Fairy Tale Ending

by L-J Baker

Kat carried her package of gryphon's blood out of the Half-Price Hematorium and walked into a hairy grey stomach. An enormous hand clamped around her neck.

"Gently, Erk," a woman said. "This threadbare witch in britches is one of my best customers."

Kat ripped her attention from the razor blade piercing the troll's upper lip to the vampire at his side. Petronilla the money-lender's pointed teeth showed. Faster than a rise in interest rates, Petronilla snatched the parcel from Kat's fingers.

"Is this the loan repayment?" Petronilla asked.

"No, I--"

Erk the troll gave Kat a playful shake.

"You'll--you'll get your money."

Kat flinched as Petronilla jiggled the parcel. With the exception of the three crowns that Kat had hidden from her sister Fanny, the seven crowns she had spent on the blood was the last of their money. Without the blood, Kat
couldn't make Grandma's Amazing Anti-Wart Unguent. Without the unguent to sell, the sisters couldn't buy food and Kat would have to forfeit her loan security.

"The new moon is in four nights," Petronilla said. "I've a ghoul drooling at the prospect of three fresh witch's fingers."

"You'll get your money," Kat repeated.

"How is that gorgeous sister of yours?" Petronilla leered. "I'd have thought she'd be here to watch the fairy tale they're filming in the woods. No? Well, my offer still stands. You could wipe out every last crown of debt if
she--"

"No," Kat said as defiantly as she could with a troll's hand around her throat. "Fanny isn't like that. But--" But every last crown of debt? Petronilla's pointed teeth didn't make the idea of snuggling up to her very appealing. But, then, losing three fingers and still being up to her neck in debt wasn't exactly enticing either. "Um. Would you consider...um...someone in Fanny's place?"

"Who?"

"Me."

Petronilla roared with laughter. "You? Did you hear that, Erk? Oh, Katherine, a sense of humor is no substitute for beauty. I'm not into boyish women. The only body parts of yours that hold any attraction for me are those three fingers."

All ten of Kat's fingers trembled as she hurried away from the marketplace with her parcel clutched to her chest. The memory of the troll's grip remained snug around her neck. She had been justified in risking leaving
Fanny at home alone rather than exposing her to Petronilla. And if Fanny heard they were filming a fairy tale near the village, Kat's life would be a misery.

Kat trotted past Fanny's flower beds and up to the cottage's front step. She opened the door. Fanny shrieked. Kat started and dropped her parcel. Fanny cringed in the middle of the living room with an arm behind her back. The
fuzzy image of a dragon's neck reared up through the roof thatching. An illusory gout of its blood froze in a spurt between the sisters. Just behind Fanny, a near life-sized vision of a knight in shining armor stood with his
sword and lower body buried in the table.

"You didn't," Kat said. "Oh, Fanny, you didn't...."

"Please don't be angry," Fanny said. "I was dusting and found three crowns lying under the broken kettle--just as if a fairy godmother had left them for me! Then the door-to-door talesman came by! 'Fair Maid, such Good
Fortune as Yours comes but Rarely to Mortal Woman.'"

"You did."

"I got a really good deal, because I'm one of his regulars and the spell is a bit blurry."

"You spent the last of our money on a stupid fairy tale."

"It's not stupid!" Fanny pulled the fuchsia-colored parchment from behind her back. "It's the very latest: 'Lady Love Warms the Cold Knight'. Look. Sir Guy isn't always clear, but the dragon is very..." Her expression
drooped. "Kat?"

Kat sagged. She turned away and noticed the parcel near her feet. Dark red wetted one corner and pooled on the step.

"Shit!" Kat dropped to her backside and let her head fall into her hands. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

A hand rested on Kat's shoulder.

"Did I do something wrong again?" Fanny said in a small voice. "I tried really hard to--Oh. What have you broken? Is that my fault, too?"

Kat sighed and patted Fanny's fingers. "No, it's not your fault. I'll soak it up with a rag and dissolve it in some water and it'll work just fine." She forced herself to smile up at Fanny's distress. "Everything will be fine. I promise. I always make everything all right, don't I? Now, go on. Your story is fading."

"Warts and weasels!" Fanny dashed away.

