Godmother (9 page)

“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.”

I leaned in. The girl's face was lovely, intricate, infinitely sad. “It's so emotional,” I said. “And just a few black lines.”

I was right there. I could have told him, right then. Who I was. What I was. But I couldn't speak.

The moment passed. He was flipping through the book. “Someone wrote in this,” he said.
“Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir.”
H
is
French was perfect.

“All my old loves will be returned to me,”
I repeated. “It's lovely, isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said, looking at the script more closely. “Imagine, scribbling in a book and having someone read your words more than a century and a half later.”

“It's incredible.” My voice cracked as I spoke. “How much is forgotten. I think about it all the time.”

George looked up at me, closed the book. “Are you okay, Lil? Is something wrong?”

“No,” I said. “Everything is fine.” I smiled at him, felt a tear drop down my cheek. “I'm just a silly old lady sometimes.”

“Ah,” he said. “Aren't we all?” He smiled back at me, and I felt a wave of caring for him. As if I were in my old skin. A new energy moving through me, something ancient but just below the surface. He stood. “I better start heading up if I'm going to get back this afternoon. I've got another collection to look over tonight, in TriBeCa.”

I did not want George to be alone, the way I was alone.

“Okay,” I said, wiping my face. And after a moment, “You know, I think your dance will be good for you.”

He shrugged, smiling, gathering up his book. “Well, at least it's for a good cause, as they say. They also claim that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”

An idea was forming. A perfect thought. “No, I mean I can help you. I will help find someone for you. Someone to take. Someone you'll like.”

He laughed out loud, throwing his head back slightly. “Well, that is quite a task. Very sweet of you, too, but I wouldn't assign that job to my worst enemy.”

“I'm serious,” I said. And I was. I was! For a second I believed that if I jumped in the air I'd be able to see past his skin, into his deepest heart.

“You want to find me a date?”

I nodded. “Yes. For the Paradise Ball.”

He looked at me. “You seriously want to find me a date? You know I'm hopeless at these things, right?”

I smiled. “I am aware of this, George. That is why I'm offering to help.”

“Desperate times, desperate measures, yes?”

“Exactly. And my help, I might add, is more valuable than you know.”

“I have no doubt.” He threw up his hands. “And who am I to turn down such a magnanimous offer?” He shook his head, staring at me. “Now I'd better get out of here before you start threatening to pick out my next wife and name my children, too.”

“That,” I said, “is not a bad idea.”

Chapter Five

I
OPENED MY EYES IN THE BLUE WATER OF THE FAIRY
lake, the vines and water lilies looping around me, sparkling with the sunlight that shot through the water. A flurry of fairies was passing, their wings fully spread, translucent. The great tree with its jutting branches grew out of the lake bottom, which was covered in grass and plants and jewels. A flapping red flower opened, and a just-born fairy emerged, blinking her long lashed glittering eyes. In the distance was the fairy court, the gleaming shell-made seat of the chief elder. Around it the tangled branches of the tree curling down.

It was all so beautiful. And yet, for the first time in my life, my world felt lacking.

“Lil!” I heard, and suddenly Maybeth was swaying before me, laughing wildly. “Get up!”

“No,” I said, curling back into the water lily and twisting over onto my side. I just wanted to go back. The only thing I could focus on was the image from her dream, an image that had entered my own dreams now, the man standing in
the field in front of her, the longing that had moved its way through her, and now me. I pulled the flower petals up to my shoulders and closed my eyes.

Maybeth pressed her face close to mine. “Come on,” she said. “What's wrong with you?”

“I'm sleeping,” I said, shaking her off. “Leave me alone.”

“I brought you a present,” she said, as a tiny seashell appeared in her palm. “Isn't it pretty? It has red dye inside, to color your lips with.” She made it wink and glitter at me, but I turned away. “I can show you where to find more.”

“I just want to go back to sleep. I was having a good dream.”

“This isn't like you, Lil,” she said. “Come on. You've been weird since we came back.”

“I'm fine.”

She sighed. “You shouldn't have transformed. Something happened to you, didn't it?”

“No,” I said.

“Something is different about you. It's that girl, isn't it? Something's wrong with her. I can't believe she is to be queen.”

“May,” I said slowly, flipping over. I lowered my voice and looked around. In the distance, I could see one of the elders moving his head, his eye rolling toward me. “Do you ever think of what it'd be like to be human?” I whispered.

She floated next to me, wild, her long purple hair tossing in the waves. “What are you talking about?” she said, her face changing. “Why would you wonder that?”

“Shhh,” I said sharply. “I just wonder. I can't stop thinking about her.”

“About who?”

“Her. Cinderella. And her dreams. She was dreaming of him.”

“So? Of course she was. All humans are like that. Pathetic. Lil, they're watching us. Let's go. We should at least get up to the pier.”

