“Lil's going into the human kingdom today,” Maybeth said, folding her arms.
“Oh, really? How fun! Let's go turn a lady into a frog!”
“Gladys,” I said, “this is important.”
“How important can it be?” Maybeth said. “Kings, queens, they all get old and die, anyway.”
“We need to make this girl a queen before she can die as one,” I said. “I told you what the elders said.”
“I think it sounds marvelous,” Gladys said. She caught sight of herself in the surface of the water and peered in, moving her face back and forth. “I hear she cries all day long every day. Poor girl.”
“They say she is the most beautiful girl in the land,” I said. “With hair like starlight.”
Maybeth made a great show of stretching up her arms and yawning as wide as she could.
“I'm sure she is simply dazzling,” Gladys said. “But can she do this?” She flipped her body over and balanced herself on the water with one finger. Her wings pulled her up into the air behind her. “And won't she turn old in seconds, practically?”
“Get old and die, you mean,” Maybeth said.
“I think you're just jealous,” I said.
“Of a human?”
“No,” I said. “Of me.”
Right then Lucibell emerged from the water and threw her arms around Maybeth, knocking her over and into the lake. They were both laughing so loudly I covered my ears.
“What are you thinking about?” Gladys asked in her soft voice, almost a whisper. Suddenly she was right next to me, leaning into me.
“The work I have to do,” I said.
“I did like Cinderella's mother.”
“Me too.”
“I was sorry when she died. I saw it written in the leaves and I wished I could change it.”
“Don't say that,” I whispered.
“It was just a thought, that's all.”
I looked back at the other world, their world. The dark sky in the distance, curling in on itself, the light shooting down through it. It was our job to make sure that everything happened as it was supposed to happen, the way it was written in the branches and vines of the great tree, the way the elders interpreted. When necessary, the young fairies, like me, who still left the water, helped humans meet the fates the elders decreed. We were inextricably bound to humans, no matter what we thought of them.
“Lil thinks I'm jealous of Cinderella,” Maybeth said.
“Well, I am,” Lucibell said. “I'm going to change my hair into pearls. Then the prince will marry me instead of her! What will you do then, Lil?”
“Ha,” Maybeth said. “You won't be able to compete with my golden breasts!”
“Lucibell! May!” I said.
“You should not even kid about that,” Gladys said, gasping exaggeratedly.
“Thank you,” I said.
Gladys left my side and spread her crazy butterfly wings with the bright blue markings on the sides. “Because we all know that no human can resist these lustrous wings coupled with my violet eyes. What do I need with gold or pearls?”
I sighed as they burst into laughter, but it was true: Gladys was the most beautiful of us, and took great joy in appearing in rivers and in sunlight to human men, who would write reams of poetry and sometimes even go mad altogether as a result. Still, it was not a proper topic for conversation. Cinderella was not an ordinary human. She was destined to become queen, and it was my task to ensure it.
Just then the sky lit up in the distance. Lightning.
“I need to go,” I said, standing up on the pier. “Much as I am enjoying this stimulating conversation.”
“I'm coming, too,” Gladys said. “I can help.”
“Oh, a great help you'll be,” I said.
“We're coming, too,” Maybeth said, dragging Lucibell behind her.
“Don't you have work to do?”
“We can work later,” she said, waving her hand. “For now, we might as well see our competition.”
They all laughed, but I stayed silent. They were starting to annoy me. The elders had chosen me for this task, not them. I was the one who was to get Cinderella to the ball now that human vanity had conspired against it.
It had been a dark, wintry night when the elders summoned me to the court. Ice dripped from the trees and every creature in the forest was in hiding. Snow and ice had coated the lake's surface, icicles breaking off and falling into the grass at the bottom of the lake as we slept. I had thought I was in trouble when the message came, as if the elders could sense my desire to be out in the world, to run through the snow, but then I found myself in front of the council. Prince Theodore, they told me, was going to throw a ball and pick a wife. It was important, they said, that Cinderella attend, and yet her stepsisters and stepmother were going to prevent it. It was a great honor for me to have been chosen. For my sensitivity, the feather wings that marked me.
