Read Online My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison - Free Book Online Page B

to have a sweet disposition. I turn my back on you and you’re drenching your elders and kicking poor defenseless trees. Is that really keeping in character?”

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    I spun around. She wore the same tank top and miniskirt I’d seen her in before, with her sunglasses in place even though it was dusk.
    I clenched my hands into fists. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for three weeks straight.”
    “I told you I was going shopping. I’m still not done and I get, like, forty messages from you on my godmother cell phone. Has anyone ever told you that you need to develop a little patience?”
    I glared at her.
    “No? Well, let me be the first then. Get some patience—it will help you out in life.” Yeah, I could put that on the list right behind my milking skills, which were also woefully undeveloped.
    “Who goes shopping for three weeks?” I asked. “Exactly what kind of sale is that?”
    Chrissy slipped her sunglasses onto the top of her head and gave me a condescending look. “Time isn’t the same here as it is in your world. You obviously don’t read fantasy books or you’d already know that sort of thing.”
    “How much time has elapsed back home?” I asked.
    “Well, ideally with these wishes you could live here for years and only seconds would have passed back in your world. Then when you wanted to, you’d come home 92/431
    physically unchanged.” She examined her nails instead of looking at me.
    “But . . . ,” I prompted.
    “Well, that was one of those areas that I didn’t do so well on in school. I never could get time to stop spinning, just to slow down. For every week that passes here, an hour passes back in your world. That’s not really so bad. Your parents are still downstairs at your house watching TV. They won’t miss you until tomorrow morning, and the way you sleep in and then hole up in your room, well, that should give you months here. Then you can decide whether—”
    “I don’t want to stay here for months,” I said. “All I’ve done here is work like a dog. No, I take that back. Dogs don’t have to clean out the toilets. I’ve worked like . . .
    like . . .”
    “Cinderella?” she asked.
    “Yes, but with no ball in sight and a prince who is an arrogant jerk.”
    She shrugged. “The ball is in about eight months. It wouldn’t be the full Cinderella experience if you only worked a few days and then got to go to the ball. Anyone can do that. It takes no long-term suffering at all.” I held out my rough and calloused hands toward her.
    “And who said I wanted to be long-suffering? I don’t remember wishing for that.”

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    “If the prince is going to rescue you from your dreary life,” she continued, “it has to be dreary in the first place, doesn’t it?”
    Her logic made me sputter. She actually thought she’d done me a favor by turning me into some sort of serf.
    “My life was plenty dreary as it was, and besides, I didn’t wish to be Cinderella in the first place. You never let me finish telling you what I wanted.” Her eyebrows arched up. “Well, excuse me for having other things to do with my time besides listen to your love-life woes— I told you I needed to go shopping.” She tossed her hair off her shoulder and pulled first one, then two more shopping bags from her purse. At last she pulled out the scroll and opened it. “You said, and this is a quote, ‘I just wish my life could be like a fairy tale with a handsome prince waiting for me at the ball, and that somehow when I met him, everything would work out happily ever after.’ ”
    She pulled on the end of the scroll and it spun shut.
    “You asked for a fairy tale. One of us here is an expert on fairy tales, and the only tale with a handsome prince waiting at the ball is Cinderella, which I duly granted.” Another toss of her hair. “If you had a different fairy tale in mind—well, I’m sorry you’re so ill read that you got mixed up and wished for the wrong one.”