When Kat carried her bloody rag and broken parcel into the living room, the dragon writhed and thrashed. Horribly overacted, as they always were. Kat waded past its death throes and through the image of a young woman artfully
draped across a flowered bank. The dragon's thespianic excesses would be nothing to the sappiness to come now that the hero prepared to wake the heroine. Fanny's voice softened dreamily as she read on.

In the kitchen, Kat swung the cauldron over the fire and pushed up her sleeves.

"Sir Guy strode past the Foul Serpent's Carcass," Fanny read, "and glimpsed Lady Myfanwy. Her Wondrous Beauty blinded his Manly Eyes."

Kat rolled her eyes and pulled the stopper off a jar of pickled lizard's tongues. She counted as she plopped them into the warming water.

Fanny shrieked.

Kat dropped the jar and leaped through into the living room. "What's wrong?"

"It's a trap!" Fanny said. "The Evil Sorceress disguised a peasant girl to look like Lady Myfanwy."

"Oh, is that all." Kat scooped up the fallen black tongues and returned to the cauldron.

"But Sir Guy has risked life and limb and everything," Fanny said.

The peasant would probably have more sense than the other woman, but the hero would be too brainless to realize it. Kat reached for the dried bat wings. "Fanny? Do any of your heroines ever rescue themselves?"

"Who would want to read that?" Fanny asked. "It'd be like...well, like the hero rescuing a prince. Or a princess rescuing the heroine."

"I'd enjoy that," Kat said. "And there are probably more like me than you think."

Kat swore to herself as she scraped the very last sparkling speck of fairy dust from the vial. She was a pinch short. With reluctance, she twisted the top off her ring and tapped out her secret, absolute-emergencies-only supply. There would be no more magic for them until she sold this potion.

By the time the green mixture bubbled in the cauldron, Fanny had fallen quiet. Careful to keep stirring the spoon widdershins, Kat leaned back from the hearth until she could peer around the doorway into the living room.
Fanny's enraptured attention fixed on the fading image of "The Kiss." The parchment had crumbled into a pile of fuchsia dust at her hem.

"Fanny? Can you double-check something in Grandma's spell book for me?" Kat asked.

Fanny sighed. "I wish I were a fairy tale heroine. Then some man would come and love me and protect me and give me lots of money that I could give you. Then we could have a carpet again."

"We don't need a man for that," Kat said. Although, she admitted, she wouldn't turn down much at this point. "Grandma's book is under the table leg."

Fanny drifted into the kitchen, quoting her favorite lines from what she had just read. A quirk of memory allowed her to savor the expensive tales over and over, albeit without the images, though the enchanted parchment
disintegrated at the end of a single reading. She clutched the battered spell book in one hand and an advertising leaf decorated with pictures of hearts in the other.

"My only Lady Love, be Mine Forever!" Fanny said. "We need magic and romance in our lives."

"I'm trying." Kat wiped sweat from her face. "Look up the Anti-Wart Unguent recipe."

Fanny dropped onto the stool near the window. "Oh, no, it's raining again. 'Not even Nature's own Wet Jeweled Beads can compare to the Sparkle of your Eyes, Lady Love.'"

"It's about halfway down the page."

"'What Number of Days have You endured this Ensorcelled Tempest battering your Tall Towered Prison?'"

"How many drops of gryphon's blood do I need to add?"

"Thirteen."

"Thirteen? That's a hell of a lot. Are you sure?" Kat had been thinking four or five.

"Quite, quite sure." Fanny sighed.

Kat sopped the bloody rag in a bowl of water, wrung it out, and poured all the red liquid into the cauldron. When she glanced around, Fanny stared wistfully out at the rain.

"With the money I get from this," Kat said, "maybe there'll be enough left over for a new fairy tale for you."

"Oh, Kat! You're the best!" Fanny hurtled across the kitchen to fling her arms around Kat. She brandished the leaf. "The annual Avalon Fairy Tale Festival is next month. Can we go? Please? I'd be good forever! 'There is a
Place of Great Wonder that I would take You to, my Fairest Love.' It's been so gloomy with thirteen days of rain. We--"

"What?" Kat's eyes snapped wide. "What did you say?"

"It's rained every day for the last thirteen days," Fanny said. "It started on my birthday. 'Oh, Sir Guy, I'd Voyage with you to--"

"Shit." Kat's attention cut from her sister to the cauldron. It no longer bubbled. Oily rainbow ripples flickered just beneath the surface.

