Chapter 8

Day by day, week by week, Elena mastered the arts and skills of magic, and "fine art" of being a Godmother. Midsummer's Day came and went, and summer drowsed towards haying time in the villages near Bella's cottage. Haying time brought a spate of women to the cottage, the wives and sweethearts of farmworkers, seeking charms against cutting and ointment for wounds; haying was dangerous work, and the men who swung the huge, razor-sharp scythes could be cut and bleed to death if the worst happened. Bella taught the making of these to Elena, and after the first few, it was she who supplied all such things to their visitors.

Some few of the farmers themselves came looking for help as well, but what they wanted was not a charm, but a prediction; hay needed five hot days to dry properly after it was cut, five days of no rain and no dew. Bella herself saw to that.

"It's easy enough," she said with a chuckle. "Weather moves from west to east. I simply have Randolf look west from here, and find me at least a five-day span of clear weather, then give me a notion of when it will start. At this time of year, when we have far more sun than rain, that's not so hard."

That struck Elena as supremely clever. It didn't require trying to see into the future (which she had learned was very difficult and became more so the further ahead you tried to look). It also didn't require changing the weather, which she had been warned was something that could cause more problems than it solved. Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.

Sometimes she felt as if she was learning so much so fast that her head was stuffed full of it all, and if she had to master one more thing, her skull was going to burst.

While Witches and Hedge-Wizards tended to control and direct magic by using things, (creating complicated potions and talismans), the Sorcerers and Sorceresses controlled magic with words using a special language of words of binding and loosing, that minutely described the effects a magician wanted. But a full Wizard or a Godmother worked strictly by will and intention. Oh, that sounded so very easy! But you had to learn how to focus yourself completely, so that nothing distracted you; you had to learn how to chart an exact course and commit yourself completely to the course you had decided on. And you had to learn to think on your feet, so that you could frame something that would steer The Tradition in the way you wanted it to go the moment that an opportunity presented itself.

This was why Arachnia, despite her best effort, had not thwarted The Tradition with her pseudo-curse. This was why Elena, shaking with fear and effort, had been able to counter the curse in a way that satisfied The Tradition. Faced with her first crisis, she had been so focused on it that by the time her will had been imposed there was no room for The Tradition to move except in the direction she wanted it to. Thanks to all her reading, she had known enough of The Tradition by then to be able to give it the path of least resistance in the direction she wanted it to go.

But the more practiced she became, the more experience she had, the more important the ability to focus would become. She would not have that fear to narrow her concentration down to the sharpest point. With familiarity came, if not contempt, certainly a loss of urgency; she had to learn how to make up for that with internal focus.

Wizards and Fairy Godmothers did more than merely counter curses; they also tested and guided Questers and dispensed punishments to seekers who failed the tests.

The little old lady in the woods, who after being treated kindly, dispensed the clues that a Quester needed to find his goal— those were Godmothers. The ferryman who had the answers to questions—also Godmothers, or Wizards. The hag at the bridge, the watcher at the door—

And when there was more than one Quester, when, for instance, it was a Quest by several young men, only one of whom would be worthy, it was the job of the Godmothers and Wizards to test these seekers to find the one who was worthy to pass on. And, if they did not measure up, to allot a punishment or send them in another direction that would, hopefully, teach them and correct their behavior. Many a Prince who had failed the test of kindness on the way to the captive Princess later became the hero of his own story—or, at the least, became the wise and virtuous King of his own land at the death of his father.

That was Godmother and Wizardly magic.

Wizards were fewer than Godmothers, and usually elected to be solitary, apart from the dwellings of men, living in caves or wild forests as hermits. But because Godmothers often acted as the local White Witches, they also had to learn Witchery in order to help their communities and maintain their fictive disguises; thus, Elena had not one, but two sets of lessons to master.

Of the two, the Witchery was the easiest; in fact, so far as she was concerned, it was something of a doodle. All you had to do was to follow the recipe to create the potion, whose purpose was determined by the ingredients. Then you infused the potion with a touch of power.

Witches and Hedge-Wizards worked in subtle ways, attempting to make their influence felt, not at the crisis, but before there was any hint of a crisis. They operated at the lowest level of magic, where small changes might bring larger results. As a result, even the most powerful of Witches generally used the smallest amount of magic needed in order to bring about the desired result.

