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Authors: Megan Whalen Turner

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BOOK: Instead of Three Wishes
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“I think the passing cars must have disturbed him,” she said.

“Are elves really bothered by iron?” asked Selene.

“I don't know that it actually hurts them,” said Harold, “but it does, you know, give them the willies.”

“Yes, I see,” said Selene's mother.

“Of course, automobiles give me the willies, too,” admitted the prince. “Things didn't move so fast in my day.”

Harold spent the night in the spare bedroom. They sent him back the next morning.

As she closed the door behind him, Selene's mother said, “He was a very nice young man.”

“He was sweet,” said Selene. “But what in the world would he have done if I'd married him? Gone out to look for a job?”

“Poor boy, can you picture him trying to get one?” Her mother laughed. “What are your qualifications? Well, I look good in velvet and…”

“Can't read or write…”

“Can't type, can't drive, don't know what electricity is, never heard of a vacuum cleaner.”

“He couldn't buy groceries, cook dinner, or pay bills.”

“If you wrote out the checks, he could sign his name,” Selene's mother reminded her.

“Oh, of course,” said Selene, “he would have
ministers
to take care of all that.” She added, “He'd do okay if he just came with a pot of gold.”

“Oh, no,” said her mother. “That's
leprechauns.

Selene was late for school again. As she went out the door, she said, “This is the third gift we've rejected. Do you think His Highness the elf prince of wherever will give up?”

 

Mechemel wasn't giving up. He was getting out the big guns, going to the experts, checking with an authority on humans. He went to talk to his mother. She had a room at the top of the castle with windows on all four walls so that she could lie in bed and look out at the forest. She was old and a little frail, and she didn't get around much, so she passed her time keeping an eye on daily activities in the forest and watching television.

Mechemel climbed up the stairs to her tower. He sat beside her bed and twiddled his thumbs while he explained his difficulty. After a while he grew suspicious of her silence and looked up in outrage.

“You're laughing at me!”

“Mechemel”—his mother's laugh was a lovely sound—“this is the most foolish thing that I have ever heard in my life. I warned you about how fast those iron contraptions can go.”

“It's your fault,” said Mechemel. “You're the one who wanted to keep your gold in a bank. Who ever heard of fairy gold in a safe-deposit box? Much less a checking account?”

“I know, dear.” She smiled apologetically. “But so many of these mail-order companies want to be paid by check or money order, and the sprites were complaining about the lines at the post office. I thought you'd send a leprechaun.”

“Leprechauns are unreliable,” grumped her son. “They only have to meet one sharp character, and they hand over everything.”

“Yes,” admitted the fairy queen, “but surely you could have sent a hamadryad, or even one of those human princes that are always hanging around.”

“Hamadryads are even worse than leprechauns, and the princes, well…” He smiled ruefully at last. “There's no point pretending that any of them were gifted with brains.”

“And here you are fussed because the mortal girl thought the same thing. Stop sulking and admit that this is funny.”

Mechemel stiffened and then stifled a snort. “You should have seen her face when I pulled out the wishes. She looked afraid for her life.”

“She probably was, poor thing.”

“What did she think I would do, turn her into a frog?”

“She probably thought that you were a homicidal maniac.”

“A what?”

“You don't watch enough television, Mechemel. It's one of those humans that go around murdering other humans for no good reason.” She waved one hand at the television set on a stand beside the bed. It stood on a stand of crystal and carefully wrought gold. Its cord ran across the floor and out one window, where it dropped to the ground and was wired directly into one of Ontario Hydroelectric's cross-country power cables.

“I don't understand how you can stand to watch that.”

“Oh, it's amusing sometimes. It's so terribly dull, since the humans have stopped coming to court. There's never anyone new to talk to. Watching them talk to each other is the next best thing.”

“You should go out more.”

The elf queen slipped deeper into her feather pillows. “It's too much trouble. Things have changed too much in the last hundred years. Besides,” she added slyly, “look what happened to you.”

