My Unfair Godmother
Janette Rallison
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
For Master Sagewick Goldengill
How I Used My Fairy Godmother Skills to Fix Another Lucky Mortal’s Dismal
Life
Letter from the Honorable Master Sagewick Goldengill
Letter from the Department of Fairy Advancement
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
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Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Letter from the Honorable Master Sagewick Goldengill
Also by Janette Rallison
Imprint
To my husband, who became a superparent while I shut myself in a room and worked long hours writing this book. Car pool, grocery shopping, dinner—he did it all. (Actual comment overheard at my daughter’s softball practice: “Does Arianna have a mother?”) To my children, who lived on frozen dinners, pizza, and Dad’s cooking while I wrote—and especially to Faith, who checked my computer every day when she came home from school to see what I’d written on the story. You kept me going!
And lastly to my editor, Emily Easton. I don’t know if you believe in magic, but I’m glad you believe in my fairy, Chrysanthemum Everstar.
For Master Sagewick Goldengill
Dear Professor Goldengill,
Thank you for another opportunity to raise my semester grade with an extra-credit project. As you read my report I hope you’ll see that I’m more than ready to enter Fairy Godmother University.
I have mastered fluttering, flitting, and twinkling. My wand-waving technique is excellent, and I can outsparkle just about anybody. But, most important, I totally relate to teenage girls and all their woeful little problems. During this assignment, whether the
trouble
was
with
boys,
fashion,
or
evil
megalomaniac ex-fairies trying to kill my teenage charge, I was always completely understanding.
True, there were a few glitches along the way, and maybe a mortal or two got misplaced in the wrong time period, but I would like to point out that no one died during the assignment. And the stuff that went wrong was pretty much my assistant’s fault anyway.
When I found out I had been assigned Clover T.
Bloomsbottle as my assistant, I reminded the co-ordinator at the Fairy Godmother Affairs office quitepointedly—and maybe even with a little bit of 7/356
hysteria—that I had already said I never wanted to work with another leprechaun—especially and specifically Clover T. Bloomsbottle. But she got all uppity and told me the FGA is trying to find a position for Clover that best uses his talents. Considering that his main talent is his amazing ability to spread incompetence around, I suggest you relegate him to a cereal box somewhere.
Here is my nine-page report, complete with side notes, to show you how much I’ve already learned about human culture.
Sincerely,
Chrysanthemum Everstar
HOW I USED MY FAIRY GODMOTHER SKILLS TO FIX
ANOTHER LUCKY MORTAL’S DISMAL LIFE
by Chrysanthemum Everstar
Subject: Tansy Miller Harris, age seventeen Place: Queens, New York, early twenty-first century Mortals are always going on about how important family is to them.
They even believe it’s true. When Tansy Miller was seven, her father used to tell her he wouldn’t trade her for a mountain of gold. Of course, she should have been suspicious of this claim, since it was hard to prove. Very few gold-mountain owners are interested in bartering for little girls. But still, Tansy believed him.
Tansy suspected her mother liked Kendall, Tansy’s two-year-old sister, best. Kendall was as petite and delicate as newly sprouted rosebuds and would cry if it was too dark, or her clothes were too prickly, or if she spotted something frightening like cockroaches or broccoli.
Kendall clung to their mother, following her from room to room like the train of a wedding gown. Their mother was constantly cooing and caring for Kendall, forever making things cooler, hotter, or more pink.
But Tansy didn’t mind because she had her father. Mr. Miller took her on bike rides, called her his princess, and pointed out faraway places on the map with odd-sounding names like Ulaanbaatar, Kathmandu, and Sacramento.
Every day, Tansy sat in her bedroom window seat, covered in jelly stains, grass stains, and whatever other stains she managed to acquire, and waited for her father to come home from work. She would color pictures and watch the trees outside her window rustling at each other while they ignored the pedestrians on 159th Street. Tansy liked to pick 9/356
out books for her father to read to her, and the later he was, the more stories went on the stack. Perhaps he knew this. He was never very late.
Often, he brought home new books. That was one of the perks of working at the Brooklyn Public Library. Mr. Miller was rich in glossy picture books, even if he wasn’t rich in the other kind of printed paper—the green variety with portraits of stern-looking presidents.
“Don’t just read words,” he would tell her as he held up the latest story, “devour them. Let the words create new worlds.” By the time Tansy was twelve, she had worlds without number en-folded in her heart. And each one of them was built with the scaffold-ing of her father’s voice. She couldn’t read without hearing him nar-rate the story in her mind.
A week before her thirteenth birthday, he rearranged her life with one short word. Divorce. It had started with a lot of other words, accusations, and fights that Tansy didn’t understand. It ended when he decided to take a job in another state.
“I’m leaving your mother, but not you and Kendall,” he told her.
“I’ll always be your father.”
Fairy’s side note: Even mortals with the best intentions will tell a devastation of lies.
Because he did leave Tansy and her sister. The very next day.
Mr. Miller left a stack of boxes by the front door for the UPS man to pick up, then took a battered suitcase and went outside to wait for a cab. Tansy watched him from her window seat, willing with all the magic she possessed to make him turn around, come back inside, and decide to stay.
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Fairy’s side note: Mortals are woefully lacking in magic.
He didn’t come back inside. He didn’t even look up at Tansy to notice she’d rested her head against the window, her face streaked with tears.
The cab pulled up. Tansy’s father put his suitcase in the trunk, shut it with a clang of determination, then climbed into the backseat.
He settled in and let out a sigh, of relief probably. Why else did one sigh alone in a cab? It wasn’t a sigh of regret or sadness, she knew, because he never looked back at their apartment. Not once. She watched him growing smaller, disappearing from her life, until the car turned and went down another street.
And every one of the worlds in Tansy’s heart crashed together like a book being closed. He moved across the country to a place he’d never pointed out on a map: Rock Canyon, Arizona. A land of parched earth and cacti with thorns so thick and fierce they could draw blood. It was a fitting symbol in this new world of pain. Even the plants in Arizona wanted to hurt you.