More often than not, they did not use magic, as such, at all.

For instance—being kind to the abused and exploited stepdaughter of a neighbor...giving her encouragement and the odd meal, helping her to cope with a cup of tea and a word of advice.

Yes, Elena's neighbors had been Witches— both of them. And, among many other things, they had kept a careful eye on Elena, guiding her, keeping her spirit from being crushed. Had she ever truly wanted, with all her heart, to become ordinary, they would have called on Madame Bella to come and take the weight of all of that Traditional Potential away from her, and she probably would have managed to find either a kind husband, or a position as a maid-of-all-work, when Madame Klovis departed on her search for another wealthy victim to wed. Probably the latter, though there was no telling for certain.

As it was, when they knew that Elena was determined to escape, no matter what it took, they had called Madame Bella to examine this potential Apprentice for herself. Those were the voices that Elena had heard that night, murmuring over the wall next door.

For their part, Sorcerers and Sorceresses intervened when things had gone so wrong that only enormous magical effort could save the day. They accompanied heroes and heroines on the quests, and when they did, the odds were usually stacked against them. They often watched over the children who would become heroes as they were raised in hiding. They fought at the side of heroes when the armies of good and evil clashed. They could go their entire lives without ever fulfilling that particular destiny, however, so they also served another set of functions. They often assisted Godmothers; they frequently devised the trials and tests that lesser questers had to pass.

And, perhaps because of their affinity for language and deep, long thought, they were frequently mystics, being sought for their wisdom as well as their magic. A Sorcerer's life was often spent in long years of patient study and waiting, and it sometimes ended in a frenetic and peril-filled span of mere months. When there was combative magic darkening the skies, it was most often the Sorcerers and Sorceresses who were in the thick of it.

Yet, such times were few, and it was just as well that this was so, or the landscape would have been shattered by the scope of such conflicts. Most Sorcerers and Sorceresses never once raised a wand in anger. They lived and died in their distant, lofty towers, seldom venturing out, studying the heavens and the earth in splendid isolation unless someone happened to call upon them for some trifle or other.

Elena decided rather quickly that she would not much enjoy being a Sorceress.

She might have enjoyed being a Witch, but—

But could she have ever acted as her neighbors did, remaining apart from the people she served, staying out of their day-to-day quarrels, living in her town, yet apart from it? Witches and Hedge-Wizards could not take sides, could not become involved, dared to make no judgments, allowing events to judge themselves.

She didn't think so; she could not just stand apart from things and let them run their course without trying to set them right. She would never, for instance, have been able to stand being next door to her younger self, seeing how that self was mistreated by Madame Klovis. In fact, she probably would have marched right in one fine day after a beating and turned Madame and her two daughters into toads.

It was the passion to set things right that defined the Godmother and the Wizard; and this was also why they did not live among the people. To be a Godmother meant that you did become involved, and you used your strong emotions to help you focus. But Godmothers and Wizards did not remain so utterly apart from people as the Sorcerers and Sorceresses did—they needed to have some contact with people, to remain anchored in humanity and keep their own emotions alive. It was a difficult balance to maintain—but it wasn't boring.

In all of the magical work she was doing, Elena was constantly concerned that at some point, that store of magical power that The Tradition had surrounded her with would run dry, and finally one day during the haying, when she had made half a dozen charms against cutting (a little talisman made of tiny leaden scythe with no edge at all, a sprig of High John, and a bit of cloth with the person's blood on it) she voiced that concern to Madame.

Bella was out in the garden, deciding, with Lily's help, just which herbs would be cut that night in the light of the full moon. When Elena stammered out her worry, Madame gave her a long and considering look.

"It is true that with nearly anyone else, I would have taught you how to harvest power by now," she said at last. "The reason I haven't is that you arrived with so much you haven't yet expended half of it. But something could happen to me—" she paused at the sight of Elena's stricken look, and laughed "—no, no, I'm not anticipating anything! No premonitions, no predictions, I assure you, just the common sense that things can happen that no one foresees.

So, since those talismans and a few other things have to go to the village anyway, you might as well come along with me, and I'll show you how it's done."

