Don't ask Fate for more than three of anything.

Gray dress, gray coach, green face (I swear this coach has square wheels).   Someday I would love just one ride on a broomstick or a flying carpet...something that nipped smoothly through the air instead of clonked around with the mortals on earth.   I've never even seen a flying carpet up close, but I hear some of them are literally three thousand years old and developed personalities like grandmotherly donkeys (all stubborn but comfortable).
 As we get closer to heart of the magical world...the epicenter to the trading madness that is Cracker Bogen, the congestion gets a lot thicker.  In Hogswallow there aren't enough people to warrant rules about who goes which way when, so everyone just flies, walks or rides wherever they so please (even if it's upside down like the Digsby twins).    Here though, I've never seen so many people.  The sky looks like it's filled with dotted lines swirling around like moving calligraphy. 

Mother pulled me away from the window and I promptly emptied the contents of my stomach on her shoes.   I held my breath, turning my trademark and delightful shade of neon green, but Mother didn't yell at me.  She waved her handkerchief over the ill timed departure of my breakfast, and it sort of half cleaned itself up.   I tried to ignore the chunks still stuck in my teeth as I finished the cleaning spell for her.   Mother doesn't do cleaning spells very well, never had to do much cleaning in her life, she learned more important spells.   Usually she doesn't even attempt to try a lowly cleaning spell, which is making me rather disconcerted.  She has barely spoken to me all morning, AND she didn't even try to charm the coach driver out of his fare.   I normally keep some change in my pocket to pay for whatever people give her for free, but today I had my fingers in my pocket, wrapped around the coins all ready to hand them over, when she climbed right in without saying a word to the driver about how handsome he was, or how privileged and safe she felt to be riding with him.   I barely had time to scramble in after her before the coach started trundling down the road.   Would she have left me? It made me ill just thinking that I almost missed my one opportunity to make visit the infamous Cracker Bogden (hmm...that would be a less embarrassing explanation for my traitorous stomach).   I promised myself I just needed to experience it once, and then I would be happy to go back and be a small town apothecary witch.

I have three things I want out of this day, and I really hope that's not tempting fate too much.  Seems like fate is usually ok with sets of three.  It's when you want four wishes or something that gets you into trouble.  Fate for some reason does not like the number four or five, or maybe it doesn't mind but everyone is afraid to try it.   Like why risk asking for four things when nobody ever does it.   My particular things are very little and inconsequential (and only slightly illegal perhaps).

1.  I want to see a real library...any library, although the maladies and merkels one at St. Hernadine's would be my once in a lifetime choice  (do you hear that fate?)
2.   I would love to have a three minute chat with a level two physician. (it might have to be five minutes, depending on how fast they can answer the questions I have written on my arms)
3.  I want a rock from St. Hernadine.   Really the merest sliver of a shaving from an inconsequential corner would be fine.  Nanny Milgrin says that even the stones there are soothing and I would like to take just one back for Ol Wizard Ozark so I can slip it in his pocket and he can stop trying to fix his arthritis.  (in retrospect, this makes me sound like a nicer person than I am.   Truly his breath could kill a pixie, and I'm pretty sure one of his teeth waves hi to me whenever he smiles!).  

Of course, if I HAD to pick a fourth thing to ask of this day (Fate do please plug your ears unless you're in a really good mood), I would love to know why in fact we are going to Cracker Bodgen and the famous St. Hernadines in the first place.  I feel like I shouldn't even whisper the question in my head considering I've only been trying to talk Mother into taking me here my entire life.  And while she comes here all the time, I have spent every single one of those times a particularly violent shade of neon green.  She won't ever even discuss it!  It's like one of the three iron clad rules of the Lucille WIlkes household.  Always be fabulous.  Don't take no for an answer.  And never ever take Lucy to Cracker Bogden.   Bah

And then all of the sudden, she gets all mad about a shredded up letter, and decides we both must go to the city immediately.   I had to bite down the thousand questions that were nearly leaping off my tongue.  Why was the letter shredded?  Did she shred it?  Did it shred itself?  Who sent it?  Was it from someone in Cracker Bogden? (of course it was, scratch that question).  Why was she taking me?  What did I have to do with the letter?  Why was she being so quiet and nice?   Why am I dressed in a gray shift that I grew out of last Summer?  Why is she wearing her best scarlet evening gown?   Why....why...why... (exerting great control to clamp down these questions, because I swear she literally can hear my thoughts.)

