Fairy Princess

3. Family Matters

The clothing store Wen worked at was still empty of customers. She leant on the counter, looming over the tiny figure of Idra, who was standing next to the register in her tiny pixie body.

"Apart from the ancestor of yours who left our world for the human world, there haven't been many stories of fey leaving our world."

Idra spoke in an offhanded way, but the conversation at the counter had been getting steadily more intense for Wen, and at this statement, she couldn't keep her earnest feelings to herself any more. She crouched down so she was at Idra's level instead of looming over her and held Idra's gaze for a moment before speaking.

"Can you tell me why she left?"

Idra seemed surprised by her intensity, but quickly brushed it off and answered with a casual wave. "It's probably too long a story to tell right now, while you're in the middle of work. We'll have to spend some time together talking about this, but I can tell you the short version: your great, great, great grandmother was the youngest of six children in the royal family. She wasn't in a place to take the throne, and she left our world for the human world."

"What happened to her after she came to this world?" Wen refused to drop her serious tone.

Idra sighed, resigned to elaborating even though she clearly didn't want to. "We don't know. The royal family probably knew back then, but she was left to her own devices. I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted to be kept under surveillance, and so she and her new family disappeared from the notice of the fey world."

"Then how did you find me?"

"We have a family tree — the royal archives have magical records — but it still took a long time to work out what happened to her descendants."

"Am I the first in line?" Wen tried to play the question casually. She wasn't overly invested, she was just curious.

Idra looked uncomfortable and averted her gaze. "I think the complicated matter of ascendancy is best left for another time."

"So that's a no." Wen drew out the sentence, trying to figure out her feelings on the matter. She settled on relieved, rather than disappointed.

Idra frowned and folded her tiny arms across her body. "It's a 'we don't know', not a no. Okay?"

Wen realised she'd made the situation awkward. "Sorry."

"No, no, it's fine. If you want to know right now, before we go any further with this, you're well within your rights to find out now." Idra took a deep breath, contemplating her words before saying them. "We can't exactly see the whole of the records, and without a member of the royal family to help, we'll never be able to see all of them. They're locked away by a special kind of magic. It was almost impossible to find you, but somehow I got lucky, and if we want to find anyone else from your family, we'll need your magic to get the whole family tree."

Wen was bursting with more questions, but Idra's wings were twitching in a distressed-looking way, so Wen would have to keep her curiosity in check and wait until Idra was ready to be interrogated again. She stood up straight and ran her hand along the dress she had put down on the counter.

There was silence between them for a minute or so, then Idra approached the dress and took some of the fabric in her hands. "What shade of blue were you thinking, Wenona?"

With the tense atmosphere broken, Wen grinned and pulled out her phone. "I'll pull up a colour chart."

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Wen flopped down on her couch beside Gwen. Thursday was late night shopping with extended opening hours at her store, and Wen had been there until closing time. She shut her eyes and listened to one of the characters on TV give a speech to reveal who the murderer was. She'd walked in on the climax of a show she didn't even watch, but Wen didn't particularly want to move. She'd had an interesting week. Not "interesting" in a difficult or bad way, but tiring nonetheless. There was nothing like a pixie from the fey world turning up in your life to make your mundane life seem even more so.

There was an ad jingle playing on the TV when Wen jerked awake. It took her a second to register that Gwen was staring at her. Wen stared right back without saying a word.

"Don't you think you should just go to bed?" Gwen asked.

"Who are you, my mother?" Wen joked with a smile. She dropped it quickly when her expression was returned with a frown. "Forgive me, I just wanted to spend some time hanging out with my roommate."

"It's less hanging out, and more being annoying when you fall asleep next to me while I'm watching a show."

"Oh." Wen made no movement to get up.

There was a silence between them as Gwen continued to stare intently. As usual, Gwen broke it first. "So tell me what's on your mind, then."

Wen sat up straight and looked down at her hands. "It's about my family."

"Did something happen?" Wen felt Gwen tense up beside her, waiting for bad news.

Wen sighed. "My background might be more complicated than I thought it was, and I don't really know what to do about it."

"So this is about that visitor you had earlier this week?" Gwen relaxed again. "Have you spoken to your family about it?"

"It's not really about that side of my family."

"But you can still ask them about it, can't you? Your mum married into that family, you can at least ask them what they knew about her."

Wen looked back up at her friend. Gwen had always been level-headed, and Wen hadn't even really thought about it that way. She nodded. "I'll go see them tomorrow."

Wen sat back and smiled. Everything wasn't solved, but she'd find out what her family knew. Maybe there was something her mother had shared with her grandparents or her aunt and uncle. It was definitely worth a try.