Read Instead of Three Wishes Online
Authors: Megan Whalen Turner
Instead of Three Wishes (7 page)
We ate our lunch and then we began our search. Celeste, Rannuccio, Antonio, and Caroline had already looked to see if anyone was wearing the coat. It was springtime in Canaletto's Venice, and anyone wearing a fur coat would be easy to find. They had looked in gondolas and other boats, as many as they could get into. We walked along the canal, looking in the market stalls and the shop-windows. We made our way down one side of the canal until the gray mist stopped us, then crossed a bridge and began to work our way up the other side. I stopped outside an arched doorway. The others turned back.
“What is it?” asked Rannuccio.
“I don't know.” I looked around. There were two gondolas, pulled up at the side of the canal. They were tied to brightly striped posts like horses in stalls. The gondoliers were sitting on the edge of the street, with their feet dangling over the water. The street was made of large, uneven paving stones, and steps led up from it into the archway on my right. Under the arch was a
chamber where people could stand out of the rain. At the back of it, in the shadows, was a glass door. It was the door that had caught my attention. It had glass panels on both sides, and I could see a wooden staircase with blue carpet beyond it.
I climbed up the steps to the archway and walked closer. Set in the door frame was a small brass plate with a button on it the size of my fingertip. It was an electric doorbell. I stepped back. At the top of the door was an address, and when I saw it, I knew that we had found what we were looking for. The address was 5478-B. Venice had certainly never contained an address like that.
I turned the knob and pushed open the door. Celeste, Antonio, Caroline, and Rannuccio came behind me, but when they reached the doorway, they found they could go no further.
“This is not the painting,” said Antonio.
I went in alone.
I climbed the stairway. I turned once, then again. My friends were out of sight. There was a landing at the top of the stairs, and on the left a door. There seemed to be no lock. I tried the knob, and when it turned, I found a dim room filled with hunting trophies and dust. There were bookcases on the walls and above them the mounted heads of various animals. There were antelope and ibex and bongo. Above the empty fireplace was a huge sad-looking buffalo with its hair fallen out in patches. Here and there on the bookshelves were stuffed rabbits and gophers and birds. The windows were dirty. The room
smelled musty and sad. I wrinkled my nose and looked around for Olga's coat. There was a table in front of the fireplace. It was empty except for a layer of dust and a rolled bundle wrapped in twine. I picked up the bundle and felt the softness of the fur. It was dark brown, and each individual hair was tipped with silver. I tugged at one end of the bundle until I saw the stitching in the collar, and then I was sure. It was Olga's coat. I tucked it under one arm, and I turned to go.
“What could you possibly want with that old thing?”
Sitting in a wing chair at the far end of the room was a harlequin dressed in turquoise and yellow and blue and red. He had no face, only a white porcelain carnival mask with ribbons hanging from its sides. Their bright colors were obscured by the same fine gray powder that coated everything in the room.
“Well?” he asked me.
“I'm taking it back to its owner,” I said, and hurried toward the door.
“Why bother?” asked the harlequin, and lounged further back in his chair. He didn't seem anxious to stop me. I stopped myself.
“Why do her a favor?” he asked. “What has she done for you?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the harlequin dismissed all my answers with a wave of his hand.
“Big deal. Some tea, cookies, a bunch of second-rate puzzles. She hasn't changed anything, you know.” He leaned forward and planted his
elbows on his knees. “If you go back, everything will be just the same. You'll get on the ferry tomorrow and go home to your dull life and your dull governess, and you still won't have any friends. You won't have anything to do all day but stick together boring puzzles and spend every afternoon with your mother at dull tea parties with dull ladies. Why would you go back to that? Why bother?”
What else could I do?
“Stay here,” he suggested. “She can't make you climb back through the frame. She can't fit through to come after you herself. You have friends here, why not stay?” He was very persuasive. I wavered, thinking of the splendid day I had spent with my friends.
“No one will miss you,” the harlequin pointed out. “No one will even notice that you are gone.”
Olga would notice.
“Only because she wants the coat,” the harlequin said. “That's all she cares about. She doesn't care about you.”
But I knew that wasn't true. I was important. Olga had said so. She had said I was more important even than the coat.
The harlequin went on. “Stay,” he said. “You'll never grow old,” he said. “You can stay here forever and nothing will change.”
