other godfathers showed up, one dressed in pink, another in fuchsia, and the last in black spandex.
“What do you think?” he asked them, motioning to Ariadne.
They looked her up and down then turned from him in a huff.
“Why thank you,” he said, before they disappeared. He smiled at Ariadne with tears in his eyes and a finger in his mouth and crooned, “You look gorgeous.”
Ariadne gaped at him. Why her? Why couldn’t she just have a nice, normal, fat little fairy-godmother who brought her cookies like her sisters had? But she forced herself to shrug it off. She had more important things to think about like tonight’s ball. She had heard that the prince was everything a prince should be. She wanted him already, and she’d better get him too.
All the way to the carriage in front of her anxious family her fairy-godfather fussed over her. He gnashed his teeth, shouted, and pulled his hair at every step, every movement of cloth and hair. Then he got in the carriage with her and the door closed on them, and there was silence. He stopped speaking and looked out of the window. This was the part Ariadne hated the most, the deafening roar of the nothing between them when the door shut.
Her sisters used to tell her about all the things they and their fairy godmothers used to talk about on the way to the ball. The secrets of how to attract the prince, get his attention and keep it, etiquette at table, matrimonial strategies, how to get the most out of the wedding contract and the wedding night, but he just sat there and said nothing. She could hear the fairies’ wings fluttering in her hair it was so quiet. After four years of this she snapped.
“So what do you think my chances are?” she asked, turning to look at him. His face was a mask of glitter, gems and paste.
“What?” he asked as if she had pulled him back from fairyland itself.
“My chances of getting the prince? Is he the one?”
He just stared at her a long time and then looked away.
Ariadne ground her teeth and looked back out of the window at the endless forest full of unicorns. She shook her head, her mind boggled. Angrily, she pursued the conversation.
“At least, do you have any tips for me tonight?”
He gave her an angry glance and said, “Don’t eat the cake, you’ll get fat.”
Ariadne stifled a scream just as the carriage stopped. They had arrived.
“Thanks for. . .” she was going to say ‘nothing,’ but his head had whipped around, and he stared at her. “. . . for the advice.”
“Showtime,” he said coldly and slid out of the carriage.
He opened the door for her and took her gently around the waist. She could see past him that they were late again. There were only carriages and drivers to be seen. He held her firmly and lifted her down. They glared into each other’s eyes.
“You know you never even taught me how to dance,” she growled.
“Fine,” he said, slapping her hand onto his shoulder and taking the other in his own. His instruction was more like being dragged than actually learning to dance. Ariadne was thinking of kneeing him the groin when they stopped moving.
“You’d better go inside, or you’ll miss the ball,” he said staring down at her with an expression almost like pain.
Well, how could she be expected not to step on his feet when he had never taught her to dance? She sighed and turned away, then flounced up the stairs to the castle entrance. The double doors opened for her. She walked in, and it happened as it always happened. Everyone turned around, including the prince, and then they all went back to dancing with whomever they were with. It was like the magic died the second she entered the castle. The spells failed to attract anyone. In fact, they seemed to have the opposite effect. Ariadne slunk into a corner and sat the evening out, again. She was the last one in and the first to leave.
Her fairy-godfather was waiting for her as usual. Smiling, he held the carriage door open like an eager puppy. She got in and sat down.
“So how did it go?” he asked as he took his seat beside her.
Ariadne broke down and cried. She had no hope left of ever meeting her prince.
A hundred years of sleep was starti
ng to sound good, so she just raked her hands through her hair and wiped away the make-up with her dress sleeves. She could hear hysterical tiny fairies screaming and fainting. She batted at them, tossing the ones she could catch all around the carriage. They hit the walls, exploding with multi-colored fairy dust.
“Ariadne, calm down; there are other balls,” her fairy-godfather said, folding his arms.
“Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!” she shrieked at him.
“Fine,” he said, turning to look out of his window.
“I don’t want to go to any more balls. I don’t want to go anywhere. I never want to see you again. Do your worst. I don’t care! Make me ugly, turn me into a frog, a slave, anything has to be better than this!”
