Godmother

  She twisted around to stare up at me. “I have no future.”

  I reached into myself, and there was nothing there. I had no power now, I realized. No way to help her.

  “You are so kind, Godmother,” she said, pushing herself up from the grass on her elbows. “No one has ever been this kind to me.”

  “I'm sorry,” I whispered.

  “You can do anything. These shoes,” she said, reaching over and holding one up, watching it glow in the pale light, “you just imagined them, didn't you?”

  She was so calm now.

  “They are tricks,” I whispered. “That's all we can do in your world.”

  “I imagine things all the time,” she said. “But I can't do anything. I can't make one thing change. I have lived in this house for five years, you know. I haven't left it. Not even once.”

  “I am here now,” I said, and I could feel the desperation hacking at my chest, “to change things for you. To change your entire life. Don't you understand that? Everything will change.”

  “It's too late for me,” she said. The night seemed to have gone black, all at once, and in the starlight she looked like a ghost. If I blinked, she might disappear, along with the horses and carriage.

  “No,” I said. “It's not. Upstairs, in your room, you were so happy! When you were transformed. Let's go back. I can do it all over again. A new dress, new everything.”

  She looked at me, confused. “I wasn't happy,” she said.

  “You were,” I said. “You dreamed of him. I came and made you beautiful, for him.”

  I reached out for her, but it was as if she'd turned to ash. She slipped out of my reach and stared at me.

  “I never dreamed of him,” she said.

  I felt like I was floating. Like nothing was real. I crouched on my knees and leaned toward her. “But I was in your head,” I whispered. “I felt what you felt, saw what you saw. You were in a field. He was walking toward you.”

  “No,” she said, her voice low. Shaking her head and moving back on the grass. She looked afraid now. I wanted to scream. Grab her by her shoulders and shake her until she admitted that what I said was true.

  “Don't you remember? It was a big field. It stretched out in every direction. He was walking toward you. The prince. Reaching out to you.”

  “No,” she said, firmer now. She straightened her back and looked right at me. “I don't think about the prince. I never think about the prince.”

  “I was there.”

  “Sometimes I dream of my father,” she said before I could continue. “A field we used to play in, he and I, when I was a child. When my mother was having an episode, he would take me there. I don't care about the palace. Any of that.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I couldn't understand anything suddenly. “You were made for him. To go to the ball and fall in love. You should be dancing with him right now. I thought—”

  I stopped. Remembered the dream then. The man in the field, the longing that seared through her whole being.

  “Godmother,” she said, “if you are here to help me, then help me go back to them. My mother and father. Our house by the lake.”

  “But—”

  “I want to swim in the lake with my mother. I want to dance with her in the garden. I want the three of us to walk together in that field.”

  “But I can't—”

  “No, Godmother. You can do anything. Anything you want. I would give anything to be like you.”

  I just stared at her, speechless.

  “Please help me.”

  She had not been happy, I realized. I had imagined it. Her eyes lighting up in the mirror as she watched herself. Her twirling around and kicking up the glass slippers, turning her ankles to see. Her skipping down the great hall excitement crackling and streaming through her. Had I imagined all of it?

  “You aren't real,” I said, and I felt tears on my cheeks as I spoke. “I can't tell what is real.”

  She gave me a strange smile. I could barely see her face in the dark. “I didn't know that fairies cried,” she said. Her voice was kind now, soft.

  “I am supposed to send you,” I said. “It's my role. What I was sent for. I have to send you. I have to.”

  “Oh, Godmother,” she said, leaning toward me. Reaching out her arm and stroking my hair. “You are so beautiful. I have never seen anyone so beautiful as you.”

  “I'm not even human,” I said.

  “Your hair is so red. I've never seen hair as red as yours, or eyes as green.”

  “Stop,” I said. I grabbed her wrist. My thumb rubbed against the scar, which seared into me. “Stop! They're not real. Don't you see? None of it is real! I'm not even human!”

  “You're hurting me,” she said, and I dropped her wrist suddenly, saw the marks where my nails had cut into her, into the wound.

  “I am not even human!”

  The slippers were broken, I realized then. Shattered into bits. Long shards of glass spread out around her, next to us. I couldn't remember her having broken them. She looked right into me, her face inches away. I flinched. Her eyes were so hollow and dead. How had I not noticed before?

  THE DAY before the ball was a Friday, and I went to work at the normal time, knowing full well that it could be my last day. That it would be my last day. The alternative was unthinkable.

  I walked up and down the aisles of the store, feeling the spines of the books under my palm. I opened the case behind the register one last time and took out the book. I stared again at my favorite pictures, the leaves running down the sides of the page, the words scribbled in French. Left there, just for me. All my old loves will be returned to me.

  Yes.

  George came down just before noon.

  “Are you excited?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I'm excited. Not to put on a tux, and not to see my ex-wife, but Veronica seems great.”

  “You think so?” I asked. I could barely contain my excitement. “I think you two are perfect for each other. I think this will change everything.”

  George laughed, then reached over and put his hand on mine. “Thank you, Lil. You may be getting a little ahead of yourself, but I appreciate it, that you care so much.”

