Crossed Wands

Fiona, Fairy Godmother Superior Learns a Few Things

It was the end of the first week of her new fairy godmother trainee, but Fiona had been dragged to Mundane by Maven, in anger, to show her the state of that dimension. Things were worse there than Fiona realized, all the more reason for her to keep Maven under control. But they had crossed wands to return to Faery, and Maven had wished to be a good fairy godmother.

Right now Maven was dealing with some of her untrained, unruly magic, out of the way.

Fiona breathed a sigh of relief, and then sat up even more rigidly in her chair. Why relief? What had changed? Yesterday she had been on the Other Side, dying, but today, business as usual, wondering what to do about Maven. She reminded herself she had brought Maven to Faery to protect her domain from raw, untrained magic.

She peered into her crystal ball, searching for any unexpected alteration in the landscape of Faery, but everything was peaceful other than the mess that had two fairy godmothers out of commission while Maven battled some issue with the magical palace that had them trapped.

She'd often wondered how to get rid of Maven, or at least how to control her often unorthodox methods and unruly magic. Having her gone would be a relief…until she came back, and like a bad penny, she always had, even from impossible tasks.

Still, something felt different. She clapped for her map to appear, and commanded it to show her every wish. Three glowing wishes appeared, and there was no one else to manage. She needed Maven back, not to mention Calliope and Tulip.

In the meantime, she thickened her gossamer for travelling, fluttered the kinks out of her wings and poofed off to grant a few wishes. It would do her good to get back out into the field and see how people fared face to face.

Chloe

When she appeared to her first client, announcing herself with a tinkle of bells and a flash of sparkles, the client spun in her chair and scattered a pile of papers across the floor. Nearly up to the client's shoulders, the stacks were a fire hazard and a disaster in the making.

Fiona listened to the story carefully through the wand, while the client found her voice to ask who she was. Organization was needed here, though she was unlikely to ask for it. No, she wanted money, lots of it right now, not that she would have it for long.

After a few seconds, the client, Chloe, had still not spoken.

"I'm your fairy godmother, Dear." Fiona waved her wand in a graceful swoop. "I heard you wishing. What do you most truly desire?"

"I…I don't know. I need money for the house, and I want a lover and the carriage has been sold and…" Chloe began to sob.

Fiona continued to listen to the story, one not often told anymore of a girl left with a small income that had now run out. She might have managed it better with some training and discipline, but still, what she'd had was gone now. How to teach her what she needed to learn, help her in her immediate distress, and set up the happy-ever-after each wisher desired?

"Have you considered marriage as a way out?" Fiona asked, as that was the standard device for saving the heroine.

"I have no fortune," Chloe said as she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, "and there are no princes of this realm looking for a wife, be she rich or poor."

"I could shower you with gold," Fiona said, tapping her wand in her palm with only a hint of impatience, "but it would disappear by morning, even before you could pay your creditors. It is up to you, however, to make a wish before I can grant it."

Chloe struggled to control herself and regain her composure. She had been brought up properly, except that she had no head for housekeeping. "I want to keep the house and not have to let the servants go. Some of them already found new jobs, but the others have nowhere else to go. That's what I wish for, a way to pay everyone and keep a place to live."

This kind of story was Maven's specialty, but she had other fish to fry. No romance here, no evil character to be overcome, and not a hint of selfishness or cruelty in the client. Fiona thought of Daisy, the dairy maid who had been Maven's first client. She too wanted to help her friends, the peasants of Princess Vivienne's kingdom.

"Do you wish always to be the fine lady in your satin gowns?" Fiona asked, noting that while the gown Chloe wore was clean and well-made, it was linen and quite plain.

"I love beautiful clothing, but I…already sold or gave away most of my wardrobe and my mother's, and my father's clothing, too. There isn't anything left." A solitary tear spilled from Chloe's eye and streaked her face.

What would Maven do?

Fiona shuddered.