“God, you are so spoiled!” he drawled, sounding bored. “What is it going to take, a gold bird, a living doll? What? What do you want?”
“I want you to leave me alone. I hate you!” she screamed. “I hate you!”
He stared at her, shocked, as he faded away. When he was gone Ariadne stopped crying and a terror seized her as she awaited her punishment. She waited with her hands pressed to her mouth as she rode home. She held her arms over her head when she got into bed, but nothing happened to her. She ran to the mirror in the morning and except for the fact that she had bed hair for the first time in years she was still herself.
For days afterward, every little sound made her jump. And everyone in the castle was on edge because her fairy-godfather was nowhere to be found. Finally, her mother came to her, her face white as a sheet. She walked into Ariadne’s room, took her by the shoulders and screamed:
“What have you done? What have you done?”
Ariadne didn’t know what to say. This was the first time she had ever been touched or addressed by her mother.
The Queen began to wail out loud and tear her clothes.
“Oh, foolish child. Don’t you know you can’t mess with fairies. You’ll be cursed forever, and so will we. You’ll never get married. You’ll be a burden on your father and me for life. We’ll never be free of you. And did you think of your little sisters, especially Francine with the bad eye? Oh, and what of Abigail with the short leg? Oh god, oh god, what have you done?”
Her mother fell on the floor, kicking and screaming. It took four guards to carry her back to her rooms. She had grown quite plump over the good fairy years.
Ariadne didn’t know what to do. All around, everyone was waiting for the other slipper to fall. Her ladies-in-waiting all went home with sudden haste. Only the most faithful, that is, the poor ones, remained loyal. The castle became a ghost town, but a month passed and nothing happened—no blight, no plague, no death—and things went back to normal. Her ladies returned, and she even got an invitation to a ball.
This time there was no fuss but a lot more nerves and rushing. Ariadne wore a human-made dress and put on her own make-up while her ladies curled her hair. As she sat in front of her mirror staring at herself, she thought that she was just as beautiful as he had ever made her. Ariadne involuntarily thought of the touch of his hand on her cheek before he used to change her, the way his magic felt against her skin. It was disconcerting to think she might miss him. She shook her head. It was just a stupid memory.
She got up and went out to the waiting carriage. The footman opened the door for her and she stepped inside. The door slammed, and her heart jumped. It was quieter than ever inside. There was no noise except for the sound of the churning wheels and the driver’s shouts as he spurred the horses on. Ariadne folded her gloved hands in her lap and glanced over to where he always used to sit. It was strange not to see him there.
She leaned forward and slid her hand over the seat. His body had not even made an indentation. She moved over and sniffed the leather near where he rested his head, trying to catch a whiff of his smell, but there was nothing. No magic left. She sighed a trembling sigh, sat back and stared out the window for the rest of the way.
She was not late this time. She came right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of things. It was terrible. She told the footman to wait when he opened her door. She sat for an hour in the carriage while the crowd dissipated. She could not help but think that maybe her fairy-godfather wasn’t as bad as she had thought. His timing was better than hers.
Then the doubts began. Maybe it was her. Maybe she wasn’t meant to live happily ever after. She had heard of princesses who did not. Maybe, she was blaming her fairy-godfather for what was wrong with her, and now he wouldn’t even be with her to keep her company when she once again returned in defeat. No one would be waiting for her. No one would care.
“Well,” she sighed, “it’s show time.”
She got out of the carriage and made her entrance into the hall. Like usual everyone turned around. This time, Ariadne did not wait for them to turn their backs on her. She moved quickly to sit down in a dark corner, but someone stopped her.
“May I have this dance?” he asked.
Ariadne stared at the Prince then looked around to see if there was anyone else he could be talking to.
“Me?” she croaked. “You want to dance with me?”
“Of course,” he smiled.
And then she was up and twirling. It was beyond belief. It was a miracle, and yet she kept thinking about her dance with her fairy-godfather, how he had looked at her, how she did not feel the same in this man’s arms. Still, she danced with Prince Cadbury, as he was called, all night.
