Chapter 5

"Good morning, Mistress!"

The cheerful voice startled her awake, and even if it had not, the ruthless pulling aside of the curtains at the windows to let in a flood of sunshine surely would have.

Elena sat straight up in bed. A real bed. The same real, luxurious bed she had dreamed that she had climbed into last night. And she was in the same, gorgeous, glorious room that she had imagined in her dream.

Except that she was awake, very much awake, and she was still here. Those were her clothes folded up on the chair, which a little brown woman who probably stood no higher than her waist—whose ears, she could see, were rather pointed—was picking up, unfolding, and tsk ing over. She was dressed in a miniature, muted version of Madame Bella's eccentric costume.

She must be a Brownie, like the two old men last night. Which meant that they, too, were real.

"Oh, Mistress, these'll never do, these garments of yours," the Faerie woman said firmly, and with, perhaps, just a touch of disdain. "Maybe for working in the garden after rain, but not for every day. Not for an Apprentice."

She had not been in her position a day, and already she was making mistakes, it seemed. This wasn't a very auspicious start. And last night, Madame Bella hadn't said a word about clothing.

"But I'm afraid they're the best I have—" Elena said, weakly. "I'm terribly sorry, but my stepmother—I'll wear whatever you like—"

The Faerie woman interrupted her, with a wave of her hand. She didn't seem annoyed; relieved, perhaps, that Elena had volunteered to wear what she chose. "Oh, not to worry, not to worry. You won't need the whole turn-out for weeks and weeks yet, and Robin will have it all tailored up for you by then." The little woman bustled about the room, unpacking Elena's few things and folding them away in a chest. "Till then, I expect some of Madame's things will do.

You're much of a size." She opened one of the two wardrobes and began pulling clothing out.

Remembering Madame's rather—flamboyant—style of yesterday, Elena wondered if she ought to say something. Not that Madame Bella's clothing wasn't good but—

But fortunately, it seemed, the little woman's taste was a good bit quieter than Madame's. Out came a fine white linen shift and petticoat, a white blouse liberally trimmed at the cuffs with lace, a black twill skirt piped in green, and a black vest embroidered in green and purple, and a sash to match. Still far more colorful than anything Elena had worn in years, but by no means as eye-popping an ensemble as Madame's.

No corset, so there wasn't any need for help with dressing; and just as well, as Elena would really rather do without a corset if she could. Before the old woman could make a move to serve as a body-servant, Elena quickly climbed out of bed and put the clothing on, feeling an unaccustomed urge to giggle with nervousness. It wasn't that she was shy about disrobing in front of a stranger—years living among the rest of the servants had cured her of any such illusions of modesty. No, it was the giddy and dizzying rush of realizing that this was real.

It wasn't a dream—it wasn't a dream. She was the Apprentice to a Fairy Godmother. She was living in a house that was bigger on the inside than the outside, waited on by Faerie Folk.

I am going to learn magic. Magic! How incredible could this be? Here she was, with Faerie Folk all around her, and she was going to learn magic herself!

The old woman—much less wrinkled, and much more apple-cheeked than the old men, Elena noted—surveyed her with hands on her hips when Elena had finished dressing. "You'll do,"

she said brusquely. "Those colors suit you. Foot."

"Excuse me?" Elena replied, now utterly bewildered.

"Your foot, girl, show me your foot! " the old woman repeated, and with absolute confusion, Elena lifted her skirt and held up one of her feet.

The old woman seized it in a hand as hard as horn, and looked it over, muttering to herself.

Then she let go, to Elena's relief, and bustled over to another chest.

From there she took a pair of soft slippers of the sort that tightened with ribbons to fit, and handed them to Elena. "Barefoot only in the garden, Mistress," she said, in a tone that warned that there would be no arguing with her. "Shod elsewise. People come here, Mistress. You must be a credit to the Godmother as her Apprentice. People have to respect you, as they respect her."

