She stepped to the right, and the man stepped with her. She stepped to the left, and he did too.
“If you don’t mind, good sir, it’s late and I’m tired.”
“Don’t worry,” he replied, pushing Jill against a wall. “This won’t take long.”
Marguerite watched, feeling the sickeningly familiar sensation of being stuck in quicksand, unable to move, as she had been that terrible night when Rapunzel’s father had climbed over her garden wall and attacked her. Afterward, as she’d lain in the dirt, weeping bitterly, another woman, heavy with child, wept along with her. “He does this all the time,” Rapunzel’s mother confessed to Marguerite. “The fairies say I’m having a girl. What if he does it to her?” That was when they’d hatched their plan: Marguerite would threaten to curse Rapunzel’s father unless he handed the girl over. She would raise her; she would keep her safe.
Jill’s scream yanked Marguerite out of her fog. No! Not again! She ran into the alley, and with a sudden surge of strength, yanked the man off Jill and threw him to the ground.
“What the—” he began, but she quieted his protest with the kiss of her blade.
“Not another word or I’ll cut your throat.”
“Please don’t,” he begged.
Please don’t. Those were the very words she’d uttered to Rapunzel’s father. They had done her little good, so she had no reason to heed them now. Except for one difference: this time she had the power to decide.
She ran the blade down his midsection, stopping at his crotch. “If you even think of hurting a woman again, I promise you, I will find you. And next time, it will not end so well for you.” She released him, and the man ran off, his exposed backside glinting in the early-morning sunshine.
“Thank you, thank you,” Jill cried, embracing her. “I can’t believe I was so careless. Normally I wait until they are gone, but I was tired and eager for bed.” She shook her head. “I should have known better.”
“No, he should have known better,” Marguerite said. “It’s his doing, not ours.”
“Ours?” Jill said. “It’s happened to you?”
Marguerite paused. “Yes, it’s happened to me too.”
The dawn was quiet as the two women acknowledged each other and all that they shared. “If you still need a hired man to join you on your quest,” Jill said, “I will send my brother, Jack. He hurt his head quite badly as a boy, and people say he’s simple, but he’s not. He’s gentle and reliable and good with a secret. He would work for no money. To repay my debt to you.”
“I will be glad to hire your brother, and pay him. But if you feel you owe me a debt, pay it on behalf of some other maiden.”
Jill hugged Marguerite and promised she would.
7.
Jack had already groomed, saddled, and bridled the horses when the Wickeds arrived at the stables later that morning. He wanted to leave early, as they were venturing through some unsafe areas with some unsavory types.
“Unsavory types don’t scare me,” Marguerite bragged, surprised to find that the words were nearly true.
They set off at a lazy canter, Jack leading the way and the three Wickeds lingering behind. As the afternoon wore on, the clouds rolled in, the air took on an electric tang, and Jack suggested they wait out the storm under a grove of trees.
“Wouldn’t we be better off in that tavern?” Gwendolyn pointed across the way to a redbrick building. Several horses were tied up in front, and smoke was billowing out the chimney.
“That’s not a tavern; it’s the Godmother’s headquarters,” Jack explained. “Seeing as we are not looking to borrow money or vanquish an enemy, there’s no reason to disturb her.”
“Wait, are you talking about the Fairy Godmother?” Gwendolyn asked. Jack nodded. Gwendolyn leaped off her horse and strode into the pub. “I’m here to see the Godmother,” she announced, making her way through the smoky room.
“What business you got with her?” asked the dwarf who was tending bar.
“Tell her Cinderella’s wicked stepmother is here.”
The bar went quiet as the men’s eyes turned to her. She could hear the chain of whispers carrying the news back, until suddenly the fireplace—which held no fire; the smoke up the chimney was from the cigars—swung open, revealing a secret back room.
Gwendolyn walked through and found herself in a disappointingly drab office: a wooden desk piled high with scrolls, glass bowls filled with coin. But the woman sitting behind the desk and chomping on a cigar was anything but drab. She wore no finery, but she had the majesty of a queen. She did not disguise herself as a man, yet she had the command of a king.
“Help you,” the Godmother said without looking up.
“I’m . . .” Gwendolyn’s voice trembled. “I’m Cinderella’s wicked stepmother.”
She waited for the usual look of disgust. But the Godmother’s face remained blank. “That s’posed to mean something to me?”
“I believe you helped my stepdaughter marry a prince.”
The Godmother blew a plume of smoke. “I help lots of girls marry princes.” She pointed to a price list on the wall. And right there, between “Procure a poisoned apple” and “Dwarfs for hire,” was “Bewitch a prince.”
“You gotta date?” she asked.
“Why, yes, it was just a short—” Gwendolyn stopped herself and counted, shocked to realize that fifteen years had passed.
The Godmother rang a gong and ordered an ill-tempered dwarf to bring her all the bewitch-a-prince files from fifteen years ago. “Now, what was that name again?” she asked when the dwarf returned with the papers.
“Cinderella.”
Her ink-stained fingers flipped through the pages. “Ahh, now I’m starting to remember.” She rang the gong again and requested the gambling invoices from the same year, and when the dwarf returned with the files, she pulled out a bill and handed it to Gwendolyn. “Name ring a bell?”
Indeed. The name on the paper, with a hefty balance owed, was her husband’s.
“Terrible gambler he was,” the Godmother said.
“Still is,” Gwendolyn said.
“He got himself into some hot water, borrowing money he couldn’t repay and then doubling down on his debt by hiring us to bewitch a prince and not paying for that.” She whistled. “Think he thought the princess would pay his debts, but she didn’t. So we sent the birds after him.”
“The birds?”
“If you don’t pay up, they poke out your eyes. Wait a second.” She leafed through a few more pages and chuckled. “What a hustler. He bargained for his eyes too. Gave us his daughters’ eyes instead of his own.”
“Those were my daughters’ eyes!” Gwendolyn cried. “He blinded them!”
The Godmother shrugged. “These things happen. An eye for an eye. And we got four for two. Couldn’t turn that down. But look, to make things square, pick anything you want off the menu. On the house.”
Gwendolyn found she couldn’t summon any anger at this woman. It wasn’t the Fairy Godmother who’d accrued the debt, or settled it at her daughters’ expense. Sighing, she looked at the offerings. “Can I take a couple dwarfs?”