It might have been a persuasive argument for an adult, but I wanted to grow up. I wanted to be old enough to tell my mother, no, I wouldn't go to her horrible teas. I thought of all the puzzles in the
world without solutions. I suddenly realized that I wanted to go to college. It was an unusual thing for a girl to do, but I knew I could if I wanted. I would go to college and spend my whole life learning the solutions to puzzles.
“Stay,” said the harlequin.
“No, thanks,” I yelled as I threw myself at the door and jumped down the stairs three at a time. I burst out into the street and was lucky to miss knocking Celeste down. In a parade, we marched down the street and out to the Grand Canal. Rannuccio picked a gondola that he thought might pass under the picture frame, and we all piled in.
The boat passed the frame, but of course it did not stop. Very nimbly I had to throw myself up at the passing square with all my friends pushing and pushing until their hands could no longer reach.
“Good-bye! Good-bye!” I yelled as I teetered on the edge of the frame. With only one hand to balance by and the other wrapped around the coat I thought I was on my way back into the canal, but strong hands reached to pull me from the other side. I fell through the frame and landed in Olga's lap.
Later, after one last cup of tea and a long talk, we walked down to the beach together. At the waterline, Olga stopped to give me another fierce hug. “Good-bye, Charlotte. You will forget about me soon, but remember to keep looking for more puzzles.” She kissed me on the forehead, then freed the last knot in the twine that wrapped the
bundle and shook out a stiff dark fur coat as large as herself. As she walked into the water, she pushed her arms through its short sleeves and wrapped herself, clothes and all, in the fur. She fell forward into the next wave and was gone. When the crest of the wave had passed there was no sign of Olga. Only the brown head and shoulders of a seal bobbed in the water.
Somewhere behind us a car honked. We were stopped at a traffic light that had turned green. The cabdriver put the car into gear and hurried through the intersection. “Lady? Did you want to go to the East Building or the West Building?” he asked.
“West Building, please,” said Aunt Charlotte.
The cab pulled around a corner and bounced across a cobblestone parking lot. It stopped in front of a pair of huge metal doors, and we got out. Aunt Charlotte went to pay the cabdriver, but he waved one hand out the window.
“No charge,” he said. “Free ride. Best story I heard in my life, in my entire life.” He drove away, his wheels squeaking on the cobblestones.
“Well,” said Aunt Charlotte, looking after him, “I did think that it took a long time to get here.” Her cheeks were pink, and she looked pleased.
“Was that the end of the story? Did you ever see Olga again?” I asked.
Aunt Charlotte took my hand, and we walked into the museum.
“No, that isn't quite the end of the story. I never did see Olga again, and it may surprise you to hear that I quite forgot about her for many years. Then one day, when I was home from college (I studied chemistry), I came to a fund-raiser here at the museum. I brought my fiancé because I thought it would probably be very boring. During the speeches we slipped away and went to look at the paintings. Your great-uncle Emlin, you don't remember him, I suppose, was majoring in art history. He told me little snippets about the paintings we passed, until we reached this one.”
My aunt had stopped at a small painting of a profile of a girl. Only her head and shoulders fit into the frame. She was wearing a dark coat and a hat with a wide flat brim that matched. Her blonde hair was long and straight. Her nose was tilted up, and her lips curved in a delighted smile.
“This,” said my aunt, “is Celeste.”
I read the plaque at the bottom of the picture carefully. It said “An Alsatian Girl by Jean-Jacques Henner.” I looked up at my aunt.
“Yes, well,” she said, “you can just imagine how surprised I was. It had never occurred to me that my friends must have had paintings of their own. All of my days with Olga came back in a rush. I dragged my fiancé through as much of the museum as was open, telling him the story as we went. He was able to suggest likely painters for each subject, but no others of my friends were here. Later, I paged
through art book after art book until I found them all.”
She tugged at my hand, and I followed her out of the gallery.
“I badgered the curators here at the National Gallery and donated pots of your great-great-grandfather's money so that this museum could acquire the portraits of each of my friends, I even found the Canaletto. You've seen it. It's the painting at the top of the stairs at home.”
One by one, she showed me all of her friends. We walked across the main hall to look at Lady Caroline Howard painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The hat on her head did look like a small wedding cake. She was reaching out with one silk-gloved hand to brush the petals of the rosebush beside her.
