Godmother Page 6

  I smiled. “Hello, lovely,” I whispered. It came up to me, rubbed its head against my ankle. I laughed, bent down to pet it. My hand disappeared into its soft fur. It leaped in the air, swiping its paw at a dragonfly that appeared just then. The sheen of the insect's wings made me blink. Then there was a second dragonfly, and a third. I held out my hand as they whirred by.

  “You are close, aren't you?” I said to Maybeth. To Gladys and Lucibell. I didn't know what it all meant, except the air, suddenly, felt different. Everything felt different. “I knew you were close.”

  “Are you okay, ma'am?” I looked up into the eyes of a young man, and it was only then that I realized I was crying. Tears streamed down my face. I reached up to wipe them off.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said. “I'm just … tired.”

  He smiled, his face open. He was so young. Tall, his chest broad and wide, a baseball cap backward on his head. “I know what you mean,” he said. “That your cat?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Ah.” He crouched down and stroked the cat's head, his hand moving delicately back and forth. I thought of May-beth and the horse, her mouth against its ear as its body softened and the lash marks disappeared. “Sometimes they just know when you need them.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They are magical creatures.”

  The ferry was approaching the slip. “Jersey City, Hobo-ken,” the captain called out. The crowd on the barge began to gather by the gates.

  “Well, see ya,” the man said, nodding to me, giving the cat one more stroke. “And, hey. Things never stay bad forever.”

  I smiled at his back as he ran down to the barge. Lost in a thousand memories that flickered inside me, each more clear and lush than the last.

  When I turned to the water again, I thought, for one second, that I saw a flicker of something. Deep down. Was it the light, the way the sun had hit the surface, in just that instant? I was sure I had seen a wing. A wing in the water.

  “Are you there?” I whispered, and I imagined jumping in, letting my body sink until they pulled me to them, until my wings became finlike as they slipped through the water.

  I stood and looked, waited. The clock glowed from the other side. I stretched it out till the last minute, but I did not see one more sign of them. They did not return.

  With a heavy heart, I turned and headed to work.

  Chapter Four

  IWASN'T SURE HOW MUCH TIME HAD PASSED, HOW much time I had spent in Cinderella's dreams. She stood by the window. I had to rip myself away from her. Her tears, I thought, are not mine. Still, I felt as if I were leaving something of myself behind as I slipped down the winding stairs, away from the barren tower they kept her in, down to the rest of the house.

  The manor was silent. Up ahead a torch flickered. I peered more closely at the tapestry it illuminated on the wall, which illustrated ancient scenes from myth—Daphne turning into a laurel tree, her arms and legs sprouting leaves and her hair dripping bark; Actaeon becoming a stag, his hounds close behind and baring teeth; Leda's neck stretching out, the feathers sprouting from her skin.

  I blinked as I heard the faint sounds of laughter from down the hall. I passed the great bedroom as I moved toward the sounds, peeked in to see Cinderella's stepmother asleep in a room strewn with furs and velvet, the walls covered in intricate tapestries like the one I'd just seen. I wondered if she knew the violence in them, of humans turning to plant and beast at the whims of gods. Curious, I moved into the room, struck by the luxury of everything in it. The diamonds sparkling up from her thick fingers, which clutched the sheets. I could not help being attracted to shiny things, soft things; it was in our nature. I flew down to her, just for a moment, to let her dreams enfold me and erase the longing that clung to me, the image of the man walking toward me in the empty field.

  It came up on me like a whirlwind, a dazzling array of images in every color, every texture: Mounds of gleaming coins and jewels, heaps of gold necklaces and bracelets and earrings and pins and rings and barrettes and combs and mirrors, palaces of silver and porcelain and ice and emerald. Peaches and cherries and pineapples and kiwis, all more rare than diamonds, their juice dripping over the lips that consumed them. Weddings with gigantic champagne fountains and vaults of centuries-old wine, servants hauling up bottle after bottle to pour into the mouths of her daughters, commoners made royalty, both of them wives of the prince in this vision, banquet tables covered over with whole roasted chickens and hens and boars and lambs and fish, piles of sweets shaped like hearts and knots and stars. Gold poured down over me in rivers until I couldn't breathe.

