My Unfair Godmother (28 page)

“Pain makes you blind.”

It was true, and yet it wasn’t. The pain of my parents’ divorce had made me blind to a lot of things, yet here, holding Hudson’s hand, I 256/356

realized that suffering could also make a person see. I could understand a little bit of the crushing weight he felt because I had been crushed myself.

“I should have gone after her,” Hudson said.

I slid one arm around his waist and laid my head on his shoulder.

I didn’t think he would return my hug but he wrapped his arms around me, resting his cheek against the top of my head. “I’ll never be able to make it up to him.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Your father doesn’t want you to carry around this guilt.”

Hudson didn’t say anything else, but I don’t think he believed me.

The muscles in his arms and chest were rigid. Neither of us moved, though. We sat there by the fire, arms around each other, while the flames hissed and popped and smoke swirled up into the sky.

Eventually, the tension left him. He let out a deep breath and it drained away. But instead of letting me go, he pulled me closer. As though, after pushing away comfort for so long, he finally wanted it.

And I wanted to comfort him. If I lifted my head, I could kiss him. I raised my head and looked into his eyes, trying to read his expression.

He looked back at me with a calm intensity.

I tilted my face to his, then heard an irritated voice behind me say, “There you are! I’ve been looking for you all over!” I turned, startled. Chrissy stood behind me.

Chapter 19

She wore a filmy green dress with flowing layers that reminded me of plant leaves. Her hair had changed from pink to blond, and small white flowers were woven through it, making her smell like orange blossoms. She carried something in a blue fuzzy blanket, which she held against her chest and shoulder.

Hudson dropped his arms away from me. “Surprise,” he muttered.

Chrissy stepped toward me, eyes blinking to the same fast rhythm that her wings fluttered. “You’re supposed to be at the castle. I showed up in my official fairy godmother outfit expecting a wedding, and the whole place was in disarray. King John is furious and threatening anyone and everyone. He sent all the knights scuttling across the kingdom to look for you, and …” Her gaze swept over me. “What in the world are you wearing? I specifically told Clover to make sure you wore evening gowns.” She made disappointed
tsk
ing noises. “Never trust a leprechaun where fashion is concerned.”

“I’m in the middle of the forest,” I pointed out. “Why do I need an evening gown?”

With her free hand, Chrissy pulled a wand out of a leafy bag that hung around her shoulder. “Because this is a fairy tale, and my professor gave me a horrible grade after my last assignment when Cinderella’s ball gown changed into a bath towel at midnight.” She gave a careless shrug. “I did warn her. It wasn’t my fault there were people around.”

Chrissy swished her wand in my direction. Before I could utter another protest, I was wearing a white gown with silver beading 258/356

radiating from the bodice like an exploding star. I felt something on my head and reached up to touch it. My hair was up in some sort of bun with a tiara nestled into it.

“Now then,” Chrissy said with satisfaction. “We’ll need to get you back to the castle for your wedding.” I found my voice then. “No!” I sputtered. “I won’t marry King John. I won’t.” I stood up so quickly that my legs nearly gave out. I had to take a couple of stumbling steps before they would support me.

Chrissy’s rosebud pink mouth dropped open. “What’s wrong with your legs?”

“I’ve been riding a horse all day. After I escaped from the castle—”

“You escaped from the castle?” she repeated indignantly. “That’s not supposed to happen. You’re messing up my fairy tale.” Hudson got to his feet and stood by my side. His voice was calmer than mine, but had a firm insistence to it. “Tansy doesn’t want to be the miller’s daughter. She wants to go home. We all do.” Chrissy let out a disapproving humph and wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re not even part of this fairy tale. Whoever heard of a nameless extra running away with the heroine?” I reached out and took hold of Hudson’s arm, afraid Chrissy would whisk him away with a dip of her wand. “I want his help.” Chrissy shifted the bundle she carried from one shoulder to the other. “This is most irregular. I put safeguards in place to keep the story from veering off track. You shouldn’t have been able to escape from the castle.”

I held a hand out to her, pleading. “Please don’t send me back to King John. I’m only seventeen. I can’t marry some crazy man and have his baby. You’ve got to see that.”

