Godmother (30 page)

“It's your sister, isn't it? I remind you of her. I understand.”

I stared at her, uncomprehending.

She set the package down next to her and put her hand on my arm, then reached up and kissed my cheek. A shudder went through me. My wings tensed.

“Leo gave me all this stuff to give to you,” she whispered, nodding to the package. I looked at it for the first time, confused. A regular yellow mailing envelope. “He said he found it going through his grandfather's things. I hope it's okay that I looked at it.”

“What are you talking about?”

She reached in to hug me, her arm snaking around my shoulder. I flinched and pulled away. Veronica held on to me.

“Lil, let me be your friend. You can talk to me about what happened, you know. I knew that something had happened to you and now I want you to know that you can talk to me about it, about anything.”

I could feel her hand pressing against my wings. Surely she had felt them by now—the soft piles of feathers, the thin bones. I waited, ignoring the pain that shot through me, slicing right into me. It was all almost over.

“You have to talk about things,” she said. “You know? Everyone has to talk about things.”

I was starting to feel claustrophobic. Her hand pressing against bone. Her breath against my skin. I flinched away from her. Why wouldn't she just listen to me? We had so little time!

“Listen, Veronica,” I said quickly, the words tumbling out. “I have to tell you this. What I am. Why none of this matters anymore. I am … I paused. To my horror, I sounded reedy, weak. My voice seemed like it came from another body. I wondered, for a split second, if I was breaking something. If by speaking it I would change things somehow. But she had to know this! We were out of time and she had to know who I was and who I'd been, why everything she was saying was a mistake. Why it would all be okay now. I started again. “I am,” I said, “the fairy godmother. I was a fairy, in the other world.” The words seemed to fall from my mouth all wrong, breaking on the wood floor like bits of china. “I came here to set things right, because of what I did.” It poured out of me, just like that.

She just stared at me with those wide blue eyes. A look of shock on her face I tried to ignore. In the sunlight, with her blond hair hanging down, her makeup-less face, she and Cinderella could have been twins.

I had to make her understand. “I was supposed to get Cinderella to the ball. I was her fairy godmother, the one who sent her to the ball. That's what I was supposed to do, but I failed.”

“No, Lil,” she said interrupting me. Talking slowly, gently. “I know what happened. Your sister. That's what this is about.”

“No! Listen to me!” She was supposed to be my friend. Why was she looking at me like that? I wanted to scream with frustration. “She never made it to the ball. See? I was supposed to get her there, that's all I was supposed to do, and I failed. I was banished. I fell to earth. They banished me, don't you see? From my own world!”

“It wasn't your fault, Lil,” she said. She picked up the package then, and opened it, let the contents fall out onto the coffee table. Old photos, yellowed newspaper articles, bits of paper.

“It was my fault. I was supposed to protect her. That's why I came here, why I can't fly anymore. Why I had to set things right.” It all seemed to tumble out of me. The words, my tears, nothing sounding right. I had no control, over anything. I was dizzy. The light in the room seeming to sparkle, moving in and out. They were coming. I was almost there. “Listen to me!”

“You couldn't have saved her, Lil. You were just a girl yourself. You were at a beautiful dance, you were young. You could not have known what would happen to her that night.”

“No!” I said. My wings were like snakes on my back, struggling to free themselves. “Are you hearing me? I was a
fairy.
And protecting her, looking over her, that was my
purpose,
what I was supposed to do. And I didn't do it because I was in love with the prince myself, because I was selfish and left her alone. That's why they banished me. I was a fairy, like the fairies in your book. I was Cinderella's fairy godmother, long ago.”

I could hear wings, the beating of wings.

She took my hand. More gentle than I'd ever seen her.
“You are an amazing person, Lil. I know you loved her. But what that man did … you could not have known.” She picked up a few of the newspaper clippings from the table. “I think you'll want to go through this stuff. There are some beautiful photos, Lil. Some of you and her, of that night. I just … I want to help you.”

She didn't understand at all. She was supposed to be my friend, my one friend, and I could not make her understand me.

