Meadow Faeoria's Arc

Chapter 2 of 12

Meadow reached the kitchen door before the sun touched the roof. The house behind the door was quiet in the wrong way — the stepmother and her daughters gone to the tailor, the fires banked low. Meadow knocked once. The girl who opened the door had ash on her cheek and a broom still in her hand. "I don't know you," the girl said. Meadow leaned on the wand. The star at its tip flickered blue. "You know my voice. I spoke into your hearth last week. I told you to hold on until sundown." The girl's grip on the broom tightened. Her brown eyes caught the last daylight and held it like a coal. "Prove it." Meadow tapped the wand once against the doorframe. The ash on the girl's cheek lifted and settled into the shape of a small crown, then fell apart. The girl did not smile. She stepped back to let Meadow in. "I'm your godmother," Meadow said. "The face is borrowed. The rest is mine. I came to get you to the ball." "I have no dress. No shoes. No way there." "I brought all three." Meadow set the wand on the kitchen table. "Listen first. I only say this once." The girl sat. She folded her hands like someone waiting for a sentence. "Outside, in the yard, there is a pumpkin. I will make it a carriage. Steel ribs. Glass windows. Wheels that turn on their own. It will carry you to the palace gates and wait." Meadow lifted the wand. "Your dress I will spin from the air. Your shoes will be glass. They will fit only you. If anyone else tries them, they will crack." "And the cost." The girl's voice went flat. "There is always a cost." "Time. That's all." Meadow met her eyes. "Every piece of this magic ends at midnight. The carriage. The dress. The shoes stay — they are yours — but everything else falls. If you are still in the ballroom when the last bell rings, you will stand there in cinders in front of the prince and his mother and every guest who watched you dance." The girl was quiet a long moment. "Midnight." "Midnight." "Why help me." Meadow set her borrowed old hand on the table. "Because my brother and sister have stories. I want one too. And yours is the first that ever answered when I called." The girl looked at the wand. Then at the door to the yard. Then at her own black-streaked palms. "Do it," she said. Meadow lifted the wand and walked to the yard. A pumpkin sat by the woodpile, dull orange in the dusk. She touched the star to its rind. The rind began to shine. Steel curled up out of the vine like ivy learning a new shape. Behind her, the girl stood in the doorway and finally set the broom down.