  I watched his face. There was a sadness to him, something in his eyes that made me breathe in. It had always been there. It had been in Theodore's face, too, I realized. Even then I had responded to that.

  “You're welcome,” I said. “And I want to thank you as well, for everything you've done for me.”

  He gave me a strange look. “What do you mean?”

  “Just letting me work here. Giving me a place. I didn't always have a place, you know.”

  “What's up, Lil?”he asked. “You're acting like you won't see me again.”

  A bit of cool air swept through the room as a young couple came in the front door.

  “No. I just want to thank you. I never have.”

  For a moment the way he looked at me took me off guard. As if I were young, as if he could see into me.

  “Well, it has been my pleasure, madam,” he said. “You're a mystery, you know that? Someday you should tell me your story.”

  “Yes, I should,” I said, looking down.

  And I thought, for a second, what if I told him? What if I told him and Veronica both? Just sat down and said, This is who I am. This is who I was, this is what I did, and this is how I'm setting things right. What if I told him I was leaving?

  I would have given anything to have my powers again, right then, and be able to hear George's thoughts, feel what he felt. Humans had seemed so simple to me once, when I had not understood anything at all.

  “I hope …” I didn't know how to say it. “I hope this works out for you.” The way it was supposed to work out for Cinderella and the prince. I didn't know how to tell him what I had seen in him. What I wanted to see: him and Veronica, together, erasing all the longing and sadness from each other. He would laugh if I told him that.

/>   “Thanks, Lil. Well, I'd better get going. I've got to pick up my tux, then head up to Chelsea to meet a client.”

  “Oh,” I said, reaching out to him. “Will you be back today?”

  He looked at me in surprise, and I caught myself. “I don't think so,” he said. “But I'll see you Monday morning. Maybe we can have an early breakfast across the street. I'll tell you all about the ball.” He emphasized the last two words and smiled.

  He does not believe he can be happy, I thought.

  “That would be wonderful,” I said.

  “I'll see you Monday.”

  I watched him leave, his dark hair falling past his collar, his long body pushing out the door.

  It hadn't occurred to me before then that I might miss the human world when I left. How much I would miss George. But then I thought of everything I would be returning to.

  I spent the rest of the day putting things in order, the way I always did. Restoring order to the shelves, helping people pick out just the right book, wrapping their purchase in a brown paper bag. I tried to get through all the boxes George had piled in back.

  When I left work, I thought about going to the diner to eat but then decided to do something more special. I had so little time left. I considered going down to the water, but it was too soon, much too soon for that.

  And suddenly New York seemed wide open, wonderful, enchanted. I wanted to go somewhere new. A place I'd never been. My mind ran through all the possibilities—the far-flung beaches, the zoo, the botanical gardens, the planetarium where constellations lit up all at once in the dark. And then I thought of what George had told me, about the fairy paintings at the Frick.

  I didn't mind the long walk. I made my way over to Fifth Avenue, filled with excitement. The cars slid down the avenue like fish, their headlights glowing, and every building had an illuminated wrought-iron entryway with a doorman standing in it, ready to usher people in or out. There were posh people everywhere, with their small dogs, their town cars pulling up to the curbs, their perfumed skin and puffing hair. I walked past, invisible, my hands stuffed in my pockets. I glanced into the lobbies, saw marble floors and chandeliers sparkling, hanging down.

  I thought of the palace and its silver stairs. How they had felt under my human form, the glass slippers clacking against metal.

  An hour later I turned on Seventieth, and the street was darker now, lined with town houses fronted by swooping banisters, greenery bursting out of the windows and doorways. There were whole worlds in each one, I thought, imagining what I might have been able to see once on a street like this. Of course, the world was so crowded now. The thoughts and dreams swirling here would likely move into a fairy and eat her alive. Wouldn't they? I laughed. I thought of Cinderella's stepmother and her dream: the banquet tables laid with food, the chests overflowing with jewels.

  Men and women walked by holding hands, stepping out of cars, walking up into the palaces lining the streets. I thought of Veronica and George, how perfect and alive they were, the way her eyes would glitter when she looked at him, her lashes batting up and down like wings, and how flushed he would become under her gaze. I thought of her ice blue dress with the crystals shining off it, wrapping around her body and clashing with her hair.

  I could see all of it.

  The Frick came up on my right, surrounded by a regal dark fence. I took a breath and stepped through the main door, past the security guards and around the side, to the front desk.

  Inside, it was a riot of color, all around. I was surprised that it was an old house, a mansion someone had lived in once. I could feel the presence of lives in the walls and air, even before I read about them.

  I bought a ticket, then walked slowly through, one grand room after another, past the ornate furniture that was on the verge of crumbling, the fireplaces, the paintings that took up whole walls. Everything rubbed up against everything else. As I walked from room to room, I heard whispers, laughter. At one point I saw men and women standing around the couches with drinks in their hands, and stopped in my tracks. They were gone a moment later, the whole place turning so quiet I could hear my breath, my beating heart. The faint movements of the pacing guards.

