Godmother Read Free Page A

pearls?”
    I sighed as they burst into laughter, but it was true: Gladys was the most beautiful of us, and took great joy in appearing in rivers and in sunlight to human men, who would write reams of poetry and sometimes even go mad altogether as a result. Still, it was not a proper topic for conversation. Cinderella was not an ordinary human. She was destined to become queen, and it was my task to ensure it.
    Just then the sky lit up in the distance. Lightning.
    “I need to go,” I said, standing up on the pier. “Much as I am enjoying this stimulating conversation.”
    “I'm coming, too,” Gladys said. “I can help.”
    “Oh, a great help you'll be,” I said.
    “We're coming, too,” Maybeth said, dragging Lucibell behind her.
    “Don't you have work to do?”
    “We can work later,” she said, waving her hand. “For now, we might as well see our
competition.”
    They all laughed, but I stayed silent. They were starting to annoy me. The elders had chosen me for this task, not them. I was the one who was to get Cinderella to the ball now that human vanity had conspired against it.
    It had been a dark, wintry night when the elders summoned me to the court. Ice dripped from the trees and every creature in the forest was in hiding. Snow and ice had coated the lake's surface, icicles breaking off and falling into the grass at the bottom of the lake as we slept. I had thought I was in trouble when the message came, as if the elders could sense my desire to be out in the world, to run through the snow, but then I found myself in front of the council. Prince Theodore, they told me, was going to throw a ball and pick a wife. It was important, they said, that Cinderella attend, and yet her stepsisters and stepmother were going to prevent it. It was a great honor for me to have been chosen. For my sensitivity, the feather wings that marked me.
    Now I spread my wings and flew up into the wind and beyond the fairy lake, which was in the center of the dark forest. The others flew close behind, and the air against my face was like mist. My whole body relaxed into it. We passed over the ancient trees, the secret hovels of elves and witches and gnomes, and a group of men searching for theirtwo lost companions, whom they would never find—I could feel the fear coursing through them—and headed toward the palace in the distance, rising up into the storm clouds. Slowly my annoyance disappeared. There was nothing like the feeling of flight, of navigating whole worlds with one's heart and body.
    I pushed myself into it, faster and faster, and soon the rain lashed against my skin, the temperature dropping to a heavy coldness. I gave myself over to it, all of it. I laughed with the others, screaming against the rain and thunder.
    We landed in the field of a large estate on the outskirts of the kingdom. Gladys dropped into an upturned leaf that was filling with rain. “I'm drowning!” she cried, as Maybeth flopped into the mud and covered her skin with it.
    “I believe I have turned to chocolate!” Maybeth called out.
    I laughed, then looked up at the huge black horse in front of us, quivering as thunder shattered the air behind it. He stamped at the ground.
    “Lovely creature,” I breathed, and he looked at me then, his enormous eyes meeting mine. I flew up, against the rain, to him. He had long black lashes and I could see the scars on his side where he'd been lashed.
    Maybeth was by my side in an instant. “He's a pretty thing,” she said.
    “He sees us.”
    She neared the horse and gripped his mane. She leaned in close to his ear and whispered. Through the whooshing sounds of the storm I could hear her words, soothing him.
    “We should go,” I said.
    The horse calmed as she spoke to him. I flew down andpressed myself against his soft coat, as black as ink. The horse's eyes focused in on me and he blinked.
    “A creature like this shouldn't have to stay here, not this way,” Maybeth said.
    “I know.” For a moment I