“It's all very well to snicker about it. The longer I owe her a favor, the more in debt I am. So…”

“So what?”

“So tell me what will make her happy.”

“I haven't a clue.”

“But you're supposed to know!” He threw up his hands. “And stop laughing!”

His mother reached out a hand to pat him on the knee. “Don't worry,” she said. “You find out a little more about her, and then we'll think of something.”

 

On Saturday, Selene was out in the front yard, sawing at a dead tree, when the elf prince arrived. The tree had been the builder's one attempt to fulfill a clause in the contract that said “fully landscaped.” Stuck into ground packed hard by bulldozers and surrounded by weeds, the little tree had given up immediately and died. Selene didn't mind the weeds—many of them were pretty—but the brittle
branches of the dead tree depressed her, so she was cutting it down.

She looked up from her work and realized a man was watching her from the sidewalk. “Are you the next silly idea of that ridiculous elf?”

“No,” said Mechemel, and didn't say anything else.

Selene was terribly embarrassed. She looked from her saw to the tree and back to Mechemel.

“Yes,” he said, “do stop dismembering that poor bush and invite me in.”

“It's a tree, actually.”

“Bush,” said Mechemel. “
Salix bebbiana.
Or it was. All it is now is dead.”

He moved past Selene toward the ramp that led to the front door. “Fortunately uninhabited,” he said as he went.

Still carrying the saw, Selene followed him up the ramp and into the house. He waited in the hall while she went to fetch her mother. He looked startled when Selene rolled her in, but collected himself quickly.

“I understand,” he said, “that you are willing to take a lodger?”

Selene's mother asked him for references, and he provided them. He told them that he was a visiting professor at the local university.

“Waterloo or Wilfred Laurier?” Selene's mother asked.

“Uh, Waterloo.”

“Lovely, perhaps we know the same people. You said you were in the history department?”

Mechemel saw that he was on dangerous ground and retreated rapidly. He was new there; he didn't know anyone; he wouldn't actually be teaching in the department, just doing research.

“Oh,” said Selene's mother, disappointed. “Well, still. I'm sure it will be very nice to have you as a lodger. Did you say that you wanted to take your meals here?” she asked hesitantly.

Mechemel shuddered. “No, thank you,” he said.

 

So Mechemel moved in. Selene and her mother wondered about their new lodger. He came with very little luggage, just the one suitcase. He was always home at dinnertime, but he never seemed to eat. Selene cooked her mother dinner, and the two of them ate at the kitchen table, wondering what Mechemel was doing in his room.

“Maybe he lives on store-bought cookies and soda,” said Selene.

“It would be warm soda,” her mother pointed out. “He doesn't have a fridge.” They didn't see the leprechauns skipping up to the spare bedroom window, carrying trays of covered dishes. Mechemel was willing to sacrifice in order to get his debt paid off, but he was not going to eat whatever humans called food. Before he'd left the castle, his mother had told him dire stories about microwaves and things called burritos.

Mechemel had been staying with Selene and her mother for a week before Selene did any baking. On Friday, Mechemel's rent payment made it possible to buy an extra dozen eggs, baking chocolate, and five pounds of extra-fine cake flour. In the evening, she read through her collection of secondhand cookbooks and decided that she wanted to try a brittle chocolate crème de menthe gâteau.

“It sounds wonderful,” said her mother. “Do we have crème de menthe?”

“Somebody brought some to the Christmas party last year. I think it's still in the closet over the oven.”

“Now that we are rolling in dough, so to speak, will you not be making any more scones?” In the past, Selene's baking had been limited to a weekly batch of scones because their ingredients were affordable.

“Oh, I'll make those first thing in the morning, then try the cake,” said Selene, and she got up early on Saturday in order to have the scones ready for her mother's breakfast. Mechemel woke to the aroma of buttermilk currant scones baking in the oven. He got out of his uncomfortable narrow bed and into his clothes before being pulled irresistibly into the kitchen. Selene was measuring out ingredients for her cake with the precision of a chemist; her mother was having a cup of coffee. Mechemel sniffed, appreciatively.