Meekly, Elena took the shoes, and the stockings that the Brownie woman handed to her, and put them on. The shoes were of a leather that was as soft as velvet, and she was terribly afraid that she would have them ruined within an hour.

Still, if this was what was proper—

The Brownies were known for strict adherence to the truth. Rose—for surely this must be Rose, who did the "cleaning"— would not tell her to do something that was not correct. Very well. If these were the shoes that were right, then she would wear them.

It's all true.

"Right then, Mistress. Come along." The little woman opened the door and stood there, beckoning. "Time to break your fast and start on your work. You've a lot to learn, and you're a bit late coming to it."

"Are you Rose?" Elena asked, as the little woman made impatient shooing motions with both hands, as if Elena was a giant chicken.

"That would be me. Come along, then. Madame doesn't stand on ceremony at breakfast and luncheon, unless there's guests; we all eat in the kitchen, and I'm to show you the way." An odd little sniff showed Elena that Rose did not precisely approve of Madame Bella's informality with the staff. Poor Hob! She must lead him a merry dance! I wonder if all Brownie women are like this? Rose had all the hauteur of Madame Klovis's oh-so-supe-rior lady's maid, packed into a package half the size of the human.

Out they went, with Elena glancing at all the books waiting for her in her sitting room with longing, down the stairs, and out towards the back of the cottage, at least so far as Elena could tell. First they passed a little dining-room, then a pantry, then a milk-room with pans of milk already set out for the cream to rise, and at last came to the kitchen. This was a fine, well-appointed room, complete even to a sink with a hand-pump, bake-ovens built to either side of the fireplace, and plenty of pothooks for kettles and a spit with a clockwork turner. And there was a very modern stove, as well, which set into a much larger hearth, one that could have once roasted an ox whole. Its presence surprised Elena. The cook in the Klovis household had often lamented that they had no such thing, and had described one in detail, though Elena had never actually seen one.

The kitchen had an immaculately scrubbed flagstone floor and whitewashed brick walls, two big, sunny windows with real glass in them, and it smelled deliciously of baking bread. There were two tables there as well, a large worktable in the middle, which would have been low for a human, but was waist-high to the Brownie, and under one of the two windows, a table with benches beside it. Madame Bella was already there, dressed much as she had been yesterday, except that the predominating hue in her wardrobe was red today. Robin was at the stove, and besides baking bread, Elena smelled porridge, eggs, and frying ham. He turned at her entrance, nodded at Rose, and asked, "Did you sleep well, Mistress? What would you care to eat?"

"Very well, thank you, Robin," she replied, carefully. "And I'm not particular, anything at all will suit me."

"Come sit here, Elena," Madame Bella said, waving at a stool beside her. "I trust your rooms suit you? Ah, I see by your face that they do."

Before Elena could even get properly seated, Robin had bustled over with porridge for her.

There was already cream and sugar on the table and Elena helped herself to both, with a sense of giddy freedom, for other than when she had eaten porridge with her neighbors, all she'd had for years was the scrapings from the kettle, seasoned with a little salt. She had not even finished pouring the cream over her breakfast, when Robin returned with a plate of eggs and fried ham.

This was a feast!

"Now, today, my dear, I will need to prepare you for your position," Madame was saying as she dug into her breakfast. "In fact, we'll begin now. A wineglass, please, Robin, and something to take the taste away afterwards."

Robin brought two glasses, one empty, the other half full of something that sparkled darkly in the sunlight. "Ah, blackberry cordial, just the thing," Madame Bella said with approval. She reached for a tiny decanter that was already on the table and poured a few drops into the empty glass. "Now, you toss that right down, and never mind the taste, just get it all down and follow it with the cordial."

Elena looked askance at the glass, but did as she was told. It wasn't as if there was anything to fear, after all. Firstly, Madame Bella was a good magician, and secondly, why in heaven's name would she bring Elena here just to poison her? But the liquid in it was black and oily-looking, and seemed to warn that it was not going to be nice.

