The Cinderella Theorem (22 page)

“Oh!”
I realized suddenly that I
did
know who it was.

Calo.
It had to be Calo. It made mathematical sense. He had been adopted into
Puss-in-Boots
,
but since his adoption occurred before the written part of the story began, it
didn’t matter. As far as the story was concerned, he was always the second son.

The
evidence of Celdan’s son’s death was circumstantial at best and completely
illogical. The queen didn’t return to the hillside for a week. The miller (or
his wife) could have found Calo and brought him home. The bloody clothes and
entrails found a week later could have been from something else or put there as
a decoy.

I
stopped myself. That’s an awful lot of work for a miller (or his wife) to do. Plus
didn’t the miller’s journal indicate they found Calo on the doorstep? And how
would they know to leave a death scene? It took sneaky spying to know what the
queen intended when she dumped her grandson out there on the hill. And it
required a fair amount of evilness also, to let Celdan and Colin think their
baby was dead. The queen wasn’t an option; she herself believed animals had
eaten him. Only one other person satisfied that equation of spying and evilness.

Levi.

I
bet there were grease stains on those bloody clothes. And hadn’t Levi told me
he was Celdan’s Dark Mesa? That he’s been working Celdan’s case for a very long
time? Not only did he make everyone vanish, he created the depressing end to her
fairy tale.

I
sighed. Great. Now Levi’s plan was completed. Tandem Tallis would be pleased to
have a fully vanished story languishing in his dungeons. Of course, I was
probably the only one who knew that Calo really belonged to Celdan’s story.
Everyone else thought the story completely vanished hundreds of years ago.

I
sat on my bed to think. So many equations were balancing now. Calo was always
Less than Happy, because his levels were affected by the fact his other story
had vanished. No wonder he was grumpy all the time.