"Did I do something wrong again?" Fanny asked.

"Run!" Kat grabbed Fanny's wrist and yanked her to the doorway.

Kat trod in the pile of fuchsia dust and left romantically-colored footprints running to the front door. She shoved Fanny down the path.

"I say!" a young man called. "You there, Beautiful-Girl-in-the-Cottage-in-the-Woods. Is that Ruffian manhandling you? Do you need Rescuing?"

Fanny skidded to a halt. Kat banged into her back. On the edge of the lawn, a young man in a blue velvet tunic sat astride a white horse. A pair of pink-clad arms gripped his waist from behind.

"Oh!" Fanny clasped her hands together. "It's just like a fairy tale!"

"Screw that," Kat said. "Run!"

Kat propelled Fanny forward, but Fanny tripped. Kat sprawled on top of her just as an almighty boom concussed the garden. Something whistled past Kat's ear and smashed into the fence, flattening a seven-foot long section.

Kat lay still with her eyes squeezed shut.

"Kat? Are we dead?"

"I'm not sure." Kat rolled off her sister to sit on the grass.

Fanny gasped. "What happened to the cottage?"

Black smoke drifted from the scorched edges of the four holes where the door, two windows, and chimney used to be. A twisted chunk of the cauldron sizzled in Fanny's petunia bed.

Kat flopped back with her hands over her face. "Shit."

"Such Desolation as this, Fair Maid, I have nary seen before," Fanny quoted.

"Kat, is this my fault?"

"No, love."

"Oh!" Fanny crawled away across the lawn. "The couple on the horse!"

The white horse lay stunned. The riders sprawled in an untidy tangle near the wishing well.

The air constricted and popped. A two-foot tall blue fairy man materialized above the unconscious actors.

"Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!" The fairy waved tiny fists. His wing tips quivered. "Why me, gods? Stop filming! Stop everything. Stop the world. It's all ruined."

"Filming?" Fanny's head snapped up. "This really was a fairy tale?"

"Was!" The fairy snarled. "It was going to be bigger than 'Destiny's Stepdaughter' and 'Star-Tangled Love Children' put together! Hell, with the right publicity and marketing, it could've out-sold 'Snow White's Daughter--Part Two'!"

Fanny's eyes widened. "Ooh, really?"

"Not now! I battle a month of torrential storms only to have the lead actors killed by your exploding hovel!"

"Thirteen days of rain," Fanny corrected. "And they're not dead. They're just a bit battered. 'Good Sir Knight, this Disaster may not be as Dire as you Fear.'"

"Look, lady, I'm the tale fairy, right? And you are the proud owner of--" The air popped again and he suddenly held a large sheaf of papers. He shook them in Fanny's face. "A lot of debt."

"Hey!" Kat scrambled to her feet. "Don't shout at her."

"Not shout?" he shouted. "What do you expect me to do--thank you for ruining my life? I needed to sell three thousand copies just to break even. I owe the leprechaun Mafia more crocks of gold than you can shake a broom at. And now, so do you."

He dropped the papers in Fanny's lap. Kat retrieved them. They were heavy with numbers.

"The prince and princess will be well in a day or two," Fanny said. "And then you can finish it. I'll buy a copy."

"Day or two?" The blue fairy tore at his hair. "The contract expires at the last stroke of midnight!"

"Since this is my fault," Fanny said, "what can I do to make it right?"

Kat's attention raked down a column of numbers that dwarfed her own debt to insignificance. "It's not your fault, love. We--"

"Yes, it is!" the fairy retorted.

"'Oh, Woe is Me'," Fanny said, "'who will save Me from this Vile Fiend?'"

The blue fairy glared at her. "You don't really talk like that, do you?"

"Yes, she does," Kat said, still leafing through the fairy's bills. "And that's your fault--you and all the others who make these trashy tales. Does your conscience never--Wow. You pay actors that much?"

The fairy snatched the papers back. "You didn't imagine that evil dragons, scheming stepsisters, and kindly-but-ineffectual grandmothers come cheap?"

Fanny sighed. "What a pretty dress she's wearing. I wish I were a fairy tale heroine."