She picked up the glass, took a deep breath, and tossed it all back.

And nearly choked.

It was worse that she could ever have imagined. Horribly bitter and fiery at the same time, it was so powerful and so awful that her eyes filled with tears and she had to struggle not to spit it all out. She groped with one hand, and Madame put the other glass into it, which she took and quickly downed the contents of.

The cordial managed to wash away the awful taste, and she shook her head as she put the glass down and wiped her eyes with a napkin. " What was that?" she choked.

"Dragon's blood, undiluted," Madame said, apologetically. "Fresh, or relatively so; I got it yesterday before I went to fetch you. Now you'll be able to understand the languages of the birds and beasts."

Dragon's blood? Real dragon's blood? There seemed no reason to doubt it, and Elena nearly choked all over again. She reminded herself how often she had eaten things like blood sausage, and tried not to feel too sick.

Perhaps some porridge— She took a mouthful before she asked her next question.

"Why would I want to do that?" she asked, hoarsely, feeling as if she must be missing something that should have been terribly obvious.

"Because the birds and the beasts are everywhere, and often have a great deal to tell you,"

Madame replied. "You'll see. At any rate, this was best taken care of first, as the rest of the spells are a bit more complex. But first, Elena, do finish your breakfast. It's going to be a busy day, and it has just begun."

The morning began with a tour of Madame Bella's "cottage," which was quite as large inside as Elena's old home had been. The difference was that very few of these rooms were devoted to show, especially on the ground floor. There was no formal dining room, and what Elena had taken for a drawing room was, in fact, a second library, the first already being crammed so full of books that they had spilled over into this room, where they were in a fair way to take over. Elena felt her eyes going round with astonishment at the sheer number of books. The only spots on the walls that were not covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books were where the windows and doors were let into them, and where the fireplace, mantel, and chimney were let into the wall. There were hessian curtains on these windows, old, faded rugs on the floor, and the only furniture in either room were more low bookcases surrounding a desk and a chair.

"Genealogies, histories, and tales. Also some spell-books, but most of what a Godmother does is about what is appropriate to the moment, is impelled and powered by The Tradition and the magic that The Tradition has accreted around the hero or heroine, and doesn't require the same preparation as a Witch's or Wizard's spells." Bella looked around the walls with what seemed to Elena like weary satisfaction, and Elena noticed that there was a book lying open on the desk, with pen and ink beside it. "What you do need to know is who is related to whom—

absolutely necessary to trace missing heirs and potential usurpers. You need to know your enemies; you'll find them in those books, like as not, and potential enemies for the future as well.

And you should be familiar with every tale that any Godmother has ever been involved with. In your turn, you are expected to write up every Tradition Line that you steer—you can read and write, I hope?" Suddenly Bella looked very anxious, and Elena was pleased to be able to reassure her. "Ah, good. Well, that will be one of the spells that you will have to perform; once you finish writing a tale, there will be an identical book in the library of every other Godmother and Warding Wizard, and those White Witches and Wizards who are powerful enough to have libraries like ours will also have a copy." She shook her head. "And this, of course, is why I no longer have a drawing room. I thought about performing the spell to add a room, but I never got around to it. That will be your duty, I expect. I can't see how many more books can be added without spilling into some other room—and Lily would be most vexed if that happened."

"How is it that this is nothing more than a cottage from outside, and all this on the inside?"

Elena asked, pleased for the opening at last to ask what she had been dying to know.

"Ah. That is rather difficult to explain. In fact, I'm not entirely certain that I can, except to say that it is magic, and it is necessary." Madame Bella shrugged. "There is nothing to show on the outside that this is not the abode of an ordinary White Witch, or even some peasant who has chosen to live apart in the forest. I told you that we have enemies, and it has happened in the past that in order to facilitate their schemes, they began by eliminating the region's Godmother.