But Levi’s
timing bugged me. He could have pushed Calo over
anytime
. He obviously
knew who Calo really was. Why not get him when he vanished the rest of the
story? Why now?

~~~

Macon
Mind was waiting when I arrived. “Good morning, Princess.” He bowed. “I have
been asked to give you this.” He handed me a note. “I have several pressing matters
to attend to, so if you have no further need of me…” Macon dangled his
sentence, waiting for me to dismiss him.

“I’m
good. Thanks, Macon.”

Macon
bowed again and started to walk away.

“Wait
a minute, Macon.” I called, hurrying after him. “I’ve thought of something.”

“Of
course, Princess. How may I serve you?”

“Could
you,” I stopped, hoping he would say yes. “Could you keep my being here a
secret? I don’t want my parents to know.”

An
odd expression crossed Macon’s face. “Are you in danger, Princess? Is there not
some other way I could assist you?”

I
considered telling him. I considered saying, “Yeah, Macon, I’m on a mission to
save the people I vanished.” But instead, I said, “I just don’t want them to
know I’m here. I have to take care of something.”

“And
they want you to stay in the other world?” Macon’s tone was even kinder than
before.

I
nodded.

“I
will not openly lie to my king and queen, Princess, but,” he paused, “I will
not volunteer the information, either.”

“Thank
you, Macon.”

He
bowed and left.

I
opened the note, which turned out to be another short and cryptic message from Doug.
[51]

Don’t
come to the Observatory. I’ll meet you in your cubicle.

I
ran upstairs to put my bag down, then I ran back downstairs, hopped on my bike
and headed for HEA. I didn’t leave my marble in the bowl for a very good
reason; I didn’t want my parents to figure out I was here. I would just have to
be extra-careful not to lose the marble. I certainly did not want to spend the
rest of my life in Smythe’s SFL. I had brought Ella’s file with me, just in
case I needed it. I planned to tell Doug everything, right down to my need to
make Ella normal.

But
my plan failed from the beginning. As I pedaled toward HEA, I saw my parents get
off their own bikes and enter the building. Not only that, but two guards were
now guarding the entrance. Security must be heightened due to the vanishings.

I
needed to recalculate my equation. I’m technically skipping school and while I
think I could legitimately argue why I need to be here, I don’t want to. It has
been my experience that when parents are already under stress (from an illness,
problem at work, or a vanishing rampage in their kingdom) that being
disobedient (by missing curfew, failing to complete chores, or skipping school
to save vanished friends) only increases their stress, which increases the
potential punishment. Since my ability to help Doug all depended on my ability
to (a) get to him and (b) not be sent to my room or home by my parents, I was
stuck. I hopped off my bike and headed into the woods, far enough off the path so
I wouldn’t be seen.

I
sat on a large rock and thought. There had to be a mathematical solution. There
had to be some way I could get into HEA without being seen. I exhausted the
mathematical solutions first. No back or side doors. Only the main door.
[52]
And while some of the offices had windows, our cubicle didn’t.

I
sighed and said, unmathematically, “I wish I was invisible.”

“Now,
you’re talking.” Glenni hovered above me, plaid sparks dripping from her wand.
“I do wish you’d wish more,” she said, floating down to my level. “But fairy
godmothers don’t get to have wishes. We only get to give them.”

“Why?”

“Well,
it would be silly for a fairy godmother to have a fairy godmother. It doesn’t
make sense.”

I
nodded, careful to avoid pointing out that a fairy godmother doesn’t make much
sense in the first place. How are you supposed to learn to solve problems for
yourself if you’ve got someone popping out of thin air every time you make a
wish? How do you keep from being spoiled?

“So
you want to be invisible?” Glenni was bobbing up and down slightly.

“Yes,
I need to get into HEA without being seen.” As long as I had wished her here, I
might as well use her. Spoiling or not, there was no other way into HEA. It
would have to be magic.

“Well,
invisibility has its uses, but you want to be careful with it. It can end badly
if you do it wrong.” She floated slowly in a circle, thinking. “Hmm. Yes, that
would be the best.” She stopped her circular motion in front of me. “Do you happen
to have your key?”

“Which
key?” I asked. “I left my house keys at home.”

“Not
those
keys.” She shook her head slightly. “Your key. Your key to the
kingdom.”

“Oh,”
I said, understanding. “You mean my marble.”

“Yes,
yes, your marble.”

I
pulled it out of my pocket and held it in my palm, offering it to Glenni. She
pointed her magic wand at it, and said, “Float.” The marble rose into the air.

I
stared at Glenni. I wasn’t shocked by the magic so much; I’d gotten somewhat
used to that, but I couldn’t believe there were no magic words.
Float
described what was happening, sure, but wasn’t magic supposed to be something
else? Shouldn’t Glenni have said “Floatius,” or “Floatia,” or
“Floatabracadabra”?

“Why
in the name of Salt are you staring at me like that?” Glenni didn’t look at me
when she spoke. She was concentrating on the marble hovering slightly above her
head. “It’s quite difficult to perform any sort of magic while being ogled.”

I
shook my head slightly to break the stare. “I’m sorry, Glenni,” I apologized,
“but I thought you’d use magic words.”

Glenni
swiveled around to talk to me. She kept her wand pointed over her shoulder. The
marble still floated. “What are you talking about? What magic words?”

“You
said ‘float.’ I just thought you’d say something else like ‘abracadabra, open
sesame float.’”

“That’s
ridiculous.” Glenni turned back around. “Why would I say all that nonsense?”
She moved the wand up and down slightly. The marble followed–in direct
proportion to her wand movements. “I wanted the marble to float, so I said ‘float.’”

“Okay,
I get it,” I got up and walked around Glenni so I could see her face. “I just
thought magic words had to
sound
magical.”

“Good
grief,” Glenni rolled her eyes. “That’s more of that animated propaganda you
get in your world. Next you’ll be thinking we all break out into song, too.”
Glenni moved her wand from side to side, making the marble move horizontally
also. “Words–magical or otherwise–only have the power you put behind them.”

“What?”

“I
mean,
people
give words their power. A taboo word is only taboo because
someone decided that it was that. A magic word is only magical because I put
magical power behind it. If you don’t give words their power, they don’t mean
anything.”

“So
if I insult you, and you don’t give the words any power, then you aren’t
offended?”

“That’s
the theory anyway.” Glenni had the marble spiraling up and down and all around.
“However, you very rarely meet with anyone who so completely retains their
power. Most of us are all too willing to let the words have all the power.”

I
wasn’t willing to continue this discussion. I didn’t have time to
mathematically determine how much of my power was tied up in words. And I was
uncomfortably sure Glenni was one of those you “rarely meet with” who
absolutely had all her own power.

“What
are you doing?” I asked, to change the subject. Floating marble acrobatics
doesn’t seem to equal becoming invisible.

“I’m
testing your marble’s obedience.”

“It’s
a marble. You can get them at any store.”

“Not
these you can’t.” Glenni made the marble do increasingly faster figure eights.
“These were given to your father at his presentation by Jacomo.”

“So?”
I asked, a little tentatively.

“
So,
Jacomo only makes magical toys. For instance, he created the Robert, the
Steadfast Tin Soldier.”

“So
the marble is magic? Magic how? Like am I only a good marble player because I
play with magic marbles?” Something else struck me. “Have I been cheating?”
Cheating is
very
unmathematical.

Glenni
looked directly at me. The marble looked like a hula-hoop spinning around her.
“You are not a cheater. Only someone who knows the proper spells can use the
magical properties of the marbles. The marbles were only ever regular marbles
for you.”

“What
can they do?” I pointed to the blue whirl. “Can that one turn me invisible?” I
asked, calculating the odds that the marble I had chosen as my key to the
kingdom was
also
the marble that could turn me invisible. Assuming, of
course, only one of the marbles could make me invisible. If all of my father’s
marbles had the capability to render me invisible, then it wouldn’t have been difficult
to choose the right one. That probability was 100%.

Glenni
interrupted my math. “Yes and no. This marble
will
be able to turn you
invisible. But only because it’s a magical marble. Not because it’s a marble
that turns you invisible.”

I
blinked twice. “What does that mean?”

“Jacomo’s
marbles come with the potential to perform whatever task is magically assigned
to them. If you had them adjusted to act as a flying aid, you would fly like a
bird, or you could place one in your flour bin and be assured you would never
run out of flour.” She had my marble slow down. “Before your father left them
for you, he instructed them to appear to be normal everyday marbles.” The
marble floated down into her hand. “But the effect isn’t irreversible.” She
smiled and spoke to the marble. “When rubbed three times to the left, make the
holder invisible. That should do the trick,” she tossed the marble to me. “Give
it a try.”

I
eyed the marble suspiciously. “So you were making sure it was obedient because
as a magical entity, it might not be obedient?”

Glenni
nodded. “Exactly. It’s been fifteen years since any spell’s been cast on them.
They were bound to get a little rebellious in that time.”

“Right,”
I nodded slowly. I took a deep breath and rubbed my rebellious marble three
times to the left.

I
said, “I can still see me,” at the same time that Glenni was saying, “Ah!
Perfect. It worked.”

I
stood staring at her incredulously for four seconds before I realized that if
it
had
worked (like she said) she couldn’t see my look of disbelief.
“What do you mean it worked? I can still see myself.”