Antonio was in the galleries at the other end of the museum. His nameplate said only “A Youth,” but he had the chestnut hair that my aunt had described. Around the neck of his shirt was a thin collar embroidered with the same deep black as the velvet on his cap.
“See the tassels on his hat?” Aunt Charlotte asked. “I always forget those tassels until I see them again.” They were tiny tassels, marked by just a dash of gold paint.
Rannuccio was not on display. My aunt led me by the hand through a door marked “Museum Officials Only.” Behind it were cement corridors lit by bare lightbulbs. In a windowless office we found
a man who was expecting us. He took us to a room filled floor to ceiling with racks of paintings. He slid one painting from the racks and carried it to an easel. Then he left us alone to admire Rannuccio in his fancy clothes.
Afterward, we went to the café. We sat in silence, Aunt Charlotte sipping her coffee while I drank my soda. Finally I had to ask, “Is it a true story, Aunt Charlotte?”
Aunt Charlotte looked at me without saying anything for a while. Then she said “I've told you my story. What you believe is up to you, Marguerite.”
What you believe is up to you.
S
elene and the elf prince met on a Monday afternoon in New Duddleston when she had gone into town to run an errand for her mother. Mechemel was there to open a bank account. He had dressed carefully and anonymously for his trip in a conservative gray suit, a cream-colored shirt, a maroon tie. He was wearing a dark gray overcoat and carried a black leather briefcase. Selene hardly noticed him the first time she saw him.
He was standing on the traffic island in the middle of Route 237 when she went into Hopewell's Pharmacy and was still there when she came out again. She thought he must be cold on a November day with no hat and no gloves. He looked a little panicked out on the median by himself. The traffic light had changed. The walk sign reappeared, but Mechemel remained on the island, rooted to the concrete, with his face white and his pale hair blown up by the wind. Selene walked out to ask if he needed a hand.
“Young woman,” he snapped, “I am perfectly
capable of crossing a street on my own.” Selene shrugged and turned to go, but the light had changed again and she, too, was stranded. While she waited for another chance to cross, the cars sped by. The breeze of their passing pushed Selene and the elf prince first forward, then back. It wasn't a comfortable sensation. When the walk sign reappeared, she was eager to get back to the sidewalk and catch her bus for home. A few steps into the crosswalk, she noticed that the elf prince still had not moved.
Rude old man, she thought, I should leave him here. But she stretched out a hand. Without looking at her, the elf prince put his arm around hers, and they walked to the curb together. Once they were up on the sidewalk, he snatched his arm away, as if it might catch fire.
“Well,” he said with a sneer, “I suppose you expect a reward now.”
Selene looked at the crosswalk. She looked at the old man. A nut, she thought. Nice suit, though.
“No, thank you,” Selene said aloud. “Happy to oblige.” She gave him the pleasant but impersonal smile she used on customers when she worked after school at the cafeteria.
“Of course you are.” His voice dripped sarcasm, and Selene took a step back. “But I can't let you get away without one, can I?” When he fumbled in the inside pocket of his suit coat, Selene took several more steps back. He pulled out a wallet. From the
wallet he extracted three small white cards and pushed them at Selene.
They looked like business cards. Instead of a printed name, a filigreed gold line wrapped itself in a design in the middle of each white rectangle.
“What are they?” Selene asked.
“Wishes,” said the elf prince. “You've got three. Just make a wish and burn a card. It doesn't”âhe looked her over with contemptâ“require a college education.”
“Thanks, but no, thanks,” said Selene, and handed the cards back. She'd read about people who were offered three wishes by malevolent sprites. No matter what they wished, something terrible happened. She looked carefully at the man. Behind the nice suit and the tie, he was just as she thought a malevolent sprite might appear.
“What do you mean, âThanks, but no, thanks'?” The elf prince was irritated. “They are perfectly good wishes, I assure you. They're not cheap âwish for a Popsicle' wishes, young woman. They are very high-quality. Here.” He pushed them toward her. “Wish for anything. Go ahead.”
“I wish for peace on earth,” Selene said, and sneaked a look over her shoulder. Her bus was coming up the street but still two blocks away.
“That's not a thing!” snarled the elf prince. “That's an idea. That's a concept. I didn't say wish for a concept. I said a thing. A material object. Go on.”
Selene stood her ground. “I'd rather not.”
