Geek Fantasy Novel (29 page)

C. of CHESHIRE:
How to say it … they had a much more secure place in my family. Mary was my mother’s handmaid, practical-minded, an adult from the time she was a child. Gert was the beauty, an imperial firstborn. I was somewhere in the middle, and … let’s say I spent a lot of time away from the house, out with friends. The summer when our parents decided it was time to grant us all wishes I had been especially poorly behaved. I was running around with a soldier’s son, and my parents hated him. They were sure — and they were right — that if I got a wish, I would wish to marry him. So they simply didn’t grant me any wish at all. You have to understand the time period — wishes were THE THING, and not getting one … ooh! I’ve always felt that I’m missing that … invisible badge, and I’ve never been a real part of the royal circles since. So it’s become a sort of fixation for me, as you can understand. I think everyone who is eligible should get a wish. It’s our birthright.

CHEVALLY:
Do you recall what your sisters wished for?

C. of CHESHIRE:
Oh dear. Let’s see. Gert wished to be the belle of the ball, something like that. She’s like a grown-up version of her daughter Daphne. She’s what children like that become.

GERTRUDE BATTERSBY:
I wished to be loved. That’s all. And for the record I officially don’t appreciate the tone my sister just took.

CHEVALLY:
And Mary?

C. of CHESHIRE:
I … bloody hell, I honestly don’t remember.

MARY
:
I wished for peace. I thought it would be some bigger peace, like an end to a war somewhere, but my quest ended up showing me how to be satisfied with boredom. It’s not the most dramatic thing. My own sister can’t even remember what I wished for. But I’m very content.

CHEVALLY:
So we can assume that your own lack of a wish led you to want to give one to Daphne, Cecil, and Beatrice?

C. of CHESHIRE:
Yes, that’s exactly it.

SUMPERSON:
I hate to play the cynic, but it’s hard to overlook the fact that Chessie had a more selfish reason, as well.

CHEVALLY:
Do continue.

SUMPERSON:
Well, we can’t forget the Kelling Provision in Article 4.

CHEVALLY:
Would you be so good as to reeducate the Board?

SUMPERSON:
We haven’t had an occasion to use it for years, so the Board’s ignorance is excusable. But it states that a royal who grows to adulthood without having been granted a wish can still have that wish granted, if and only if she grants three wishes to her family members. It was originally devised as an emergency stopgap measure to provide a rapid resurgence in guild usage, were the ritual of wish-granting ever to decline to dangerously low levels.

CHEVALLY:
So you’re implying that Chessie granted wishes to the Battersby children in order to have a wish of her own granted?

SUMPERSON:
Yes. And to receive her royalties once the wish was transcribed into story and sold.

CHEVALLY:
Please respond, Duchess.

C. of CHESHIRE:
I didn’t do it for the money.

MARY
:
Let me bring her a tissue, please.

C. of CHESHIRE:
Thank you. [Blows nose] I make plenty of money already, thank you. But yes, I did it for the wish. I wanted my own wish granted.

MARY
:
Before we go any further, I’d like to declare that I think any motivation, even the most self-interested, is acceptable if it means a wish gets granted.

RALPH
:
What? Since when?

MARY
:
Since I saw the new Ralph.

CHEVALLY:
We have noted your opinion, Mary, but the Board cannot overlook the rule that self-serving wish-granting is forbidden.

C. of CHESHIRE:
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

MARY
:
It’s okay, Chessie. Personally I think all wish-granting is self-serving. That’s just the way it is; it doesn’t make it any less important.

SUMPERSON:
Enough! What transpired here has been a debacle, the most poorly executed series of wishes in centuries. Commenced with no prep time, handled by a narrator who hadn’t the experience necessary to enact them. Need I list the grievances? There was a Choose Your Own Adventure section. Mentions of “poo.” An evident libidinal attraction by the narrator for at least one of the Misses Battersby, possibly both. And need I add that Maurice took one of our guild’s most revered tales, my own
Snow Queen,
and cut out the first three-quarters? I had to override him and insert a special storytelling bear to keep Ralph on course. The offenses are innumerable — there is no debating that his immediate disbarment is the only possible resolution.

CHEVALLY:
No one here doubts that this has been a grave embarrassment for the Guild.

C. of CHESHIRE:
Might I try to explain myself further?

CHEVALLY:
That sounds like a smashing idea.

C. of CHESHIRE:
I want to set this straight: My wish wasn’t that selfish at all. I granted the Battersby wishes in order to get my son back. I hereby wish for my son to return to me.

MARY
:
(quickly) And I grant your wish.

RALPH
:
Mom!

SUMPERSON:
What? A wish-granting within a Board meeting? This is preposterous. I demand we adjourn immediately. And none of this sentimental rubbish she’s trotting out alters the fact that the Duchess of Cheshire, who has proven a craven businesswoman, stands to make thousands of pounds sterling off the sales of these wish stories.

MARY
: Sir, I was granting my sister’s wish only symbolically. It’s a redundant wish, for she’s already had her son returned.