"I'll harness Dobbin," said Lily instantly.

"You go change your apron and get your hat," Bella told Elena. "I'll have Rose make up the basket."

So by the time Elena had changed her apron for a clean one, tied a kerchief over her hair to keep the dust out and placed her wide-brimmed, flat-crowned straw hat over that and was down the stair again, the donkey and cart were at the front gate, and Madame was already on the driver's bench.

Although he wasn't nearly as fast as the Little Humpback Horse, the donkey could keep a surprisingly quick pace for one so old and small. A pleasant hour brought them to the village of Louvain, and Madame was hardly over the little stone bridge before the women who had commissioned those charms came running to meet them.

"You're just in time," said the first of them, a cheery, round-faced woman who had three happily grubby little children trailing along behind her. "Haying begins tomorrow! I don't know what we'd have done if you hadn't come today."

"Tell those dolts to be extra careful, that's what we'd have done," said another, thin and careworn, with a grimace. "Still, they're men! You never can depend on them not to play the fool when there's a lot of them together!"

The last of the women, a sweet-faced girl with a furrowed brow, took her talisman but whispered to Madame when the others were just out of earshot, "Madame Bella, it's—can you—"

"That's why I came today," Madame whispered back. "Just let me leave my simples with Brother Tyne, and I'll see you before I leave."

Elena had expected from the name that Brother Tyne was a priest—but in fact, he was an apothecary with a little shop on the village square, the sign of his trade—a large, round-bottomed bottle—hanging above his door. When they drew up to his shop, he came out and took the basket from Madame, handing her down afterwards as if he was a footman. "Come along, Apprentice," Madame called over her shoulder. "You'll be doing this eventually, so you might as well see our arrangement."

They didn't stay long in the tiny shop; Brother Tyne counted what they'd brought and apparently there was a set price already for Madame's goods, for there was no haggling. They emerged with a little purse of copper and silver and an empty basket, and a paper with the prices that the Apothecary would pay for each potion on a little slip of paper in Elena's pocket. And on the way out of town, Madame pulled the donkey up beside the gate of a tiny, rose-covered cottage with the prettiest yard Elena had ever seen. The entire place was as cheerful as you could ask, and Elena was struck by the notion that not that long ago, she would have been happy living in such a place. "Rosalie!" Madame called. "Have you got that butter I wanted?"

The same young woman who had whispered so urgently to Madame appeared at the door of the cottage. "I have, and please come and choose the pats for yourself," she replied. Madame hopped down off the cart, and Elena tied up the donkey to the hedge at the front of the yard and followed her.

Once inside the cottage, it was clear that butter had been nothing more than an excuse to come inside, away from the prying eyes of the neighbors. "I feel that hemmed in, it's like I can't breathe sometimes," the young woman was saying, as Elena joined them in the tiny kitchen. "I can't imagine why it's got so bad, so quickly this time."

It was then that Elena noticed what she had not before; that the young woman was just beginning to show her pregnancy. Ah, this must be something to do with that, Elena thought—but then wondered. She knew this village had a midwife, and a good one. Why ask Madame Bella for help?

"Well, this should be the last time it's this hard, my dear," Madame soothed. "Now just you remember, if you get a craving for anything out-of-season, you send straight to me, that minute, and I'll make a special trip here or send my Apprentice. I don't think you will, once I've done with you today, but it's still possible. Now, Elena, watch and listen."

When Madame said "watch" in that tone of voice, it meant magic.

Elena blinked, and saw the whirls of magical power swirling tightly around the young woman, so thick that her features were blurred, as if she wore a veil.

"Rosalie, do you surrender your power to me, freely and of your own will?" Madame asked, slowly, carefully, and clearly. She held her wand just over the crown of the young woman's head.

"Do you renounce this power, not only for yourself, but for the sake of your unborn child?"

"I do," Rosalie replied, bowing her head slightly. "I renounce it for the life I have chosen, for the sake of my unborn child, and for the love that I bear my husband."

With each word that the young woman spoke, the power slowed, and somehow relaxed, until it no longer bound her like coils of wire, but lay about her like loose hay.