  I had to rip myself out of her dream. I opened my eyes back onto the room again. The figures in the tapestry leered at me, the stepmother spread out over the bed, saliva gathering at her mouth. The room stank of decay. Shuddering, I flew out of it.

  What a place, I thought, for a girl—one withfairy in her veins—to live in. I let the sympathy wash over me. It was what I needed: to remember my purpose. Not the man in the field, the need to touch his skin, that feeling of being incomplete without him there. The stepmother's dream was something else entirely.

  I came upon Maybeth and my friends in a room down the hall. It took me a minute to realize what they were up to. The closet door had been flung open, and the three of them stood inside, all transformed into human shapes, huge like giants, trying on dresses. Torches floated in the air, making the closet as bright as if it were midday.

  I could not believe what I was seeing.

  “What are you doing?” I cried. I looked behind me, at the huge bed where the two sisters slept openmouthed, their arms flung over their heads and the unmistakable luster of fairy dust glittering over them. “What did you do to them?!”

  Maybeth danced over to me and pulled me into her hand. My wings beat against her palm. I had never seen my sister in human form looming over me, her blue eyes like lakes. Quickly, I slipped down, shifted into my own human form, my body filling out, becoming hot with blood, until I stood next to her and looked her right in the eye. She was different this way: prettier, less wild, her pale cheeks tinged with rose. Wearing a green gown lined with heavy lace.

  “Don't worry, Lil. We're just having fun. Helping you get ideas, right?”

  Gladys turned toward me, draped in a deep yellow satin, her dark hair piled on top of her head and dangling down in tendrils. “This is what she should wear,” she said. “Have you thought about this, Lil? I think a summer yellow would be divine.” A line of diamonds materialized around her neck as she spoke.

  “She'll look like a cornstalk,” Maybeth said. “That yellow under her white hair!”

  “Maybe you should change her hair color,” Gladys said. “Make it red like yours, or something darker. Imagine this yellow on Lil, May.” She blinked then, and suddenly I was wearing it, too. The thick yellow fabric weighed on my skin, cinching at my waist and around my upper arms.

  “Stop it!” I said, waving my hand and switching back to the gauzy dress I'd been wearing before.

  “Humans suffer for beauty,” Gladys said. “Don't you know that?”

  “What about this?” Lucibell said, emerging from the back of the closet and wearing a pale blue silk dress. Like water on her skin.

  “I didn't see that one,” Gladys said.

  “I know,” Lucibell said. “I conjured it.”

  “Let me see it,” I said, reaching out my hand.

  A moment later the dress filled out over my body, streaming down my skin. I shivered, turned to the mirror that stood in the corner of the room.

  “Lil!” Maybeth breathed. The others pressed in behind me, grabbing at my hands and arms to pull me away. “Don't!”

  “Stop,” I said, and whatever it was in my voice made them obey.

  I stared at myself, mesmerized. I had never looked at myself this way, in human form—I had only seen myself out of the corner of my eye, on the surface of a lake or in the sheen of ice clinging to bark. We were not supposed to see ourselves like
this.

  Now I knew why. As a human I was perfect. My skin pale and luminous. My hair like autumn and fire. My eyes like emeralds, fringed by dark lashes. I pressed my palm against my waist, the silk smooth under my touch, my skin tingling and warm.

  “That's the dress you should send her in,” Maybeth said behind me, her voice trembling.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  In the canopied bed in the center of the room, the sisters slept on, their breathing jagged in the night air. We could hear the creeping of the servants in the hallways as they moved through the house.

  Gladys and Lucibell were quiet now, waiting by the rows of dresses.

  All I could think of was the man from her dream. How he would look at me like this. The longing that came from a place deep inside her, winging out and spreading through every cell of her body. Spreading now through mine.