The mess in the room interfered with Fiona's concentration. Without a word, she swizzled her wand and set up a filing system, sorting and arranging the piles of papers into folders and binders, aligning them on shelves that appeared behind Chloe's desk.

"First, start reading these files carefully," Fiona said. "I am sure you will find out where your money has gone, and you may find that you are not so desperate as you think. Tomorrow I will send a woman to you, perhaps even a peasant, who may have some ideas of how you can help yourself, your servants, and other women in this town. Will you listen to the guidance of a peasant?"

"To get out of this mess, I would take advice from a troll or an ogre!"

"I hope it will not come to that. Start reading today." Fiona raised her wand to poof. "Remember that everything that looks like magic is not, and real magic takes time, despite what the stories say."

"I will remember!" Chloe said, smiling as she reached for the first binder on the shelf.

Fiona went back to her office, shaken and unsure of what had just happened. She had never had such a wish to grant, and would never have thought to start some kind of organization such as Daisy had with her friends. The craftwork of Vivienne's kingdom was the envy of all Faery, and none of it was made with more magic than that of nimble minds and industrious fingers. But Daisy the milkmaid, her friends and half the royalty of Faery were stuck inside the recalcitrant palace. She had told Maven to manage it, and even with her crystal ball, Fiona had no ideas how to help Maven.

Wishes waited to be granted.

Beatrice

She listened to the story as she dangled in the zilchzeit between there and yonder. This wisher was dark, lonely, bitter-- not the sort that Fiona would usually consider worthy of a wish, but she felt compelled to visit. Some stories were about redemption.

Fiona appeared in a dark parlor, barely lit by the candle stub burning over a cold hearth. She did not make a big splash of sparkles, but only appeared, glowing slightly, almost like a mauve ghost.

A woman sat in the dark, dressed all in black, as if to go out, but not moving. She was thinking of jumping off a bridge into a river, where her clothing would weigh her down to the depths. Yet she had made a wish.

"I hope that I am not too late," Fiona said. "You have not yet made up your mind?"

"I am wishing for a reason to change my mind." The woman, Beatrice stared off into the darkness. Can you bring me peace, Fairy Godmother?"

"I can see that you are lonely here in your house with your money. It has not brought you the joy you expected, but that is because you only let it in and never let it out. Would you trade some of your gold for some peace of mind and a purpose to live?"

Beatrice scowled at Fiona. "Now even the Fae come asking for money. That is all I am, my wealth, my stacks of coin and my holdings. I might as well die."

"You misunderstand. No one pays for wishes, but wishes always require some effort on the part of the client. You could actually grant a wish for someone else, if you chose."

"By giving them money that they will only throw away on some useless frippery?” Beatrice crossed her arms and frowned. “I think not."

"You are a woman of business, shrewd in dealings and never wasteful, or so I understand."

"Waste not, want not."

"Could you teach someone else how to be a good business woman, and perhaps learn how to be warm-hearted at the same time? Could you learn to be happy and how to enjoy the company of others rather than giving all your love to that which does not love you back?"

"I am listening. What is your proposition?"

"A young woman on the other side of town is going to lose her home if she does not learn how to manage it. She is deep in debt, probably due to her generosity and poor business sense. She wished tonight to keep her home, both for a place to live and so that she would not have to let the rest of her servants go homeless. Could you teach her how to do business, how to manage her money, and perhaps learn to see the world from her innocence?"

"A project, then." Beatrice's eyes gleamed. "A new start, perhaps. It would be like starting over again, knowing what I know now." She rubbed her cold hands together, but then peered up at Fiona. "How do you know I won't take advantage of her, turn her out of her house for the rent?"

Fiona's answer came into her head with Maven's voice. "You waited for me to come. You aren't dead yet." Fiona added with a cock of an eyebrow, "And I'll be watching."

