Anyway, the girl was born, out of wedlock but none the worse for that, it wasn't as if they couldn't have married, they just never got round to it... and Lilith wished for her to have beauty and power and marry a prince. Hah! And she's been working on that ever since. What could I do? You can't argue with wishes like that. Lilith knows the power of a story. I've done the best I could, but Lilith's got the power. I hear she runs the city now. Changing a whole country just to make a story work! And now it's too late anyway. For me. So I'm handing on the responsibility. That's how it goes, with fairy godmothering. No-one ever wants to be a fairy godmother. Except Lilith, of course. Got a bee in her bonnet about it. So I'm sending someone else. I may have left things too late."

Desiderata was a kindly soul. Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful.

She was not someone to use extreme language, but it was possible to be sure that when she deployed a mild term like ‘a bee in her bonnet' she was using it to define someone whom she believed to be several miles over the madness horizon and accelerating.

She poured out the tea.

"That's the trouble with second sight," she said. "You can see what's happenin', but you don't know what it means. I've seen the future. There's a coach made out of a pumpkin. And that's impossible. And there's coachmen made out of mice, which is unlikely. And there's a clock striking midnight, and something about a glass slipper. And it's all going to happen. Because that's how stories have to work. And then I thought: I knows some people who make stories work their way."

She sighed again. "Wish I was going to Genua," she said. "I could do with the warmth. And it's Fat Tuesday coming up. Always went to Genua for Fat Tuesday in the old days."

There was an expectant silence.

Then Death said, YOU SURELY ARE NOT ASKING ME TO GRANT A WISH ?