My Unfair Godmother (34 page)

He reached out for her, and she took him out of the sling, cooing as she held him. I took the book out of the diaper bag and flipped through the pages. New illustrations had been added. My showdown in the forest with Rumpelstiltskin lay on one page. On the next, he was a hideous gold statue. The last picture showed Hudson standing by my side and my family hugging me. It read, “And the miller’s daughter lived happily ever after. The end.”

Even though my family was reading the book over my shoulder, I called out, “It ended! I live happily ever after.” This sentence brought me a ridiculous amount of relief—like the book had put a stamp of approval on my life. I was going to live happily ever after.

I pulled out the pen but didn’t put it to the paper. “I’ll wait for Hudson to come back.”

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“Start it now,” my father said, “and you can write the last bit when he returns.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah, save the part about people needing leprechauns to save their britches until he gets here. I’m sure he’ll want to know what the real moral of the story was.” I sat down on the ground and spread the book out in my lap. “I should have known all along it would be a biased moral.” I didn’t start writing until I saw Hudson running back down the trail. He slowed to a walk when he saw the statue was gone. “What happened to our buddy Rumple?”

“Clover took him,” I said. “He’s going to use the gold to pay his UMA dues for the next century or two.”

“Ah.” Hudson drew a couple of deep breaths and walked over to me. “Greed pays off again.”

“There’s another good moral from the story,” Nick said.

I finished writing the sentence Clover had told me, but like the others, it faded from the book. I gripped the pen hard, then threw it onto the open page. “No!” I yelled.

Alarmed, Hudson took the book from my hands. He read the last page and looked at me quizzically. “You didn’t want to live happily ever after?”

“Not that. Clover told me the moral of the story and it still didn’t work.”

Nick shook his head and glanced at the book. “So much for leprechauns saving our sorry britches.”

I suppressed a frustrated scream. Nothing worked. What sort of awful enchanted book was this?

Hudson helped me up and handed the book back to me. “Let’s hope the wizard’s magic works better.”

Chapter 23

Another light came bobbing up the trail toward us—the wizard hurrying, but not running. He slowed when he saw me. “Where is this statue you said entrapped the girl? What sort of trickery are you up to?”

“No trickery,” Hudson said. “I told you the truth. A leprechaun took the statue away because it was made of gold, but you can look at the mark on Tansy’s arm if you don’t believe me.” I didn’t expect the wizard to actually care about the proof, but he strode over to me. I showed him the mark on my forearm. It was deep red, almost purple, and my arm was swollen. He wrinkled his nose, then turned back to Hudson. “Very well. Let’s conduct our business directly. Where is the Gilead?”

Hudson opened the pouch at his waist and pulled out the branch.

“You can have it if you promise to send everyone here back to our time period. We can pay you gold for your extra trouble.” The wizard pursed his lips. “Our bargain was for one person. No more.”

Hudson motioned to my family. “All of us need to go home. We don’t belong here.”

“Do you know how much effort, how much magic, that would en-tail?” The wizard held up a finger. “One person. Choose whomever you desire.”

I didn’t want to hear this, not after we’d been through so much.

“Please,” I said, but Bartimaeus probably didn’t even hear me. Hudson was talking again.

“It has to be all of us,” he said.

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My dad stepped forward. “If you help us, we’ll give you the things we brought with us from our day—walkie-talkies, flashlights, watches, first-aid kits …”

Perhaps the wizard might have been interested if he had known what any of these items were, but he didn’t bother to ask. He shook his head as though we couldn’t possibly have anything worthwhile.

Sandra walked over to him, still carrying the baby. “Think how you would feel if your own family were stranded in the wrong time.

Wouldn’t you want someone to help them?” A moth flew by the wizard’s oil lamp, and he batted it away. “That is precisely why I have no family. They’re simply more people who need something from you. Annoying insects.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant families or the moth that was still circling his lamp. “The mos-quitoes will be out next.” He swung his hand through the air as though swiping away an incoming swarm and glared at Hudson. “Choose who will go, or our bargain is over.”

