“I hereby call this meeting of the powerful women in Lily’s life to order!”
Emma glanced dubiously around the circle of women seated on the grass. She recognized three of them—Crystal, Gemma, and Mrs. Claus—but not the woman who spoke, and judging by the snow witches’ confused expressions, they didn’t recognize her, either.
Mrs. Claus, however, wore a serene smile.
Emma returned her focus to the sixth woman. She had to crane her neck upwards to do so, because the woman was as tall as the ice willow tree that used to stand in Lily’s yard. A gray fog hid her face from view, though Emma somehow knew she was smiling. Her long, slate gray hair seemed to blend into the airy dress draped over her slender figure, and massive smokey wings webbed with a network of black veins rose taller than her head and spread out across the ground to join a gray mist surrounding them.
Even to the wife of a mad scientist, she was unusual. But she seemed oddly familiar to Emma, too.
“Now, I’m sure you have many questions,” she continued. “I don’t want to waste too much time on them, since you’ll all forget this when you wake up, but—”
“Oh, so this is a dream,” Crystal interrupted, her furrowed brow relaxing. “That explains it.”
Gemma shushed her daughter with a sharp hiss and a sharper look from her sky-blue eyes.
“Yes, this is a dream,” the unknown woman confirmed, nodding her ephemeral head. “But it is also real. I guess introductions are in order. My name is Wendy, and I’m Lily’s fairy godmother.”
“You’re what?” Crystal burst out again. “No, Mom, I will not shush. Did you just hear what she said?”
“She’ll explain if you give her a chance,” Gemma retorted. “And what in Jack Frost’s name are you wearing?”
Crystal rolled her eyes. “It’s called a negligee, Mom. I’m not thirteen anymore.”
Two sets of sky-blue eyes met in a brief contest of wills. Gemma would have looked more intimidating if she hadn’t styled her blonde hair in two pigtails tied with cutesy pink ribbons, Emma thought. And if she hadn’t been wearing Barbie pajamas. And if her daughter hadn’t been wearing a very mature lacy pink negligee that showed off much of her very mature body.
Emma felt like a nun by comparison, with her blue housecoat and pink bunny slippers.
“Go on, Wendy,” Mrs. Claus intervened. “If you wait for them to stop arguing, we’ll be here all night.”
“I still think it would have been better not to invite them,” Wendy muttered. “Emma can handle this herself.”
Emma’s brown eyes went from the red flannel-clad Mrs. Claus to the fairy and back again. The two spoke like close friends.
“Well, yes, but there’s a certain poetry in getting the family involved, isn’t there?” Mrs. Claus replied. “And Emma prefers to remain in the background, anyway. Don’t you, dear?”
Emma tilted her head to the side slightly. “I’d prefer to know what we’re all doing here.”
“I second that,” Crystal interjected.
“Well, to make a long story short, Lily is cursed; people will start dying if she doesn’t get her magic under control; and she just ran away. Which won’t save anybody, but it’s what she does when she’s stressed. And that’s where you all come in. You need to save Lily so she can save you.”
A brief silence followed Wendy’s words, and then Gemma put her hand to her chin thoughtfully.
“What did I eat before I went to bed?” she wondered aloud.
“I think you made that a little too short,” Mrs. Claus said to Wendy. “Surely you can give them a bit more detail than that.”
Wendy sighed. “I’m already in big trouble for interfering too much. This is the last time I can intervene without getting fired, and if I say too much…”
“Well, say something that makes sense,” Crystal said. “That’s all pretty vague stuff.”
Wendy shrugged. “You can get the backstory in a children’s book Emma has. Or her children have, anyway. It’s the Disney version of the real story, but—”
“That came from you?” Emma interrupted, frowning.
“No, George, my boyfriend left it there. And wrote it. It’s kind of cheesy, but not as sappy as his love letters—”
“Don’t ever give my children something without my permission.”
