Godmother Read Free Page B

could see the rain and the fields and the black trees through the horse's eyes, feel the fear slowly leaving him as his wounds closed and disappeared.
    “Good boy,” she whispered, stroking his coat. Her face soft, open. We had both inherited it, this love for beasts.
    “Where are the others?” I asked.
    Lucibell and Gladys were no longer in the grass, I saw then, but hovering up ahead, next to a carriage that was stuck in the mud. As Maybeth and I approached we saw a man wrenching himself out of the carriage and screaming at the horseman, his clothes getting soaked with rain. The horseman was pulling on the reins frantically, but the horses were refusing to budge.
    Obviously, the two of them were up to no good. “What are you doing to that man?” I said. “Quit making mischief!”
    “Oh, Lil, we're just having fun,” Gladys said, pouting. She glowed against the night like a firefly.
    “I am quite sure he deserves it,” Lucibell said.
    Thunder clapped above us. I spread my wings. We left the horse and the carriage and the field behind, and moved through the dense, wet air. The kingdom spread out below us, all human life as we knew it. We passed noble manors, with their massive gardens and the lines of huts the peasants lived in, the fields full of crops and grapevines and livestock, the little chapels. We passed villages, with their rows of shops, their butchers and blacksmiths and seamstresses, their elaborate churches and stone taverns with the horseshitched up outside. We passed small forests without enchantments, filled with pheasant and other prey, and roads being traveled by knights and bandits and kings and beggars, until we came to the silver palace, which glittered under us, which reached up to us with its massive heart and all the desire that collected in it. And then, finally, after crossing the river that flowed like mercury, we came upon a dark manor on the other side of the kingdom that looked, from above, as sad as any tear. Its garden was overgrown, its crops untended. The stones in the façade were beginning to crumble. I had seen the place behind my eyes, from the lake, but here, now, it seemed enormous. Lightning cracked open the world. I could feel her in the house, and her presence came over me with such force I almost cried out loud.
    We were silent as we came upon the long windows, pressing our foreheads against the glass.
    “Up here!” Maybeth cried, and we all fluttered to the second floor, where, in a gaping stone room, three women stood huddled over a bed covered in dresses and fabric.
    “Which one is she?” Lucibell breathed. “None of them looks very beautiful to me.”
    “Well, they're not going to be, not to us,” Gladys said. “She's human after all.”
    “This isn't her room,” I said, trying to interject. “She's not here.”
    “Oh, but her mother was gorgeous,” Lucibell said to Gladys. “Remember? I loved her. I loved watching her.”
    Gladys shrugged. “She was half fairy. Wasn't she?”
    “Yes,” I said. “A fairy fell in love with her mother, Cinderella's grandmother.”
    “That's disgusting,” Maybeth said.
    “She was supposed to have been astonishing,” I said. “He came upon her bathing in a stream and it happened then. Her husband never knew.”
    Lucibell shuddered. “I can't even imagine.”
    “He was banished, right, the fairy?” Maybeth asked. “For that, he must have been.”
    “Of course,” I said. “Anyway, those are the stepsisters and their mother. Cinderella's in the kitchen. I can feel her.”
    The sisters were pulling up dress after dress from the bed and throwing them onto the floor. Rich fabrics of velvet and tulle and silk, every color woven into them.
    Before I knew what was happening, Gladys pushed her way into the room, dissolving into the glass and reconfiguring herself on the other side, and Lucibell followed. I watched for a minute as they flung themselves onto the pile of fabric and began pulling the dresses away every time