Chrissy’s expression softened and she let out an almost motherly sigh. “I was never going to make you have King John’s son. That’s why 259/356

I’ve brought you yours.” She moved the bundle from her shoulder and cradled it in her arms, revealing a baby. His eyes were shut in sleep, his lips puckered in an invisible suckle.

“What?” I stammered. “I don’t have a son.” She handed me the bundle. He was warm and soft, and he had flower-petal-smooth skin. I held him to me and inhaled his baby-powder scent.

“Well, you don’t have a son when you’re seventeen,” she said. “I went to your future and borrowed him. Now you can tell that awful ex-fairy his name, be through with the story, and go home.”

“No …” I held the baby back out to her, panic gripping my chest with more fierceness than the golden heart had ever done. My hands trembled, and I had to force myself to look at Chrissy and not the baby. I wanted to stare at his round cheeks, his button nose, and the wispy brown hair that curled at the ends. My baby. My future son.

“Take him back to the twenty-first century. He’s not safe here.” Chrissy bent over and kissed his forehead. A puff of silver glitter momentarily twirled around his head. “I know you’ve never taken care of a child, but it’s not that hard. I packed bottles, formula, diapers, and the cutest little outfits you’ve ever seen.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a bag that grew until it was a full-sized, leafy green diaper bag.

In a low voice, Hudson said, “Tansy, you have to tell her what you did.”

I didn’t need the prompting. The words had already started tumbling out of my mouth. “I traded Clover some gold for a change enchantment. So now the fairy tale doesn’t have to end like the real story did. I can’t have my own baby here. Rumpelstiltskin will take him.” Chrissy’s lips tightened and her wings spanned open sharply.

“You
changed
the fairy tale?” 260/356

“It seemed like the easiest way to get home.” Chrissy tapped her wand in exasperation. “Well, that’s mortal logic for you. Complicate things in the name of simplification.” She put one hand on her hip and held the other out, palm up. “Let me see
The
Change Enchantment
.”

I was still holding the baby, so Hudson got the book and handed it to her. Chrissy opened it, barely glancing through the illustration and text. “Writers,” she muttered, then put her wand to the book. “Give me the nonfiction version, please.”

At once the paintings changed to actual pictures, moving ones, like paper-thin computer screens. She put her wand back into her purse and flipped through pages, pausing at the one where Clover and I made our bargain. She scowled, then turned the next page and the next, watching the important events of the last two days, until she reached the final page and saw herself peering at the book in the forest beside Hudson and me.

Chrissy let out a dramatic sigh and slammed the book shut. “How am I ever supposed to finish an assignment to the UMA’s approval when they keep sending me an assistant who purposely sabotages my efforts?” She gripped the book hard, as though she’d like to throw it.

“I’ll tell you why he did this. He’s ticked off that I’m using the gold enchantment that he lost to Rumpelstiltskin to complete my assignment.

He just can’t bear the fact that he doesn’t own it anymore.”

“It used to be Clover’s enchantment?” I asked. The shabby clothes and second job as a party entertainer suddenly made sense. He had lost his ability to make gold. But had Clover really given me
The
Change Enchantment
to sabotage me? Would he do that? The thought settled into my stomach like I’d swallowed lead. Weren’t there any magical creatures out there that actually helped people? What was going to happen next? Would a unicorn come along and try to impale us?

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I glanced down at my baby. I hadn’t ever thought much about having children before, but seeing him, holding him, was doing something to me. Emotions gripped me so strongly I couldn’t even identify what they were. He was beautiful. Perfect. I didn’t want to let him go, and yet the desire I had to protect him outweighed everything else.

I held him out to Chrissy. “You understand why he can’t be here.

Anything can happen now.”

“Yes,” she said, clutching the book as proof. “You decided to leave the safety of a plotted story and plunge into the unknown. You might as well have stayed in your old life if you were going to do that. Are you so fond of uncertainty that you had to bring it into your wish too?” Her wings fluttered in agitation, and a wind rushed through the forest as if nature had no choice but to match her mood. The fire blew out.

Strands of her hair flailed around her shoulders and bits of leaves swirled at my feet. “I brought your son here because I thought he would be safe within the confines of the fairy tale. You only had to do two simple things when Rumpelstiltskin came for the baby: cry so he offered you a second chance, and then answer his question. His name is Rumpelstiltskin. How hard is that? But now anything can happen.