Not often, but it has happened."

"Oh," Elena said, sobered. So, this Godmothering business was dangerous. She felt a little touch of fear at that moment. She wasn't used to danger. Life with her stepmother had been hard, lonely, unhappy and unpleasant, but not precisely dangerous. Danger was something that happened to other people—why, hadn't she considered and discarded the idea of simply running away and taking her chances because of the danger?

Difficult, complicated, and now dangerous. But on the other hand, I will never be bored, and no one will be making a slave out of me. There was a great deal to be said for that, and as for the danger—

I will be helping to make other peoples' dreams come true.

"You will make dreams come true, Elena," Madame Bella said, softly, in an uncanny echo of Elena's own thoughts. "And dreams are dangerous things in and of themselves." She cast another look around the library. "Look at them! Dreams and nightmares, hopes and fears. Compared to some of the trials that our heroes and heroines must face in order to earn their happy endings, what we Godmothers encounter is really trivial so long as we are careful to keep our true nature hidden. You'll see, when you come to read them, for not every tale has that happy ending. Not every hero is brave enough, resourceful enough, or lucky enough, even with our help, to triumph in the end." There was a shadow on Madame Bella's face, and she seemed to be recalling something that was very sad indeed. Then she shook her head. "Read the books, Elena, and you will see."

The rest of the ground floor was given over to working rooms. There was a dairy-room, a stillroom, the kitchen, of course, a little office, a sewing-room; in short, everything this establishment needed to be self-sufficient. "We take care of a great deal of our own needs here,"

Madame said with pride. "There are two villages within walking distance, and we have arrangements with people in both of them for things like flour and so forth. The villagers all believe that I am a White Witch, and often come to me for spells and cures, and pay me in things that we need." She smiled. "Which, of course, is another reason why my home appears to be a simple cottage on the outside. You will soon see that we do not squander magic on the things we can supply by the same means as anyone else. We help our local people, earning our way the same as any other craftsman, and our local people, since they do not know that I am a Godmother, assist in creating the illusion that I am just the local White Witch. They will see nothing amiss in my having taken an Apprentice; in fact, I suspect that they will be somewhat relieved."

"That sounds like an excellent arrangement to me," Elena replied, feeling relieved, for she could not envisage herself as a farmer, and the House Elves did not seem young nor strong enough to be farm-workers. Of course, according to the tales she had heard, there was no telling with Elves; they might look frail, yet be strong as an ox.

"In the same way, we aid the local Faerie Folk in return for their help, both in terms of the service that Hob and Robin and their wives give us, and in magic. They, however, know that I am a Godmother, and by now, they have heard about you." Madame Bella smiled broadly. "The Faerie Folk always seem to know about something within the hour of it happening."

Outside the house—which still looked, and from all angles, like a simple two- or three-room cottage—were the gardens. In the front were the flowers and ornamental plants; two on either side were herb-beds. The culinary herbs were to the right of the cottage, the healing herbs to the left. Of course, there were some herbs that served both purposes, but as Madame pointed out, having them in both gardens meant only that she could be sure that there would always be enough.

In the rear was the kitchen-garden, with handsome red hens industriously scratching among the planted rows, looking for insects or weed-sprouts; this was where they found the Brownie Lily, working diligently among the young cabbages.

And as she listened to their quiet clucking, she got a shock. She certainly heard clucking—but she also heard something else.

"Greedy, greedy, greedy," muttered one hen, jealously eyeing a choice patch of ground that a bigger hen was scratching. "Not enough bugs," grumbled another, and the rest simply evidenced contentment.

She could, indeed, understand the speech of animals.

It took her a moment to catch her breath when she realized the truth, it seemed as if, for now, her life was going to be one disconcerting moment after another.

Finally she caught her breath, so to speak, and turned her attention back to what Madame was saying about her garden.

