Blessings and Blights: A Fairy Godmother's Tale

For hundreds of years, Mecille has kissed the brows of princes and princesses. She has rescued girls from wicked stepsisters. She has blessed swords and weddings and, in one particularly adorable case, a pair of mittens.

Today, Mecille saunters into an engagement ball, twinkling her wings and leaving a dazzle of stardust behind her. The crowd parts for her with delighted gasps.

She approaches the dais where the king rises to greet her. The little prince stands at his side. Not so little, she realizes. Goodness, humans age so quickly. Beside him, a girl waits, head bowed.

“Mecille the Golden,” King Rickham intones grandly. “Welcome back to our home.” He gives a short bow, which she returns with a curtsy.

“Your Highness, what a fine kingdom you have raised from the ashes of war,” Mecille says. “And I am delighted to see that your reign of peace will continue with the young prince and his bride.”

“Yes, your blessing has helped Prince Greymar become a fine future king.”

The prince in question inclines his head, the delicate crown glinting atop his blond curls. “Welcome, Fairy Godmother,” he says with a smile. Greymar tugs at the girl’s hand, bringing her forward. “Allow me to introduce my bride, the lovely Jane.”

Well, "lovely" is a little generous, Mecille thinks, but nothing a bit of magic can’t fix. The girl curtseys with a wobble.

Introductions finished, Mecille flourishes her hand and her wand appears, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Come, dear children, and I shall bless your union to be long and fruitful.”

Jane’s eyes fly up to her then, and Mecille tuts at the fear she sees. “Don’t worry, darling,” she says in a singsong voice. “This won’t hurt a bit. Just accept my blessing and you’ll get a perfect happily ever after.”

Mecille trills the blessing and waves her wand, adding a touch of extra stardust for effect. Her magic flutters out, settling like a cloak over the young couple. It pulses a lovely shade of gold before gently fading. Mecille lets go of the wand and it disappears with a sparkle. She pats Greymar’s cheek. “Enjoy the ball, dear.”

Greymar places his hand over Jane’s tightly curled fingers. “Thank you, Fairy Godmother,” he says, still smiling.

After King Rickham’s death, the new king summons Mecille back to the castle.

She arrives prepared to bless a new baby or to reassure a queen heavy with child. Instead, she finds the throne room empty except for the royal couple and a few guards.

What a waste of shimmer, Mecille thinks. “King Greymar,” she greets magnanimously. “How can I be of service?”

He doesn’t rise from his seat. “My wife fails to bear me any children.”

Mecille’s brows shoot up to her hairline. She looks over at Jane, still unremarkable, even in the finery of her status. Strange. I thought I took care of those plain features with the last blessing. “That’s quite impossible, your majesty.”

“Yet here I am, without a son.”

She keeps the smile fixed on her face. “The blessing may take time.”

“Do it again.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He leans forward. “Do. The. Blessing. Again.”

In her periphery, Mecille sees the guards approach. She rolls her eyes, pretense abandoned. “There is no ‘again,’ Greymar. Nor can your union be more blessed. If there’s fault with the blessing, then it’s between the two of you.”

Jane gasps and her face pales. Mecille feels an uncomfortable pinch of guilt in her belly. She softens her tone. “You must merely exercise patience, good king. My power is—”

Something glimmers over her head a moment before she feels a painful tightening across her torso, jerking her arms to her sides and bunching her wings against her back.

“Your power is the property of this kingdom,” Greymar says, standing at last. “And you will use it to fix your mistake, or your services will no longer be needed.”

Mecille looks down to see a silver chain, thin as a cobweb, wrapped around her. She tugs without success. She calls to her magic and the chain sprouts barbs, digging into her gown and piercing her flesh. The gossamer of her wings rips.

“Let me go!” she cries, panic and pain thundering in her heart. “What is this?”

“Incentive,” Greymar says. “Bless me with a son and you’ll be freed. Fail, and I’ll strangle you with that chain until all the shine on you fades.”

In the dungeon, the guards wrap one end of the chain around her waist and wrists, then fasten the other end to the wall. When they leave, Mecille tries to summon her wand but only tugs on empty air. Then she tries to conjure light, and the chain bites her for it.

Lacking any other ideas, she kicks at the wall and yells. She pulls uselessly at the chain and yells some more.

“Do you plan on doing that for much longer? You’re terribly shrill.”

Mecille startles at the raspy voice. She swings her eyes in its direction and makes out a faint shape against the wall several yards away. “Who are you?” she demands.

The figure shifts. “Your neighbor, apparently. So, if you’re done with that caterwauling, I’d like to go back to sleep.”

Mecille gets up and approaches as far as the chain allows. A barred window high up the wall casts weak moonlight on the floor between them. “Please, you must help me,” Mecille whimpers, sinking to her knees. “I don’t belong here.”

The figure snorts. “Save that act for the guards. It won’t work on me.”

Mecille glowers. “Fine. You can rot here while I find a way out.”

“Best of luck, sister,” the voice says and is silent for the rest of the night.

The next morning, Mecille wakes up wrinkled and furious, her joints stiff from sleeping in a sitting position.

