Twelve Dancing Witnesses

by Elizabeth A Reeves

  “It’s not much,” Gabriel said. “I’m sure you’re used to better.”

  I was, but this looked much better than the stone floor I’d been contemplating. I felt if I didn’t lie down soon, I would fall over. I said as much to the young man.

  A soft whinny caught my attention. It sounded close.

  “Are we in stables of some sort?” I asked.

  Gabriel shook his head, but his eyes darted away from mine. “No, no. It’s probably someone just… passing by.”

  He obviously wanted me not to mention it, so I didn’t. A small kindness for the kindness he was offering me. If we were in a stable, I wondered if he would be intrigued or disturbed if I told him about my longma back at home.

  “Do you know when I’ll be able to go home?” I asked.

  Gabriel shrugged one shoulder and looked away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure whether…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” I asked curiously.

  “If they’re going to help you, or if they’re going to finish the job,” he said quickly. He bolted out of the door before I could respond.

  Though there was no lamp in the small room, it was, like the larger room I’d seen with the girls, dimly lit by some unknown source. Possibly something hanging from the ceiling I couldn’t see because it was so high. I was too tired for my curiosity to persuade me into hunting down the light source. Instead, I curled up on the bed and tried to sleep.

  Now that I was alone, all my injuries seemed to scream for my attention. I was a cacophony of bruises. I tried to imagine just how I could have received each injury, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. The bruise around my ribs felt like… a boot imprint? Several or just one from a very large boot?

  Surely not. Who would have kicked me there? It would have had to be a blow designed to crack ribs.

  My head bothered me the most. Waves of nausea and dizziness made me feel seasick even resting on my side. It felt as if I were trying to sleep on a ship in unsteady waters, not on a cot on dry land.

  My mind seemed foggy. Even my interaction with the girls was beginning to feel more like a strange dream than reality.

  Why couldn’t I remember what happened to me? Was that the doing of my head injury? I hoped not. Amnesia wasn’t supposed to be a good sign. Was something else at play? Magic? But I couldn’t feel Magic anywhere around here. Was that because there was no Magic or because for some reason I couldn’t feel it?

  The girls returned after an hour or so and checked in on me. Eventually, I gave up on sleep and returned to the main room, where they hurried about at various tasks.

  I met Bella with the straight black hair and brown velvet eyes, and Diedre with the upturned nose and green eyes, and Leigh, who appeared to be the youngest. She had wide, dark eyes, dimples, and corkscrew curls that surrounded her face like a halo. Of all the women here, she looked the most like what I expected of a princess.

  The others looked like the sort of princesses who would fight off the terrible beast and rescue themselves. A family of mermaids I knew would have approved.

  The girls had reappeared in fine day gowns, the sort that princesses would be expected to wear. They wore flowers in their hair and had their hair curled and set… to any eye they would appear to be a lovely set of beautiful human princesses.

  The unhappiest group of princesses I had ever seen in my life. They were cross and grumpy and snapped at each other. They pushed at their skirts as if they were in the way and nearly all of them hobbled around as if their feet were aching.

  I remembered my dream of the blood-stained floors at the Magical ball and shuddered.

  “When will you decide if you’re going to kill me or not?” I asked.

  The girls froze and stared at me, almost as if they were clockwork figures and I had twisted their key, stealing all movement from them.

  “We’re not going to kill you,” Leigh said immediately, her huge eyes widening, then hushed when she saw her sisters staring at her. “Are we?” she whispered.

  “She’s a Godmother,” Gillie said. “She’s one of them.”

  Somehow, I didn’t think Godparents were the “them” she was referring to.

  Chapter Four

  *Days Earlier*

  “Grace,” my mother said. “You have to stop this nonsense of yours immediately.”

  I looked down at the menu the serving girl had left on the table in front of me and secretly wiped my sweating palms off on my skirt under the table. My mother did not need to know she had such an effect on me. I managed a bland smile. “What nonsense are you speaking of, Mother?”

  She let out a long-suffering sigh. “This vendetta that you have against your family. You simply must stop. If you keep playing the victim like this, no one…” She paused and glanced at Dallan.

  “…Will ever love me,” I continued for her. It was one of her favorite anthems. “I don’t know how you have conceived of the idea that I have been attacking the family, but the opposite is true. If you are talking about Ferdie, yet again, please try to remember that he continually entered my property without permission and made threats against me.”

  “Grace!” My mother slammed down her drink and glared at me. She glanced around the bistro with the air of one frightened of being overheard. “How you act reflects on us! Stop being so selfish! Why can’t you just behave yourself?”

  I flattened out my hand and started ticking of points on my fingers. “I do my job. I do it well. I go home. I find my uncle destroying my property.” I closed my fist. “I fail to see how I am to blame in any of this.”

  “And how you treated your poor cousin, Gloriana,” my mother continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. In her mind, I probably hadn’t. She hadn’t listened to me in years. If ever. “And now she’s been thrown out into the human world where she might die!” She pretended to cry and blotted her eyes on an extremely ornate handkerchief. My mother would never actually cry, it might make her eyes appear unflatteringly puffy.