If ever there was a model vegetable garden, this was surely it—the rows were as straight as could be, the young plants healthy and flourishing. And if Elena was any judge, the gardener had started her plants in stages, so that there would be vegetables at the perfect state to harvest all summer long. It was difficult to manage, and took a great deal of skill, as well as careful management of cold-frames. Elena had never managed it properly, and only knew two farmers at home who had done it— and their produce almost always went straight to the Palace.

"Ah, Madame Bella!" said the Brownie, rising to her feet and brushing soil from her canvas apron. "I've some lovely sparrow-grass coming; not for dinner today, but definitely for tomorrow. This would be Mistress Elena, then."

"Yes," Elena answered for herself. "And you are Lily; these are wonderful gardens!"

"Oh, I do my best," Lily replied, with a shrug. "It's good to be where people appreciate that."

The last of the tour took them to the byre at the bottom of the garden, with the stable beside it. There was a donkey in the stable—presumably unmagical, since it gazed on both of them with supreme disinterest and went back to the hay in its manger. It was an old beast, by the grey of its muzzle.

In the byre were two red-brown milch-cows with mild eyes, who were equally disinterested in the two humans. Well, that explained where the fresh milk and cream were coming from.

Fortunately, they didn't say anything. Elena wasn't at all sure she could cope with talking cows as well as talking chickens at the moment.

Altogether, this would have been exactly the sort of situation where Elena would have been happy as a servant. She certainly had never envisioned herself as the mistress of such a place. It was a little daunting.

And when you added in the talking animals—

How am I ever going to be able to eat meat again ? she wondered with sudden dismay.

But then, she remembered just how incredibly stupid the chickens had sounded. She had always known that chickens weren't bright, and the fact that she could understand what they were saying to each other hadn't changed that. All that was different, really, was that instead of merely intuiting the meaning of their calls, she actually knew it.

It occurred to her, as Madame Bella opened the garden gate and beckoned her to follow out into the woods surrounding the cottage, that there was another aspect to all of this. In the tales that she knew, there were often animals that were, well, more than mere animals. Whether they were magic beasts, or from the Faerie Realms, they were always the equal and sometimes superior in intelligence to humans—

—like that little humpbacked horse that had drawn Madame's cart last night, for instance.

And now she would be able to speak to them, as Madame could, which was probably Madame's entire reason for giving her the dragon's blood to drink.

Madame followed a path winding among the enormous trees of this forest, and Elena followed her, though once they got under the deep shadows cast by the heavy growth, she looked back at the sunlit gardens longingly. Elena was town-bred, and in fact, since Madame Klovis had taken over the household, she had never been any farther from her house than the market-garden. The trees she knew were all tame things, neatly trimmed and confined to gardens, surrounded by seats or planted in jardinières. These were wild trees, huge, taller than the clock tower, so big that three girls could have stood around them, stretched out their arms and barely have been able to touch their fingertips together. The thick bark was green with moss, and beneath their branches the woods lay in a murmurous twilight. Anywhere that there was a gap in the canopy, the undergrowth ran wild—where there was no place for the sun to penetrate, mushrooms made little colonies, moss carpeted the ground and the fallen tree limbs, and the occasional odd, pale flower bloomed.

Every time a twig snapped or a bird called, Elena jumped. And it didn't help that she could understand what those birds were saying, either, because it was mostly, "Hey! Hey, hey, hey!"

So what were they shouting about? What was lurking out there, hidden in the tangles of vines, behind the fallen trees, in the shadows. Bears? Wolves?

Worse?

"Madame Bella?" she whispered, not wanting to make any noise louder than that. "Where are we going?"

The Godmother glanced back at her. "I need to show you to the Faerie Folk—their official representatives, that is; my Brownies don't count. Most of them can't abide salt and cold iron, so they cannot come to us, we must come to them."