With daylight seeping through the window, Mecille can finally take in her surroundings. She finds the typical dungeon fare: filthy floors, shackles on the walls, skeletons strewn about. Mecille sees the heap that she assumes was the grouchy voice from last night.

“Wake up,” Mecille snaps. “Wake up, you wretch.”

The heap grumbles.

“Wake up, or I’ll start shouting again.”

At that, the prisoner pushes up to a sitting position and glares, tattered blanket falling to expose the ruined edges of severed wings. Even with the dirt caked on her skin, the runes tattooed under her glittering silver eyes are unmistakable.

All the blood drains out of Mecille’s face. “Landra the Blight,” she whispers, horrified.

The dark fairy’s mouth twists with disdain. “And you must be Mecille the Silly.”

That snaps Mecille out of her shock. “Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t enchant mittens.”

Mecille closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before speaking again. Landra is known across the continent as a harbinger of violence and sorrow, cursing crops to wither and murdering families in their homes. She is more monster than fairy. But above all else, Landra is powerful.

“Fortune has smiled on us, sister,” Mecille says with forced cheer. “Between the two of us, we can escape. Our chains react to our own power, but perhaps—wait, where is your chain?”

Landra has moved to sit against the wall, her naked wrists resting on her pulled-up knees. “I am held here by different means,” she says.

Hope flares in Micelle as she scrambles to her feet and holds out her hands. “This is excellent! Come, test this chain.”

Landra scowls. “Go away, Silly. I’m not touching that chain for all the magic in the Veil.”

“But...” Mecille looks from the silver chain to the dirty floor to Landra’s bare feet and torn clothes. “Why not?”

Landra closes her eyes, the runes barely visible under her lashes. “Because that is a soul chain, Fairy Godmother, woven with my life. The moment it touched your blood, we became tied. If I take that chain off you, we both die.”

Though creative and delivered with fervor, the collection of curse words Mecille unleashes fails to impress Landra. Serves her right, Landra thinks, giving magic away to humans like that. It was never going to end well.

Landra just wishes the life lesson didn’t involve her. She could have done without this extra complication. And the glitter.

A soul chain is a forbidden spell, one that Landra had to learn by reading the corpse flesh of a false demon god. It was the only way to recapture her own soul, stolen from her by that damned Rickham. She had been caught unawares, like some fledgling idiot, when he snatched it from her. He held it aloft in an enchanted glass cage as he demanded she grant him victory in his decades’ long war.

“I can’t grant wishes,” she seethed. “I can’t give blessings.” She reached for it desperately, the swirling silver orb pulsing with her own heartbeat. He gave the cage a violent shake, and she cried out in pain.

“Then curse my enemies,” Rickham commanded. “And I will give you back your soul.”

And she had agreed, fool that she was. For Rickham had dozens of enemies, and when his supply was running out, he simply made a fresh batch. When curses took too long for the king, he sent her out to bring him their heads. Each time she begged for her soul, he would tell her the bargain wasn’t fulfilled and send her out again.

Then the king had died, likely with his own son’s help. And Landra had no doubt of the new king’s intentions for her. So, she had gathered all the ingredients for the chain, including her own life force, and once it was created, she crept back into the castle to retrieve her soul.

King Greymar had been waiting for her. He took her chain, burned her wings, and threw her in this dungeon with its clever wards to keep her in place.

And now, Mecille the Silly is stomping her feet and yelling as if Landra were the one who trapped her here. Landra can taste the other fairy’s soul, sticky sweet and cloying, as it starts to take up space in Landra’s own body.

“How could make this wretched thing?” Mecille asks dejectedly, finally done with her tantrum. “Why would you do such evil?”

Landra cocks her brow at the fairy godmother. “Evil is a matter of perspective, sister, and I’d say yours is a bit skewed.”

The first time the king drags Mecille before the queen, he strikes the fairy twice across the face for begging for her freedom.

“He doesn’t like it when you talk back,” Landra says once Mecille returns to the dungeon.

Mecille gingerly touches the flowering bruises on her face. “I gathered that, thank you very much.”

The second time, after the guards wrap her hands in the chain again, the king reaches out and tears one of her wings off.

“I’ll keep this for you,” he says casually over her screams. “You can have it back when my queen is with child.”

In the dungeon, she curls into a ball and weeps. The air drifting over her wound feels hot and serrated.

“He took your wing?” Landra asks quietly, shuffling toward her.

Mecille keeps herself wrapped tight. “Leave me alone,” she mumbles.

Several minutes later, she hears Landra muttering. Behind her closed lids, Mecille sees a flare of silver light. Her body grows cold all at once and then, with her exhale, it warms again. When she gets up, she sees Landra sitting against the wall, breathing heavily, arm limp and bleeding at her side.

“What have you done?” Mecille demands. As she moves forward, she feels a gentle tug as her wing, healed and whole, catches in the tangle of her hair. Her eyes fly back to the other fairy. “How did you do that?”

Landra’s silver eyes, a little dimmer now, slide over to her. “Blood magic. Not as fancy as a wand, I know.”

