Americana Fairy Tale (2 page)

Ringo hung his head and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Yup, only a matter of time until Atticus came up in the conversation. “If I knew you were going to angst at me, I wouldn’t have let you drink.” Ringo puffed up his chest, and he flew figure eights over Taylor’s head, his wings shimmering and beating a girlishly happy tune. “Screw Atticus, screw your dad.” He perched on Taylor’s shoulder. “There’s Billy Goddamn Bunyan across the quad!”

Anything to take Taylor’s mind off his father’s disgust toward Taylor’s preference for men.

Taylor’s brows knitted, and he smiled crookedly. “You fail in every aspect of a moral compass as a fairy godfather.”

“Life experience, my boy. Life experience,” Ringo said and patted him on the shoulder. “Now get out there and live it!”

Taylor nodded once. “I’m going to ring in my big two five in the best way I know how. Jell-O shots and friends with benefits,” he said. He crossed his dormitory room in three steps, arrived at the door, and then pulled it open in a wide, confident swing…

…and collided chest to ample breasts with a buxom blonde sorority girl. Taylor stumbled back, and Ringo took the opportunity to duck behind the lamp. When the humans were confronted with the knowledge of Enchants living among them, it never went well.

The girl merely arched a dubious brow. She tapped her foot, clearly agitated. “Taylor Andrew Hatfield?” she asked in an authoritative tone.

Taylor smiled, and Ringo knew he was trying to not look as utterly inebriated as he was. “Look, if this is about a donation to your Kappa Delta What-The-Fuck-Ever so you can save the bunnies or some crap, I’m fresh out.”

Ringo smacked his forehead and huddled behind the lampshade. “Aiyaiyai….”

The girl tilted her chin for a glance over Taylor’s shoulder and into the room. Taylor bent at the waist to block her view. Her ruby red lips pulled into a smirk. “Ah, your fairy godfather. I have the right place,” she said in a detached tone.

Taylor arched a brow. “You’re an Enchant? Like me?”

The girl narrowed her eyes in contempt. “Way to go on stating the obvious.”

Taylor crossed his arms and puffed a sigh. “Not to be rude, but who the hell are you?”

The girl crouched to one knee and daintily took Taylor’s hand. She smiled up at him, stroking her thumb over his knuckles. “I’m Prince Phillipa Montclair. We are destined to be wed.”

Ringo zipped across the room and perched on Taylor’s shoulder, glancing at him, Phillipa, and back to him again. Ringo patted Taylor on the cheek as he stood clearly shell-shocked. Ringo quirked a bushy brow with confusion. “Happy birthday?”

O
NCE
U
PON
A…. D
AMMIT
!

S
ORRY
, W
ASN
’
T
R
EADY

Hatfield Plantation, Atlanta, Georgia.

June 6

T
HE
H
ATFIELD
Plantation was abuzz with the preparations for Taylor’s impending wedding. At long last, Taylor had heard them say, the eldest Hatfield son would be married, and by the grace of the Storyteller That Be, his life would finally get on the proper track. Despite Taylor being the newest generation in a long, proud line of fairy-tale princes and princesses, he loathed being born a princess.

Because of the uniqueness of Taylor’s situation, the Enchants smiled to his face but discussed the scandal behind his back. Taylor was all too aware his family had their fair share of long-standing scandals, and they had fought for centuries to keep them buried. Having a gay son kept things pretty exciting for them, specifically Taylor’s frequent screaming matches with his father. And his father’s rampant homophobia. Even being back in the halls of his far-too-fancy home closed him in. While his parents took on the massive undertaking of scouring the countryside for an elusive prince, they wouldn’t even spare Taylor the honor of attending his wedding.

Instead, his father would rather drown his sorrows at the Dwarves Hollow, and his mother was at a loss on how to get father and son to make amends. He rather liked his mother. He was closer to her, even with the wedge his father shoved between them. His father was such a closed-minded jackass. He refused to let his gay
fairy
tale princess son anywhere near, for fear of corrupting the perfect Hatfield image.

Perfect, indeed. Taylor knew there was dirt by the fuckton. Secrets were buried so deep they had become fossil records.

