The Fairy Godmother: Part One (special preview)

The Blessed Silver School for Boys had been a fading relic when I came to it. I had studied there as a boy, sent into its halls by my father. I was unsure why he did such a thing, as our family wasn’t affluent nor were we known for having any sort of education. It made me angry to be sent away, I just wanted to be with my family. But every time I went home, I began to realize it was not the place I wanted to be.

My mother was controlling and possessive, but in these small, soft ways that I never would have seen had I stayed home. It became apparent to me my father sent me away for my own good and well being. He could not escape, but I could. I could learn the ways in which my mother was twisting things to suit the story of her life.

One too many times I had caught wise to her games. The way she played the victim and the way she cried, once it stopped working on me, I saw who she truly was. Vicious and spitting bones, she lashed out at me, blaming me for things I had nothing to do with. I was not a bastion for her happiness or unhappiness, that was all her doing. She had wound up people before, my father, her lover, and I was not to be part of it. 

I returned to the Blessed Silver School for Boys and never left. Upon graduating, I changed my name to avoid my parents. I insisted I go by the last name, Zelazny, or by the nickname Fable. I do not want to risk anything, I do not want to return home. I will never go back to that place. 

I took up a job at the school, teaching, something I was good at but rarely enjoyed. It was a means to an end. I took no joy in seeing the students nor in furthering their education. They were forced to be here and I forced myself to stay, that was about all we had in common.

The years went by and I became headmaster of the school. At this point, the school was on the verge of decay. There were very few students who attended, and teachers were leaving for better places. Since there were so few students, the funding was drying up rapidly. There were threats of shutting the school down, but I feared if I left Blessed Silver or the town of Silverlake itself, my mother would find me. 

In a last ditch effort, I sunk every penny I had into buying the school for myself. I renovated it and turned it into a boarding house for young women. My original intent had been to provide housing for young women going to school or traveling, a safe haven of sorts. But it all took a strange turn, and my boarding house became known for something else.

Young women came into the boarding house, rarely staying more than nine months at a time. Their families sent them to allow them to ‘recuperate’ and to be educated into being fine young women. Somewhere along the way, these poor girls had fallen victim to their own needs, or to the needs of others. They came to me pregnant, then left me as fine, upstanding girls again. 

I provided the best care for these women and the eventual births of the babies. The girls were made to take classes in order to reform. Those who had been greatly affected by their condition received special treatment in the attic.

The fate of the babies born was often left a mystery to the ones who bore them. There would be instances where the family would ‘adopt’ the child to raise. The more likely circumstance was that the family paid extra for us to take care of the child. Usually, the baby had a place to go once it was born. Other needy families would bid for the upcoming child, taking it and raising it as their own. There were the sad, few occasions where the new life had nowhere to go after birth. But they are too few to mention.

The halls sound haunted these days with the wails and moans of the girls within them. In sadness and in pain, they are like spirits here. The souls of the mistreated and forgotten, they wander around as if lost. Trapped between worlds, they linger until they can leave, neither alive nor dead in the eyes of the family who sent them here.

The Blessed Silver Boarding House for Girls is never empty, our rooms are always full, our hearths are always warm, but the curtains are never open. I like it that way, even if it feels sometimes like the place is haunted. I don’t like feeling alone here.

When I am alone it is when I am truly bedeviled. I keep the doors locked, hoping to keep some sense of sanity and safety in my mind. For years, when I was a child, I would watch the open door at the foot of my bed, fearing my mother would appear there. If she was not happy, then no one could be happy. If she felt that no one loved her, then she made us pay. It was why my father sent me away. 

It was on nights where I was alone she came to me. She would come from open doorways, the cracks in the wardrobes. I had no clue if she was alive or dead, if this was a specter of my own imagination. She would crawl out and hunch over me, breathing softly with the scent of pine upon her. Her hands would reach out and stroke me before those long, bony fingers slipped around my throat. I stopped staying at home and instead began to live in the school.

I was penniless when I first reopened the doors, so I rented out my home for extra funds. The money came in slow at first, but over the years, I grew a reputation and, soon enough, I could name my price for anything. It was a shock to see how willing people were to hide their wretched daughters until they gave birth. Even more surprising was the lengths people would go to just to have children. Within the same walls, babies were wretched and blessed all in the same breath. Conceived the supposed right way, they are miracles, conceived in the allegedly wrong way and they are sins. 

I had first seen this with my mother, and I had convinced myself that she was a rare case. But the more I saw here at the boarding house, the more I was aware that she was just one of the many. Locked doors were fine as they were locked, but god forbid you ever open them.