You put your son in danger by choosing this.” I held my baby protectively to my chest, shaking with both fear and anger. “I didn’t choose to have a baby in the Middle Ages. It’s your fault he’s in danger. You’ve got to take him back to the right time.”

“My fault?” She blinked in indignation. “I granted you three wishes and in return you made a deal with a leprechaun that could lead to magical calamity.” She gestured to the baby. “Your son is the key Rumpelstiltskin needs to regain his old powers. It won’t matter where I take the baby now. He was here and yours within a year from your agreement. That means Rumpelstiltskin can claim him.” 262/356

Around us, tree branches shuddered in the wind. The sound of their swishing leaves created a dull, chastising roar. “Do you realize what Rumpelstiltskin will do if he gets his fairy magic back?” Chrissy asked. “He won’t be a friend to mortals, I can tell you that. Expect a lot of frozen crops, plagues, and men to mysteriously change into frogs.

Meanwhile, the fairies will have to join forces to fight him all over again. As if I don’t already have enough to do.” She let out a disgruntled huff and crossed her arms so forcefully she nearly dropped the magic book. The wind ended at the same time as her outburst, and the billowing leaves settled limply back down.

“This,” she said pointedly, “is precisely why fairies stay away from humans most of the time.”

I gaped at her. I could feel Hudson’s hand on my arm, warning me to let it go, but I couldn’t. “I asked for a way to change things into gold and you threw me, my family, and all of our possessions into the Middle Ages. I have been imprisoned, threatened, shackled, and my house was ransacked. I was forced into a bargain with a creepy ex-fairy, knights are out looking for me in order to force me into a marriage with a crazy old man, and the gold enchantment rips at my heart every time I use it. And now, on top of that, you’ve put my baby in danger.”

Chrissy regarded me evenly. “You know, you’re pretty unhappy for someone who got exactly what she wanted.” I gritted my teeth. “I never asked to be part of this fairy tale!”

“But it’s what you
wished
for. The trouble is that you didn’t really want gold. You wanted a life with no worries, no problems, and the answers to every test before it’s given to you.”

“Okay,” I said. “That sounds good. Give me that instead of this wish.”

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She flicked my words away with a toss of her manicured nails. “If that’s what you wanted, you should have asked to be turned into an encyclopedia.” She shook her head patiently. “You wouldn’t be happy on a dusty shelf though. Living is more fun. The key to happiness—as any good fairy godmother will tell you—is not to avoid problems, but to overcome them.” She took a deep breath, composing herself, then gestured grandly toward the forest. “So off you go on your journey, my little charge. Overcome.”

Hudson cocked his head at her in disbelief. “Overcome?” She ignored him and kept waving her hand at the forest. I looked in the direction she was motioning and then back at her. “It will be dark soon, I have a baby, and there are sword-wielding men out there who want to capture me.”

She pulled her wand out of her purse and waved it at the horses.

They changed from brown mares into white steeds, fully saddled.

“Overcome,” she said. “And if you can’t overcome, at least learn something meaningful. Otherwise it will be an awful story, and no one will want to read it. You don’t want to be responsible for not only giving an ex-fairy his powers back but also ruining a perfectly good fairy tale, do you? Now off you go.”

With another flourish of her wand our supplies flew off the ground and repacked themselves onto the horses.

“No one will want to read it?” I repeated. “
That’s
what you’re worried about?”

Her gaze ran over me and she let out a martyred sigh. “I suppose as long as I’m blowing my magic budget, I ought to fix your legs too.

You can’t go hobbling around for the rest of the story.” I didn’t argue with her about that. She swept her wand in my direction and the pain drained away, until it had completely disappeared.

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“Here,” Chrissy said, holding out the book. “You should read the next page before you go.”

I was holding the baby, so Hudson took the book and opened it so we both could see it. Illustrations covered the pages again, and the latest painting was of Rumpelstiltskin. He held his magic mirror in one hand, a look of dark determination in his eyes. I recognized the background. He stood next to the boxes of supplies at Robin Hood’s camp. He must have come not long after I left.