Once Upon a Time - Part One

Chapter One: Once Upon a Time 
- Part One

Waiting for her ever-tardy Aunt Mab, Pix stood, impatient and bored, between some stiff-necked duchess in mid-snit and her fat duke of a husband, wishing she were as good at tuning out the shrill royal as he was. Just because the invisibility spell she cast made those fat, dumb royals not see her didn’t mean she was spared listening to them drone on and on about their dumb, fat, royal lives.

It was a stupid party, the child fairy thought. Brightly colored, clownishly decorated banners streamed ridiculous down gleaming walls. There were tables and tables full of food too perfect and pretty to actually eat. All dainty, golden, buttery pastries and tiny, colorful, elaborately decorated hors d'oeuvres. And then there were the throng of over-stuffed royals nibbling and chatting, too stupid to know how to have a real party.

Pix scanned the crowd with a contemptuous eye, wondering what the big deal was. So a princess had been born. Whoop-di-do, the six-year-old pixie thought as her wings fluttered irritatedly.

Her mother had been the undisputed leader of Shadow Mountain for more than a decade before she died—which made Pix a sort-of princess—but no one had come to bring her gifts when she was born. No, the good villagers of Morning Valley had stormed the castle with torches and pitchforks and burned them all out. Happy froggin’ birthday.

Pix had been just a baby—a newborn with still-shut eyes and barely there wings—and had been far too young to really remember but, even six years later, the smell of smoke made her gag.

But at least she was finally getting their revenge, hers and her mother’s. For then and for everything else those stupid, spoiled royals ever took from her.

How dare they celebrate! How dare they parade about happy as a horde of drink-sodden dwarves. How dare their lives go blissfully on when her mother had been dead these six years past.

Pix twitched her pointy nose as she turned to see the chef bring out a huge birthday cake—all frosting-coated and sugared-up with candied flowers and piped curls and fringe. Pix bet it tasted like trash. So sweet it hurt your teeth. And those rotten royals would eat it all up, cooing currents of saccharine breath at the tiny, baby, princess brat.

Pix stomped her bare foot on the sun-warmed marble floor. It wasn’t fair. That small, insignificant, weak bundle of useless flesh got a cake and a party and a small mountain of gifts. That child was being born into a world of wealth, comfort, and ease while Pix had been born into the smoking, flame-scorched remains of a motherless home.

Pix felt weak wetness glaze her dry, burning eyes. Unblinking, she stomped again—forcing the heat of her anger to sear away her grief as glittery, black fairy dust fell to the floor, leaving scorch marks in its wake.

Her gaze flicked down to the ruined tile. Narrowing her eyes at the black, sooty spots, a sly smile spread across her face as the chubby duke jumped at a spark of dust that drifted invisibly onto his boot, singeing through the leather and making him yelp.

Amused, Pix sprinkled fairy dust over the man’s head, her mirth making the ash cool and crystallize. She giggled as he twitched and itched while the sparkly specks ran ragged and sharp down the collar of his puffed-up suit.

She laughed as he scratched violently, stumbling backward into the chef behind him and sending the gaudy cake flying straight at his sniping wife. The harping duchess screeched as frosting dripped and slid down her face and onto her dress. Pix laughed at the woman’s horrified face as she picked bits of cake from her coiffed hair while the pudgy chef knelt teary-eyed and shaking at her pastry-wrecked feet.

Pix giggled with glee as she sidestepped the still faltering duke, prancing excitedly about him—even poking and prodding him sometimes, making him squeal and shriek as he bounded this way and that into the crowd of tittering royals gathering around them, mock dismay trying to cover delicious laughter.

Pix, so entertained and distracted by her new toy, yelped as she bumped into something.

Shocked, she whirled around, braced for battle with her hand already summoning her wand. Pulling it from the air like a dagger from its sheath, the stony-eyed six-year-old was surprised to find herself face to face with a lanky, freckled, brown-haired boy around her own age.

He raised himself on his toes and peeked over her shoulder. “What’s going on?”

Pix glanced behind her, but no one was looking at them—all their beady royal eyes were locked on the still bumbling duke and his now shock-silent, frosting-caked wife and the broken down, crying cook.

