I could have answered that question. In fact, I could have written a five-paragraph essay on the subject that would have impressed my English teacher, but they didn’t ask my opinion.

In the end, Haverton relented. He muttered a few threats against my family should I escape, then placed a candle on the ground near the stool and left. The flame flickered apologetically, throwing out only a small circle of light.

I waited for Hudson. He had come inside the last two nights; surely he would come tonight. But the door remained closed. Perhaps King John had ordered so many men to guard the door that he couldn’t come in undetected.

I sat down on the ground and thought about my family to make myself cry so Rumpelstiltskin would appear. But the tears didn’t come.

I had worried so much about them during the day that my eyes felt numb to that pain. Mostly I was just stressed out about falling asleep before I could get gold for Clover.

While I’d been shut up in the castle, I’d tried to figure out what the moral of the Rumpelstiltskin story was. When I had heard the story as a little girl, I thought it was that you shouldn’t brag about things that weren’t true, like the fact that your daughter could spin straw into gold.

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That moral didn’t seem right, though. My father hadn’t been brag-ging about me. I doubted that was a vice he had a problem with. I had been taken prisoner to the castle because Haverton thought my father criticized the king.

Surely the moral of the story wasn’t Don’t criticize the king. King John deserved criticism, although I would wait until I was a safe distance away from him to give it.

Perhaps the moral of the story was something along the lines of

“If you’re innocent, then magical forces will help you. Go ahead and take magical help, even though some of that magical help might later want to eat your baby.”

Really, when you think about it, Rumpelstiltskin is a horrible story.

I heard a noise behind me and turned, expecting to see Hudson.

Instead, Chrissy sat perched on the straw, her hair falling around her shoulders in a river of glossy pink. She wore her tooth fairy uniform and was reading what looked to be a newspaper—except that instead of normal paper, it glowed like a computer screen and the headlines flashed and pulsed. She also had a sort of glow about her, like she carried her own personal sunset with her. A minty smell wafted over to me.

“Chrissy, you’re here.” Inside me, frustration crashed into relief like competing waves. Relief won out though, toppling and foaming over my other feelings. She had finally come. She could set things right now. I stood up. “Please, you’ve got to help me.”

“I am,” she said without taking her eyes from the paper. “At least for the duration of my break. Then it’s right back to the wonderful world of swiping teeth from children.” She flipped a page in the paper and let out a disgruntled sigh. “Honestly, this moonlighting gig is killing my social life. You’d think there would be more jobs for a fairy 176/356

with my talent, but apparently art doesn’t have to be inspired anymore. Now it’s all about the gritty reality of life. Like anyone wants to pay to see that.”

I tried to keep my voice calm. “My family is missing.” Her wings swept open, lazily fanning herself, and she flipped another page of her newspaper. “They’re fine. Your father packed up his camping gear and they’ve been running around the forest having a grand time.”

I imagined they weren’t actually having a grand time, but at least they were alive. My heart had been strung tight in my chest, and now it relaxed a little. “We need to talk about my wish, Chrissy. If you remember, I never wished to be chained up in the Middle Ages or forced into a marriage with a half-mad old man.”

“Look at this.” She rustled the paper, still staring only at it.

“Clover has put a rent-a-leprechaun ad in the classified section.” Reading out loud, she said, “Does your event need a little luck? Let an experienced leprechaun host your next wedding, bar mitzvah, or high school reunion. Please, no children’s birthday parties. Extra charge for events hosted on St. Patrick’s Day.” She shook her head. “He is so pathetic.”

“You made a mistake, and I—”

“Speaking of pathetic, what are your pathetic numbers these days?” Chrissy folded her paper. As soon as she did, it vanished from her hands.

“I don’t know.” I gritted my teeth. Frustration was back, and it was the winner now. “I left the pathetic-o-meter at home, and I haven’t been back since I was dragged out of there by armed guards threatening to kill either me or my father.”

“No problem.” Chrissy snapped her fingers, and the blue and yellow disk appeared in her hand. She stared at it. “Hmmm,” she said, 177/356

sounding like a doctor diagnosing a patient. “Your numbers have increased instead of decreasing. When were you yelling at inanimate objects?”

“Chrissy, I wished to be able to turn things into gold. Instead you sent me, my family, and a random guy who was on my street to the twelfth century.”

Her gaze shot over to mine. “A random boy got sent here too?” She frowned and let out an irritated huff. “Well, that won’t look good on my evaluation.”

I held out my shackled hand to her. “Just send us home. Put everything back the way it was before. That’s all I want now.” She stood up and brushed stray pieces of straw from her skirt. “I’ll send you home when your fairy tale is through. Until then, I’m duty-bound to fulfill your wish. You asked to have the power to change things into gold.”

“Right. That’s another problem with being in this fairy tale. The miller’s daughter never spun anything into gold. It was always Rumpelstiltskin who did it for her.” Chrissy flicked a piece of straw off her sleeve and it fell, fluttering onto the floor. “Nonsense. Rumpelstiltskin gives the miller’s daughter the enchantment on the third night. You didn’t think she would trade her baby for anything less, did you?” I felt a prickling sense of dread. That’s what King John had demanded—that I get the ability myself. But the original story wasn’t that way. “The fairy tale never said she could spin the straw into gold herself.”

Chrissy spread her wings out like a butterfly and they shimmered in the darkness of the barn. “I thought after our conversation about Robin Hood’s story, you would have learned that you can’t trust writers. They’re a shiftless and unreliable bunch who spend their time 178/356

making stuff up. Didn’t it ever occur to you that the queen wouldn’t want everyone to know she could spin straw into gold? It’s bad enough that she had to spin it to get her husband. Can you imagine the friends, relatives, and salesmen who would have come out of the woodwork to pester her? You know what mortals are like.” Chrissy laughed as though she’d forgotten who was standing in front of her. “Of course you know. You asked for gold yourself.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Money is easy to create, but gold is tricky. The leprechaun union has a monopoly on those enchantments.

You can’t just hand them out. I’m not sure how I would have granted your wish if I hadn’t known of a certain leprechaun who lost his gold enchantment in a poker game to a disgraced ex-fairy.”

“Ex-fairy?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“If a fairy breaks magical laws, the Unified Magical Alliance strips him of his fairy power and locks it up. An ex-fairy still craves magic, though. It’s part of our essence, and without it, we shrivel away and eventually die. So ex-fairies are known for stealing magic from anywhere they can take it—from wizards, pixies, unicorns, trolls—and especially other fairies. As you can imagine, ex-fairies aren’t invited to many parties.” Chrissy smiled airily. “I’d like to see Mistress Berrypond find fault with my methodology on this one. I’m not only granting your wish, I’m taking an enchantment away from an ex-fairy who shouldn’t have it in the first place. It’s killing two birds with one stone.