  I entered a great hallway, a long rectangle of a room lined in paintings. Every kind of painting, it seemed. Whole worlds clashed and collided with each other there. Stormy scenes, dark trees bent against blackening, melancholy skies. Portraits, faces staring out, spoke of other, ghostlier worlds. I thought of everyone, all the places and people I had known, the dreams I had taken up into myself and could still feel rustling there, deep down.

  I stopped and stared into one of the paintings: a lit-up, butter-colored harbor with long boats teeming against the shoreline, where men and women wandered and worked and waited. The sky glowed and turned to dark, then to a bright dewy blue, almost translucent. Sugary. The water was green and brown and blue, constantly changing, almost alive. I could see the sun and the buildings reflected in it, growing and spreading across the surface, feel the cool sprays of it flicking onto my hands and face. The sky, I thought, is going to break open. I stepped closer, stared into one of the boats, the people working there and the sails dangling and folding down, like sheets hung out to dry, and then the faces, the people bent over, moving. I could hear them talking, shouting orders. I could hear the sounds of their feet stomping across the hull, the planks of wood, the water slapping against it, and the tug and groan as the boat stopped and swayed in the harbor.

  “Ma'am?”

  I recognized something. A familiar line of the jaw, arch of the forehead. A clock, I saw then, rising up across the water. Chiming one, two, three …

  “Excuse me, ma'am?” A hand touched my arm. “Ma'am, are you okay? I need you to step back behind this line.”

  I looked down, disoriented. Green carpet, a yellow line.

  I moved then, but I could feel the tears bubbling up in me, pressing against my eyelids. I looked back at the painting but it was all still now, quiet. A lovely scene lit from within, as if a heart were glowing from inside of it. The figures on the boat were motionless, drawn in black paint. The clock tower had disappeared.

  A stairwell led to a cluster of rooms downstairs. A painting caught my eye immediately as I walked in. I stepped closer. The colors seemed to shimmer off the canvas, greens and blues and golds. I focused in. A fairy scene. Three fairies next to a lake, dancing on the grass beside it. Behind them, a scattering of lights.

  I could reach into the painting and feel water, grass light. I could feel the wind breaking against my face as I flew through it. The water skimmed against feathers as I dove in, exchanging the air for the fairy lake, pressing into the water, my wings spread out like sails as I went deeper and deeper into the other world. The elders sat at their thrones; the gnarled trees swayed back and forth in the water.

  I checked the date of the painting: 1831. I leaned in but could not make out the fairies’ faces. They could have been my own kind but also could have been any other fairy tribe. Had they shown themselves, too?

  I didn't want to step away. The colors were rich, like juice or candy. My body, with its aches and fatigue, felt different, as if I were one gesture from flight. Back in the other world, flying had been as natural as breathing. I barely had to tilt my wings, think of air, before I was gliding through it. In the water I could dip my head and propel forward like a great fish, the water skimming through each feather, massaging them.

  A guard stood at the edge of the room, watching me. I nodded to him, then saw the painting to the left of the one I'd been looking at.

  It was a forest scene. A beautiful girl with pale blond hair lay in the grass, her body spread out and angled strangely. The grass was covered in blood. Over her hovered the small body of a fairy, the unmistakable sheen of wings. It was evening, and the moon was above, shining through the trees.

  In the background you could see the coach, a horse barely visible against the black night. The trees dropped over the scene, their leaves
pale green in the moonlight.

  I couldn't breathe. I looked up at the guard, but he didn't seem to know what was happening. He was just standing there as if everything were normal.

  The fairy was tiny, her wings a blur of movement, but still bright white. You could just make out the red of her hair, like a tiny flickering flame.

  I looked at the plaque next to the painting.

  1834, ANONYMOUS.

  “What is this?” I said, turning to the guard.

  He looked up at me, confused. “Ma'am?”

  “Do you know anything about this painting?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

  I turned back to the canvas. Her pale skin, her peaceful face. The blood, sickly and dark in the moonlight. I could have been right there. As if not one minute had gone by.

  I studied the painting, tried to memorize every detail. There was something strange about the trees, I saw after a minute, and I looked more closely. Up in the right-hand corner, in the array of heart-shaped leaves dappled with moonlight, leaves that shifted from pale to dark green, there was a smattering of lights. Fairies.

  “You were there,” I whispered. “You were there, watching.”

  The room was silent.

  “Are you here now?”

  In the corner of my eye: the curve of a wing, the blurred light above me. I turned, and there was nothing.

  I did not know how to feel. What to think.

  My head spun. Someone had recorded that ancient scene. And if it had happened, if it had become a part of history, hadn't it been destined to happen? What if everything had turned out the way it had been destined to all along? What if it had happened exactly as it was supposed to? Maybe they were never destined to be together, Cinderella and the prince. Maybe it was him and me, all along.

  I felt dizzy. After a few more minutes, I went upstairs, moving back through the rooms, passing angels and mirrors and overstuffed couches and chairs and the guards staring out at me, until I heard the sound of water and entered a columned marble room with a long fountain in the center. The water tumbled down from it into a shallow pool below.