“Look,” said the elf prince, “you get a reward for doing me a favor. I can't go around owing you one. What do you want?”
Selene could hear the bus rumbling up behind her. “Why don't you pick something for me?” she asked. “Something you think is appropriate. How would that be?” The bus stopped beside her, and the doors sighed open.
“Well,” said the elf prince with some asperity, “I can hardly thinkâ”
“âOf something off the top of your head? I'm like that, too,” said Selene. “Tell you what, when you think of something, you can send it to my house. It's easy to find. We live in the New Elegance Estates.”
She hopped onto the bus. The doors closed behind her, and the elf prince was left standing on the sidewalk as the bus drove away.
Oh, she thought as she sat down, I wish I hadn't told him where we lived. I wish I hadn't.
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Left behind, the elf prince was nonplussed. When he recovered, he propped his elegant briefcase on the top of a postal box and opened it wide enough to pull out a small Persian carpet, which he threw down on the sidewalk. He stepped onto it.
“Home,” he snapped, and disappeared.
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Selene and her mother lived in a housing development several miles beyond the suburbs of New
Duddleston. The builder who had bought up the farm on the outskirts of the city had intended to build an entire community of different-size houses and apartment buildings. He had laid out the roads, and then paved all the driveways. By the time he began building the houses, he had run out of money. Only a few of the smaller ones had been finished when he went bankrupt, leaving the owners of those houses surrounded by vacant lots covered in weeds with driveways that led to no houses and roads that went nowhere.
Selene's mother was one of the owners. She had used her savings to buy the house and had hoped to take in a lodger to help with the mortgage payments, but so far no one had been interested in such a peculiar neighborhood. She and her daughter lived frugally on a monthly insurance check and waited for someone else to buy the land and build houses to go with all the driveways.
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“Hello! I'm home!” Selene shouted as soon as she was in the door.
“I'm in the kitchen. Did you have a good day at school?” Her mother had her wheelchair pushed up to the kitchen table. In front of her was a plate of crumbs and one remaining half of a scone.
“Hey,” said Selene, “I thought I told you to eat those up yesterday when they were still fresh.”
Selene's mother smiled. “I ate as many as I
could. And you know that I always think your scones are better the longer I wait.”
“That's only because you're hungrier when you finally eat them. I bought the stuff to make more. And I got your prescription filled. Do you want a pill now?” The wrinkles around her mother's eyes showed that she was having a painful day.
“Yes, please, dear,” she said. “I'm a little sore. Did you have any trouble getting the prescription filled?”
Selene was reminded of the peculiar man outside the pharmacy. “Not with the prescription,” said Selene. “They know me at the pharmacy.”
“But you did have a problem?”
“Not a problem, really. But I ran into a nutty old guy.” Selene described her encounter with the elf prince. She provided a skillful caricature. “Still, I wish I hadn't told him where we lived.”
“I wouldn't worry. He has probably forgotten all about you by now.”
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The next morning, as Selene was pulling on her coat before going to school, the doorbell rang. She opened the front door and found a shockingly green small man on the front step.
“Your gift,” he said, “from Prince Mechemel of the Elf Realm of South Minney.” And he swept a bow all the way down to his toes and waved it out across the stubbly crabgrass to the street. A golden coach and six black horses stood at the curb.
“Zowee,” said Selene. “Is that for me?”
“Our master sends it to you and hopes that you will accept it as repayment of his debt to you.”
“Oh.” Selene paused. “Look,” she said, “that's really nice of him, but could youâ¦take it back? I really appreciate it and everything. It's very beautiful, but the coach would never fit in the garage, and I don't have anywhere to keep the horses. Tell him I said thank you, though.” She carefully closed the door.
By the time she had walked to the living room window that overlooked the front yard, the leprechaun, the coach, and the horses were gone.
“Zow-ee,” Selene said again, and went to tell her mother all about it.
“It's a good thing we don't have many neighbors,” her mother said. “They'd wonder.”
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The next day the doorbell rang again. This time when Selene opened the door, there was an elegant woman with deep blue skin and dark green eyes. She was wrapped in a sea green cape that covered her all the way down to her toes and puddled there at her feet. In one thin, beautiful hand she held a set of keys on a silver key ring.
“Our master entreats you to accept these as repayment of his debt to you.”
