Wishes by Molly Cochran

baffled.
    Artie looked up too. “Her name?” she asked. “The queen’s name?”
    But the queen was the most shocked of all. “What . . . what . . .” Then she moaned, a low, keening sound, as her hair turned from gold to gray, and her gown from gossamer to rags.
    At that moment, the guards all collapsed to the ground, an army of fallen dolls. The chandeliers vanished. The beautiful furnishings disappeared. The golden walls changed into the damp limestone rock of a cave. Only the scattered bones of the dead remained.
    “How do you know me?” the queen rasped hoarsely. “How dare you speak . . .” Her hands trembled. Her loose skin paled.
    “She’s losing her power,” Artie said in wonder. She breathed deeply and stood up. “And I’m gaining mine.”
    I felt as if a weight were being lifted off my chest. “Me too,” I said.
    I cast a glance at Peter. He was still lying where he fell, the pool of blood around him growing larger. It was killing me to leave him then, but I had to. I had to deal with the queen while I could.
    Standing up, I summoned the bones that littered the floor to circle around the queen.
    “No!” she shrieked. She picked up her wand in her clawlike hand. “I’ll kill you!”
    “I don’t think so,” Artie said as she shifted easily into a Bengal tiger. With one delicate bite, she snapped the wand in two and then growled into the queen’s face while I finished constructing the cage.
    When it was done, the beautiful horror that was the Queen of the Fairies was no more than an ancient hag hanging helplessly on to the bones of the innocents she’d killed.
    “Help me,” she begged. “Please.”
    Artie morphed back into herself. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, but I held up my hand to speak.
    “We’ll free you,” I said. “You have my word. But you’ll have to give us what we want.”
    Suddenly her pathetic, ruined face brightened. “Another wish?” she asked sweetly. “Of course, dear. Whatever you’d like.”
    Artie and I only looked at each other. “We’re done with that,” I said. “Take back your wishes. I don’t want any more.”
    The queen looked crestfallen.
    “Take them back!”
    “Done,” she said.
    “And release Artie.”
    “But I have,” she said in a wheedling voice. “Don’t you see? I’ve given her power back to her.”
    “Liar,” I said. “Artie got her power back all by herself, because you couldn’t really take it from her. You could only weaken it while she was here with you. The rest of the time, she only believed she was powerless, so she didn’t try.”
    “So there you have it,” the queen said. “No harm done, then.”
    “Plenty of harm,” Artie said. “Get out of my head, and don’t come back.”
    “Oh, that’s just your imag—”
    “Do it!”
    The queen took a deep breath. “Done,” she said.
    Artie looked around the room. “I feel it,” she said softly. “She’s gone.”
    “Yes, wonderful,” the queen said dispiritedly. “That’s all lovely. Now let me go.”
    “One more thing,” I said. “Heal Peter.”
    We all looked at him, lying motionless in his own blood.
    “I can’t do that,” the queen said softly.
    “What? Why not?”
    “I wish I could, whether you believe me or not. But I can’t. The wound is physical. And from the looks of it, mortal.”
    “Mortal?” I whispered. “You mean he’ll . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word.
    “There’s nothing more I can do,” the queen said. “But I’ve granted your other demands. And you’ve given your word.”
    She pulled herself to her full height, restoring some of her dignity. “I won’t stop you from leaving,” she said. “You have my word.”
    We looked at one another for a moment. Both of us had lost what was most important to us. In that way, we weren’t so different. “Okay,” I said.
    Artie and I linked arms to make a kind of cradle for Peter, and we carried him between us. At the entrance to what had