Fiona poofed out to go to the next client, a girl wishing to find a true love, Fiona’s favorite story, and easy as her true love was the boy next door. The girl just needed to see him with new eyes. Fiona told her to go outside, with some household task first thing in the morning, and that she would fall in love. Fiona could see even without her crystal ball that the two neighbors would collide and fall on the wet grass, shattering forever their old familiarity and revealing their true selves for just a moment. But she made a silent visit to the boy in question and put a glamour on him to go out early the next morning, too.

No one could cause people to fall in love, as true love is much stronger than magic, but she could certainly put them in each other's path.

Maven was somehow involved, even if Fiona could not find her. Somehow she was influencing Fiona, and her kind of magic flowed out of Princess Vivenne's kingdom like rain-swollen rivers in all directions.

Three down, and one more to go. Fiona was tired, as she had not done such work in a long time, although she hadn't actually granted any wishes. This one she would do by the book--no matter what it was, and then she'd figure out what was going on. But when she arrived, she found that the wish was not so simple.

Princess Eulalie

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The last client was leaning out her window, propped on her elbows. Her hair hung down in long braids to her knees, and her dress was of fine silk. Princess Eulalie wished to visit among her subjects, to know how the peasants lived beneath her beautiful tower.

"How will you make your living, Princess ?" Fiona asked, unwilling to plop the girl down on the street in rags, though at one time she would have done so without much thought. "Peasants work for their money, for their food, and their shelter. They don't have much use for drawing and fine embroidery."

"I have tried visiting. They are always nice, polite, but they are afraid of me and of my father. "If I were living as they are, I would know what they need."

Fiona listened both to her wand and to herself for the voice she hoped would give her an idea. "I could fly you around invisibly and let you look in on them, see them as they are, and see more of them than you would meet on your own, and you would not cause a disturbance by disappearing from the keep."

She got a response from that…the princess wanted to escape something or someone in the castle, and she was desperate enough to run away to do it.

But the girl didn't ask for protection or escape.

Fiona saw how Maven felt about her clients. The wish was not foolish by intent, though the result might be much worse than the problem she might face here.

"Of course, you might feel more pity for them than they feel for themselves. What do you wish to escape in your present life that makes the poverty of peasants look inviting?

"Are you going to grant my wish or just tell me that I am too young and foolish to see what will happen if I stay here?" Now she faced Fiona, eye to eye with the voice of command that would rule her subjects when she came of age, married or not.

Fiona stared back, too tired to listen to a slip of a girl, voice or no. "When you make your wish," Fiona said, "I shall grant it. State clearly what you want, and be careful what you wish for." Fiona too had the voice of command, and it was all the more commanding because her feet hurt.

"I wish," the girl began, "I wish to escape my father and his friends, to be safe from them until I can marry or manage on my own, if that is possible for a lady of the realm."

Fiona waved her wand and a letter appeared, on very impressive parchment with elegant lettering, sealed in wax with the emblem of her second client, who was about to start a college for young noblewomen to learn the supervision of a household, to be sensible wives and mothers—and maybe queens of the realms. "This will come to your father's attention in the morning, and he will be most agreeable to the terms. You will be packed off immediately and hemmed up as tight as in a nunnery. But you will be safe."

How her clients would work out the details was up to them, but Fiona poofed the letter off to be delivered in the morning. "Choose your wardrobe carefully, as your silks will not do for all your lessons."

She poofed out.

Back at her office, a similar letter appeared to Chloe, and copies went to Beatrice, who went to work immediately, informing her servants to prepare a classroom and sleeping quarters for the first two young women, and made some plans for curriculum.

The young couple banged their heads over the wet grass, saw their old friendship in a new way. Meet Cute Accomplished.

Within a week, both young women were in the new school, Chloe's immediate finances repaired, but out of her hands.

Fiona swizzled her wand over her desk, where a mug of hot coffee appeared.

When they'd crossed wands to get back to Faery, she'd gotten some of Maven's power, and apparently some of her preferences. As good as she felt about her new clients, she'd have to make sure Maven's influence over her was nullified. But the coffee was good.