Hudson turned to me, his dark eyes pained. He was going to say good-bye to me now; he was leaving. The realization caused a spike of pain in my heart that rivaled the stab of the enchantment. I wanted to tell Hudson it was okay, that I wouldn’t blame him for going and leaving the rest of us here. I couldn’t do it, though. My throat felt tight at the thought of never seeing him again.

“Well,” I said, trying to keep my voice light, “it turns out ‘happily ever after’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” He walked over and took hold of my hand. I didn’t want this moment of kindness. It felt like a consolation prize. I couldn’t pull my hand away, though. Suddenly I wanted to cling to him and was afraid I wouldn’t be able to let go.

“Should we send Stetson back?” he asked.

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“What?” It hadn’t been what I expected him to say. I couldn’t process it. He wasn’t leaving?

“We could send Stetson back to our day. He’d be safer there—with modern medicine and better food …”

Emotions swirled inside me. Hudson wanted to stay with me. He had chosen the baby to go back instead of himself. But where exactly would we send Stetson? Who would take care of him? I couldn’t send him to the void of the future and never know if he was all right or not.

I shook my head. “He belongs with me.” Hudson nodded then turned to my family. “Nick, do you want to go?”

Nick looked at Sandra and my dad. “Not without the rest of my family.”

My dad put his arm around Sandra. “We go as a family or not at all.”

Tears welled in Sandra’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “We’ll make do in this century if we have to.” Hudson turned back to the wizard, keeping the branch close. “If you want the Gilead, it has to be all of us.” The wizard grunted, and a sneer curled his upper lip. “You’ve wasted enough of my time. When you decide who to send, you’ll find me in the carriage. But be quick about it. Once the horses are rested, I’ll leave.” He turned so quickly that his cloak spun around his feet, and he stalked off down the trail to the carriage.

My father rubbed the three-day beard on his chin and glanced over at Hudson. “Are you sure you want to stay? Your family is back in the twenty-first century.”

Sandra shushed my father, but he ignored her. “Hudson shouldn’t give up his trip home without thinking about it.” 319/356

Hudson fingered the Gilead, turning it over in his hand. “I’m beginning to wonder if this plant might be more useful than a trip back home. Just imagine the things we might need to fix: leaky roofs, swords, broken arms …”

Hearts
, I thought. Could the Gilead fix the gold enchantment that hurt my heart so badly? Could it fix the sadness I felt about never seeing my mother or sister again? Could it fix Hudson’s pain?

Hudson raised his voice as though talking to someone besides those of us standing on the trail. “We might even be able to make some good changes to the Middle Ages. With twenty-first-century knowledge, unlimited wealth, and a bit of magic to fix things, we’ll be able to accomplish anything we want.”

I realized what he was doing and raised my voice too. “Right—we could raise armies, create new countries. Do you think the fairies will mind if we take over, say, Belgium?” Chrissy popped up in front of me, her wand visible in her crossed arms. Her glow lit the area so brightly that the flashlight beams seemed to dim. She wore modern clothes again: a white miniskirt, a polka-dot blue halter top, and rhinestone-embedded flip-flops. A pair of white sunglasses sat atop her deep blue hair, and a purse with pictures of little beach umbrellas hung from her shoulder. “It’s not nice to threaten fairies,” she told Hudson and me pointedly. “I was going to come talk to you just as soon as my pedicure was over. Look—” She put out her foot to show us her toenails. All but one were painted baby blue with fluffy white clouds swirling all over them. “I had to leave before my last toe was done. I suppose Belgium can thank me later.”

“The story is over,” I said. “You said you would take us back to our time period.”

She sniffed and tossed her hair off one shoulder with a hand that featured the same blue-polish-with-clouds manicure. “In the original 320/356

contract, I was to take you back once Tansy defeated Rumpelstiltskin, but as you pointed out, you changed things. Now you’ll get back when Tansy writes down the moral of the new story in the magic book.” She looked at me and sighed in exasperation. “Really, the outfits you keep showing up in. My ball-gown professor would fail me for that dress alone.” She flourished her wand in my direction, and my brown dress turned into a slim-fitting golden evening gown.

I ignored the change, picked up the magic book, and showed it to her. “I wrote down the moral that Clover told me to. It still didn’t work.”

