Free Wishes by Molly Cochran Page A

hands on her shoulders.
    She tried to push me away, but she didn’t have enough strength. “Don’t fight me,” I said. “Let me help if I can.”
    She sobbed as she gave in and allowed me to hug her.
    The pain shooting through her was horrible. “Go . . . go . . . ,” she whispered feebly, but her words were drowned out by another voice, a strident, sure voice full of power and malice that emanated from inside her mind.
    Bring her to me, it said. I can help her, Artemesia. Show her the way.
    “She’s talking about me,” I said.
    “Don’t listen to her!” She doubled over again. “Go away. Go away . . .” She was so weak, she could hardly speak. But the voice inside her, that authoritative, terrible voice, was finally fading, and so was Artemesia’s pain.
    “Who was that?” I asked. “The voice in your head.”
    She pushed away from me. “That was the queen,” she said, defeated.
    “The queen?”
    “The Fairy Queen,” she mumbled.
    “Can she hurt you without even being near you?”
    “The queen can do anything she wants,” she said, wiping sweat off her forehead. “So don’t even think about it.”
    “Think about what?”
    “Going to her. I know that’s what you want to do.”
    “She said she could help.”
    “But she won’t. Listen to me, Katy. Since you found the box, she knows who you are, she knows you’re a witch, and she wants you for your magic. So stay away from her. It’s your only chance.”
    “But I can’t, don’t you see?” I heard the note of hysteria in my voice. “I have to get rid of the wishes. It’s too tempting to just snap my fingers and have anything I want. Every wish I make is going to take me further and further away from who I really am and what’s really important to me.”
    “I know,” she said. “I came to the same realization. And like you, I thought she would do the right thing.”
    “But she didn’t?”
    She laughed ruefully. “What do you think? Look, you don’t want to end up like me, granting wishes that you know are only going to hurt people. Being alive without actually having a life.”
    “How do you know that’s what’ll happen?”
    “It’s what always happens, at least to witches.”
    “Then you are a witch,” I said.
    “I was. A shape-shifter. I’m just a servant now.”
    “To me?”
    “No, to her. Her. You saw what she can do.”
    “Yeah. She was in your mind.”
    “No joke. And sticking pins into the rest of me for telling you to stay away from her.”
    “How long have you been . . . like this?” I asked.
    “Three hundred years, give or take.”
    “You’ve been the queen’s servant for three hundred years? What about your family?”
    “After I went to see the queen, I never saw them again.”
    We sat together in silence for a while. Finally I spoke. “What did you wish for?” I asked. “All that time ago?”
    She shook her head. “I wanted to be pretty,” she whispered. Then she laughed, a sad, miserable sound. “Now no one cares what I look like, anyway. They just all want their wishes to come true. That is, until they do.”
    I picked a daisy off the grass and pulled its petals off. “If you didn’t have to be a fairy, what would you do?” I asked.
    “I’d go to school.”
    “Really? Why?”
    “You wouldn’t know.” She smiled. “School’s just another thing you don’t think is important because you’ve already got it. But I haven’t, okay? I don’t have friends and teachers and books and a future. I don’t have anything, really. So yeah, I’d like to go to school.” She lowered her eyes. “If you must know, I’d like to be like you.”
    “Like me?” I could hardly believe it. Someone actually thought my life was worth having. That it would be cool to be me. It’s funny how differently people see things.
    “How’d the queen talk you into becoming a fairy?” I asked.
    She turned away. “You don’t understand. There’s no choice. Not for me. And probably not for you,