Free The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey Page B

Bella. Mending and making? An odd way to divide the duties. Still, if it suited the Brownies, who was she to criticize? “Is workingin the garden mending or making?” she asked both of them. “What I saw of it is lovely.”
    â€œAh. That’d be tending , and that’d be Lily, Mistress,” said Hob, with a finger laid aside his nose and a nod. “She be gone to bed anow. ’Tis Robin’s Lily as does the tending, and my lass Rosie who does the cleaning.”
    â€œAnd when Robin lets me, I have been known to do the cooking,” Madame said with a silvery chuckle. “They’ll be staying on to help you when you are Godmother here.”
    Elena noticed immediately that Madame did not say, serving . So, the Brownies were not servants; given what little she knew from nursery tales, to call them servants or treat them as such would be a deadly insult.
    Robin evidently anticipated the question she was afraid to ask. “’Tis our honor and our duty to help the Godmothers and White Wizards and Witches, Mistress,” he said solemnly. “For when the Black-Hearted Ones move in, it is our kind that are the first to suffer.”
    â€œYou’ll learn all about that later, dear,” Bella said, as Robin took her bag from her, and Hob the basket. “Come along now, and I’ll show you your room.”
    Through the sitting room they went, and the candles in the antechamber went out by themselves as they exited.
    Well, it is a dream, after all.
    Hob went through one doorway, and Madame Bella led the way through the other, to that staircase that Elena had glimpsed. With Madame in the lead, and Robin following behind, Elena climbed up to the next floor—and the candles in the sitting room also went out by themselves.
    At the top of the stairs, it was quite obvious that Madameliked an old-fashioned sort of house, with no hallways, just one room leading into another. This one was meant for display, apparently, but Elena could not quite understand what the theme was, or even if there was one. Shelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling, and there were objects carefully arranged on them. But what odd objects! A cap made of woven rushes. A fur slipper, but quite the smallest that Elena had seen, clearly made for an adult woman, but the size of one meant for a child. A knitted tunic that was made of some coarse, dark plant fiber. A golden ball. A white feather. There were hundreds of these odd objects, and Elena would very much like to have looked at them further, but Madame Bella gestured to her left, and Robin was already carrying her bundle through the left-hand door.
    â€œYour rooms—the vacant ones—are that way, dear,” Madame Bella said, and covered a yawn, which triggered a similar yawn from Elena. “The two suites are identical, mirror-images, so I know you’ll be comfortable. Good night.”
    And with that, she passed through the right-hand doorway, leaving Elena to follow Robin on her own. So she did, and once again, as soon as she left the chamber, the candles in the sconces on the wall behind her went out of their own accord.
    I really do have the most remarkable imagination.
    The first room was a sitting-room, and Elena very nearly stopped right there, for it was fitted on two sides, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves. And they were all full. She stopped dead, and stared hungrily, only vaguely aware that there were other furnishings here.
    â€œMistress?” came Robin’s plaintive call from the next room.
    I’m dreaming, she reminded herself. These books aren’t real. And for a moment, she felt her eyes burn and her throat close, and the dream didn’t seem quite so amusing anymore….
    â€œMistress?” Robin called again, and she sniffed and hastily wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron, and hurried on to the next room.
    If Madame Klovis could have seen this room, she would have turned a rainbow of colors with