2- In which Effie meets a fairy and finds out that princesses aren't meant to travel
Effie looked down to see an old woman, no more than a foot high, peering up at her angrily. She had peppery gray hair and an irritated expression that was probably normal for anyone who had to shout each time they wanted to talk to someone.
"Oh!" Effie gasped, staring. "I didn't see you!"
"Not many people do," the old woman wheezed, then began talking quickly, in short little spurts that left no spaces between. "Not little old me. Too old, too slow, too short," she tapped her cane on the ground. "Nobody notices me. Just step over, go around and right on past. Don't listen to my problems, they're too small."
"Um…" Effie searched for a chance to get a word in, before the woman really got started and complained all night. Effie's grandmother could go on for hours, and this old woman didn't seem much different. "What problems are those? Were you the one calling?"
"Mushrooms!" The old woman shouted like a cat springing on a mouse. "Blasted mushrooms! Grown up over night and now they're too big, can't get over them. Stupid fairies playing tricks, think it's funny to trap an old woman, but they'll see…"
"Mushrooms?" Effie blinked and looked more closely at the ground. A circle of mushrooms had indeed grown around the little woman, poking up out of the moss. "But those are barely an inch high!" Effie exclaimed. "Surely even you can…"
"Can't!" The woman snapped. "Otherwise, do you think I'd be standing here waiting for some big girl like you to step on me, huh? Never think, you big people, never think."
"Sorry," Effie found herself apologizing, though she wasn't sure what she had done. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Yes!" the woman pounced on the words again. "Get rid of these mushrooms."
Effie blinked. That sounded easy enough. She reached for the nearest cap.
The woman's cane rapped sharply on her knuckles. "Ow!"
"Not like that, stupid girl!" The woman shifted from foot to foot irritably. "Don't you know anything? Mustn't touch a fairy ring with your hands, you'll be trapped too!"
"Oh," Effie rubbed her hand. "Sorry," she repeated. Then she gathered a fold of her skirt and carefully removed five of the tiny mushrooms, leaving a gap quite large enough for the old woman to waddle through.
"What do I do with them now?" she asked, looking down at the mushrooms in her skirt.
"Throw them out. Eat them. Feed them to the dog, doesn't matter. The magic's broken now," the old woman explained. Effie dropped the mushrooms to the side.
"So why did the...fairies did you say? Trap you in that ring like that?"
"Full of mischief, fairies," the woman said. "Never pass up a chance. Especially on the old and helpless. Oh, in my younger days I'd have shown them a thing or two, but now, now…" she started coughing, loudly.
"Are you alright?" Effie asked, worried.
"Fine, fine," the woman waved a handkerchief at her. "You may not be the brightest apple in the bunch," she said appraisingly. "But you're certainly a sweet girl. Not many of that sort around these days. When I was younger, you couldn't walk past two trees without tripping over a nice young girl ready to help. Now…now I had to shout for practically three days before you came along. Three days with nothing but mushrooms for company. It's not fun, let me tell you."
Effie nodded, still wondering if the woman was being purposefully insulting, or just completely oblivious. Still, she'd been raised to be polite to her elders, even strange ones. "Can I help you home? Where do you live?"
"Oh no! No no no no no…" the woman clicked her tongue. "If you came to my house, why, you'd never leave again. It wouldn't do, nice girl like you, stuck in a fairy's house, wouldn't do."
"I wasn't going to stay, just…" Effie's brain caught up with that sentence. "Fairy? You're a fairy too?"
"Oh, did I let that slip? My mind must be going. I'm getting old, you see. Yes, yes, I'm a fairy too." The woman nodded to herself, happily.
"But the other fairies still trapped you in that ring? That's horrible."
"Young fairies, you see, aren't raised to be nice to their elders. Not like you. I can tell you've had a good upbringing. Now. Is there anything I can do for you?" The old woman settled back on her heels and looked up at Effie expectantly.
"Well, I…um…what sort of things?" she stammered. Now that she thought about it, this sort of thing was supposed to happen all the time to girls lost in the woods. Fairies in need of assistance were known for granting wishes.
"Not things, dearie, thing. My powers aren't what they used to be. Just one wish is all I can manage, and nothing too big at that. I still need to get home, you know."
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of keeping you," Effie said while her mind raced. What should she ask for? Money? Jewels? A team of horses? A good husband? Her mother would like that one.
"When I was little, I used to wish I was a princess. It was pretty simple then," she sighed out loud.
"What's that, dear? A princess? Oh, I haven't heard a wish like that in ages. Nowadays everyone wants money, or a new axe or plow or something. You used to get wishes for speaking diamonds, or living tapestries, but now…I wonder if I'm still up to it? You'd make a wonderful princess." And before Effie could protest that that wasn't what she'd said at all, the old woman was waving her cane and muttering.
A cloud of sparks enveloped Effie, settling on her clothes, and with a sudden Poof! her dress felt a lot heavier. So did her hands, and her head. In fact, she had to grab hold of a nearby branch to keep from falling over.
"Oh, you look lovely, dear," the old woman said, nodding her head in approval as Effie regained her balance. "I'm sorry I can't do more. In my younger days there'd be a carriage and white horses to go with it, but you do look the part, at least."
Effie looked down at her dress. The cloth was pure white with diamonds and pearls set in the middle of intricate embroidery in light blue. The sleeves and collar had lace at the cuffs and tapered to a point over each hand. Raising a hand to her head, she found a crown set similarly with diamonds, and a pearl necklace around her throat.
"Um…" she started, looking up, but the woods were empty as the village square at midnight. The old woman was nowhere to be found. "Hello? This isn't what I wanted," Effie called. No one answered, except a bird, far off in the forest, calling goodnight.
Effie stood there, alone in the middle of the woods in a dress made of pearls and lace, and shoes with soles of thin silk, and wondered why she hadn't managed to wish for a path back home.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, stamping her foot. "Why are fairy tales so stupid!"
Suddenly a stick cracked behind her and she jumped, spinning. Unfortunately her skirts did not spin with her, and she tripped over the folds and fell heavily to the ground. Looking around, she saw nothing to cause her fright.
"Calm down," she told herself, talking out loud as if to prove a point. "There's no one here."
Struggling to her feet, she finally managed to gather the skirts in a way that allowed for movement and headed in what she hoped was the direction of home. After a few minutes she decided that wasn't the way at all and turned around. Then she set off to her left. Then her right. After several hours it was getting dark, and she had to concede that she was irreversibly lost.
Her feet hurt from walking in pathetically inadequate shoes, and her arms hurt from holding up the heavy skirts. She tried to walk with them on the ground but she tripped every three steps and scraped her hands painfully on what seemed like every rock, tree and log in the forest getting to her feet again.
"A real princess wouldn't be walking through the forest at night," she announced to the woods. "Why couldn't that old woman have been just a little less deaf? Or, failing that, a little more powerful and given me one horse, at least?" The trees remained silent. After a minute's thought, Effie decided she was glad they didn't talk back.