Kat looked at the unconscious actress. An attractive woman, she couldn't hold a candle to Fanny. But they were about the same size, and the actress's wig was close to Fanny's natural color. Kat frowned. "How much more do you have to film?"

"A lousy three minutes of riding through the Ominous Forest," he said. "Then the Big Climax. I can't believe how close--"

"Fanny can do it," Kat said. "She can memorize any lines she has to say. Can't you, love?"

Fanny's eyes widened. "Me? You mean it? You'd let me be in a fairy tale? Oh, Kat, really?"

The fairy's eyes narrowed. "In that dress, she's more of the Cinderella-type. But...She's quite a looker."

"Oh, please!" Fanny begged. "I could scream and swoon and weep and sprain my ankle and everything!"

"You know...." The tale fairy flew around Fanny. "She's quite something. This might just work. Soft focus on the close-ups...."

"Yes! Oh, yes, please, Mr. Tale Fairy," Fanny cried.

"Three hundred crowns," Kat said. "Not a crown less."

The blue fairy tapped his teeth and wiggled his wings, then spat on his hand. Kat spat on hers and reached forward. The blue fairy snatched his back.

"Nope," he said. "Won't work. I need a leading man, too, or it's no use."

Fanny crumpled.

Kat's heart sank, carrying along with it her hopes of retaining all her fingers. She slumped to the grass. "I never wanted to play the piano anyway."

Fanny clapped her hands. "Kat can do it! Mr. Tale Fairy, look. She wears britches and everything."

Kat glanced up to see the fairy peering at her. "No."

"By Titania's toenails, she's right," the fairy said. "Glue a moustache on you, and--"

"No," Kat said. "Absolutely not."

Fanny threw her arms around Kat. "Please!"

"I'm sorry, love, but me in some half-baked, mushy fairy tale?" Kat said. "Nothing could induce me to--"

"Four hundred crowns for the pair of you," the fairy said.

"Four hundred?" Kat blinked. That would repay her loan from Petronilla, buy back the carpet, and allow them to eat for the next two months.

"OK, say four-fifty and not a crown more," the fairy said.

"Please, Kat," Fanny pleaded. "Be my One True Knight."

Kat offered her hand. "Where do I sign?"

The fairy's tiny hand closed on three of Kat's fingers to shake. "But you don't get a sniff of the cash unless we finish by midnight."

--------------

"Oh, Lothar, my Love," Fanny said. "Happily would I travel to the Ends of the Earth with Thee, but I am so Weary. How much Longer until we Reach your Castle?"

Kat ducked as the groggy white horse wobbled under a low branch. "Just--Just a little while, Lucia, my--"

"Stop!" The blue fairy materialized with balled fists. "Amateur!"

"What's wrong now, Mr. Tale Fairy?" Fanny asked. "Is it my fault?"

"Of course not." He leveled an accusing finger at Kat. "He's knocked his moustache loose again!"

"I'll fix it," Fanny assured him.

Kat dropped from the saddle. Her legs tangled with the sword scabbard and she sat down abruptly. Fanny knelt beside her in a billow of gauzy pink.

"This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened," Fanny said. "Ever!"

"But it's not real," Kat said. "It's just some tatty--Ow!"

Fanny ripped the moustache off and hummed happily as she applied fresh glue.

"If it weren't for the money and the fingers," Kat said, gingerly feeling her upper lip, "the next time that blue bastard shouted at me, I'd--"

"You shouldn't keep pretending that you forget your lines. He's worried that it's getting late."

"Fanny, I don't pretend. It beats me how you remember all this gibberish."

Fanny's brows set in an unusual frown as she pressed the moustache to Kat's upper lip. "But you do everything better than me."

"No, I don't. That blue bastard is right: you're a natural, and I'm a clod pole. There isn't much more to go, is there?"

"The Big Climax and The Kiss. You don't have many lines." Fanny smiled rapturously. "Just think, Kat, we're going to be real fairy tale stars! 'Up there, Fair Maid, where the Gods Play, shall our Exalted Passions rise.'"

Kat didn't have the heart to express her conviction that this cut-rate production with the world's stupidest plot and drippiest characters would never break even, let alone make Fanny a star because of her part in the
last fifteen minutes. It wasn't even an incomprehensible mess of symbolism, meaningful silences, and weird camera angles that would assure it of high critical acclaim and a showing at the arty-farty film festival that Fanny
wanted to attend.

