Page 10 of Run, Run Rudolph
And she was mine. All mine.
“I remember.” I caught a small, impatient eye roll.
I’d also won an award for most wishes granted, thanks to Char.
Last quarter was rather dire, though, and this one wasn’t shaping up well, either. We trainees only received a certain number of clients each year, and two of mine—Char and Tamara—hadn’t made a single, chargeable wish. I was falling behind.
“I also recall the mix-ups, broken rules, and errors.” The head fairy was clearly tired, ready to go home, but she had a duty to listen to all of us lower ranked trainees at the end of each day. Provide guidance, remind us of the rules, keep us in line, and guide us so we could pass our next levels and basically become like her.
Right down to the barf-a-rific pink dresses I refused to wear.
Still, I think the head fairy liked me. And not just because we were related. She’d been in this job for a few hundred years and seen everything. And again, not to brag, but I continued to surprise her. And that wasn’t solely due to my accidental rule-bending and breaking.
My fairy godmother trainee colleagues all knew the rules by heart as their families had put them into fairy godmother-specific private schools from an early age, preparing them for today.
Unlike my family. I was truly a trainee, learning everything for the first time, and our jobs were beyond complex.
But, it turned out, I was good at finding loopholes and bending rules. Probably because my fellow trainees were already so well-trained on how to behave, there wasn’t much leeway for them to surprise our head fairy.
I took the wins wherever I could get them.
Especially since sometimes I could see a little spark of pride in Gram-Gram’s eyes when I did something unexpected. Oh, how I lived for those sparks.
“I will bring magic and goodness to their lives!” I told Gram-Gram.
“Have either of them made a wish?”
“Well, no.” So, technically, I couldn’t jump in and fix things for Tamara. But I could grease the wheels over here in the world of magic. Then Tamara would see that I wasn’t as scary as she believed, and she’d start making wishes for me to grant.
“Then why the optimism and excitement?” the head fairy asked.
“I was asked for a favour.”
“We don’t grant favours. We grant wishes.”
“Yes, I know.” You got paid for wishes. Not favours, or anything else for that matter, and there was a cost to running the offices of Your Fairy Godmother. “I need access to the regional communication system.”
“RCS?” The head fairy leaned forward, eyes narrowing. She was pretty in her pale pink dress with the sparkles and matching hair clips. I’d been told by Trish that tomorrow the head fairy would celebrate Christmas Eve by wearing red and green. Red was my favourite colour, and I couldn’t wait to see someone else in the agency wearing something other than pink. Baby pink, flamingo pink, bubblegum pink, cherry blossom pink… The list of yack-inducing shades went on and on.
I was surrounded by so much pink I swear my estrogen shot through the roof every time I walked into the bullpen of fairy cubicles. I was the only one who refused to wear pink. I was also the only one wearing stilettos and black leather pants. And the only one with dyed red hair.
Was the whole wearing-red thing for Christmas simply Trish trying to pull my leg again? She knew I didn’t understand the fairy world as well as everyone else. I might come from a very long line of fairy godmothers, but some of this stuff just wasn’t in my blood. And some of it—like the wardrobe—I didn’t want in my blood.
“Why?” the head fairy asked.
“Sorry what?” I was still trying to picture Gram-Gram in something other than pink.
“Why do you need access to the regional communication system?”
“To call the North Pole. To speak with Santa Claus.”
“And why is that?” Gram-Gram was instantly suspicious. Obviously she’d heard about the solstice party, and the ensuing, lengthy fight between Santa and Mrs. Claus, thanks to me and my social blunder.
But it was an easy mistake to make. Santa hadn’t been in his red suit, and Trish had told me he’d been eyeing me all night, and that he was a high wizard. Feeling brave, I’d gone over, and we’d flirted over appies for almost an hour.
How was I supposed to know he was Santa? Wizards might also let out a ‘ho, ho, ho’ when they laughed. Trish sure had been pleased with herself once I was in Mrs. Claus’s line of sight. I shuddered at the threats Santa’s wife had made against me.
“I’m following the client rules,” I said, thinking on my feet. “Keep the client safe, happy, making wishes, and improve their lives.”