  “Gloriana was a murderer,” Dallan said simply from his seat by my side. “If you have a complaint against myself or my sister…”

  “Oh, no,” my mother hurried to exclaim. “I wouldn’t ever consider questioning you.” She fluttered her hands as if she were a delicate put-upon creature. “You can’t imagine what it is like to have an ungrateful child.”

  “I imagine you don’t either,” Dallan said. “Grace is the epitome of responsibility. I doubt she has ever been ungrateful for your kindnesses.”

  My mother narrowed her eyes, her true shrewdness appearing for an instant before she hid it by whimpering to my father. “No one understands me! How I suffer! I lie awake every night!”

  My mother, I noted unemotionally, was adept at never lying, but never being truthful.

  My father looked up at me from his book, which I doubted he was reading as it was upside down, and frowned at me in a distracted sort of way. “Goodness, Graciously, how long have you been sitting here?”

  I fought the urge to shut my eyes or react in any way to how my parents were behaving. This was a game for them. The stakes were high and the penalty for losing could be steep. Everything they did was designed to diminish me and work in their favor. They’d had centuries of practice even before I was born. They’d just become experts after my birth.

  Thankfully the server, a young brownie girl, came to ask us what we wanted to eat. My parents had already started eating without us, though I had made sure to arrive early. It was another one of my mother’s tactics.

  My mother made shocked and disapproving sounds as I ordered a spicy stew and fresh bread. Dallan glanced at my mother and ordered the same. She didn’t dare disapprove of him.

  I hoped he liked spicy food.

  “Why do you insist on eating like a peasant?” Mother sniffed. She, I noticed, was eating a clear broth and some wilted leaves of something that looked like sorrel.

  “Mother,” I said sweetly. “Why don’t you explain to Dallan why you think Fe
rdie and Gloriana are both innocent and I am at fault?”

  Rage suffused my mother’s delicate features, turning her pale, blue skin a mottled shade of purple. It was a shockingly satisfying shade, I thought a wee bit maliciously.

  “Must you always bait your mother?” my father demanded, thumping his hand down on the table. It was a grand gesture, but it had the unfortunate side effect of making half of my mother’s insipid soup slosh out of the bowl and spatter across the table.

  My mother breathed out one of her famous sighs and covered her eyes with her gloved hands. After a moment, she removed her hands from her eyes, patted her hair back into place and gave me what she considered to be a bracing look.

  “You do not always have to be difficult,” she said in what I’m sure she thought was a reasonable voice. “Just let Ferdie get what he needs out of your house. He’s family. I do not understand why you can’t make an attempt to be kind to him.”

  “He’s not coming into my house,” I said bluntly. At this point I didn’t have much to lose, anyway. I was going to be on her bad list for at least fifty years. Well, I had been there before. It was survivable, much more so than the thought of my uncle coming anywhere close to the Keep. “Ferdie has already left me with an enormous mess to clean up, both in the damage he has done and in his business. I’ve been given the kingdoms he was supposed to be working with. I don’t know what he was doing, but none of it is right.”

  My mother paused. For one long moment she forgot exactly what emotion to wear on her face and I thought I might be seeing what she looked like under that society mask. Her lips pressed together until her mouth was a thin line. “They gave you Ferdie’s kingdoms?”

  Our food arrived just then, so I just nodded. I thanked the brownie and smiled at her.

  My mother waved her fingers impatiently at me. “What kingdoms, exactly, did they give you?”

  I took a bite of my stew. It was delicious, full of chunks of vegetables, and spicy enough to make my nostrils burn. I broke off a chunk of my bread. “There are a few. Why is it important?”

  My mother shook her head and waved a hand as if a fly were irritating her. “No. No. Of course, it isn’t important. I’m simply trying to make conversation like a civilized creature.” Her tone implied that I could never understand such manners.

  If I didn’t, whose fault would that be?

  “With all the disasters you have left in your wake,” my father interjected, peering over his unnecessary glasses, “I would think that you would take some time off before jumping into a mess even Ferdie with all of his skills and experience couldn’t fix.”

  Of course he would take that view.

  “I am fully capable of getting the work done properly,” I said firmly.

  “Gloriana would talk you into taking a rest,” my mother sighed. “Dear, sweet Gloriana. How I miss that darling fairy!”

  I kept my eyes from rolling and kept my thoughts to myself. My mother had never considered Gloriana to be anything more than on the fringe of acceptable when she had still been in our world. Now that she was gone, my mother couldn’t stop singing her praises.

  If I died, she would probably find it in her heart to tolerate me, too, but then I wouldn’t be there to enjoy it.

  “There’s quite a lot of fairies very cross with you just now, my girl,” my father said, waving a breadstick at me as if it was a flag. My mother took it from him and set it off to the side, shooting him a long-suffering glare.

  “Perhaps they are cross because they have been misled about the truth,” Dallan said delicately. “If they remembered properly, they would realize that Grace is a hero twice over.”

  My mother did not deign to respond to this, but she fixed her eyes behind me, where my wings should have been. The message was clear. If I were deserving, I would have wings.

  “It is not wise to make enemies,” my father expounded. Having lost his breadstick, he settled for pointing his finger at me and shaking it instead.