Elena shivered. The Brownies were one thing; they were small and earthy, and impossible to be afraid of. But there were all manner of Faerie Folk that she wasn't at all sure she wanted to be

"shown" to. Dangerous creatures dwelled in the Faerie Realms, and even when they were marginally friendly to mortals, they were chancy to deal with; unpredictable and easily offended.

What if she offended one of them?

Perhaps worse, what of one of them took a fancy to her? No mortal could resist Faerie glamour; she could be lured away, only to discover, when her Faerie lover tired of her, that when she tried to return home, she would turn into a withered old crone, or even die, once she set foot outside those charmed precincts. For while weeks or months had passed for her, hundreds of years would have passed in the mortal world.

But it was too late for misgivings now, for there was a glow ahead of them that was not sunlight breaking through the heavy canopy, and there were bright and dark figures moving in that glow.

As they neared the spot, Elena saw that it was a clearing in the woods, ringed with palid mushrooms, carpeted with deep green moss studded with tiny golden flowers. In the center, two stumps and a tightly entwined series of ancient vines formed a pair of thrones, cushioned with leaves so dark a green they looked at first glance to be black, and ornamented with huge, trumpet-bell flowers in of pale pink, pale blue, and cream. Two tall, thin, impossibly beautiful creatures sat in those thrones, creatures with leaf-pointed ears, cascades of silver-gilt hair, and garments of that damasked silk that only the Elves could weave. Their skin was so pale and translucent they could have been carved from moonstone, but their enormous, curiously slanted blue eyes were alive enough as they watched Madame and Elena approach.

Surrounding the thrones was a crowd of other creatures, most of which Elena could not put names upon. There were Unicorns, silken-soft and cloven-hoofed, and tiny, perfectly formed, perfectly naked winged women no more than a foot tall. There were tall, shrouded creatures that seemed to bring a deeper shadow with them, and Elena instinctively knew that she did not want to look under their cowls. There were green-skinned women clothed in leaves and flowers, and men with goat-legs, tiny horns half-hidden in their curly brown hair, and sly, knowing eyes. And those were just the ones that Elena could see.

Madame led her to within twenty paces of the sylvan thrones, and stopped, making a deep, but not servile, bow. "Majesties, this is my Apprentice, Elena."

The two on the thrones, who evidently must have been the King and Queen of the Elves in this Kingdom, if not all of the Faerie Folk, turned their impassive gaze on her. And, after a long moment of scrutiny, nodded.

"A good choice, Madame Bella," said the woman, whose musical voice was as lovely and indescribable as her face. She stood up, and beckoned to Elena, who reluctantly came nearer.

"So, Apprentice, have you been warned? Do you know the dangers as well as the duties?"

"I left that to you, Majesty," Madame Bella said, serenely. "As is the custom."

The Elven Queen smiled, coolly. "So you do remember. It is well. Mortal woman, stand before me, and see. These are the foes you will contend with, mortal and immortal."

The Queen extended the slender willow-wand in her hand until it touched Elena's forehead.

And in a single moment, it seemed, a torrent of images poured into her mind. None were pleasant, and many were terrifying.

It was one thing to be warned about the evil magicians, and to remember all of the things she had read and heard. It was quite another to see them at work, in rapid succession. And some—

were horrors.

Some of the horrors were blatant—entire countries laid waste, the inhabitants made into hopeless slaves, afraid to do anything but obey because of the cost of disobedience. Some of the evil ones were precisely as she might have expected, gloating despots squatting on thrones they had no right to, torture and exploitation the hallmarks of their reigns.