“It must have been terrible to lose her,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I can't imagine. What that man did to her, and then my god what she did to herself …”

“But I …”

She kept talking, her voice soft, relentless. “I know you are the one who found her by the water, bleeding. I read about all of it, Lil. It was in the papers, the next day, all of them, and Leo's grandfather kept the clippings. See? It must have been … unbelievable. I am so sorry for what happened to you.”

I glanced down at the table, the pictures of two young women, the newspaper article lying face up, the words “Society Girl Takes Own Life After Violent Attack” blinking up at me. My head was spinning, the room hot and closing in. “No, Veronica!” I said. “You're wrong! I'm telling you
what I am.
You felt my wings. You see these feathers. I am going to have to leave soon, and I want you to understand. You did everything you needed to. You and George, the ball. It's perfect.
You
helped
me.
There is nothing to worry about anymore. It's fixed, all of it. That was all so long ago and now it's been fixed!”

“I don't …”

“I will show you, then,” I said, as I stood up. Turned and lifted my shirt
.
I could hear the flapping of my wings, and a euphoria moved through me. She would understand perfectly now. My wings unfurled, feather by feather. I felt like I didn't have any boundaries, no skin, nothing. “Do you see?” I asked.

I could feel my wings tapping the walls, hear the crash of a picture frame falling to the ground.

To my shock, she just looked terrified. She was reaching down to the table, searching through the materials. “Wait, Lil,” she said, pulling a photograph out of the pile. “Look.” She strode forward, holding the picture up to my face. “Lil!” she said. “Look.”

The whole room filled with feathers. They drifted down, like snow. Why couldn't she see them? They were falling right on her, gathering on her shoulders, in her hair.

She thrust the photograph in my face. It was black and white. Two girls at a dance. Dancing together, smiling at the camera. People standing around them in suits and gowns, holding drinks. One in a dark dress and one in a long, pale silk gown. Both beautiful, radiant. The shoes, the slippers, as clear as glass. Behind them was the water. A clock rising up.

“Lil, none of it was your fault. I know everything. You couldn't have saved her. It wasn't your fault. You were a girl. There was no way you could have known what would happen.”

Something crept up on me then. A feeling, a memory.

“Lil, it is okay to miss her. I know that everything you said to me was true, but you have to miss people. You have to remember them!”

I took the photograph from her and stared down into it. My face and hers. One framed by hair like moonlight, the other like autumn leaves. We had both been so beautiful. Young. The whole world spread before us.

I turned it over.

“1952, October 17.”

My head hurt. I pressed my palms to my head. My wings cut into my back, like someone was stabbing me.

“Let me help you,” Veronica said.

“Winter Garden Palace.”

I was supposed to have protected her, but I had left her there. By herself. I shouldn't have left her alone. She was so beautiful, young. Much younger than me. But I had left her outside, someplace we weren't supposed to be. We didn't have invitations. Only one of us could go in, on the arm of that man. She was supposed to wait for me. And she did. She stayed there. I had left her alone just to be with someone I would never see again, someone who had first been hers. Should have been hers. And look what they had done to her.

The room was filled with feathers. My wings flapped back and forth.

What occurs in the world of faerie will become manifest in the world of men.

“CINDERELLA,” I
said, jumping down from the carriage and making my way over to her. I could still feel the press of his fingers on my skin. “It's time to go.”

I stood over her. She was asleep. So calm, peaceful. She never really got to rest, did she? I felt a wave of love for her
as I bent down and put my face next to hers. My cheek touched her cheek. She did not move.

“Get up,” I said, more loudly now. Her face was cold under mine. “Get up, my child. We need to go.”

I stood. The moon shifted. It was only then that I saw that the grass was covered in blood. The moon was just bright enough to illuminate it. And her wrists. The glass.

I realized then: Her dress was ruined, the slippers in shards. Her wrists cut open.

“No,” I whispered. The glass slippers were in pieces around her. “What have you done?” I dropped down beside her, barely able to breathe. “I'm here! I came back. Wake up!”