When the last dance was over Cadbury walked her to her carriage and helped her inside. He promised breathlessly to come and visit her the next day and hinted at talking to her father. Confused, Ariadne rode home. This was what she had wanted, and yet she was not at all happy.
The next day three things happened. One, Prince Cadbury came to her castle with a full regalia of officers. Second, he had an interview with her father. Third, her father flew into a rage. Prince Cadbury was asking for a king’s ransom as dowry to take Ariadne as his wife. He had heard about her lack of a fairy and felt he needed extra cushioning to make him feel comfortable about getting a fairy-less wife.
No fairy meant perhaps no children at all, no heir for him, no son on the throne, no extra luck, no magic help in the hard times, a wife that might get a little worn looking quite quickly. Cash was the only cure for these kinds of doubts. Though he loved Ariadne dearly, of course, and wanted to marry her desperately, it was just that his parents were worried.
As was customary, Ariadne had been listening behind a velvet curtain to the exchange between her father and the Prince. So this was it, she thought. This was the great thing she had wanted, some prig of a pencil-necked prince with acne and bad teeth blackmailing her parents to take her off their hands.
“It’s not as if she’s gotten any other offers,” Prince Cadbury said, triumphantly. “And she is a little old.”
Ariadne was about to step out and slug him when she actually heard her father hemming and hawing. He was trying to keep the deal alive and get the dowry down to reasonable proportions without breaking the kingdom’s treasury. Her father was bargaining to get rid of her? Ariadne felt old, so old. She was an old maid. This was it. This was her life. She covered her face and wished her fairy-godfather was with her again.
“Don’t cry, Ariadne,” a familiar voice said. “I hate it when you cry.”
She looked up and almost passed out. It was her fairy-godfather, but not. There was no glitter, no sequins, nothing. Just his astonishingly handsome face and gorgeous body in a suit fit for a king. He had dark black hair, bright blue eyes and a couple of days’ worth of stubble. He also looked exhausted like he hadn’t slept, and his clothes were wrinkled.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand. His breath smelled like beer. “Come.”
And then she felt his magic move up her body like the touch of a kiss, and she was in a devastating gown. He led her out to stand beside her father, and he was back in his glitter again.
�
�I’m her fairy-godfather,” he said to the Prince. “Steve’s my name.”
Ariadne looked up at him. Steve? What a weird and wonderful name.
“I’m responsible for her,” Steve said. “I can promise you a male heir, good luck, and a beautiful wife forever.”
Prince Cadbury licked his lips. He looked a little disappointed.
“I really need the cash,” he said.
“That too,” Steve sighed, resigned, “I can get you...cash.”
“What are you doing?” Ariadne yelled, turning on Steve.
“I’m helping you get married,” he said.
“Why?” she asked with balled fists.
“Isn’t that why you called me back?” he cried, bewildered.
“No!” she shrieked, jerking her hand from his and running out the room.
“God. I can never do anything right with you!” Steve cried, following her down the corridors of the castle.
Ariadne threw open her ornate wooden doors, ran into her room and tossed herself on her giant four-poster bed.
“What do you want? Tell me! Just tell me for fairy land’s sake!” Steve shouted, standing over her.
“You!” she said, turning on to her back and looking up at him. “You. That’s all I want, but I can’t have you because you’re a fairy.”
He stared at her in shock. Ariadne expected him to fade away again. She knew her admission must disgust him, at least horrify him.
Instead, he took her into his arms, gently. She waited for the “I’m sorry, but it can never be” speech. Her body tensed, and her tears were ready.
“I love you too,” he whispered, his mouth close to hers.
Ariadne rolled her eyes. “I don’t love you like a friend,” she snapped.
“I don’t love you like a friend either,” he growled back and wiped her cheeks where her tears had fallen. “You’re gorgeous, better looking than a fairy. You think anything less than magic would have stopped those princes from lining up around your palace?”
Ariadne blinked with realization.
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