But some were subtle, and once Elena realized what she was seeing, the implications were chilling. Often the evil one was not on the throne itself, but was the power behind it, whispering into the monarch's ear. The effect was insidious; rather than creating despair for all, the dark one created factions, pitting the privileged, wealthy, and titled against those beneath them, placing the effort of exploitation one layer below the monarch. This kept despair from being total, for there was always the hope— "But when the King learns of this...."—even though the hope was destined never to be fulfilled. These spiders spun a cunning web, beginning as they always did by eroding conditions gradually, with rights converted to privilege, then the privilege revoked on one pretense or another, always for an excellent reason, always on a "temporary" basis, until the next "privilege" was taken and the previous grievance forgotten. Then as one hand took away, the other, the King's, would give—something trivial, but pleasurable. Games perhaps, or entertainments. Nothing controversial, of course. A competition that would elevate the winner into the ranks of the wealthy and prominent—so that the illusion was maintained that this was possible for everyone. It was as if wholesome bread was being taken, and a tastier bread made with sawdust used to replace it.

Or, perhaps the one behind the throne would start a war on some trumped-up cause—a little war, of course, against a weak but convenient enemy, one that would be difficult to lose, that would stir up patriotic fervor, one that would, of course, entail "sacrifices for the good of all and the security of the realm" under cover of which more "privileges" could be "temporarily" taken.

Clever and insidious, and damnably difficult to counter. And all the while, the spider spun his web, battening on the misery and depression, growing fat and ever more powerful, and in the darkness behind the throne, indulging himself in secret cruelties against the "enemies of the state."

These, more than the others, were the ones that were the most dangerous to the Godmothers, the White Wizards, the Good Wizards. The first class were brutal, but seldom thought past the moment. The second planned ahead, months, years, decades—anticipated opposition, and moved to counter it well in advance. These were the ones who swiftly cleansed their countries of resident magicians, either directly murdering them or instigating the local peasantry against them, and then ensured that no one else would move in by creating intense hostility against "foreigners"

and "outsiders," cleverly engineering their rhetoric so that the blame for anything that was bad would be laid to the door of "outsiders." Since that effectively made isolationism a certainty, it protected the evil ones further, for anything outside the borders became suspect, even hated, and there would be no chance for anyone to learn that things might be better, elsewhere.

Elena saw, in detail, what was happening to the "outsiders" in several of the infected Kingdoms...imprisonment was the least of it. In rapid succession, she saw Faerie Folk being driven into grim encampments hedged around with cold iron and salt and spells, there to wither and die, or suffer torture at the hands of sadistic guards. She saw a Godmother dragged to the center of a town and burned alive, a White Wizard buried in the rubble of his own tower, a coven of Good Witches torn to pieces by a pack of savage hounds.

It all played out with dreadful immediacy in front of her eyes, and sent her heart into her throat.

But more than that, it made her angry. This was what her stepmother had done to her, writ large on the face of the world. She had been powerless to stop it then, but she would not be powerless now, and she would not stand idly by when there was something she could do.

So that when, after it all was shown to her and the Faerie Queen took the wand from her forehead, she emerged from the nightmare fueled with rage and determination.

It must have shown on her face, for the Faerie Queen gave her a penetrating look, then a nod of satisfaction.

"Good," she said. "You are made of stern materials. You are an iron bar, lady. We will give you the tools to be transformed to a sword."

She beckoned, and an ethereal creature, outwardly sexless, winged like a dragonfly and garbed mostly in its own flowing hair, drifted forward, handing her what appeared to be a rose petal. "Eat it," the Faerie Queen commanded, and wary of what had happened the last time she had followed a similar command, but obedient to Bella's nod, she did so.

It tasted like nothing—but a moment later, she was seeing things—ribbons and auras of intense blue, surrounding and drifting between the Faerie Folk for the most part, but also around Bella, more faintly running everywhere she looked. And also, very strongly, around herself.

A second creature, another Brownie, came forward with what appeared to be a small stone.

Again she ate it, and now, added to the ribbons of blue were ribbons of gold. A shining bird dropped what appeared to be a hot coal in her hand, which gave her ribbons of fiery red, and last of all, a girl clothed in water-weeds with a water-lily in her hair dripped a single drop of clear water into her hand, which granted her emerald-green ribbons and auras.