“But I felt what she felt. The prince was in her dream and all she wanted was to be with him.”

“You've always been good at that, feeling them. I wish I was as good at it as you.”

“You'd hate it. How they feel.”

She rolled her eyes, impatient. “Anyway, she'll be with him soon. So what?”

“Now I want that, too.”

“What do you want?” To be with him.

“Wait. The prince?”

I nodded.

Her eyes widened. “Lil. You can't talk like this. You can't.”

“I just want to go look at him. See what he's like.”

“You know what he's
like!
He's the prince!”

“Come with me to the palace, just one time.”

“We can't!” she cried, then clamped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes darted up to where the elder sat, past branches and through the water, past two fairies darting by just then, calling to us to come to the surface, me and Maybeth, my flower sister, and even through all that distance I could feel his eyes slicing through to me. But I didn't care.

“It will be fun. Let's just go and look at him. Don't you
wonder about him? They all dream about him. The whole kingdom.”

“Don't talk about him like that,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Don't even
think
it.” Her clear eyes staring back at me, hard-edged, like diamonds.

It was the first time our hearts hadn't been one piece.

Something had happened to me, I realized then. My own world seemed muted, emptied out. The crystal water, the great tree, the wondrous flowers and gems, the tangle of human fate the elders deciphered, the fairy court lined with shells, the colors so bright a human would have gone blind from the sight of them, the elders moving through the water or sitting at their thrones like elegant, shimmering fish while the young fairies emerged from the water and flew back down again, going back and forth between worlds, the fate of all humanity in their hands: it all seemed to have dried up, in an instant, until the only thing left was him, the field, and his hand reaching out for me.

I had never lied before to Maybeth, but I knew I needed to then. “I was only kidding,” I said. I made a face at her, then flung myself off the lily.

Her face relaxed. For a moment, the world was normal again. I grabbed her hand and pulled her up with me to the surface of the lake. We passed the elder who'd been watching us, and I smiled over to him, spreading my wings. Water streaming around us on all sides. I lifted my head and tried to forget everything else.

We burst into air. The sun bright above our heads, the air full of the sweet music of our friends, who were scattered on the pier and in the branches of the trees, instruments in their hands and against their lips. Others were returning
from the human world, others still disappearing into the line of trees to do their own work there.

I must have been mad, I thought, to dream of the other world, when everything any being could ever want was right here.

I flew into the air, perfect. Whole in a way a human could never be.

THE PIERRE.
Even the name felt like some exotic truffle on my tongue. I had walked past its pale wedding-cake like façade, seen it shooting like a palace above Central Park, admired its pointed copper roof that shone when the sun hit it. I'd heard stories about its grand ballroom, elaborate and overblown, like something from Versailles. I couldn't believe I'd never been inside. There was so much in the world that I didn't pay attention to, traces of the old world all around.

The Pierre was perfect. The perfect place for the ball. And George
was
a prince, or as close to one as I could imagine. It was hard to remember sometimes that he'd been raised in a palace overlooking Central Park, that he'd studied at a prep school in Connecticut and gone on to Yale, that one of his relatives was a duke. And now he was going to a ball, just now, at the same moment when a girl showed up with evidence of fairies and just when the prince showed himself to me, too. Theodore
had
had fairy blood, like Cinderella, like all the royal line. Now I was convinced it had been him in the diner. Maybe he had been more than part fairy. Maybe that's why he'd been able to see me the way he had, so long ago, and was able to appear to me in human form now.

And then I understood. Or at least I thought I did. They were coming back to me. Weren't they? They were giving me a chance to change the story. They had to be. George was going to a ball, and he needed a woman to bring, someone he would fall in love with and marry. Didn't he? Didn't everyone? And I knew just the right girl for George. She'd practically been dropped in my lap. There was a reason why George collected fairy stories, why Veronica had shown up with a book showing real fairies on this earth. Even if they didn't know it, I did. I was a
fairy godmother.
Even now I had white feathers on my back, after years of being on earth. I made sure that humans met their fates. If I did this, I could make up for that night so long ago.

Couldn't I?

The thought was dizzying, luxurious:
I could redeem myself
for what I'd done. I could return to my own world, where nothing from this world would matter. Not Leo or the apartment or the bills I couldn't pay. Not my wrinkled, hanging skin, or the ache that seemed to start in my bones and spread out like tree branches.

I tossed in bed that night, imagining the two of them together. George in a tuxedo as black as his eyes, the color of ink, and Veronica in a pale blue dress, her bright hair falling to her neck. I grasped for an image and thought of bright silver walls the dancers could see themselves in. The smell of perfume, of rain. Myself running up the silver stairs, racing through the night with the beating of wings behind me.

I shook my head, tried to rid myself of the memory. The past was becoming the present becoming the past. Everything was happening again and again, until it was set right and all was forgiven.