  The torches flared and leaped and made patterns against the walls of the closet and the main room.

  This is what he would see, I thought. If it were me, at the ball.

  I lifted the skirt of the dress. My feet were bare and curved on the stone floor.

  “What would you think of shoes of glass?” I said, and turned to see them all watching me, eyes wide in the light of the torches.

  “LIL?“

  I looked up. I hadn't heard George coming down from upstairs. I hadn't been paying attention at all, I realized, and quickly closed the book I was holding, careful not to harm its crumbling pages. The glass case hung open.

  “You seem different,” he said.

  “How do you mean?” I covered the book with my palm and tried to push the case closed with my foot.

  The store was quiet. Today it had the air of an old attic, somewhere in the country. I noticed then how tired George looked, rubbing his eyes. It was not even nine A.M. yet. I had never seen him up so early. He held a thick book under one arm.

  “I don't know. Just different.”

  “Oh,” I said, slipping the book under the counter. I was conscious of him staring at me, and I turned quickly to one of the book-crammed boxes next to me. “I'll just get started on these, then,” I said, pulling out a copy of Gulliver's Travels.

  He seemed preoccupied. I noticed he was fingering the same pages of his book over and over again.

  “Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

  “Just a bit tired,” he said. “I was up all night working.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Actually, yeah.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I think I've found a chunk of a lost manuscript.”

  “Oh? What is it?”

  “A so-called ‘definitive history of Massachusetts.’ This governor spent decades working on it. The life's work of a true obsessive.”

  “Something you know nothing about, I'm sure.”

  He laughed, leaned his tall body down on the counter, his face a few feet from mine. Sometimes it took me by surprise, how handsome he was. “There's a story that when the British attacked his estate, he locked himself in the study with the manuscript and a rifle. Ignored his family completely.”

  “What happened?”

  “They all died. At least that's the story.”

  “Wow.”

  “Imagine, though. Years of your life, all that history, on paper. So delicate, and yet pieces have made their way down to us, after all this time.” He stood up, stretching. “I need some coffee desperately.”

  I saw something pass over his face then. Something more than tiredness. “What's wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, his shoulders relaxing. “Well, I ran into Lauren yesterday.”

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” I said. I took his hand, and for a moment we stood there awkwardly.

  “Thanks,” he said, squeezing my hand. “It's okay. I just wasn't expecting it. I was grabbing a quick lunch on Broadway, and there she was.”

  I was almost afraid to speak, as if I would ruin what was happening. George never talked to me about his ex-wife. I had watched his marriage end the year before, and he had suffered quietly, with barely a word. As a fairy I could have blinked my eyes and made him whole, fresh as a stem. As a human there was nothing I could do for him.

  “It's hard,” I said. “It takes time. But you will meet someone else.” I winced at how trite my words sounded. How did I know he would meet someone? Or that he wanted to?

  “I just never thought I'd end up like this.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I wished I could tell him how rare he was, but I couldn't. I'd known that he was the first time I'd met him, when I'd walked into the store on a day so cold that tiny icicles had formed on my wings and fused the feathers together. George had looked up at me, and I knew he recognized me, that there was something in him attuned to the other world. It was the same way I knew that the girl, Veronica, had recognized me.

  We watched each other for a moment, and then something shifted in him, something I was surprised I could feel so strongly.

  “Do you think a person can get ruined?” he asked then. “Just tapped out?”

  “No,” I said, with more force than I intended. “No.” My jaw was tight. “I'm old, I've seen so many things, but I've never seen that. Human beings don't work that way.” I was close to tears. They caught in my eyes like tiny hooks. “You can always become new.”

  I knew I was lying, even as I said it. I thought of my former beauty, the feelings that used to move through me like rivers. A memory knifed into me. A girl on the ground, hollowed out, empty, surrounded by glass.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice softer now. He slipped his hand out of mine. “I'm just tired. I need that coffee.”

  “Do you want me to make a pot?”

