Cinders looked down and realised she was still shaking the woman’s hand.
‘Where I’m from, Brian is generally considered a man’s name,’ she said as politely as possible, letting go of Brian’s hand.
‘Says who?’ Brian replied. ‘It’s a perfectly good name. Why on earth would you stop half the people on the planet using it?’
‘Beats me,’ Cinders said. ‘That’s just how it is.’
Brian shook her head in disagreement. ‘You make no sense, you people. Doesn’t really matter, does it? I do love the way it rolls off the tongue.’
To be fair, Cinders couldn’t really argue with her.
‘Anyway, I’m not sure you’d be able to pronounce my real name,’ Brian went on. ‘So let’s stick with Brian for now. I’m guessing you’ve got some questions.’
‘One or two.’ Cinders nodded. ‘Mostly about the whole magic thing. And the godmother thing. And the talking dog. And the wings.’
‘The last one is easy. I need the wings to fly,’ Brian replied, speaking very clearly, as if Cinders might not understand. ‘And I’m your godmother because your mother chose me to be your godmother. That’s usually how that works. As for the magic, I don’t know why it’s decided to show itself today, but, if you want to tell me what you’ve been up to, that might give me a clue.’
‘You knew my mother!’ Cinders’s eyes opened wide. ‘Oh my goodness, please can you tell me about her?’ Whenever she asked her father about her mother, he went all quiet and got a faraway look in his eyes.
‘I can.’ Brian nodded. ‘But shouldn’t we get your dog back on the ground first?’
‘I suppose we should,’ Cinders agreed. ‘I don’t know what happened. One minute he was just an ordinary dog and the next he started talking. Then I wished things would stop for a moment and everything froze.’
‘Ah, there you have it,’ Brian said with a wise smile. ‘You made a wish. Wishes are very powerful, you know.’
‘I wished for the sausages as well,’ Cinders said slowly. ‘And I wished that the dishes would do themselves. Are you telling me I can grant my own wishes?’
‘Who else do you expect to grant them?’ Brian asked. ‘I might be a fairy, but I’ve got far better things to do with my day than produce a plate of sausages out of thin air every time someone clicks their fingers. Although, that said, these are very tasty sausages.’
‘You’re a fairy?’ Cinders asked, saucer-eyed.
Brian fluttered her wings. ‘These things didn’t give it away? You know, your mum was a lot cleverer than you.’
‘And you really knew my mother?’
‘You could say that,’ Brian replied, turning a somersault in mid-air. ‘You look a lot like her, you know.’
Other than her father, Cinders had never, ever met anyone who had known her mother, and every time she asked her father to tell her a story about their life together he looked so sad she couldn’t stand it. Brian was the first person she’d ever met who had so much as heard of her mother, and she was real-life, flying fairy.
Cinders really needed a little sit-down.
‘I’ve never met a fairy before,’ she said slowly. ‘I didn’t think they were real. I mean, I know there are elves and I met an exceptionally disagreeable troll who lives under the bridge once upon a time, but I thought fairies were … well. From fairy tales.’
Brian looked slightly concerned. ‘I think I’m real,’ she replied. ‘At least I’d better be. I’ve left the oven on at home and there’ll be hell to pay if I accidentally burn the house down.’
Brian, Cinders decided, was definitely real.
‘Any more questions?’ her fairy godmother asked. ‘I haven’t got all day, you know.’
‘How do we get him back on the ground?’ Cinders asked, turning her attention to Sparks. Her stepmother had been furious when she shrank her favourite jumper in the wash, and she would not be happy if Cinders left the dog hanging around in mid-air.
‘Wishes are tricky things,’ Brian said. ‘Sometimes they stick; sometimes they don’t. Depends how much you mean it when you make the wish. Your magic definitely isn’t all there yet, so, if you can wait until midnight, the spell should undo itself. Magic always runs out at midnight.’
‘I think we should try to get him down before then,’ Cinders said, patting his big red head. ‘This is literally the worst day for him to start talking. I’m never going to hear the end of it.’
‘As your magic grows, you’ll have more control over it,’ Brian promised, helping herself to more sausages. ‘But while you’re learning you’ll have to speak your wishes out loud. And they must be very, very specific wishes, otherwise, well, I don’t need to tell you what could happen.’ Brian waved her hand at the frozen bluebirds and the flying dog.
‘All I have to do is make a wish?’ Cinders asked.
Brian the fairy gave a nod.
‘I wish things would go back to normal,’ Cinders said.
Her fingertips started to sparkle then glow and, in the blink of an eye, the birds began singing, the butterflies flapped away into the sky and Sparks dived face first into the now-empty plate of sausages.
‘All right, someone’s got some explaining to do,’ he grunted, rubbing his snout with a paw. ‘Who is this? What’s going on?’
‘I think the first thing you need to do is have a chat with those two,’ Brian said, pointing across the clearing to where Aggy and Elly were staring, slack-jawed, at Cinders, Sparks and her fairy godmother.
‘Oh, good grief.’ Cinders clapped a hand across her forehead as Elly grabbed her sister’s hand and legged it back through the forest. ‘I’d better try to explain before they tell my stepmother what they saw. Will you wait here, um, Brian?’
‘No,’ said Brian with a big, cheery smile. ‘But I will see you later. Now get back home before the messenger leaves.’
With that, she vanished.
‘Messenger?’ Cinders said to Sparks. ‘What is she talking about?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ Sparks replied, ‘but can you please explain one thing?’
‘I can try.’ Cinders sighed. ‘It’s all a bit complicated, isn’t it? What with the magic, the fairy godmother and you talking all of a sudden.’
‘Who cares about any of that?’ Sparks gestured at the empty plate. ‘What on earth happened to all my sausages?’
At the exact same time as Cinders and Sparks arrived back at the cottage, a short man on a tall horse galloped away, tooting on a horn as he went.
‘That must be the messenger Brian was talking about,’ said Sparks. ‘Did you see the royal crest on his cloak?’
‘That’s