All eyes turned toward Emma. She was the smallest person in attendance, a mere three feet tall when standing, and her appearance was almost comical, thanks to the green cream covering her face and the abundant curlers holding her hair in place, but everybody knew it took a lot to make her angry. And when she was angry, she was a force to be reckoned with.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Wendy defended herself.
“I don’t care whose idea it was,” Emma snapped. “It won’t happen again. They are my children, and I take their safety very seriously.”
“But it was child friendly—”
“This time. What about next time? They’re young and impressionable. I can’t have them thinking it’s okay to accept gifts from strangers. What if they see something they shouldn’t? What if it isn’t a book next time, but something harmful?”
“We’re at the North Pole,” Crystal interjected. “The chances of—”
“You’re dating a police officer,” Emma shot back. “You should know this isn’t as safe of an environment as people think it is.”
“You’re dating a police officer?” Gemma shrieked. “When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not dating him,” Crystal protested, a blush coloring her fair skin. She shifted nervously and reached up to fidget with her blonde hair. “I’m just… seeing him… sometimes.”
“Is that why you’re dressed like a Victoria’s Secret model? Have you forgotten everything I ever taught you? Why would you do this to me?”
“Okay, we’re getting off track,” Mrs. Claus called out, interrupting Gemma before she could get too far into her guilt trip. “The point of this meeting is Lily’s wellbeing. Crystal’s love life can wait until later.”
“Let me make myself clear.” Emma’s small voice rang out in the misty clearing as she stood. She walked right up to the fairy, bending over almost backward to glare up at her, and stabbed an accusing finger in her direction. “Nothing gets to my children without going through me first. Understand?”
The fairy towering over her nodded meekly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” Emma turned and walked back to her previous seat, reclaiming it and reforming the circle. Nobody dared speak. “Then let’s continue. You said Lily ran away?”
“Uh, yes.” Wendy seemed to shake herself, a ripple through the fog, and then she regained her composure. “I figured she would after reading that book, but George thought she should know, and we didn’t know how else to tell her without both of us losing our jobs. She’s on her way to Antarctica right now.”
“Question,” Crystal said, raising her hand. “What’s up with this book? It seems pretty important.”
“I can show it to you and Gemma later,” Emma replied. “It’s a fairy tale that tells the story of a fairy godmother and an imp who fell in love when they met to convey a blessing and a curse, respectively, to a newborn baby, but they couldn’t touch each other until the imp spoke the curse and triggered it.”
“Um, he fell in love right away. Not me,” Wendy corrected her. “He’s always been the romantic one.”
“Okay, well, I’m happy for you and all that,” Crystal said, “but just to clarify, Lily was the baby.”
“Yes.”
“And she’s blessed and cursed.”
“Yes.”
“And if we don’t help her, people start dying.”
“Yes.”
Crystal tapped her chin. “I gotta pitch this to Hallmark. With a little tweaking and the right spin, this would make a great movie.”
“Crystal! Would you stop thinking about your career for one moment and think about your poor cousin?” Gemma chided her.
Crystal rolled her eyes. “I am thinking about her. I’m just thinking ahead for myself, too. So, I’m assuming the blessing is her insanely strong magic. Right?”
“Yes,” Wendy confirmed. “And that’s actually the curse, too.”
“Okay, I can see that. But she’s really careful about using it so she doesn’t hurt anybody. What, is she supposed to go nuts and start killing people or something?”
“Crystal!” Gemma hissed.
“No, that’s a good question,” Wendy said. “We all know Lily is really sensitive and not the best at handling her emotions. I don’t know exactly how the curse is supposed to play out, but I could see her losing it if her magic starts killing people. But I think the magic is the problem, not her. Correct me if I’m wrong, Molly, but I think it’s supposed to start acting on its own, or something else will take control of it or influence it somehow.”
Mrs. Claus hummed, the black eyes behind her thin-rimmed glasses looking off into the distance. “I’m not at liberty to say, but you’re on the right track.”
“How much do you know?” Gemma asked the white-haired elf suspiciously.
Mrs. Claus merely smiled.