  “No, thanks, I'm heading out in a minute. To Connecticut, actually, to check out a collection.”

  “Yeah? Any possibilities?”

  “We'll see. An old friend pointed me to it, though, and it looks good. This old man—his great-uncle, I think—has been collecting war books for years. I'm told he's got some first-rate stuff.”

  “Great,” I said. I smiled at him.

  “I need to get out of here, anyway, clear my head. I wish I could stay away longer. Take a real vacation, you know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You could use that. Though I'm not sure poring over war books is much of a vacation. You ought to get to a beach or something.”

  “Very funny. Oh, damn it. That reminds me.”

  “What?”

  “This thing I have to go to. I keep forgetting.”

  “What thing?”

  “The Paradise Ball,” he said, waving his hand dismissively “It's this formal shindig every fall at the Pierre. My parents are vice chairs this year. There's no way I can't go.” He paused, sighing. “I'm a guy who should never be in a tux. Ever.”

  “Formal shindig?”

  “Yeah, black tie, fancy dinner, hours of mingling with the crème de la crème. I got out of it the last few years, but this year my mother is on a mission.”

  I started to feel giddy, despite myself. “It sounds nice. And I've seen photos of you in a tux. You look rather like Cary Grant, actually.”

  “Thanks, but you don't know how much I hate that world, Lil.”

  “George, you just spend too much time in dusty attics. A man like you should be getting out more.”

  “Don't you have some books to put away?” he asked. “Some … I don't know, receipts to file?” He smiled, sweeping his hand over the piles of books on the floor.

  “Actually, I am all caught up at the moment.”

  “Imagine that. I knew I made a mistake hiring you.”

  I laughed. “So when is it? Who are you going with? You need to bring a date, don't you?”

  “It's next month. I have no idea who I'll bring. Lauren will be there, of course. Can you believe my parents invited her? She never misses a society event if she can help it.” He smiled, but I could see how much it pained him.

  “But a dance!
” I said. “How wonderful.”

  “Maybe you should be my date. Show me some of the dances you used to do. You did dance, didn't you?”

  I could feel myself flush. “Oh, yes,” I said. “I did. Cheek to cheek, across the floor. There is nothing better.”

  “I'm serious,” he said. “You'd probably appreciate it more than anyone else. We'd have fun.”

  I smiled, waved my hand. How wonderful it would be, I thought, to be young and beautiful in his arms. The image flashed up: me in the mirror, the torches flaring around. The gardenias blooming from the balcony.

  “No,” I said. “You need to find some young woman you like and take her. It will be magical. I guarantee you.”

  He rolled his eyes. In the early-morning light, the dark bookstore, the dust floating in the air, I couldn't imagine any woman not wanting to go with him. George looked like he was made for the old world. I could see him trudging through the king's forest with a sword, or walking up the palace's silver steps, arm in arm with a nobleman's bejeweled daughter.

  “Trust me,” he said. “It will be the opposite of magical. A bunch of rich old bastards congratulating each other for being rich and old. Women wearing fifty-thousand-dollar gowns for charity. Excuse my French, Lil.” He paused. “And finding a young woman I like isn't exactly easy. I'll remind you that I'm forty-two. In some states I could be a grandfather.”

  “You're so young,” I said. “And there's a whole city out there! Filled with women. Surely there is someone you could have a glorious night with.”

  “Lil,” he said, laughing, “I think you might be reading too many of those fairy tales behind the counter.”

  I looked at the book in front of me and then back at him, my mouth opening to explain.

  He put his hand on my arm. “It's okay,” he said. “I was only teasing you. I love those tales, too.” He reached down and picked it up. “This one's a beauty, though, isn't it? You know this was printed in 1835? Right here in Manhattan?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You told me.”

  He placed the book gently on the counter. Its bark scent wafting up. He cracked it open slowly, revealing a page of text with leaves cascading down the side, opposite a drawing of a girl cleaning a fireplace. “These prints. They're exquisite. Look at her face.”