"'Avaunt Dread Beast,'" Fanny said. "'I will slice thee into Little Shreds if Thou layest a Foul Claw on my Fair Lucia.' That's what you say when the two-headed ogre finds me in the clearing."

Kat's eyebrows soared. "Two-headed ogre?"

"You kill it. Don't worry, he's a stunt ogre. The camera gnomes explained it. The resurrection spell is written into his contract."

"What? Resurrection spell? But this is all acting, not--"

"Aren't you ready yet?" the blue fairy snapped. "We've thirty minutes of daylight left to finish this. Places! Cameras!"

"Isn't this fun?" Fanny's eyes sparkled as if filled with fairy dust. "You're the best sister ever for letting me do this! It's what I always dreamed." She flung her arms around Kat and kissed her.

Kat rose slowly. She had never seen Fanny as happy or as interested in anything. Acting was something that Fanny did very well--possibly because she believed in it all. And it could earn them money. If only this weren't a
stupid, run-of-the-mill clone of all the other fairy tales out there spelled onto pastel parchments. If this were something unusual--something that would make people sit up and take notice--it might just give Fanny the chance to
keep doing what she so clearly loved. And Kat might never have to worry about losing fingers again. Kat's hand rose to her cheek where Fanny had kissed her. The Kiss. What if--

"You!" The blue fairy jabbed a finger in Kat's face. "On the horse and try not to sound like a retarded two-year-old."

Kat's glare melted into a secret grin as she walked to where Fanny waited.

When they dismounted in the clearing, Fanny wilted. Kat staggered under her weight and nearly dropped her onto the unlikely but artistic bed of flowers.

"Can it be True?" Fanny said. "Are we finally Free of my Wicked Aunt?"

"Avaunt Dread--" Fanny's fingers dug into Kat's wrist. "Oh. That's right. Yes, my Love. You are Safe with Me."

The ground thundered. Two inhuman howls battered the glade.

"Grunt. Pain. Death," two voices boomed simultaneously.

Kat turned slowly. At the other end of the clearing stood the two largest kneecaps she had ever seen. Her eyes rolled up and up. Just above his loincloth, the ogre's torso split into two. Four bloodshot eyes glared down
at Kat.

Kat gulped. "Av--avaunt Dread B-Beast, I shall--Shit."

"Lothar!" Fanny tugged Kat's sleeve. "Oh, Lothar my Love, save me!"

"Oh, shit," Kat muttered. "It's only pretend." But the shaking of her hands was real enough as she tugged her sword from its scabbard.

"Aaah!" Fanny screamed.

Kat jumped. Fanny pushed her. Kat stumbled across the clearing. An ogre leg thumped down in front of her. Kat banged off it. The ogre looked even more terrifying from flat on her back. Kat scrabbled away on hands and knees
until brought up short by a tree trunk.

"Oh, Lothar, my Hero!" Fanny knelt beside Kat. "Slay this Creature and with it all my Wicked Aunt's Foul Hopes." In a whisper, she added: "Isn't this exciting?"

Kat shot her a glare, took a deep breath, and rose. The ogre awaited her approach with his fists on his hips. Kat squeezed her eyes shut and whipped the sword in an arc from shoulder to shoulder. When she peeked, the ogre
looked unharmed and unhappy.

"You're new at this, aren't you?" the ogre's left head asked. "And puny. It's an almost insult to be killed by a little ratbag like you. Stop mucking around. Here." He planted his left leg close to Kat. "I can't make it any
easier than that."

Kat hefted her sword and thrust it close to the bulging calf.

The ogre grabbed her by the tunic and hoisted her in the air. "Are you stupid? You kill me. How hard can that be?"

"But--" Kat screamed and dropped her sword as the ogre shook her until her eyeballs rattled.

"I'm gonna to throw you to the ground near your sword," he said. "Pick the stupid thing up and hit me properly. When I fall over, leap on a chest and stab me in a heart. Get it right."

Kat hurtled through the air. Her shriek cut off when she slammed into the grass.

"Lothar, my Love!" Fanny helped Kat sit up.

Kat blinked away red dots. She could taste blood leaking from her nose and through her fake moustache.