Emma knew how pointless it was to ask more of her, as all of Santa’s elves were well aware of the Clauses mysterious immortality and otherworldly knowledge, but she’d been following the conversation carefully, and she had an important question she felt certain Mrs. Claus—or Wendy—would answer.
“Was what happened to Boris part of the curse?”
Wendy nodded. “Yes, as was Lily’s mother’s death.”
“Wait. She’s responsible for Willow’s death?” Gemma shrieked. “She killed my sister? I knew there was something wrong with that girl! She’s always so—”
“Lily would never have done that, Gemma,” Emma interrupted her. “Not knowingly. And I thought Willow died of natural causes?”
“It appeared that way, yes,” Mrs. Claus answered cryptically.
Gemma glared at her. “And what does that mean?”
“Lily didn’t—doesn’t—know,” Wendy intervened. “Emma and Crystal are right. Lily would never hurt anyone intentionally. In fact, she goes out of her way to prevent herself from hurting others. Which is why she’s now en route to Antarctica, and that is the problem we need to focus on here.”
“It’s her father, isn’t it?” Gemma asked, not to be dissuaded. “That low-down dead-beat never even had the courage to show his face around here after he got her pregnant. He just vanished. Probably some psychotic warlock who has a grudge against all the good snow witches and warlocks, and he gets his jollies from—”
“Gemma, please calm down,” Mrs. Claus interrupted in a soothing tone.
“Her parentage plays a role in both the blessing and the curse,” Wendy said carefully, weighing her words. “But it’s not pertinent to this discussion.”
“How can you say that? How can you say any of this? You keep telling us things that sound awfully important, and then you say to forget about it, or ignore it? And we’re supposed to do something with all this mess? How are we supposed to save Lily if we don’t even know what we’re saving her from? How can—”
Emma sighed and stood. She walked away from the circle and into the mist, leaving Gemma’s tirade behind, and soon enough, gnarled tree trunks studded with red-capped mushrooms, gears, and gizmos appeared. She smiled to herself and nodded. As she’d suspected, they were in Santa’s workshop, an expanse of nature and contraptions enclosed in a huge ice and glass dome. It had been years since she’d last walked through the forest here. Before she and Pipaluk had the kids.
She plucked a mushroom and walked back to the dream gathering. Gemma hadn’t run out of steam yet.
“And I demand to know what happened to my sister! I have a right to know! She was my only sister, and if my niece had something to—”
Emma strolled up behind Gemma and stuffed the mushroom into her open mouth.
“What the—”
And then Gemma froze. Her upraised hands, previously gesturing wildly, sank slowly to her lap. Her mouth slowly closed. She chewed and swallowed; the tension eased from her face and body with each passing second; and by the time Emma had resumed her seat in the circle, a blissful smile had spread across Gemma’s face.
“Now, the immediate problem is that Lily has run away,” Emma summarized. “And we need to bring her back. Isn’t that it?”
Wendy nodded, relieved to get back on track. “She’s on an ice floe headed toward Antarctica as we speak.”
“An ice floe. Hm. That will use an awful lot of magic to maintain in warmer temperatures, won’t it? But I suppose if she has Pipaluk’s potion with her, she can restore her magic as she depletes it. Unless there is a limit to how often the potion replenishes itself, which is entirely possible. He didn’t have time to test it thoroughly before he gave it to her.”
Mrs. Claus positively beamed. “What did I say, Wendy?”
“I never doubted you. Or her,” Wendy replied.
“The question is direction and speed,” Emma continued, more to herself than the rest. “Lily operates on impulse, so she’d take the most direct route possible: straight south. Now, whether that’s south through the Atlantic Ocean, or south through the Pacific Ocean… Hm. Wendy, do you know which way she went?”
“The Atlantic Ocean.”
“The Atlantic. Okay. As for speed, she’d go as fast as possible at the beginning, and once her thoughts and emotions settled—and she began to feel the drain from her magic—she’d slow down to something more sustainable. When did she leave?”
“Right after you and Pipaluk got home from your date.”