Mecille shakes her head. “I don’t understand. You’re a—” She stops when she sees the runes under Landra’s eyes twist in warning.

“I’m a what?” Landra challenges. When Mecille shrinks back, she sighs. The runes settle. “Let me sleep. I’m tired.”

Later, Mecille asks tentatively, “What about your own wings? Can’t you heal yourself?”

“Trust me to know a little more about this matter than you, please.”

“But—”

“Good night, Silly.”

Every month, Mecille is brought before the royal couple to bless and be broken.

After, Landra heals her, the dark fairy coaxing bones back into place and whispering edges of skin together again. Mecille watches Landra give the magic her blood. Sometimes, her hair. Once, the entire nail of her right thumb. Pieces of herself offered in exchange for the cool embrace of silver light.

Mecille’s own power deals in happy endings and simple rules. Through Landra, she learns that magic can be more: sacrifice and pain and intent.

“Stop,” Mecille says one night, reaching out to keep Landra from clawing off the skin above her elbow.

Landra glances up, brows furrowed. She has scars all over her face, and the lashes from her eyelids have been plucked clean.

“Please,” Mecille begs. “No more.”

“I can—”

“Just...sit with me, will you? I’m cold.”

The other fairy pauses for a long moment before moving to Mecille’s side, pressing a bony shoulder to hers.

From then on, they sit together as Mecille breathes through the pain. She distracts herself by remembering all the babies she had blessed, all the weddings. She wonders how many humans had taken her magic and twisted it, contorted their happily ever afters into landscapes of war or vice. She thinks of poor Jane, consort to a monster.

And always, she thinks of Landra.

Mecille is staring down at the tooth Greymar knocked out several days ago. It is smooth and cool and gleams in the moonlight. She looks up to see Landra kneeling in front of her.

Soft as a shadow, Landra says, “I could remove the chain, if you want.”

The offer hangs in the air between them. Mecille can almost hear their twin heartbeats, linked by the chain. A curse. Or an end. “Why would you do that?”

Landra smiles. “Maybe I’d like to grant wishes for once.”

Something in Mecille fissures and breaks. She rests her forehead against Landra’s as she grasps the other fairy’s thin, dirty hands. “Not yet,” she whispers. “Let me try one more time.”

Mecille stands before Jane, her wand shaking as she gives the blessing. “May you be fruitful. May you have sons. May you live long...”

Jane watches without expression as the wand swoops and dances.

When it is done, Mecille steps back. The guards bind her wrists. She turns to Greymar, who steps closer at her sudden smile. “What is it? Did it work?”

“You should give your wife some credit,” Mecille says, raising her hand to pat him on the cheek. “She’s really quite clever.”

Then she wraps the chain around the king’s neck and calls to her magic. The barbs pop out, and he screams. Mecille pulls harder, summoning starlight and sunbeams and shimmer. Each spell sputters out as the barbs multiply, sawing into them both.

I’ve never shed someone’s blood before, she realizes wildly and appreciates the vibrant, gushing red until a sword sweeps her head off her shoulders.

Landra feels the magic tying them together wink out.

She looks down at the tooth Mecille gave her and realizes it is the first gift she has ever received.

Days later, the guards throw Landra down before the queen in the throne room. Landra closes her eyes and counts the seconds before her death.

She makes it to twenty before she looks up.

The queen stares down at her, Landra’s caged soul in one hand and the chain in the other. She sets them on the floor. “These belong to you.”

Landra’s breath hitches. Without thinking, she lunges for the chain and whips it at the cage. It fastens around the glass and squeezes until the glass disintegrates. Then, tenderly as a lover, the chain lifts Landra’s soul. The orb stretches along its length, then slithers up her arms. It curls over her heart and sinks into her skin.

The weight of her soul settles into her bones, and Landra opens her eyes to a world full of color.

She pins the queen with a glare. “Why?”

“It would be cruel to keep it,” Jane replies simply.

Landra grasps the chain in both hands and, with a snarl, wrenches it in half. In the distance, the earth rumbles.

“Cruelty is what your king did to Mecille,” Landra hisses. The runes under her eyes begin to multiply, flaring out like raven wings over her face.

Jane flinches but doesn't cower. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “But I couldn’t be Greymar’s means to another generation of war.”

Violence snaps at the edges of Landra’s vision. “How did you defy Mecille’s blessing? Another curse? A bargain?”

Jane shakes her head. “Mecille said to accept her blessing, and I...” She shrugs. “Well, I just didn’t.”

Landra blinks once. Twice. Then, something foreign wells up in Landra so suddenly, she can’t stop it.

She laughs.

Landra remembers Mecille’s singsong voice and stardust, her dramatic gestures and sparkling wings. Of course, she thinks. It’s a spell as ridiculous as enchanted mittens...

Once Landra’s laughter fades, Jane asks hesitantly, “Are you going to kill me?”

Landra fingers the tooth in her pocket and considers the queen. “No.”

Jane exhales in relief. “What will you do now?”

The runes tuck themselves back under Landra's eyes. “Actually, I’ve been considering a career change.” She tilts her head. “Are you in the market for a new fairy godmother?”