Wish for a Midsummer’s Night
Two fairies work their magic beside a wishing well in the dark of night … for good or ill? Enjoy this throwback to Pulp Literature Issue 7, Summer 2015, with ‘The Wishing Well’ by Susan Pieters. These rare print copies are on sale for the throwback price of $8 till the end of October, so get them while you can!
The Wishing Well
by Susan Pieters
Her apprentice didn’t know shit.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Seal the spell into the water.” The wishing well was starting to glow in the dark, the stones of the curved wall radiating a rosy aura. The fairy queen snorted. “And for pity’s sake, don’t make it pink. I hate pink.”
The apprentice looked down at her own pink dress, the frills at the bottom covering matching shoes. “Sorry, Madame Fairy.”
The fairy queen turned her back on the well and hoped her apprentice would figure out how to transfer the spell before daylight. They had a curfew to keep.
“Madame Fairy, can you help me change the colour?” The apprentice twisted and her pink dress swirled as she checked out the older fairy’s clothes. “How about black?”
“Make it invisible. It’s going to reside in the water, you fool. Who’s going to drink blackened water?”
“But without colour, they won’t know —”
“Exactly.”
The apprentice hesitated before waving her junior-level wand. The well remained pink. Clearly her heart wasn’t in it. “Madame Fairy, if the water is pink, it will look more like a love potion.”
“If they realize it’s a love potion, they won’t drink it. They’ll bottle it up and sell it. This is a wishing well, not an exploitable market commodity. It’s supposed to be magic.”
The apprentice nodded to herself even though she still looked perplexed. “But what if someone accidentally drinks it? Someone who is already in love?”
The queen raised her eyebrows. Few could withstand her scorn, and the apprentice quickly shut up, turned, and worked on the spell. The queen was not about to explain herself to the dimwit. Her apprentice still called her the ‘good’ fairy. She’d learn on her own, in due time. There were no good fairies.
The queen paced as the well dimmed and turned a normal hue. Relieved, she drew near to the apprentice. “I drank a love potion myself, once.” The queen lifted her black boot to kick at the pansies that bloomed above the soft moss. She ground them under her heel. “I fell in love with a weaver.”
The apprentice made little clapping noises, and hopped up and down, her training wand swinging wildly. The queen reached for the wand to steady the reckless motion. The young fairy tried to stand still as she gushed conspiratorially, “What happened? Did he love you too? Is that why the weaver gave you the love potion?”
“It wasn’t the weaver who gave it to me.” The queen wasn’t going to tell it all now, but perhaps someday she would confide the tale. “And it didn’t last. He was a real ass.”
The apprentice clasped her wand in concern. “The spell doesn’t last?”
What a simpleton she was! The queen shook her head at the distant mountains, now faintly discernible in the sky. No idiot on earth still believed that love could last, yet she had wound up with an understudy as naïve as a baby. “Keep working. It’ll be dawn soon.”
Find out what happens next in Issue 7, Summer 2015, ON SALE now until October 31st!
Susan Pieters is one of the founding editors of Pulp Literature. She wrote this piece in a puckish mood. For more of Sue’s short fiction, you’ll need to brush up on back issues of Pulp Literature. You can find more of her fabulous short fiction here.
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