“COME ON, you sleeping beauty. We’ve got a ball to attend.”
I woke up, embarrassed and confused, staring around blearily. The room was dark; candles flickered erratically, and mushrooms on the walls glowed with a soft yellow luminance. Puck stood over me, grinning as usual, the light casting weird, fluttering shadows over his face.
“Come on, Princess. You slept all day and missed the fun. Our lovely nurse got a few of her friends together to make you a dress. They refuse to show it to me, of course, so you have to march in there and come out wearing it.”
“What are you talking about?” I muttered, before I remembered. The Winter Formal! I was supposed to show up at my old school after being gone for so long, and face all my former classmates. There would be pointing and rumors and whispers behind my back, and my stomach clenched at the thought.
But there was no going back now. If we were going to get the scepter, Ash needed to heal, which meant I had to endure the humiliation and just get on with it.
I trailed Puck out of the room, where the nurse was waiting for me in the hall, a small, pleased smile on her lips. “Ah, there you are, Miss Chase.”
“How’s Ash?” I asked before she could say anything else. With a snort, the nurse turned and beckoned me to follow.
“The same,” she replied, leading me down the hall. We passed Ash’s room, the door tightly closed, and continued without pausing. “The stubborn fool is walking now, and even challenged Robin to a sparring match this afternoon. I stopped them, of course, though Robin was only too happy to fight him, the idiot.”
“Hey,” Puck said behind us. “I’m not the one who offered. I was just doing the guy a favor.”
The nurse whirled and fixed him with a gimlet eye. “You—” she began, then threw her hands up. “Go get ready, idiot. You’ve been hovering at the door like a lost puppy all day. Tell the prince we’ll be leaving as soon as Miss Chase is ready. Now, get.”
Puck retreated, grinning, and the nurse sighed. “Those two,” she muttered. “They’re either best friends or darkest enemies, I can’t tell which. Come with me, Miss Chase.”
She pushed open another door and stepped through, and I followed, ducking my head. We entered a small room with shelves and potted plants encircling the walls, and a sharp, almost medicinal tang filled the room, as if I had wandered into someone’s herb garden. Which, I guess, I had. Two other gnomes, as shriveled and wrinkly as the nurse, looked up from three-legged stools and waved cheerfully.
My breath caught. They were working on a dress so gorgeous my mind stumbled to a halt for a moment. A floor-length, blue satin gown hung from a mannequin in the center of the room, rippling like water in the sun. The bodice was embroidered with silvery designs and glittering ribbons of pure light, and a gauzy blue shawl had been draped over the naked shoulders, so sheer that it was almost invisible. A sparkling diamond choker encircled the mannequin’s neck, sending prisms of fragmented light across the walls. The entire outfit was dazzling.
I swallowed. “Is that…for me?”
One of the other gnomes, a short man with a nose like a potato, laughed. “Well, the prince certainly isn’t going to wear it.”
“It’s beautiful.”
The gnomes preened. “Our ancestors were shoemakers, but we’ve learned to sew a few other things, as well. This weave is stronger than normal glamour, and won’t fray if you happen to touch anything made of iron. Now, come try it on.”
It fit perfectly, sliding over my skin as if made for me. I caught a shimmer of glamour out of the corner of my eye as I pulled it on, and deliberately ignored it. If this dress was put together with leaves, moss and spider silk, I didn’t want to know.
When I was done, I raised my arms and turned around for inspection. The tailor gnomes clapped like happy seals, and the nurse nodded approvingly.
“Take a look at yourself,” she murmured, making a spinning motion with her finger. I turned to see myself in the floor-length mirror that appeared out of nowhere, and blinked in surprise.
Not only was the dress perfect, but my hair was styled into complex curls, my face lightly touched with makeup, making me look older than before. And, whether it was part of the dress’s glamour or the nurse’s doing, I looked human again, without the pointed ears and huge, unnatural eyes. I looked like a normal teenager, ready for prom. Illusion, I knew, but it still startled me a moment, this tall, elegant stranger in the mirror.
“The boys won’t be able to keep their eyes off her,” a gnome sighed, and all my fears came rushing back. Fancy dress or no, I was still me, the invisible Swamp Girl of Albany High. Nothing would change that.