Now I spread my wings and flew up into the wind and beyond the fairy lake, which was in the center of the dark forest. The others flew close behind, and the air against my face was like mist. My whole body relaxed into it. We passed over the ancient trees, the secret hovels of elves and witches and gnomes, and a group of men searching for their two lost companions, whom they would never find—I could feel the fear coursing through them—and headed toward the palace in the distance, rising up into the storm clouds. Slowly my annoyance disappeared. There was nothing like the feeling of flight, of navigating whole worlds with one's heart and body.
I pushed myself into it, faster and faster, and soon the rain lashed against my skin, the temperature dropping to a heavy coldness. I gave myself over to it, all of it. I laughed with the others, screaming against the rain and thunder.
We landed in the field of a large estate on the outskirts of the kingdom. Gladys dropped into an upturned leaf that was filling with rain. “I'm drowning!” she cried, as Maybeth flopped into the mud and covered her skin with it.
“I believe I have turned to chocolate!” Maybeth called out.
I laughed, then looked up at the huge black horse in front of us, quivering as thunder shattered the air behind it. He stamped at the ground.
“Lovely creature,” I breathed, and he looked at me then, his enormous eyes meeting mine. I flew up, against the rain, to him. He had long black lashes and I could see the scars on his side where he'd been lashed.
Maybeth was by my side in an instant. “He's a pretty thing,” she said.
“He sees us.”
She neared the horse and gripped his mane. She leaned in close to his ear and whispered. Through the whooshing sounds of the storm I could hear her words, soothing him.
“We should go,” I said.
The horse calmed as she spoke to him. I flew down and pressed myself against his soft coat, as black as ink. The horse's eyes focused in on me and he blinked.
“A creature like this shouldn't have to stay here, not this way,” Maybeth said.
“I know.” For a moment I could see the rain and the fields and the black trees through the horse's eyes, feel the fear slowly leaving him as his wounds closed and disappeared.
“Good boy,” she whispered, stroking his coat. Her face soft, open. We had both inherited it, this love for beasts.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
Lucibell and Gladys were no longer in the grass, I saw then, but hovering up ahead, next to a carriage that was stuck in the mud. As Maybeth and I approached we saw a man wrenching himself out of the carriage and screaming at the horseman, his clothes getting soaked with rain. The horseman was pulling on the reins frantically, but the horses were refusing to budge.
Obviously, the two of them were up to no good. “What are you doing to that man?” I said. “Quit making mischief!”
“Oh, Lil, we're just having fun,” Gladys said, pouting. She glowed against the night like a firefly.
“I am quite sure he deserves it,” Lucibell said.
Thunder clapped above u
s. I spread my wings. We left the horse and the carriage and the field behind, and moved through the dense, wet air. The kingdom spread out below us, all human life as we knew it. We passed noble manors, with their massive gardens and the lines of huts the peasants lived in, the fields full of crops and grapevines and livestock, the little chapels. We passed villages, with their rows of shops, their butchers and blacksmiths and seamstresses, their elaborate churches and stone taverns with the horses hitched up outside. We passed small forests without enchantments, filled with pheasant and other prey, and roads being traveled by knights and bandits and kings and beggars, until we came to the silver palace, which glittered under us, which reached up to us with its massive heart and all the desire that collected in it. And then, finally, after crossing the river that flowed like mercury, we came upon a dark manor on the other side of the kingdom that looked, from above, as sad as any tear. Its garden was overgrown, its crops untended. The stones in the façade were beginning to crumble. I had seen the place behind my eyes, from the lake, but here, now, it seemed enormous. Lightning cracked open the world. I could feel her in the house, and her presence came over me with such force I almost cried out loud.