Pix turned back to the boy before waving her wand with dismissive confidence. “You’re not talking to me.”

“What?” he asked on a baffled laugh. He lifted himself up higher on the scuffed tips of slightly saggy boots. “Did you see? What happened with the cake?”

Pix flinched at the boy’s unwavering gaze.

He was staring at her. Straight at her. What was he doing looking at her?

She shook her head. Surely, he wasn’t actually looking at her. He was simply looking at something around her. That was it. Testing, she tilted one way and then the other, the boy’s gaze following her even as his eyebrows bunched in confusion. “What are you doing?” A snickering confusion colored his voice.

“You can see me,” she spat accusingly at him, her hands furiously fisted at her sides.

“Well, yeah.” He chuckled. At her! Spoiled, little royal, how dare he laugh at her. Behind an annoying grin Pix ached to smack off his face, he asked, “Who are you? You’re one of the fairies, aren’t you?”

She shot him a reproachful look. He had to ask? She had wings, didn’t she? She twitched them indignantly as small sparks sizzled to the floor. Idiot boy.

“Go away,” Pix huffed, sticking her tongue out at him. Shoving her wand into the tight bun atop her head, she turned away from him and began to stalk away.

“Well,” he said, following after her as he stuck out his hand with a shrug, “I’m Phillip.”

“I know who you are, princeling” she snidely remarked with a swish of her tattered skirts. Prince Phillip, proud King Carson’s son and heir to Starling Forest’s castle and keep. A nosy neighbor royal and the princess brat’s future husband. “Stop following me,” she ordered, throwing an annoyed glare over her shoulder, “you’re not supposed to see me.”

“Oh yeah?” he said with an arched eyebrow as he jogged a bit to keep up with her. “Why not?”

“Cause I’m invisible,” she retorted, her face pinching as the light that filtered in from the high castle windows flickered over her pointed face, blinding her a bit.

“Invisible, huh?” He cocked his head and squinted, smiling as shining brown eyes gazed at her bemusedly. “Then how come I can see you?”

“Well, I was invisible,” she insisted, turning on him suddenly, making him stop in his tracks. “Before.” Her face scrunched with displeasure. She pouted and shrugged. “You distracted me.”

“Uh-huh.” Phillip rolled his indulgent eyes before he shook his head, dismissing her annoyance.

He thought her a liar!

She would teach him to know better, simpering princeling.

“Too bad about the cake, huh?” he said with a sigh before turning back to her expectantly. “You wanna see if they’ve got another one in the kitchen? You know, get to it before it gets spilled on the floor too?”

“No,” she spat at him. “I gotta find someone.”

“Yeah, who?”

“None of your fencin’ business,” the small, snippish girl snapped, echoing something she'd heard one of the castle goblins yell at Brigg, the captain of the troll soldiers. “Go stick your saber in someone else’s backside because you’re becoming a pain in mine.”

The prince's eyes widened as he balked, half-shocked, half-smiling at the daring, dirty language as he looked around at the crowds of adults as if waiting for a reprimand. In a shocked hiss, he sputtered, “You can’t talk like that.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Pix insisted with an impudent shake of her head. “And I want to go find the princess.”

“Why?” he asked with a shrug. “She’s probably in her room.”

“Oh yeah?” Pix said slyly, imagining how long it would take for her and her aunt to search every room in the castle and how convenient it was that the ever-helpful hero had volunteered to lead her. She smiled, stalling a bit to let the boy catch up to her. “Show me.”

“What?” Phillip said with a bored snort. “Why?”

“Cause I got a present for her,” Pix purred sweetly.

Maybe too sweetly as the little royal eyed her suspiciously. “They’ve got a table for all the presents,” Phillip pointed out as he gestured toward the peaked pile of gifts now hopelessly burying the said table.

“Nuh-uh,” Pix countered, “can’t put it on the table. It’s special.”

“Magic?” Phillip asked, his eyes wide with wonder.

Pix smiled, having found the boy’s weakness. He was curious about magic. For all his lofty connections and rich coffers, the boy was still mortal. Still just a puny human.

Fluttering her wings for show, causing the glittering dust that clung to them to shake off in shimmering wisps, she smiled. “Uh-huh, magic. Wanna see?”

READ PART TWO HERE