“There,” Mona said, pointing at the long square block of a building. “I want you to heal all the kids in there.”
There was a long moment of silence. When Mona turned to look at her companion, it was to find him regarding her with a thoughtful expression.
“I can’t do that,” he said.
Mona shook her head. “Like you couldn’t make me invisible?”
“No semantics this time,” he said. “I can’t heal them all.”
“But that’s what I want.”
Nacky sighed. “It’s like asking for world peace. It’s too big a task. But I could heal one of them.”
“Just one?”
Nacky nodded.
Mona turned to look at the building again. “Then heal the sickest one.”
She watched him cross the lawn. When he reached the front doors, his figure shimmered and he seemed to flow through the glass rather than step through the actual doors.
He was gone a long time. When he finally returned, his pace was much slower and there was a haunted look in his eyes.
“There was a little girl with cancer,” he said. “She would have died later tonight. Her name—”
“I don’t want to know her name,” Mona told him. “I just want to know, will she be all right?”
He nodded.
I could have had anything, she found herself thinking.
“Do you regret giving the gift away?” Nacky asked her.
She shook her head. “No. I only wish I had more of them.” She eyed him for a long moment. “I don’t suppose I could freely give you another couple of dollars …?”
“No. It doesn’t—”
“Work that way,” she finished. “I kind of figured as much.” She knelt down so that she wasn’t towering over him. “So now what? Where will you go?”
“I have a question for you,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“If I asked, would you let me stay on with you?”
Mona laughed.
“I’m serious,” he told her.
“And what? Things would be different now, or would you still be snarly more often than not?”
He shook his head. “No different.”
“You know I can’t afford to keep that apartment,” she said. “I’m probably going to have to get a studio apartment somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Mona knew she’d be insane to agree. All she’d been doing for the past week was trying to get him out of her life. But then she thought of the look in his eyes when he’d come back from the hospital, and knew that he wasn’t all bad. Maybe he was a little magic man, but he was still stuck living on the street, and how happy could that make a person? Could be, all he needed was what everybody needed — a fair break. Could be, if he was treated fairly, he wouldn’t glower so much, or be so bad-tempered.
But could she put up with it?
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she told him, “but, yeah. You can come back with me.”
She’d never seen him smile before, she realized. It transformed his features.
“You’ve broken the curse,” he said.
“Say what?”
“You don’t know how long I’ve had to wait to find someone both selfless and willing to take me in as I was.”
“I don’t know about the selfless—”
He leaned forward and kissed her.
“Thank you,” he said.
And then he went whirling off across the lawn, spinning like a dervishing top. His squatness melted from him and he grew tall and lean, fluid as a willow sapling, dancing in the wind. From the far side of the lawn he waved at her. For a long moment all she could do was stare, open-mouthed. When she finally lifted her hand to wave back, he winked out of existence, like a spark leaping from a fire, glowing brightly before it vanished into the darkness.
This time she knew he was gone for good.
Mona’s closing monologue from chapter eleven:
The weird thing is I actually miss him. Oh, not his crankiness, or his serious lack of personal hygiene. What I miss is the kindness that occasionally slipped through — the piece of him that survived the curse.
Jilly says that was why he was so bad-tempered and gross. He had to make himself unlikable, or it wouldn’t have been so hard to find someone who would accept him for who he seemed to be. She says I stumbled into a fairy tale, which is pretty cool when you think about it, because how many people can say that?
Though I suppose if this really were a fairy tale, there’d be some kind of “happily ever after” wrap-up, or I’d at least have come away with a fairy gift of one sort or another. That invisibility charm, say, or the ability to change into a bird or a cat.
But I don’t really need anything like that.
I’ve got The Girl Zone. I can be anything I want in its pages. Rockit Grrl, saving the day. Jupiter, who can’t seem to physically show up in her own life. Or just me.
I’ve got my dreams. I had a fun one last night. I was walking downtown and I was a birdwoman, spindly legs, beak where my nose should be, long wings hanging down from my shoulders like a ragged cloak. Or maybe I was just wearing a bird costume. Nobody recognized me, but they knew me all the same and thought it was way cool.
And I’ve touched a piece of real magic. Now, no matter how gray and bland and pointless the world might seem sometimes, I just have to remember that there really is more to everything than what we can see. Everything has a spirit that’s so much bigger and brighter than you think it could hold.
Everything has one.
Me, too.
De Lint’s story incorporates elements of “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The Fisherman and His Wife,” along with other familiar fairy tale tropes — but transplants them to the modern urban setting of Newford, an imaginary North American city where legends come to life.
The Red Boots
LEAH CUTTER
Leah Cutter grew up in Minnesota and lived all over the world, teaching English (in both Hungary and Taiwan), supervising an archeological dig in England, and bartending in Thailand. She currently lives in northern California with her husband, and works as a technical writer.
She originally wrote “The Red Boots” while living in Taiwan, then rewrote it at Clarion West, which she attended in 1997. “The Red Boots” was her first sale, although another story was published first, in the anthology called Last Stop at the End of the World. She’s working on her first novel.
After driving 2295 all day, Karen decided that the larger the Texas highway number, the smaller and meaner the road. When she saw the signs for 624, she turned off gratefully. Annaville, population 5,087, was the first town she came to. Scrub oak with dirty leaves edged the town square. Mother’s Café, one of the restaurants facing the square, had a sign in the window, promising fresh pies. She and her mama couldn’t have afforded even a run-down small town café; the Old Lady who’d taken her in after her mama’d died would have walked by without bothering to look. Karen tried to drive by slowly, but her foot kept tapping the accelerator instead of the brake. She circled back around the square for a second look.
At the stop sign on the far corner, a young couple in jeans crossed the street in front of her. They held hands with two children; an older boy and a younger girl, in matching striped shirts. Enviously, she watched them swinging their arms and skipping. She imagined the home-cooked meal of pork chops and apple compote they would have in their cozy kitchen, passing warm biscuits around a wooden table and interrupting each other with talk about their day. Unable to join them, or any family of her own, she decided that Mother’s Café was the next best thing.