I was supposed to take care of her. She was supposed to live happily ever after. I put my hands on her shoulders, shook her as hard as I could. “I only left for a while,” I whispered. “It was barely any time at all.”

She did not move.

“Cinderella!” I cried, pushing her so that she was lying on her back, putting my palms on her face to revive her. “Wake up!”

A terrible pit of grief opened inside me. Tears blurred my vision. I could feel glass in my knees but let it cut into me.

“Wake up, child! I am here now!”

She couldn't have been gone for more than moments. Just moments.

“What have you done to yourself?”

Desperate, I gathered up leaves and dirt, then opened my palm, let the mixture slide down her arms and chest. “Come back,” I said, tears running down my face. I rubbed
it into her skin, focusing every feeling and desire inside me onto her. “I'm sorry I left you, but I'm here now. I won't ever leave you again.” Her body was cold, unmoving “Please,” I whispered, dipping my face down her neck to her shoulders. “You can't die. Not like this.”

She was supposed to have borne many children. Lived until she was a hundred, surrounded by her heirs. He was supposed to have loved her until then, stayed mad for her even as her skin dropped off her bones and her hair turned to ash. She had been made for him.

“Forgive me,” I said, lying next to her, pulling her to me. Everything inside me, shattered.

We were supposed to have protected her.
I
was supposed to have protected her. How could she be so fragile? She, who had been made for him and who was destined to be queen.

It was then that I heard them bearing down, the flapping of wings and the voices of the elders, condemning me.

And then I was no longer holding her, and I could not make my way back to her. The world had no boundaries suddenly. I was falling, screaming, clutching at the air. I crashed into something. My eyes opened onto grass, dirt.

I looked up and everything was changed. It was not my world. And it was not their world, not as I had seen it before.

I stood on the ground, rooted to the spot. My limbs white and bulging. I wobbled as I tried moving. I was heavy. Enormous.

“Help me!” I cried, and the sound of my voice startled me.

There was only quiet. I could not detect anything
beyond the muttering of wind in the black trees, the dull swish of the moving grass.

“Cinderella!!” I screamed. The sound rattled through me, and I coughed the way humans do, my body clenched together.

I had heard stories about banished fairies, stories that made me lie awake with my eyes wide open.

“Maybeth!” I called. “Gladys! Lucibell!” I pressed my palms against my throat and tried to force the sound out, to ignore the sensation rushing through my throat and over my lips. “Where are you?”

But I knew they were gone now, too. That they weren't coming back.

A rustling sound distracted me, made me turn my head. A small boy stood staring, his hands hanging at his sides.

“Bird,” he said then, pointing.

“What?”

He smiled, made a flapping motion. “Wings.”

As he said it, I felt a strange sensation in my back, like knives cutting into me. I could feel something moving, a slight breeze rush past my cheeks.

“No,” I whispered. “No.”

I turned my head and something soft rubbed against my cheek. I tilted my head farther.

A feather. Bright white.

FINALLY I
saw her, Maybeth, a flicker on the edge of the room. And beside her, Gladys. Lucibell. A trio of lights.

Veronica couldn't see my wings. How could I have
thought that a human could understand? I was
a fairy.
I had made humans go mad, just by showing my face. Of course Veronica couldn't see. She was just a girl, after all. A regular human girl.

“I need to say good-bye,” I said, suddenly calm. “I don't come from your world, Veronica.”

Come back,
they said.
Come to the water.

“I was a fairy godmother,” I said. “I came here to help you. You are a beautiful, beautiful girl, and you will be happy. Everything is okay now. Go, my child.”

I stretched out my arms and moved them up and down, letting the feathers caress them. So soft, as soft as fur.

All I could hear was the flapping of wings, the whispers of my fairy sisters finally come back to me. I could almost taste the water sprinkling onto my face and hands as it would when I got home again. I would glide through the air with the other fairies, looking for the glittering blue lake where our two worlds—air and water—met. Laughing, we'd slip into the water and let everything go soft, quiet.