"That was very exciting," Fanny whispered. "You're doing marvelously! The stunt ogre is very frightening."

"Frightening? If the son of a bitch hits me again, I really will try to kill him--and screw the money."

"You're supposed to."

"No, I'm supposed to pretend to kill him." Kat hugged her abused ribs. "Fanny, this is all make believe."

"But they always end with the hero killing the monster and then The Kiss." Fanny handed Kat the sword. "The monster's death wouldn't look right if it were faked."

Kat frowned and remembered what Fanny had said about a resurrection spell. "Shit. I can't actually kill him. Not for real. Not just for money. That's not--Aaah!" Kat's head bounced on the ground as the ogre grabbed her by an
ankle and dragged her across the clearing. "You prick! You're supposed to let me win!"

The ogre swung her around. "Yeah. But there's nothing in my contract to say I can't rough up annoying little ratbags first. What are you gonna do about it--kill me?"

He tossed her aside. Kat crunched to the ground. It occurred to her that losing three fingers might not hurt this much. And that make believe wasn't what it used to be.

Fanny's scream raised the hairs on the back of Kat's neck. Kat peeled opened her eyes to see a flash of pink whisked off the ground. Fanny writhed in the ogre's fist.

"You son of a bitch! Let her go!" Kat struggled to her feet.

Fanny flailed at the ogre's imprisoning hand. She screamed.

"I'm coming!" Kat looked around desperately and grabbed the sword. "I'm coming, love!"

Kat staggered across the clearing, eyes closed and sword raised. The hilt jerked in her hands. The ogre loosed ear-hammering howls. Kat opened her eyes. The sword stuck from the front of the ogre's loincloth. Something pink
dropped on her. As the ogre's body thumped to the ground, Kat crumpled under Fanny's weight.

"Oh, Lothar! My Love!" Fanny clasped Kat's shoulders.

Kat stared at the sky wheeling overhead.

Fanny leaned over her. "Kat, are you all right? Your eyes look funny. Can we do The Kiss or shall I ask Mr. Tale Fairy if we can take a rest?"

Kat wiped at the blood from her nose. The back of her hand brushed against the false moustache and reminded her of what she still had to do.

Fanny frowned. "You don't look right."

"Ah, Lucia, my Love, I hoped you would see through my Deception." Kat sat up.

"You had a nasty bang on the head. It might be better if we stopped now."

"Yes! I shall Stop this Pretence." With a theatrical flourish, Kat ripped the false moustache from her lip. "I am not Duke Lothar."

"Kat?"

"Yes! It is I, Katherine, Lothar's Sister. When my Craven Brother received Word of your Dire Plight, the Miserable Wretch cringed. But I, his Noble Sister, fell in Love with you. Your Beauty blinded me from your Portrait in
my Unworthy Brother's hands. I had to Rescue you. So, I, Katherine, am your Own True Knight." Kat captured the bewildered Fanny's hands and clasped them to her bosom. "But I hardly Dare ask, Lovely Lucia, can you Love me rather than Lothar?"

Fanny blinked. "Of course, I love you, Kat."

"My only Lady Love, be mine Forever!" Kat wrapped her arms around Fanny.

--------------
Ten times larger than life, the image of Lucia and Lothar/Katherine froze at

"The Kiss". The cognoscenti filling the auditorium of the Avalon Film Festival erupted in applause for the world's first lesbian fairy tale.

"Brava! Brava!"

Side by side, Kat and Fanny strolled out into a night lit by the aurora borealis and the green flashes of firefly photographers. The blue fairy trotted past them deep in conversation with a leprechaun about 'investment
capital' and 'niche marketing'. Ahead, hundreds of female fans waved and shouted for the sisters. Two security trolls leaped on a woman who tried to climb over the rope.

"Kat! Fanny! It's me, Petronilla!"

Fanny shrank back, but Kat waved using all ten of her fingers for the trolls to take the vampire away.

"She can't hurt either of us now," Kat said. "We've enough money from that film, and the three others I'm negotiating for you, to last us the rest of our lives."

Fanny's eyes widened. "You'll let me be in more fairy tales?"

"Yes."

"And we can have carpet again?"

"Yes."

Fanny threw her arms around Kat. "And They Lived Happily Ever After!"