I shook my head. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not Snow White.”
She laughed as though I’d been joking, then reached into her basket and pulled out a perfect red apple. “I’ve brought you a gift. Would you like something to eat, my dear?”
I took a step back from her, wishing I had some sort of weapon. “I’m not really the fairest in the land. I’m just the only one who has all of my teeth, that’s all.” Then I saw the laundry paddle. I picked it up and held it up like a baseball bat. “Get away from me.”
She took a step back, her brows wrinkling. “Snow White, what’s come over you? Is that any way for a proper young lady to act? Put down that stick at once.”
I suppose it was bound to happen. You just can’t put a modern, self-empowered girl into medieval times and not expect her to snap. I’d already had to bite my tongue and let myself be ordered around by Cinderella’s stepfamily. I was not about to stand by and let myself be poisoned.
“You want to see what I can do with this stick?” I yelled. “I can make applesauce! Take a step closer and I’ll show you how!”
She did not step closer; in fact, she ran in the other direction. Which is when I realized I couldn’t let her get away. In the fairy tale, she poisoned Snow White and that was the end of her plotting, but in my version of the story, what would the evil queen do when she failed in that attempt? She’d try something else and I had no idea what—maybe send a dragon or an army or who knew what to destroy me. I couldn’t let her. I couldn’t let her return to the castle.
I ran around the side of the cottage after her. For an old woman, she was surprisingly fast, but I sped after her, stick in hand.
We reached the road that ran between the cottages. The old woman kept running, right toward the center of the village. Which would prove to be her final mistake.
“Help me!” I yelled at the doorways we passed. “Come out and help me!”
We reached the well and the old woman ran around it, putting it between the two of us. We both caught our breath, panting as villagers came out of their homes to see what the noise was about.
They jogged over to us, making a circle around the well. As soon as they got within earshot, the old woman clutched the basket to her chest and pointed a finger in my direction. “Snow White has gone mad!”
“Don’t tell them your lies,” I said back. “I know who you are.”
“Of course you know who I am,” the woman said. “I’m your neighbor.”
My next few breaths came especially hard. I lowered my stick and squinted at her as though this would somehow change what she’d just said. “You’re . . . you’re what?”
“I’m Widow Hazel. I live right next to you.”
There was a murmur of consensus among the crowd and all of their gazes turned to me.
I pointed accusingly at her basket. “Well, if you’re really Widow Hazel, why did you try to give me one of those?”
She took out an apple and held it in her hand. “This?”
“Yes.”
“Because I thought you might want to eat something besides burned porridge.”
The crowd all laughed, and one of the men came and took me by the arm. “Here then, Snow White, why don’t I walk you back to your cottage and you can rest until the dwarfs get home.”
“I’m sorry,” I said in Widow Hazel’s direction. “I . . . I thought you were the queen.”
I know she heard me because the women standing around her all said things like, “Well, of course, who hasn’t mistaken Hazel for the queen? I do it frequently myself.”
“It’s all of them jewels you wear, Hazel. I keep telling you that if you wear your tiara around, things like this are bound to happen.”
Then there was a lot of laughing.
I went home red faced, and not because I’d just run down the street.
When I got back to the cottage, I sat in the dining room for a long time calling Chrissy’s name.
Nothing.
And nothing again.
It could be days before she found enough shoes to match all her outfits.
Stupid mall. She was a fairy, for crying out loud. She flew places. What did it matter what shoes she wore? And why in the world did she keep sending me into these medieval fairy tales, anyway? Did she not realize that no modern girl in her right mind would choose to live in a place where no one took showers?
Finally, after calling Chrissy’s name over and over again like it was a mantra, I went to the kitchen and dumped out the old porridge. I was not about to eat it again tonight and it was impossible to repair bad food. I had to start from scratch. Let me say right now that it’s harder to cook with a cauldron and a fire than you might think.