She held out the keys. Selene started to ask what they were for, when she caught sight of the mansion newly arrived on the lot across the street.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Is thatâ¦?”
“For you,” said the blue woman with a happy smile. “Do you like it?”
“It is a beautiful house,” said Selene.
“Palace, really,” said the hamadryad. “It's got those gates in the front. I don't really remember if that makes it a palace or a château, exactly. I know that if it had a portcullis, it would be a castle, and it doesn't. But it does have those little turrets at the corners, so I think that means it's not a château.”
Selene was silent.
“I'd definitely call it a palace,” the hamadryad assured her. “You do like it?”
Selene said that she thought it was a lovely palace, she really liked the gold turrets at the corners, but she lived alone with her mother, and they could never use that much room.
The dryad looked so crestfallen that Selene rushed to say, “It's not that I don't like it. It's just that we're really very comfortable here.”
“It's got central heating,” the dryad said wistfully.
“We couldn't afford to pay the bill,” Selene said sadly.
“And really lovely plumbing. Much nicer than we have back at the castle.”
“I'm afraid not,” said Selene. “But thank you, really. Please tell Mr.âHis Highness that all this isn't necessary. He doesn't owe me anything.”
She smiled at the dryad, and the dryad smiled sadly back and went away. The lovely white palace
with the gold roof dissolved into mist and disappeared.
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The next day Selene waited for the doorbell to ring. By the time she decided it wasn't going to, she had made herself late for school. On Thursday afternoons she worked in the school cafeteria baking rolls for school lunches. She didn't get off the bus until almost five-thirty and walked home through the pitch dark. She could see the lights in her house from a long way off.
As she went inside, her mother called from the living room. “Selene, do come meet the delightful young man who's come to marry you.”
“Marry me?” She went into the living room. Her mother had her wheelchair pulled up to one side of the coffee table. On the other sat a young man, about Selene's age, in a fitted maroon velvet tunic that was held in place by a wide belt across his thighs. He wore dark green tights and leather slippers punched full of tiny cross-shaped holes. His cape was thrown over one shoulder and artistically draped on the sofa beside him. It was also maroon velvet but was imprinted with a leaf pattern. Green lace leaves in the same pattern trimmed its edges. In his lap was a soft conical hat with a twelve-inch blue feather curling above it.
The prince was very handsome, Selene had to admit. He had dark curly hair and very round blue eyes. He had the very cleft in his chin that is the
prerequisite of fairy-tale princes.
He stood up and bowed from the waist. “A great pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said the prince.
“It's nice to meet you, too,” said Selene. “Did I hear that you're supposed to marry me?”
“Yes,” said her mother. “It's what's-his-name's newest idea. He thought any girl would jump at the chance to marry a prince.”
“That's the theory,” said Selene. She turned back to the prince. “Could you,” she said, “tell me a little about yourself?”
They spent a pleasant evening together, Selene, her mother, and Harold. Until her accident, Selene's mother had taught history at the high school. Since then, she had pursued her profession at home, sending Selene to the university library for enormous piles of books on the weekends. Now that she had a genuine fourteenth-century prince on hand, she had endless questions to ask.
Unfortunately, Harold couldn't answer them. He knew quite a bit about the clothes people had been wearing when he'd last been in the human world, but he didn't know anything about treaties or border disputes or religious schisms. All he could say was that he thought that a few heretics had been burned in his day, but he couldn't remember which kind.
“We had ministers to keep track of all those things,” Harold explained lamely. “I'm sure that if
they were here, they could answer all your questions.” He looked around, as if he expected a prime minister or a chargé d'affaires to pop out from behind the sofa.
“What did princes do?” Selene asked.
“We gave treaties the authority of our names,” Harold said grandly.
“How?”
“Well.” The prince looked uncomfortable. “We signed them, you know, with our names.”
They ended up discussing the elf prince's court. Selene asked about the plumbing. Her mother asked about the central heating. Then they asked about the elf prince. Harold was surprised to hear that Selene's impression of him had not been favorable.
“He's mostly really very nice,” he insisted. “I once dropped a flagon of red wine in his reflecting pool and he wasn't angry at all.” Harold did his best to convince them of Mechemel's kindness, his generosity, and his good humor. Selene was skeptical, but her mother pointed out that anyone who has recently had a fright can be forgiven a lapse in manners.
