Excerpt
She stands behind the bouquet of flowers, her little face barely visible through the green fronds. Her skin is the color of loam, her eyes the faded green of underwater seaweed, and her lips the dusky rose of the tulips that hide her.
My heart pounds. I see her among all the bouquets set on the long white table, but my colleagues don't. They're moving flowers, checking tags, figuring out which bouquet goes into what memorial chapel.
We have four funerals this afternoon and two viewings tonight. The funeral home is large, modern, with several exits and entrances, so none of the groups will see each other. Their music shouldn't even overlap.
On days like today—a Saturday, shortly after the winter holidays—I employ nearly a dozen people, some of whom just stand by the doors and make sure the right family goes to the right memorial chapel.
It's all very delicate and very sad, and I try very hard to make sure that my employees seem sympathetic. After hundreds of funerals, however, many people lose sympathy. They recognize the patterns and realize some people are loved, some are hated, and some are simply forgotten.
And then there are the very old, whose friends and family have died long ago.
The very old touch me. I can easily see myself as part of their ranks, alone and forgotten. I want someone to honor me when I die, just as I'm sure they wanted someone to honor them.
So I do. For their funerals, I put on my best dress, and sit in the chapels myself. The ceremony is often elaborate, planned for friends and family who are now gone. When that happens, it's clear the person never expected to live so long. Often she (and it usually is a she) planned her ceremony with my father or my grandfather.
We keep amazing records. My family has planned funerals for this town for more than a century. If a historian comes into our little parlor and asks to see the records from a burial sixty years before, I can find it. I can tell who presided and who attended.
I can also tell what kind of floral arrangements decorated the memorial chapel.
Flowers have always been my specialty.
Perhaps that's why I notice the flower fairies long before anyone else does.
This little girl looks no more than three, but looks can be deceptive, particularly among flower fairies. Three is a problem. Three means I might have to return her to her family.
When she realizes that I see her, she smiles. Her eyes brighten to emerald and actually twinkle.
She touches the flowers in front of her. Ferns accent a mix of dusty rose and purplish blue tulips, with a single well placed lily in the center.
"I made this," she says in a decidedly childlike voice.
Everyone in the room turns. The silence, which was already heavy, turns oppressive.
She doesn't seem to notice. She's smiling at me. She is as young as I feared.
"Isn't it pretty?" she asks.
I turn to my assistant Diane. Diane's skin is normally the color of chalk, but it's gone even paler now.
"Call Roderick," I say.
Roderick is the only one of the flower fairies who uses modern technology. He burns through cell phones like smokers burn through matches. Fortunately, he's smart enough to keep the same number with each phone change.
Diane slips out of the room. Technology usually doesn't work well in the presence of the magical.
I smile at the little girl. "Your flowers are lovely."
"Thank you," she says primly. Then she waits. She wants me to ask what it is she's doing here or, worse, what she wants.
I never ask the flower fairies what they want. That's the wrong question. It's a question—particularly with a magical child—that could get the questioner in decades of trouble.
"Is this your first bouquet?" I ask, not really wanting to hear the answer.
She nods. "Can I stay?"
I don't dare say no to her. Saying no to an infant flower fairy is much more dangerous than saying no to an adult.