"Then I assume it, for the pledge I have made, for the sake of those who will need it, and my duty to those who call upon me," Madame said, circling young Rosalie's head three times with the tip of her wand—and the power followed it, flowing around and upwards, vanishing into the wand, as if it was somehow sucking it up. That was the only analogy that Elena could make—

The spell was a simple enough one, but she saw by the frown of concentration on Madame's face that the effort to make it work was intense. And before all of the power had been absorbed, she stopped.

Rosalie's head shot up. "You aren't done!" she cried, accusingly. "I can feel it—"

Madame held up her hand. "Hush, dear. We'll take the burden from you, no fear—but I want my Apprentice to take a hand and finish the job."

Rosalie looked at Elena doubtfully, but did not voice those doubts, perhaps because she was too polite to do so. Elena took Madame's place, her wand outstretched. "Rosalie," she said, carefully, "do you surrender your power to me, freely, and of your own will? Do you renounce this power, not only for yourself, but for the sake of your unborn child?"

The power had begun to wrap Rosalie in its coils again when Madame had released it; now, as Rosalie repeated what she had said to Madame, it relaxed again.

"Then I assume it," Elena said, "for the pledge I have made, for the sake of those who will need it, and my duty to those who will call upon me." And as she circled Rosalie's head with the tip of her own wand, she concentrated, fiercely, on doing the opposite of what she had learned to do so far—not to dispense power, but to take it in.

ft was a great deal more difficult than she would have guessed. Not only was she fighting against the training she'd had so far, but she could feel the whole weight of The Tradition bearing down on her in a kind of sullen resistance. The Tradition wanted this young woman for something. It bent its power towards making her into that something. It was like an enormous, blind, insensate beast, pushing her towards that end, and it did not want to let her go down some other path.

But Rosalie did not want to go there. She was happy with her little cottage, her gentle, simple husband, happy to be ordinary and fit in with the rest of the village as a pea fits among its neighbors in a pod. The more The Tradition pushed her, the more she pushed back, and that was what made it painless for her to give up the power that was collecting around her.

Given the amount of it, Elena had a good idea of why she had seemed so distressed. She knew that sort of distant-storm tenseness that the coiled-up power around you made you feel; the sense that there was something, somewhere, you urgently had to do. It was not unlike feeling that a dreadful headache was poised, waiting to strike you the moment you dropped your guard.

It wore on you, until all you could think about was this weight on you, the feeling of nerves stretched thin. Slowly, reluctantly, the power let go of Rosalie and passed to Elena—

Where, exactly, it went, she couldn't really tell. But she could feel a sort of weight to it, and felt it join her power, as if she was a vessel, and it was water flowing in from some outside source.

Finally the last of the power was gone. There was no more magic sparkling and glowing around Rosalie than there was around any of her perfectly ordinary neighbors.

Rosalie might not have been able to see the difference, but she certainly sensed it. Her shoulders straightened, as did her back; she opened her eyes and smiled, and her brow was no longer furrowed.

"Well, Apprentice!" she said, her voice bright with pleasure. "I expect you'll not be an Apprentice much longer!"

Elena flushed. "I still have a lot to learn," she murmured, embarrassed, as Madame chuckled.

"We'll be off, then," was all Madame said. "Now that you're sorted. But remember, any craving, and you send to me! That may not sound like much, but believe me, it's important!"

"I will," Rosalie promised.

"All right," Elena said, once they were well out of the village, "what was all that about?"

"Rosalie is a rare one," Madame replied. "In fact, you won't find a girl like her in a hundred years. She's a doubler—when she was younger, before she married her sweetheart, The Tradition was trying to make her into a Fair Rosalinda."

"Oh good heavens—" Elena said, her hand going to her lips in consternation.

The Tradition was not all happy endings. "Fair Rosalinda" was one of the uglier directions that The Tradition could go into—the beautiful peasant orphan girl who is seduced by a King, set up in her own secluded bower, and murdered by his Queen when she discovers his philandering.

"Oh, yes," Madame said grimly. "A fine romantic tragedy, if it were to happen to someone else, long ago and far away...not such a fine thing if it was supposed to happen to you."

Elena had read of several "Fair Rosalindas" already; magic entered the picture only after the poor thing was dead—poisoned or strangled and the body buried somewhere hidden—

But usually, the Fair Rosalinda was drowned. Then a musician would enter the tale.