Taylor had heard the whispers from the servants and the pixies who fluttered about in excitement. They smiled kindly upon him, offering pats on the shoulder and firm handshakes. Despite this being his special day, Taylor was perfectly aware of what lay ahead. He would be expected to produce an heir. The idea rolled heavily in his stomach. He had a destiny to maintain with all other Enchants. Taylor stubbornly set his jaw.

Destiny was a crock of shit.

In the parlor, Taylor tried and promptly failed to put his best foot forward when the swarm of pixies came at him with bolts of various shades of pink fabric. Some were baby pink, glittering with gold flecks; others were a silky magenta with a smooth shine.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Taylor warned them and tried to back away. Three pixies pushed him onto the small podium, and Taylor uttered a high-pitched whine. “This is crap. This is such crap.”

A knock at the door and then the door opened without warning, making Taylor cringe. His brother, Atticus, younger than him by two years, emerged. He did an awful job of hiding his grin behind his fingertips.

The young pixies with wings in every color flitted about Taylor, seeming to try to decide how to take this sow’s ear and turn him into a silk purse.

“Are you looking forward to it?” Atticus asked.

“I don’t even know her,” Taylor protested as pixies circled him. Four took on the duty of taking his measurements, and they chittered their findings to one another. Three others sampled the texture of his long hair and grimaced, holding up the split ends to one another. Taylor squirmed and fussed under the scrutiny, being mindful not to accidentally swat a pixie in the face.

“You know the rules, Taylor,” Atticus said from the corner of the parlor. “On their twenty-fifth birthday, all princesses are set to marry their chosen prince.”

A pixie with green lunar moth wings fluttered toward Taylor with the bolt of glittery baby pink fabric. Taylor’s hand shot up to stop her, and the pixie recoiled. “Nuh-uh. No way. If you put me in a dress, I will find your hives and stomp them into oblivion,” he rumbled.

The fabric-laden pixie narrowed her eyes and mutely nodded to her sisters.

“I didn’t choose her, At-At.” Taylor looked helplessly upon him and used the nickname from their childhood. The shimmering pink fabric flopped over Taylor’s head, and he spit, scrambling to pull it from his face. His hair sported an incredible cowlick. “And besides the point…,” he said, pointing a finger skyward.

Atticus narrowed his eyes. “Besides the point you’re gay? So? You still have to sire a son.”

The pixies babbled wordlessly among themselves, encircling Taylor in the long sheaves of pink fabric.

Taylor flailed his arms in his pink cocoon. He huffed with the indignity of it all. “You can’t make me sire a son,” Taylor spat. “That’s your job!”

Atticus’s dark brow furrowed. With a muffled grunt, he pounded the flat of his fist into a wall, and the pixies scattered nervously, watching him. “Stop being so selfish,” Atticus snapped and stepped forward.

The pixies returned to their work and busied themselves with cutting lengths of ribbon from giant spools with tiny scissors. Atticus took another step, his footfalls like hammer strikes. He steadied himself, and Taylor knew what was coming next. With a breath, he launched into the one argument Taylor knew he couldn’t weasel his way out of. Taylor tried to keep his lip from trembling, already prepared to throw in the towel for the sake of keeping the peace.

“We are part of a noble tapestry of Enchants that the Storyteller That Be, bless her, granted us the magic denied the prevalent mundane humans that overrun our home,” Atticus said. He tossed out a hand. “Humans clear-cut our Enchanted Forests for strip malls. Our artifacts and talismans are buried in pawn shops and storage sheds.” His anger grew at the tarnished pride of their people. “Our magic is rare and fading into the Void with every encroachment of the humans.” He folded his hands in a gesture of asking for salvation. “So, to ask you, to beg you, to preserve our ways is an incredibly small thing to ask.”

The hum of pixie wings dominated the silence between them. Taylor met Atticus’s intense glare, his peach-pink eyes rounded, then narrowed as he contemplated a comeback. It was Taylor’s duty to sire a child, but his parents wouldn’t even attend his wedding? He wanted to yell at Atticus about how much it sounded like bullshit lip service. A noble tapestry? A proud line? No,
Atticus
, was part of the noble tapestry. Taylor was a snapped thread in the grand embroidery.