As I cut up vegetables I thought about my situation. I was stuck here and I just had to make the best of it, but I didn’t have to try and bluff my way through things and look like an idiot. It was time to tell the dwarfs the truth.
• • •
The truth, it turned out, would have sounded much more convincing if I’d been able to come up with some proof. When I told them who I was that night at dinner, the dwarfs sat around the table looking at me like I was not only stupid but insane as well. And this after I’d come up with an unburned dinner for them.
“No, really,” I said, “I’m from the future. I just got here yesterday. That’s why I don’t know how to do very much or who anyone is.”
Percival rubbed his chin with one hand. “Er, and what was your excuse for not knowing anything before yesterday?”
“I suppose before yesterday, Snow White had servants at the castle do everything for her so she didn’t have to know how to cook or sew or remember people’s names . . .” It suddenly occurred to me that both Snow White and Cinderella had been actual people, and I wondered where they were while I was being them.
Edwin looked at me suspiciously from underneath his bushy eyebrows. “So you’re saying you’ve been bewitched?”
“Be-fairy-ed, technically. I mean, this was obviously a mistake.” And then because they all still stared at me blankly, I added, “She’s only a fair godmother, not a good one.”
The dwarfs bent their heads together, talking with each other in murmured voices. The ones that had been sitting on my side of the table moved around to the other side to be included in the discussion. I sat there watching and wondering what conclusion they’d come to. They spoke in such hushed voices that I only caught snatches of their conversations.
Someone said, “She can’t be bewitched. Bewitched people never know they are; that’s part of the bewitchment.”
“She’s sick then.”
“What sort of sickness makes you think you’ve seen fairies?”
More murmuring. Then Reginald’s head popped up from the group and he looked over at me with a forced smile. “While you were lost in the forest you didn’t perchance eat any of those mushrooms we warned you about, did you?”
I folded my arms. “No, I didn’t eat any hallucinogenic mushrooms.”
More murmuring from the dwarfs. “Maybe she’s telling the truth. She just used a six-syllable word.”
“Of course I’m telling the truth,” I called over to them. “You can tell because there are no snakes falling out of my mouth.”
Perhaps it wasn’t the best thing to say. The dwarfs lowered their voices and murmured faster. I heard the words “doctor” and “medicine” thrown around.
Finally they stopped discussing my condition and Reginald stepped over to me. He took my hand, pulled me from the table, and walked with me toward the stairs. “We all think that a rest would do you good. Let’s go to your room and you can lie down.”
I went with him—what else was there to do? The rest of the dwarfs followed us up the stairs, eyeing me carefully like I might make a break for it. I protested all the way up. “I don’t need to rest. I’m telling you the truth. I’m from the future. Look, I’ll prove it to you. I’m taking geometry in school. Just ask me, I can find the perimeter of a triangle—or th
e area. Well, actually I’m not that good at the area and sometimes I mess up on the perimeter too—but I can do the angles for you. Could Snow White do that?”
He led me to my room like I was a little girl and this was all just some bedtime story I’d concocted. “And why do people in the future need to know how to find the area of a triangle? Is that a big problem in your day? Unidentified triangles?”
“Well . . . um . . . I don’t know. It’s just something they teach at school.”
“Sounds like a lovely place. You go ahead and rest now.”
He shut the door and then I heard scraping noises on the outside of the wood. I tried the door handle and confirmed my suspicions. It didn’t budge. I pounded on the door to get their attention. “Hey! You can’t lock me in here!”
“It won’t be for long,” someone yelled. “Just until we can find some leeches.”
“Leeches!” I called back. Suddenly I remembered something from my history class. One little fact that had managed to stay lodged in my brain long after most of the teacher’s lectures had rolled away. And that was that medieval doctors’ favorite treatment was bleeding patients. It went without saying that this sort of medicine killed more people than it helped.
“Aye, Edgar—er, Doc—will have that bad blood out of you in no time and you’ll be back to your normal self.”