We were silent as we came upon the long windows, pressing our foreheads against the glass.
“Up here!” Maybeth cried, and we all fluttered to the second floor, where, in a gaping stone room, three women stood huddled over a bed covered in dresses and fabric.
“Which one is she?” Lucibell breathed. “None of them looks very beautiful to me.”
“Well, they're not going to be, not to us,” Gladys said. “She's human after all.”
“This isn't her room,” I said, trying to interject. “She's not here.”
“Oh, but her mother was gorgeous,” Lucibell said to Gladys. “Remember? I loved her. I loved watching her.”
Gladys shrugged. “She was half fairy. Wasn't she?”
“Yes,” I said. “A fairy fell in love with her mother, Cinderella's grandmother.”
“That's disgusting,” Maybeth said.
“She was supposed to have been astonishing,” I said. “He came upon her bathing in a stream and it happened then. Her husband never knew.”
Lucibell shuddered. “I can't even imagine.”
“He was banished, right, the fairy?” Maybeth asked. “For that, he must have been.”
“Of course,” I said. “Anyway, those are the stepsisters and their mother. Cinderella's in the kitchen. I can feel her.”
The sisters were pulling up dress after dress from the bed and throwing them onto the floor. Rich fabrics of velvet and tulle and silk, every color woven into them.
Before I knew what was happening, Gladys pushed her way into the room, dissolving into the glass and reconfiguring herself on the other side, and Lucibell followed. I watched for a minute as they flung themselves onto the pile of fabric and began pulling the dresses away every time the sisters reached for them. The sisters, already in a state of anxiety and despair, started stamping their feet with frustration.
I grabbed Maybeth's hand. “Let's go,” I said. We moved along the stone, passing room after room full of heavy tapestries and furniture, servants moving through them like ghosts, until we were outside of the great kitchen at the back of the house, just off the dining room with its table set for one hundred, though only the mother and her two daughters ate there every night. The door to the kitchen stood open as a maid lugged in a bucket of water from the well out back, next to the stables. We made our way inside, where servants bent over piles of meats and vegetables, large black pots and skillets. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling, batches of thyme in front of every window.
To attract fairies, Maybeth said, clapping with delight.
“She put those there,” I said. “I feel her on them. She must have grown up hearing stories about us. I bet she knows all the songs, all the prayers.”
“I bet she leaves out bowls of milk next to her bed.”
“They probably don't let her,” I said. “Look at her.” I pointed, then pushed my way to the back of the room, to where she was on her hands and knees on the floor.
“That's her?” Maybeth asked, shocked.
Her hair was bound in a dirty scarf, her body covered in rags. Her skin was smudged with dirt and ash. I felt her despair so strongly I had to stop and lean against the counter to recover. Rotting vegetables were piled on the counter, the smell moving into me like a hand down my throat.
“This is the girl who is to be queen?”
“Yes,” I said, clutching my stomach.
Maybeth appeared at my side, squatting down on the counter and pressing her lips to my ear. “Are you sure about this, Lil?” she asked, and her voice, then, was less sure, more afraid.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I turned to her sharply.
She looked down at the ground, and then back up again. “I just mean, it is a lot to do. She does not look right.”
“I will be fine, sister,” I said. “I am prepared for this. That is why they chose me. Remember that: I was chosen.”
The girl paused in her work. She wiped a small hand against her forehead, which glistened with sweat, and left a line of dirt across it. She raised her eyes and for a moment they seemed to rest right on mine, and then they flicked to something behind me, to something that only she could see.
“She's so sad,” Maybeth whispered. “What happened to her?”
We heard peals of laughter then, and looked up. Gladys and Lucibell, their faces red, hurtled toward us.
Cinderella looked up again quickly, squinting her eyes. She senses us, I thought.