“Are those scones?” he asked. He suffered from
an elfin addiction to sweet things.

“Yes,” said Selene, without turning around. There was only half an inch of crème de menthe left in the bottle, and she was looking through the recipe to see if it was enough.

“May I have one?”

“Of course.” Selene looked around and smiled at him, before turning back to the recipe. It was not the impersonal smile that she used on customers; it was a real one that she reserved for people she thought she might like.

Mechemel's eyebrows went up in astonishment. He remembered that Harold had said she had a smile that would make flowers bloom early, but he had assumed that Harold was exaggerating, as Harold always did. Mechemel sat down at the table. While Selene's mother watched in amusement, he ate the entire plate of scones. The only one left was the one in Selene's mother's hand.

When Selene was done measuring out the crème de menthe, she looked at the plate, empty of all but crumbs. “You ate them
all?

Embarrassment colored Mechemel's face deep pink. “I am terribly sorry. I don't know what came over me…. I, um…It's been some time,” he explained, “since I had scones. And these really are, were,” he corrected himself, “delicious.”

He grew still pinker when Selene laughed. “It's okay. I can make more,” she said, “but see if I offer you any cake.”

“You're making a cake?” Mechemel said with delight, then backtracked hastily. “Well, no, no, I certainly wouldn't trouble you for any.” He stood up from the table and tried not to look disappointed.

Selene's mother reached up to pat him on the arm. “No, sit down,” she said. “Selene was only teasing.”

The elf prince looked at her in surprise. He wasn't used to being teased, and no one but his mother had ever patted him on the arm.

So Mechemel sat at the kitchen table and talked to Selene's mother while Selene made her brittle chocolate crème de menthe gâteau. Selene's mother told him their version of the week's events and ended up saying, “In fact, if you had been a present from the elf prince, you would have been perfect.”

Mechemel winced. If he had known, he could have sent them a real lodger. It was too late now.

Selene's mother asked Mechemel about his research project, and he made up answers as well as he could. He gathered that Selene's mother was writing a dissertation on something called the Battle of Hastings. He drew a strange look when he raised one eyebrow and said, “Which one was that?”

“Surely you know the Battle of Hastings. When the English lost to the Norman invaders?”

“Oh, yes, of course. How silly of me, yes. A friend of mine was there.” He saw another startled look forming and realized his error. “Last year, at the site, not at the battle itself, of course.” After that
he thought he had better excuse himself. He went back to his room and didn't come out until the cake was ready. He ate half of it.

On Sunday, Selene made another batch of scones for herself and her mother and one batch for Mechemel to eat all by himself. On Monday, he came home in the evening with a bag of groceries and a jar of cloudberry jam. He said that he didn't think it was fair that they spend all his rent money feeding him.

“The jam is from my mother's pantry.”

“Oh, does your mother live near here?”

“Not far,” he responded, “as the crow flies.”

Every week, Mechemel would bring home a bag of ingredients for scones and other delicacies, and on Saturdays, Selene would bake, experimenting with every recipe in her worn-out cookbooks. On weekdays, when Selene and her mother thought he was going to sit in the library at the University of Waterloo, Mechemel went home to talk with his mother. He described Selene's sugary concoctions in detail and related his conversations with Selene's mother. Then he and his mother tried to pick a gift that would please Selene. His mother suggested a cubic zirconium tennis bracelet that she had seen advertised on the shopping channel.

“She doesn't wear any jewelry. She'd probably sell it to buy cake flour. As nearly as I can tell, baking is the one thing she enjoys.”

“Buy her five hundred pounds of cake flour.”

“I can't. Every time I give her that sort of thing, she makes more cakes and scones and I eat them.”

“Well, I don't know which I envy more, your never-ending supply of sweets or the company of that girl's mother. She seems quite clever.”

BOOK: Instead of Three Wishes
13.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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