Chrissy took the book and flipped through the pages, checking on the story since she’d seen it last. “He probably told you the moral of the story is that leprechauns are awesome, didn’t he?” I nodded. “Something like that.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s the moral he takes from every story, but this isn’t his story. It’s yours, Tansy. You need to write
your
moral.” She reached the page where I turned Rumpelstiltskin into a golden statue, and a smirk stole across her lips. “That’s what he gets for un-derestimating women. I bet he wishes he’d gone off on that cooking spoon now.”

She handed me back the book, but I could only grip it in frustration. “I already wrote every moral I could think of.” She tilted her chin down. “Yes, but you wrote them before the fairy tale was finished. For a moral to be accurate, you need to know how the story ends.” She waved a hand at me. “Now then, what did you learn?”

So much that I couldn’t answer right away. It seemed I had learned more in the last few days than I’d learned in all the years before. My family and Hudson were staring at me, waiting for some gem of wisdom to fall from my lips. Instead, I fingered the pen.

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Chrissy’s wings spanned open and then fluttered impatiently.

“You may have, for example, been paying attention when I told you that the lessons you learn in life are more important than the things you accomplish, or you may remember when I told you that you can’t expect wishes to change the world without them changing you too, or that I pointed out that the purpose of life was not to avoid problems, but to overcome them. Those might have stuck in your mind if you weren’t currently—” She snapped her fingers and the pathetic-o-meter appeared in her hand. Her eyebrows rose in surprise when she read my numbers. “Oh, look. Now you’re only 34 percent pathetic.” She flashed the disk at me so I could see it. “That’s quite good, really.

Mortals are always at least 33 percent pathetic—it’s just your nature.

It’s the reason you like rap music and keep bringing low-rise jeans back into style.” She tucked the pathetic-o-meter into her purse. “Anyway, what have you learned from all this?” I put the pen to the paper, and a single gold dot leaked from the pen, waiting to be turned into a thought. “Do I need to write down everything, or just one thing?”

“One thing will do.”

Robin Hood and the Merry Men came back to the trail then. I heard someone say, “Where is that light coming from?” Little John stopped in his tracks. “Be wary, lads, it’s the selfsame fairy who snatched us back and forth between centuries.”

“Should we flee?” Will asked.

Chrissy flicked her wand and a gust of wind rushed in their direction, blowing off a hat or two. “If I wanted to do you harm,” she said loudly, “it wouldn’t matter where you ran to. You might as well come out, be gentlemen, and offer me proper homage.” To me she said,

“Fairies own the forest in the twelfth century. It’s like, you know, being royalty.”

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The Merry Men shuffled forward. Robin Hood took the lead.

When he reached Chrissy, he took off his hat and bowed deeply. “We have no gifts to offer such a fair one as yourself, but will gladly give you the homage of our praise.”

“I accept praise,” Chrissy said, smiling benevolently at him. “And sonnets will do.”

“Sonnets,” Robin Hood repeated without enthusiasm. He glanced back at the Merry Men, who didn’t look much happier about the request. “We shall confer and compose one forthwith.” They all fell back a little ways away from us, whispering among themselves.

Nick put his hands on his hips. “Come on, Tansy, write something so we can go home. You don’t really want to be around to hear poetry from twelfth-century bandits, do you?” Still, I hesitated. “I’ll be able to change things to gold when I go home?”

She nodded. “The gold enchantment is yours until you take it off.”

“Will the book—
The Change Enchantment
—will it still work when I get home?”

She nodded again. “But you’ll have no need of magic then to change your future. It isn’t set in stone or book or by any spell. You can make whatever you want of your own future.” Part of me knew this had always been the case. I’d been told the same thing by adults for years, but I’d always been concentrating on the past so intently that I’d never noticed my future, wide and endless in front of me. Now the kaleidoscope of possibilities hit me. I could do anything I wanted. Fate had unchained me.

I glanced back at the Merry Men. Robin Hood was shaking his head. “You can’t stick ‘gorgeous’ at the end of a stanza. Nothing rhymes with it.”

Friar Tuck frowned. “Poor us.”

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Will added, “More fuss.”

Little John grumbled. “Boar pus.”