“Back to work,” a low human voice said. I started, and looked around to see where the voice had come from. An older man sat deep in a chair beside the fire. Cinderella's whole body stiffened. I could feel it, that stiffening, through mine. I had never felt so sensitive before, to a human, the way I was to her. Usually I could feel them, sense them, hear their thoughts and dreams in a way that was uncanny—I was the best at this, of all the fairies—but not like this.
“Are you all right?” Maybeth whispered.
I nodded as Gladys and Lucibell swarmed around Cinderella's head. Two tiny lights sparkling and glowing, dipping down and then back up again. But I was not okay. The man rose from the chair and walked behind Cinderella, stood there with his arms folded, watching as she scrubbed the stone. I could feel his hands on her, where they had been.
“Cinderella!” a voice screeched, from a distance. We all covered our ears. “Cinderelllllla!”
A bead of sweat passed down her face and dropped in the dust on the floor. Her hands on the stone, scratched and hardened. The brush under them, sweeping back and forth. Slowly and wearily, she lifted her head to the sound of her name, and then stood, every bit of her body aching. I felt it moving through me. All of it.
“Yes,” she said. “I'm here.”
One of the sisters stormed into the room, dressed in a long purple gown and holding a pink and yellow one so heavy with jewels I was surprised she could carry it without tipping over.
“There is an emerald missing from this gown!” the sister said, looking down at it in disgust. “Fix it!”
“Yes, ma'am,” Cinderella said, taking the gown carefully.
Gladys opened her mouth wide and looked at me. “How can they treat her like that?”
Lucibell fluttered to the sister's neck, leaned in, and bit it. The girl started and flinched, slapping at bare skin. Gladys landed on her wrist and kicked it with all her might.
“You're a witch!” the sister said to Cinderella, clutching her wrist in her hand. “You and your herbs and spells! A witch!”
“I am sorry,” Cinderella said softly, flinching. “I will fix this for you.”
Gladys gave the sister's wrist another kick.
“Stop it, you two!” I said. “She will have her time. You can be sure of that. We should go back.”
Lucibell gave the girl's neck one last nip as Cinderella c
arried the dress through a vast doorway and toward a flight of dusty stone steps.
“We need to go now,” I repeated, and lifted myself into the air. I need to go now, I should have said, before my heart breaks.
One by one we spread our wings and flew back into the cold, storm-filled human night, under a sky with not one star in it. We made our way back to the forest, to the fairy world that was all light, that was always light, and the lake that was the bluest blue you can imagine. I forgot everything and moved straight into it. Down into the depths of it, to the flowers and grass that swept out from the great tree that held all human fate. It was not in our control. The world grew quiet and calm. Everything was exactly as it should be. Me and my friends. My sister. I looked back at her—her ecstatic face, her sharp chin and wild hair, her huge glittering eyes.
I STARTED awake, gasping for air. My mouth was dry and bitter. I blinked against the dark room, wondered where I was. For a moment I felt my heart burst open, a fluttering enter my throat. Instinctively I looked for her, my sister. I thought I saw the flicker of a wing, the glint of hair. My wings tensed up against my back. Anything seemed possible.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, the room slowly came into relief. My room. The same dull flaking wallpaper, the dresser with the small television propped on top, the poster of Rita Hayworth on the wall.
The pain came at me like a fist. I became conscious of my body, the way my legs ached, the rawness where the sheets had rubbed my cheek and arms. Waking was always a huge shock. Even in dreams, the other world felt far more real than this room, this wallpaper, this dresser, this aching body.
I closed my eyes and tried to go back, concentrating as hard as I could on the image of Maybeth's face, her wings spread behind her. Outside, I could hear workmen shouting, the hum of the trucks, and, farther away, a wailing siren. The fan was useless in the city heat. I shifted and heard my bones crackle. Pulling a pillow to my chest, I burrowed my face into it, pushed my shoulders down. Sometimes I could do it, slide back into the other world for a little while longer, stave off the crushing loss. This morning there was a dream there, the tail end of one, like a ghost at the edge of the room.