"Now you see the magic around you, of air and earth, fire and water," the Faerie Queen told her. "What you see, you can use. Use this gift wisely."

That seemed to be a dismissal, for the assemblage of Faerie creatures formed up around their monarchs, and the King and Queen descended from their thrones. An arch of vines at the far side of the clearing that Elena had taken for an accidental arrangement of wild plants over a natural pathway began to glow, faintly, with soft moonlike light, and fill with mist. The mist glowed, too, and there were hints of figures moving in it. The unearthly Court formed up in a rough line and began to file through it.

The King and Queen were the last to depart; the Queen passed through the arch without a moment of hesitation, but the King stopped for a moment, and looked deeply into Elena's eyes.

She could not have looked away if she had wanted to—but she did not really want to. Although his narrow, high-cheekboned face, with its winglike eyebrows, strange, slightly slanted, enormous eyes, beardless as a boy's, with long midnight-black hair any woman would be proud to boast of, was not what she would have named as attractive before this moment, she understood exactly what was meant by "Elven glamorie." She felt powerfully drawn to him, and knew that if he had cared to, he could have had her by snapping his fingers.

But he did nothing of the sort; he merely looked deeply into her eyes, as if weighing and measuring her as his consort had done. And then, without a word, he touched her brow with a delicate forefinger.

Something passed between them, though she could not have said just what it was. A great shudder shook her, a moment of dizziness, and for a moment she heard a sound as of the rushing of great wings all about her. The hair stood up on the back of her neck, yet at the same time, she was filled with such intoxication she might have been drunk.

Then the moment passed; the Elven King smiled faintly, turned, and passed through the gate behind his consort. The light within the gate faded; the glow of the framing vines faded.

And Elena and her mentor were standing in a perfectly ordinary clearing, in the dim light filtering down through the myriad branches of the trees above them as a bird called somewhere in the middle distance.

Bella was regarding her Apprentice with a look of great thoughtfulness. "Well," she said at last, "he certainly never did that with me! What happened between you?"

"I don't know," Elena said honestly. "I haven't the faintest idea." She blinked as she said that; the pale glows and colors were everywhere now, and she was having to get used to the sight of magic all about her.

"Interesting." Bella tapped her cheek with one finger, thoughtfully. "Well, whatever it was, it's something that King Huon thinks you'll need, and we'll have to let it go at that. He's too subtle for the likes of mere mortals." She beckoned, and smiled. "Come along, Apprentice. We have to choose your wand."

But as they left the clearing, Elena could not resist looking back for a moment, wondering.

"Curious, Apprentice?" Madame called over her shoulder. Elena hurried to catch up.

She wanted to ask why the Elven King had been interested in her, but she heard herself asking a different question entirely.

"Why are the Fair Folk—" she groped for a word "—involved?"

"Ah. Well, very long ago, all of the Godmothers were Fair Folk; that is the reason some folk call us Fairy Godmothers still. Some still are, and there is an equivalent to Wizard that you hear of very, very seldom, and that is the Elven Knight. But most Godmothers are human now," Bella told her, as they walked back towards the cottage.

"Why?" Elena asked.

"I suspect because there are so few of the Fair Folk and so many mortals," Bella said wryly.

"They soon discovered that if The Tradition is to be served and directed properly, they needed help. Since their very existence depends upon The Tradition, they did not have a great deal of choice, it would seem."

She could not imagine at the moment why the existence of the Elves would depend on The Tradition, but she supposed that her reading or lessons would eventually tell her. "So that is why the Queen has to accept an Apprentice?" she hazarded.

"Exactly." Bella seemed pleased that she had made the connection. "Having been the originals, they are best at judging who will be appropriate. And of course, their understanding is much deeper than ours; they can do with a touch things that require great effort from a human."

That last only made her wonder the more, as they continued down the path. They can do with a touch....

So what had the Elven King done to her?