I heard the sound of footsteps going down the hallway and then down the stairs.
My first thought was one of disbelief. I was being held prisoner by a bunch of dwarfs. Then my next thought was one of fear. Leeches. That so totally sucked.
I heard the front door shut and ran to the window in the room. The shutters were already open and the window didn’t have glass. I leaned out and watched all seven dwarfs heading outside. They walked a few feet and then Edwin turned, looked back, and saw me. “We’ll be back in a bit,” he called to me. “Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone.”
This caused a rumble of laughter to move through the group, which I didn’t appreciate.
Reginald also turned around to address me. “Don’t try to leave the house. We’ve left Cuthbert there to stand guard.”
I tapped my fingers against the windowsill. First of all, I knew which one was Cuthbert, and I could see him traipsing along with the rest of them. Second, I knew they had all left. Did they not think I could count to seven?
As they walked away from me, Cedric split away from the rest of the group. I could just make out the words he said to the others. “It’s high time I went north and spoke with Prince Hubert.”
Reginald nodded. “The sooner the better.”
A few minutes later they all disappeared down the forest trail.
I went to the door and tried the handle again. I knew it was bolted on the outside and so I jiggled it, hoping I could somehow knock the bolt loose. Nothing happened. I looked at the hinges, fingering them. The door’s construction had to be simple. After all, it had probably been made with only a handsaw and a mallet. Surely I could take it apart, find a weakness, something.
Or not.
You know, instead of teaching us completely pointless things like how to figure out the angles of a triangle, school ought to teach us something we could actually use in life, like how to escape from a room after you’ve been locked in by a bunch of dwarfs.
If I had a rope, I could secure one end to the doorknob and climb out the window. I searched the room for something I could use as a makeshift ladder, but all I had was that furry animal skin on my bed. I never asked what animal, because frankly I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t very well tie it to anything to use as a rope. This is why, apparently, Rapunzel had to throw down her hair. The Middle Ages were lacking in good ladder material.
I leaned out the window again and tried to judge the distance to the ground. The house wasn’t smooth like the ones from the twenty-first century. It had been made from stones and mortar, which jutted out at all sorts of angles. A little like a rock-climbing wall. I’d done those before. Of course, I’d always done them with a harness and a rope tied around me, but this time I didn’t have a choice.
I heaved myself out the window and carefully gripped onto the rocks. I inched downward, at every moment expecting the rock to give way under my feet or for my hands to slip, but neither happened. Slowly, I made my way down the wall.
At last I was able to jump to the ground. Without looking back, I ran into the forest, making sure to head in a different direction than the dwarves had gone.
I’d only made it a little way when I saw Chrissy leaning up against a tree, her hands folded across her chest. She shook her head solemnly at me.
“That was the most pathetic princess display I’ve ever seen.” She craned her neck to see past me into the village. “You attacked an old woman, then convinced a group of dwarfs you were insane. One more day and the whole fairy tale would have to be rewritten to include a chapter where the villagers go to the castle, beg the queen for a poisoned apple, and administer it themselves just so they can have some peace and quiet.”
It was hard to speak, hard to get out everything I wanted to say. I ended up just pointing at her and then waving my hand wildly. “This wasn’t my fault. You made me stupid!”
Chrissy’s wings fluttered, for a moment buzzing like a hummingbird. “Oh, excuse me, but you’re the one who made yourself stupid. I was only working with what you gave me.”
“I’m not stupid,” I said.
Her expression turned patronizingly tolerant. “You only wanted to be loved and beautiful. Don’t blame me if it didn’t make you happy.”
“I never asked you for a half-wit prince.”
She looked up at the sky for a moment like it was a point hardly worth defending. “Well, what kind of guys do you think half-wit girls get in life? Do you think intelligent guys want to hang out with stupid girls for very long? I would have thought you’d already learned that lesson with the whole Hunter and Jane thing.” She shrugged and smiled in my direction. “Don’t worry, though, because Prince Hubert is very handsome and kind. That’s all you wanted in a boyfriend, wasn’t it?”