  “I have never set out to make enemies,” I assured him. “I am living my life and doing my best as a Fairy Godmother, just as you always wanted of me.”

  “Maybe,” my mother said absently, biting into the breadstick she had stolen from my father. I was pretty sure she had no idea what she was doing. My mother did not eat bread. Ever. “Maybe, dearest, you should go back to baking sweets and painting your interesting pictures.”

  I ignored my mother’s description of my past careers. I had plenty of practice ignoring digs like that.

  “I know,” my father said, slapping his knee with enthusiasm. “Why don’t you marry that Cooper fellow and settle down? He has asked, hasn’t he? He begged my permission months ago, so he must have asked you by now. When’s the big day?”

  I ground my teeth. “I have absolutely no interest in ever seeing Cooper again.”

  “Awkward, never seeing your spouse,” my father said, completely unaware of the absurdity of his words.

  “I will never marry Cooper,” I stated firmly. “Look at me, both of you.”

  My parents stared at my suddenly stiff tone.

  “I would rather die than marry Cooper. He is not a good fairy. Please attempt to remember that,” I said as firmly as I could without shouting at them.

  “Such a fuss,” my mother fluttered. “I do not understand why you are so cross with us all of the time! We only have your best interests at heart.”

  Dallan took my hand in his and placed both together on top of the table where my parents couldn’t miss the gesture. “Grace is a hard worker and fiercely intelligent,” he said, looking them each in the eye in turn. “She is an exceptional Fairy Godmother. I am sure we will have no difficulty untangling the disasters that Ferdinand made of his responsibilities. You can count on that.”

  I was going to pinch him and call him a liar later for that “exceptional” bit. My parents were going to realize that he could lie if he kept this exaggeration up.

  My mother snorted softly, but had the grace to hide the sound behind her napkin.

  “As usual,” she said with a pained expression, “I see that you cannot be reasoned with. It is such an agony for a mother to see such cruelty in her own child.” She stood up and pushed her chair back with a sad huff. “I warn you, Grace, if you do not mend your ways…”

  “No one will ever love me,” I finished for her dutifully.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Glib! You are glib, that’s what you are! Where is the respect? Where is the appreciation for all we have suffered and sacrificed?”

  I noted that it stretched even her ability to dance around to truth to claim she had suffered and sacrificed on my behalf.

  That gave me a rare burst of hope that she might know the real truth somewhere, deep down under all of the embellishments she adored so.

  My mother grabbed my arms and slid her hands down them to grasp my hands, yanking them away from Dallan’s in the process, in a dramatic and rather painful gesture. I might have bruises later, even with fairy healing. “Please, reconsider your cruel behavior to your family,” she pled in a voice that could probably be heard across the street. “Before you make a mess of everything, ask better Godparents to assist you. Please be reasonable and give Ferdie what he wants! Apologize to your grieving aunt! Do not abuse these high connections that give you such power over your poor family!”

  If she dabbed at a fake tear, I was going to rip that lace handkerchief right out of her hands and stomp on it.

  She must have seen in my face that she had pushed me as far as I would tolerate. She sniffed again and swept away, her skirts hissing against the stone pavement and my father trailing behind her like a bewildered pet goose.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. I smiled at Dallan. “Shocking, aren’t they? Would you like to be even more appalled?”

  Dallan cracked a crooked smile. “How could that even be possible?”

  I gestured at the remnants of my parents’ meal spread out over their side of the
table, now half-drowned in the mess my father had made of my mother’s soup. “Can’t you guess?”

  His forehead wrinkled and he shook his head. “No, I confess I can’t. What is the answer to this riddle of yours?”

  “They left me to pay for their meal,” I explained.

  I bit back a laugh as I saw that Dallan was dismayed and surprised by this last bit of deception and manipulation by my parents.

  I bit into my bread. “It happens every time,” I told him when my mouth was free. “They invite me to go someplace expensive to eat, then somehow always have to leave early so that I end up paying. It’s one of the little ways they punish me.”

  Dallan shook his head in wonder. “How did you come from them?”

  “The usual way, I suppose,” I answered dryly.

  His lips twitched.

  I pointed at him. “I saw that. I nearly made you laugh.”

  Ignoring the fact that were in a public place and were most likely being watched, Dallan leaned forward and kissed me quickly on the lips and then on the nose.

  “You always make me laugh,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite things about you.” He leaned back, the smile sliding off his lips. “How worried do you think we should be about your family? Your parents were clear that you should be concerned.”

  I dismissed that thought with a wave of my hand. “It’s just how my parents are. They exaggerate and cajole and threaten. They’ve never tried actually asking me to do something they want.”

  “Would that work?” Dallan asked.

  I considered. “Probably not,” I admitted. “They have terrible ideas about what would be good for me.”

  “And what’s that?” he teased.

  “What do they think is good for me? Cooper.” I made a face. “Though they never thought so when we were actually together. Apparently, the notion has grown on them.”

  Dallan wrinkled his nose. On him, even that looked refined. “No, I mean, what do you think is good for you?”

  I smiled at him. “Oh. That’s easy.” I leaned over and kissed him softly.