Sometimes he would make a pipe or some other instrument of the reeds or the tree growing from her hidden grave—in the most macabre and disturbing versions, he would make a harp from her bones and string it with her golden hair. And then he would go before the King, who was grieving for his lost love, and when he played, the instrument would have but one song—

"The Queen hath murdered me, " Elena murmured.

"I will not have one of those in my Kingdoms," Madame said fiercely. "I found her before the King did, before her breasts began to bud—she, in her turn, had already begun to feel the coils of the power around her and when I had explained something of what was going to happen, begged me to take it from her. Which I've been doing, and I had hoped that when she wedded, The Tradition would give over and let her go. But it hasn't; I had some suspicions as to why, and I think they've just been confirmed now that I know she's with child. Failing to make her a Rosalinda, The Tradition now wants to make her child a Ladderlocks."

"Oh, please!" Elena said, as much in disgust as anything else. "What has the poor thing done to be so put-upon?"

The Ladderlocks story was more fantastical and less—but only a trifle less—unpleasant than that of Rosalinda. The mother of a Ladderlocks child would be overcome with a craving for some out-of-season food to the point where she could eat that and only that. Naturally, the only place her distracted husband can find this food would be in the garden of some Black Witch or Evil Sorceress. He would steal it, be caught, and pledge to give the woman his child to save his own life. On the birth of Ladderlocks—always a girl—the Witch would take her away, lock her in a tower, and among other things, forbid her to cut her hair...and the rest of that tale was familiar to any child in any Kingdom that Elena had any knowledge of. It might end well, but there was often a great deal of horror before the end came—

"I can't even bear to think about being locked up in a tower for sixteen years," Elena replied.

"I don't know why the girls don't go mad."

"Some of them do," Madame confirmed. "I know of one who hung herself with her own hair."

Elena shuddered, and looked away for a moment.

"And then there's the dozens of poor young fellows who die at the hands of the Dark One before one of them manages to get to the tower," Madame continued, frowning fiercely. "A Ladderlocks is nothing more than bait for a deathtrap, and I won't have one of those in my Kingdoms, either!"

Elena nodded, knowing that even when a young man managed to get to the tower, climb the hair, and win the maiden, he still might not escape the Witch unscathed. They were almost always caught, and sometimes the poor young man who fell in love with Ladderlocks found himself blinded by the thorns around her tower, or sometimes worse than that. A Ladderlocks tale often had more tragedy than triumph about it.

It was a tale best prevented.

"I wish I knew why The Tradition was so set on having her" Bella replied. "But as long as I keep draining her, at least until her first-born is actually born, the magic won't attract the other half of the equation."

"The Evil Witch." Elena nodded. "She knows, of course?"

"I've drummed it into her head often enough," Bella said grimly. "And it will have to be her that prevents it; her husband is kind, sweet, gentle, handsome as the dawn, and as dense as a bag of stones. She loves him, but she knows very well that he is prime material for the loving but stupid husband who climbs the wall around the Witch's garden to steal her rampion. And it would not matter how many times she warns him about it, he won't remember. The Tradition can shove him about like a coin in a game of Shove Ha'penny."

At that moment, Elena felt a surge of anger at The Tradition, that faceless, formless thing that pushed and pulled people about with no regard for what they might want or need. She met Madame's eyes, and saw that same anger there.

"Yes," Bella said, softly, only just audible over the sound of hooves and wheels on the hard-packed road. "I hoped you would feel that. I hoped when I took you as my Apprentice, that you were cut from the same cloth as me. Some Godmothers are only willing to assist in the making of the happy endings. I am of a different mind."

"There will be no Fair Rosalindas in my Kingdoms," Elena said, just as softly, but just as firmly.

Madame gave a quick nod, as if she and Elena had just made a pledged pact. And perhaps, they had.

"Good," was all she said, then she turned her attention back to the road.

Madame changed the topic to something innocuous. Nothing more was said on that subject.

But then again, nothing more needed to be.

As harvest turned towards autumn, the days became noticeably shorter, and the air grew chill at night, Madame took to leaving Elena in charge of the cottage for several days at a time. "Keep Randolf company," was all she usually said, before she went off on whatever mysterious errands were taking her away. "He gets lonely sometimes. He'll chatter at you about plays he's been watching; just nod and make appreciative noises, even if you can't understand half of what he's nattering on about."