“No,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. “It must be. If you had admired any other qualities you would have developed them in yourself, wouldn’t you?”
Which was really too much. I put my hands on my hips. “Aren’t fairy godmothers supposed to be nice and make you feel better about yourself?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, you’re confusing fairy godmothers with sales clerks.” She stepped away from me, but continued to watch me carefully. As though she were talking to, well, Snow White, she said, “You’d think you would have learned something from your last wish. I didn’t send you into Cinderella’s life at the climax of that story; why would I do it this time? If you had paid attention to the weather or the trees in the village, you would have known that apples are in season right now. Why would the evil queen think you could be tempted to take one from a stranger when you could get them anywhere else? The queen doesn’t show up until winter, when all the fresh fruit is gone and a fresh apple is a delicacy worth taking a risk for.”
Okay, when she put it like that, it did make sense. But still, how was I supposed to know that? I lived in the land of supermarkets where you could get fresh fruit all year round. Besides, I wanted to go home, not to analyze whose fault it was that Snow White was stupid.
“Look,” I said slowly. “I want to make a wish and I want you to listen very carefully to all of it so that you make sure you get it right this time. Can you do that before you rush back to the mall?”
Her wings fluttered in agitation and she folded her arms, but she nodded. “You have my full attention.”
“I don’t want to be in some medieval fairy tale. I want to live back home with my family. When I said I wanted a prince, I didn’t mean somebody from history or the pages of a storybook. I meant that I wanted that type of guy, but I want him from my own day and age. I want a boyfriend who is nice, kind—and handsome
too, but that’s not the most important thing.
“As I’ve thought about Jane and Hunter during my time here, I realize the problem was he never really liked me, he just liked what I looked like. He always wanted someone who was more like Jane and when they met, well, it was just bound to turn out that way. So I want someone who is loyal and has integrity—but most important I want a guy who likes me for me, who likes my personality.” It was hard to say that part after Chrissy had just accused me of being stupid, so I added, “And okay, I admit that in the past I haven’t applied myself in school like I should have, but I’m turning over a new leaf, so I want a guy who is smart too. And I want this guy to go to prom with me.”
She stared at me for another moment, then finally said, “That’s it? You’re done and won’t accuse me of not listening to the whole thing?”
“Right. I’m done.” I held out one hand to her. “You heard the part where I said I wanted all of this to happen back home in my day and age, right?”
“Yes. I heard that part.”
“Good, because I so want to take a—” Before I’d even said the words “hot shower,” the two of us were standing back in my bedroom.
Chapter 8
I looked around, blinking at the things that seemed familiar and yet so new. Relief engulfed me, and then surprise. “Hey, everything’s still in focus and I’m not wearing my contacts.”
Chrissy shrugged. “Yes, well, that’s one of those side effects of magic that I warned you about. After people live through a couple of wishes they almost always see things more clearly.”
I went over to my bed, ran my hand across the soft comforter, and sat down. Now that I was safely back home all the questions that I’d thought of over the last few weeks rose to the surface of my mind. “Where were the real Cinderella and Snow White while I was being them? And how come everyone thought I was them even though I still looked like me whenever I saw myself in a mirror?”
Chrissy took her sunglasses from her purse and slid them over her eyes again. “I gave the real Cinderella and Snow White lovely vacations in Costa Rica, and everyone thought you were them because the magic made it seem that it was your face that had always been the face of Cinderella or the face of Snow White.” She took the wand from her purse and said, “As much as I’d like to stay around chatting about the intricacies of magic, I’ve got to go find your prom date.” She glanced down at her watch, “And get ready for a party.” Glittering lights sparkled up and down her length, then the next moment she’d disappeared altogether and I was alone in my room.