I am meek, I am happy.  I am a good, obedient daughter. 

Whew.   That wasn't hard at all.

"Lucy Darling, you know I don't like it when you get all contrary."    Mother said. 

Like I said, she can read my thoughts although even this lacked her usual oomph.   Did I dare?

"Why are we going to St. Hernadine?"  I ventured. 

"What makes you think we're going there?"  Mother asked sharply.  My fingernails started to turn green. 

"I'm sorry Mother...I thought I heard you tell the driver to take us there."  I said.  I hoped my apology was quick enough to stave off the effects of my colorful curse. 

"I thought I taught you not to eavesdrop."  Mother said, but she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.    I almost chewed on my lip, this was such an unusual reaction, but I remembered just in time and started thumping my toes inside my shoe instead.   Hmmm.... risk another question?

"Are you ok?"  I asked.  Surely that was a safe one, and maybe she would share something that would give me the tiniest clue as to what was going on. 

"I am hoping to protect you dear, from hard truths"  She said, her lips upturned in that smile that said "sorry...not sorry."  

My heart skipped a little beat, if I was being clinical, I think it was one part fear, two parts horror.  Was it the pirates or the nefarious dwarves?

"Are we in trouble?"  I asked, really I was shocking even myself.   I would sooner ask Fate for six hundred and sixty six things than risk three questions of my mother (in a row nonetheless).   But I had to know, were we headed for prison, were we summoned by The Council?   Maybe they were going to crown my mother queen!

 The coach stopped (which is a kind way of putting it, really it was more like it creaked and wobbled and slid sideways like an old horse on a frozen pond.

"Sorry ma'am"  the driver said, "the road here don't much like me being here."     His voice was soon followed by his concerned face as he opened the door and tried to hang on.    It did seem like the coach was very insistent on being anywhere but here.  I clung to the door handle and tried to pick a spot on the ground to aim for, but the ground kept moving.  If I felt pea green before, I felt positively pond scum green now. (not to be confused with the green of my mother's curse...no wonder I don't like green)

"Really, that's quite enough." Mother said "I have an appointment with an old friend."  

The coach shuddered to a stop, because even wood and metal can't handle my mother being mad at it.

She swept out, and I followed in her wake....testing the ground with my tiptoes in case it was less like solid ground and more like soggy pudding.

Besides looking a little blurry, it seemed sturdy enough.  I risked looking up, and gasped.  (as in expelled all the air out of my lungs in involuntary stupefaction).   If St. Hernadine were a mansion, I wasn't even a mouse...maybe more like a fruit fly in comparison.   Even the infamous three gates each seemed bigger than our entire village.

I took back my three wishes from Fate?  There was no way I could possibly go in there, and frankly I could die content right this minute.  

"Master Dardor please."  Mother was telling a smaller wooden door to the right of the three enormous gates.  The door grew a face, and then a body, which I tried not to stare at because it (er...he) was very much lacking in the clothing department.  I'd never seen a door gollum before.  It glared grumpily at the shredded pieces of paper mother offered him.  

It (sorry, he) opened.

That's when I realized I hadn't yet taken a breath from the aforementioned gasp. Master Dardor?  Surely Mother would have told me she was friends with the Chief of medicine at St. Hernadines.  I would have tried my hand at swooning, but mother grabbed me by the hand and in we went.

Fate, you and I need to talk.