As the pixies wove ribbons into the makings of a French braid, Taylor hung his head. “Okay,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Okay.”

Atticus beamed. “I knew you’d come around.”

Taylor didn’t answer as the pixies continued to stitch and trim his shroud of pink and darker pink. Atticus tilted his head with a frown. Taylor failed at hiding his defeat.

“Taylor…,” Atticus said softly. “It’s not the end of the world. Maybe this is just what you need to figure out what kind of life you want. I know it isn’t easy for you.”

Taylor’s somber expression turned to rage in three seconds.
Easy?
Of course Atticus would say that. They all had to get married. The laws were black and white. There was no way of bending them, looking the other way, or playing fast and loose with them. To do so meant swift punishment. Atticus backed away one step. Taylor watched him prepare for the moment he’d explode. But Taylor wouldn’t. He had to suck it up until a new opportunity presented itself.

“Finished,” a monarch-winged pixie announced, and her sisters retreated from Taylor’s personal space.

Atticus leaned in, appraising Taylor, and Taylor’s rage evaporated. Instead, he struggled to breathe under the crushing weight of tradition. Taylor straightened into a proper stance befitting a princess. He turned a slow circle toward the mirror, his trailing robe and cape, which stretched the length of the long room, curling around his feet. Atticus once again hid his inappropriate grin behind his fingertips, and Taylor’s stomach tied itself into knots at what a ridiculous, awkward flamingo he had become.

Being swathed in layers of pink upon pink and even
more
pink seemed to be important to tell the attendees—and the world, for that matter—there was no mistake that Taylor was a princess. The knee-length tunic embroidered with gold primroses was an insult. The rose leggings and blush boots were more than a mockery. And from the way he looked at the thick, fur-lined magenta robe with floor-length bell sleeves, Taylor knew Atticus was thinking the same thing.

Atticus smiled while completely lying. “You’re perfect.”

“I look like a misbegotten love child of Liberace and King Henry VIII,” Taylor said, fuming in irritation.

Atticus smirked. “Promise me you won’t have Phillipa behea
ded.”

“I can do that?” Taylor hoped beyond hope.

“No.”

P
LEASEPLEASEPLEASE
G
ET
T
HIS
R
IGHT
! O
NCE
U
PON
A T
IME
….

Hatfield Plantation, Atlanta, Georgia.

June 6

T
HE
SOUNDS
of the gathering wedding guests boomed like peals of thunder inside the grandfather clock. Ringo nervously adjusted his green silk tie; it was only fitting to represent his wood sprite heritage with the color. Anxiety shot through him, and his pink butterfly wings puffed with an eruption of glittery dust. Ringo’s wife, Honeysuckle, made a disgusted grunt and coughed on Ringo’s dust. She was the fairy godmother to Taylor’s younger brother, Atticus, likewise embarrassingly born a princess. But that’s where the two brothers differed. Atticus was the doted-upon, perfect sibling and the newest incarnation of Snow White, the highest of all princesses.

Taylor, on the other hand…. Ringo tried not to think about it too much, but Taylor was a bit of a fuckup, and his princess title had a large question mark. Ringo loved him nonetheless.

Ringo had been Taylor Hatfield’s fairy godfather since the boy princess’s birth, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He had seen Taylor through every mud pie and every skinned knee. Ringo had been in his corner when Taylor wanted to play little league baseball and not learn ballet like other princesses. He had stood by Taylor through his goth phase in high school and beamed with pride when Taylor blossomed into a gentleman. Well… a close approximation of a gentleman.

And now with a bit of luck—okay, a metric ton of luck—Taylor’s life from this moment forward would be at long last put on the right path. Taylor would be able to rise to the occasion, to be a princess on a par with his exemplary brother.

Ringo frowned at the terrible Windsor knot and tried to tie another one. He couldn’t tell anyone that he knew this wedding was a complete farce. Taylor would never be as revered as his brother. Ringo told himself to suck it up and try to get through it.