Free Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon

and whatever it was in my voice made them obey.
    I stared at myself, mesmerized. I had never looked at myself this way, in human form—I had only seen myself out of the corner of my eye, on the surface of a lake or in the sheen of ice clinging to bark. We were not
supposed
to see ourselves like this.
    Now I knew why. As a human I was perfect. My skin paleand luminous. My hair like autumn and fire. My eyes like emeralds, fringed by dark lashes. I pressed my palm against my waist, the silk smooth under my touch, my skin tingling and warm.
    “That's the dress you should send her in,” Maybeth said behind me, her voice trembling.
    “Yes,” I whispered.
    In the canopied bed in the center of the room, the sisters slept on, their breathing jagged in the night air. We could hear the creeping of the servants in the hallways as they moved through the house.
    Gladys and Lucibell were quiet now, waiting by the rows of dresses.
    All I could think of was the man from her dream. How he would look at me like this. The longing that came from a place deep inside her, winging out and spreading through every cell of her body. Spreading now through mine.
    The torches flared and leaped and made patterns against the walls of the closet and the main room.
    This is what he would see,
I thought. If it were me, at the ball.
    I lifted the skirt of the dress. My feet were bare and curved on the stone floor.
    “What would you think of shoes of glass?” I said, and turned to see them all watching me, eyes wide in the light of the torches.
    “ LIL? “
    I looked up. I hadn't heard George coming down from upstairs. I hadn't been paying attention at all, I realized, andquickly closed the book I was holding, careful not to harm its crumbling pages. The glass case hung open.
    “You seem different,” he said.
    “How do you mean?” I covered the book with my palm and tried to push the case closed with my foot.
    The store was quiet. Today it had the air of an old attic, somewhere in the country. I noticed then how tired George looked, rubbing his eyes. It was not even nine A.M. yet. I had never seen him up so early. He held a thick book under one arm.
    “I don't know. Just different.”
    “Oh,” I said, slipping the book under the counter. I was conscious of him staring at me, and I turned quickly to one of the book-crammed boxes next to me. “I'll just get started on these, then,” I said, pulling out a copy of
Gulliver's Travels.
    He seemed preoccupied. I noticed he was fingering the same pages of his book over and over again.
    “Are you feeling all right?” I asked.
    “Just a bit tired,” he said. “I was up all night working.”
    “Anything interesting?”
    “Actually, yeah.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I think I've found a chunk of a lost manuscript.”
    “Oh? What is it?”
    “A so-called ‘definitive history of Massachusetts.’ This governor spent decades working on it. The life's work of a true obsessive.”
    “Something you know nothing about, I'm sure.”
    He laughed, leaned his tall body down on the counter, his face a few feet from mine. Sometimes it took me by surprise, how handsome he was. “There's a story that when the British attacked his estate, he locked himself in the studywith the manuscript and a rifle. Ignored his family completely.”
    “What happened?”
    “They all died. At least that's the story.”
    “Wow.”
    “Imagine, though. Years of your life, all that history, on paper. So delicate, and yet pieces have made their way down to us, after all this time.” He stood up, stretching. “I need some coffee desperately.”
    I saw something pass over his face then. Something more than tiredness. “What's wrong?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” he said, his shoulders relaxing. “Well, I ran into Lauren yesterday.”
    “Oh, I'm sorry,” I said. I took his hand, and for a moment we stood there awkwardly.
    “Thanks,” he said, squeezing my hand. “It's okay. I just wasn't expecting it. I