Elena was growing very fond of the Slave of the Mirror by this point; Randolf was perhaps the most artless person she had ever known. Despite everything he saw, and everything he had lived through, he maintained a kind of innocence. He had no pretenses, nothing about him was a sham.

Furthermore, he had beautiful manners, and was perfectly pleased to give her the one set of lessons she found it difficult to accept from anyone else in the household—the lessons in what he called deportment and she called "fitting in."

Madame just simply seemed to change everything about herself without thinking, depending on what costume she wore, from dotty old peasant woman to gracious Lady of exalted breeding and impeccable pedigree. Lily had just laughed when Elena had broached the subject, and advised her to "just be yourself, and be damned to them as doesn't like it."

And the haughty Rose, Elena thought, would be so critical that the lesson would get lost in the criticism.

Ah, but Randolf had not only been watching Kings and Queens for two hundred years or more, until recently he had been the prized possession of several queens of the evil sort. So, when Madame Bella was away, Elena would spend several evening hours in her sitting room, not merely keeping Randolf company, but learning from him.

"Just what does Madame do, off on her own of late?" she asked him one night, after a long and complicated session on Precedence. Randolf was not showing her anything but his own face at the moment; she had gotten so used to conversing with a disembodied head that it no longer seemed at all odd.

"Oh, you could ask her yourself, it's no secret," Randolf said airily. "But I can tell you easily enough. She pays visits around to other magicians in her Kingdoms; she's likely to start taking you about once you've mastered enough that you can meet them as an equal rather than an Apprentice. And she likes to keep an eye especially on the ones she's turned."

"Well, I can see why," Elena replied, struck that the answer hadn't already occurred to her.

"Good heavens, the last thing she wants is for one of them to turn back!"

"Hmm, that would be a nasty surprise," Randolf replied. "I do suggest to her that she could do so just as well through me, but she seems to think that the personal touch is more effective."

"Using both would be a better idea, it seems to me," Elena said judiciously. "After all, even though you might get a better notion of something odd going on by being there yourself, people are on their best behavior when visitors arrive. It's when they're alone, or think they are, that they let things slip."

Randolf tsked. "Truer words were never spoken," he agreed brightly. "Like that little pair of turtledoves from the Christening you went to! Bless their hearts, they're so like every other pair of new lovers I've ever watched—they so want people to believe that everything is always perfect in their little world! If there was anything wrong between them, you wouldn't see it unless you had me look in on them."

"Is there anything wrong?" Elena asked, suddenly anxious. She felt rather—proprietary about those two. She didn't want there to be anything going wrong between them—

Randolf laughed. "Bless you, sweetheart, not a bit of it! In fact—well, look for yourself!"

The mirror went to black, and for a long moment, Elena thought that Randolf was having her on, for there didn't seem to be anything at all in the mirror. But then, her eyes gradually adjusted, and she realized she was looking at two deeper shadows silhouetted against the night sky.

Then the moon rose, a huge and golden Harvest Moon, flooding the top of a tower upon which the two were standing, close together.

Arachnia had changed.

It was a subtle change, but to a Godmother's Apprentice, quite noticeable. Her hair was down, cascading over her shoulders and down her back; she still wore black (at least insofar as it was possible to tell in the moonlight) but the lines of her gown were softer. In fact, everything about her was softer. Elena got the vivid impression of a fortress whose walls have not been breached, but eroded, and covered with vines and flowers.

As for her Poet, there were changes in him, too. He stood straighter, and yet there was an easiness about him that had not been there before. In his case, Elena had an image of a man who has put aside a mask he no longer feels compelled to wear.

As Elena watched, Arachnia leaned her head on the Poet's shoulder, and he snugged his arm around her waist as they watched the moon rise. A moment later, she turned her head a little, and he turned his face to meet hers; their lips met, and—

—and at that point Elena couldn't tell if it was the Sorceress who flung herself passionately into the embrace, or the Poet who crushed the Sorceress to him. Probably both. All that she knew for certain was that the two silhouettes became one, and from the way the one was moving, it might not stay upright for very much longer—

And she felt heat rushing to her cheeks, a tightness in her chest, and a slow tingling excitement all over, but particularly centered at the cleft of her legs that—

"Thank you, Randolf, I believe I understand you," she somehow managed. She wasn't sure how. Her throat felt very thick, and her face very warm.