Emma nodded. “Of course. Impulse. Then she’s only been gone a few hours. Crystal, you would have a better idea than me. How far do you think she could have gotten?”
Crystal sat up straighter and screwed her face up in thought. “Let’s see. If I decided to take off on an ice floe—which I wouldn’t, because I’m not crazy—I’d probably… be somewhere east of Greenland by now. Accounting for Lily’s more powerful magic… She may have passed Greenland completely.”
“So, by the time we wake up, she may have passed Europe completely,” Emma concluded. “And the closer she gets to the equator, the more magic she’ll have to use. That will slow her down. Gemma, do you still have that friend who’s an airline pilot?”
Gemma nodded slowly, a dreamy, far-off look in her eyes. “He’s on leave visiting the North Pole right now. We have a dinner date tomorrow.”
“Ew.” Crystal made a face.
“I’ll need him to fly me there. And Crystal, too.”
“Um, why me? And how exactly do you propose to find her? Are we just going to fly around until we see her?”
“Yes. And then you and I will jump off the plane and land on the ice floe.”
Crystal’s blue eyes flew wide open. “Excuse me?”
“Pipaluk has parachutes and rockets we can use,” Emma said dismissively. “Then you can use your magic to help Lily steer the ice floe north again. You can take turns to help with the fatigue.”
“I’m not agreeing to this.”
“Gemma, I’ll need you to watch my kids,” Emma continued. “I love Pipaluk, but he isn’t the most observant father, and since you successfully raised Crystal to adulthood, I assume you have some knowledge of how to handle children.”
Gemma nodded. “I’d love to,” she said, her expression and her voice still distant.
“How much of this will we remember when we wake up?” Emma asked Wendy.
“None of it. You’ll all have vague impressions of what you decide to do. That’s it.”
“I’m deciding to wake up and call Hallmark with a new movie idea, and that’s all,” Crystal intoned.
“Gemma, call your friend first thing in the morning and convince him to fly Crystal and me out to Lily, then come to my house. I’ll talk to Pipaluk and get the kids settled, and then I’ll pick you up, Crystal—”
“I’m not doing this,” Crystal repeated.
“And we’ll leave to find Lily. Now, after we get her back home, what do we need to do?”
“It’s all in the poem,” Wendy replied. “And I can’t say anything more than that. I’m already bending the rules as far as I can without breaking them as it is.”
Crystal groaned. “So helpful.”
“We should bring the book with us, then,” Emma said. “Crystal and I can study it while we’re flying to get Lily.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
Emma pressed her lips together and turned to look directly at Crystal. The snow witch squirmed uncomfortably.
“You’re telling me you would take it upon yourself to prove Lily's innocence when your boyfriend arrested her, but you won’t help me stop her from making what sounds like it could be the biggest mistake in her life?”
Crystal dropped her gaze to the grass, pouting. “He isn’t my boyfriend…”
“I don’t care what you call him. You’re coming with me, and that’s final.”
Crystal sighed dramatically. “Fine, I guess…”
“Good.” Emma nodded and turned back to Wendy and Mrs. Claus. “Anything else?”
“One more thing,” Wendy said, shuffling her feet nervously. “Don’t get mad, but I have a… connection to your son.”
Emma’s brown eyes narrowed.
“Not by her doing,” Mrs. Claus intervened. “He has a special gift for picking up on certain details from the immortal plane. Like the picture he drew of Wendy.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “I knew I’d seen you before.”
“And I’ve met your husband a couple of times in his lab,” Wendy admitted. “He needed a little help to figure out that potion for Lily. But this will be the last time any of you see me.”
Mrs. Claus hopped to her feet. “I think we’re settled here. Sweet dreams, and good luck.”
She clapped her hands, and it all faded to black.
And then visions of sugarplums danced in Emma’s head.
Date of creation: 04/04/2025
Word count: 2,993
Author’s note: The prompt was to write a short story between 1,000 and 3,000 words where the female protagonist is strong and powerful and fights against all odds. There was no genre requirement.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk8rs7TuaDY