Randolf's guileless face emerged from the blackness. "Nothing wrong there!" he laughed. "

Unless you're fussy enough to insist on a wedding before the—"

Her flush deepened, and she licked her lips; now it wasn't excitement that filled her, it was frustration, and an emotion she was vaguely surprised to recognize as jealousy. It took a lot of self-control not to snap at him. "Of course not," she said, immensely proud of how neutral her voice was. "If you insisted on that, there would be a lot fewer babies born in these Kingdoms."

"I expect they'll have one eventually, though," Randolf continued artlessly. "Wedding, that is, not a baby, though they'll probably have one of those, too. More than one, if they keep on like that all the time."

The jealousy grew, and she finally took herself in hand and mentally sat on it. After all, what right had she to be jealous? "Well," she replied, trying to sound as light and carefree as possible,

"if they do that, it will certainly keep Arachnia out of any more mischief."

She couldn't bring herself to say anything more, but fortunately Randolf, who was by nature oblivious to human emotions, began nattering on about something else, and she was able to get herself back under control again. She was even able to laugh at some of his outrageous jokes before she excused herself for the night and went off to her rooms to prepare for bed.

But she did not read as she usually did; instead, she pulled the curtains wide and sat in the window-seat of her bedroom, staring out at the rising moon. Somewhere under that moon, Arachnia and her Poet were locked in a passionate embrace. Elena knew very well what that kind of embrace led to; by the time she'd become "Ella Cinders," no one in the household had cared what she saw. Servants had little or no privacy, and when coupling went on, it happened wherever they could find a corner where they wouldn't be disturbed. The cook and old Jacques had rutted shamelessly in the kitchen, the maids had done it with the footmen in the laundry. No one paid any attention to Ella; it was up skirts and down drawers, and away they went—on a heap of linen, against a wall, a pile of hay in the stable—

Oh, she knew what went on—what was going on, somewhere out there, under that bright moon. And that was what she was jealous of.

Because that wasn't just lust; that was love. Only love could soften and strengthen two people the way those two had been. Only love could have turned rut into passion. And it had been passion between them. She had no doubt of that. Just the memory of it made her heart beat faster, her knees feel weak, and that flush and tingling spread all over her body.

She couldn't say it wasn't fair—first of all, what was fair? Arachnia had endured a horrible childhood, much worse than Elena's, if Madame was to be believed. Maybe she'd done a deal of harm, but not as much as she could have, and anyway, she was making up for it now—so who was to say she hadn't earned her happy ending at last? Not The Tradition, and not Elena, and anyway, it was a Godmother's job to make the happy endings, not take them away from someone. Plenty of people got happy endings that some might say they didn't deserve.

Oh, but—

But what? asked a ruthless, inner voice. Are you going to try to claim that what you have now is not a happy ending? Look at you! Fed, housed, clothed beautifully, with work in front of you that means something—

Yes, but—

And that isn't enough for you? the voice continued, as her throat thickened and her eyes stung, and the moon blurred a little from unshed tears of loneliness. Oh, well, aren't we a selfish little bitch! We want it all, do we? And just what have we done to earn it, hmm?

Nothing, but—

Exactly right. Not even to earn as much as we've gotten! The inner voice was not going to go away. And it wasn't going to be less truthful, either. Think about the Rosalindas, before you start feeling too sorry for yourself. Think about the other ugly turns The Tradition can take. Then think about how lucky you are that Madame Bella came along, and stop being like the spoiled child who cries herself to sleep because she can't have the moon.

Now the voice went quiet, and left her alone. She swallowed down the lump in her throat; she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. That inner voice was right. She knew it was right.

And just because she thought she was a little lonely, that didn't stop if from being right.

She needed to take herself in hand, and count her blessings. And she would. She would.

Tomorrow....

But tonight—tonight she would think about how much she wished it was her that was in a true lover's arms, and weep for the moon.

Just a little....