she might trick some other poor cow into taking her place, as she had taken Susie’s.
Although access to the surface was denied her, she did not know what might lie on the other side of the portal she guarded. It seemed a reasonable hypothesis however that a guardian would have access to the world she guarded. Imagine being the first modern scientist to explore to world of fairy! What an amazing discovery that would be!
The secret must lie in the armor, and she would treat it as if it were a haunted house with secret passages. One of those passages would lead to an ancient and mysterious realm that was sure to be worth the bother of searching for it.
After all, she now had all the time in the world to find it.
Fashion and the Snarkmeisters
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
You saw it, everyone did—one billion people, if the Nielsens are right (and they so rarely are)—that moment when the statue of a gigantic, naked, golden man toppled onto a scrum of snarky, microphone-wielding “reporters.”
Oh, the dithering. Oh, the slow-motion replays. Oh, the terrified faces—right out of a Hollywood disaster movie.
No one was injured, at least not in the Hollywood-disaster-movie way. Expensive clothing was wrinkled and stained beyond repair. Reputations were ruined with little more than a few high-pitched squeals. And way too many people celebrated on social media.
I admit, had I been sitting at home watching the so-called debacle, I might have Tweeted something inappropriate and regretted it enough to delete my Twitter feed the next day.
But I wasn’t at home. I was standing about fifty feet to the left, behind the emergency curtain at the edge of the red carpet, some special safety pins clamped in my teeth, a stronger-than-surgical-steel needle in my right hand, and a spool of special glittery metallic thread in my left.
I might have growled a cheer, but I knew better than to open my mouth and take a deep breath before shouting my huzzahs. After all, if I had swallowed those pins and lost my concentration . . .
Well, I get ahead of myself.
The Real Beginning
I have no idea if the snark started on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (make that May 17, the day after the Big Event) or if it started back at dawn of time when clothing stopped being optional.
What I do know is this: the word “award” came into common use in the Middle Ages, and if you look at mainstream dictionaries (the ones that don’t accept magic), you’ll see that award meant “decision after careful observation.” Okay, fine. That sounds right—especially considering how much time we all spend watching the nominated films every year.
For the magical, though, the word “award” holds a deeper meaning. The word has the word “ward” in it, and wards, as we magical know, mean “to protect, guard.”
You think you know where I’m going—especially since that gigantic golden man fell on those snarky faux-celebrities—but hang on. You have no real idea.
Because once upon a time, awards carried no bling. The bling that you were awarded, back in the day (Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe) came in the form of trophies.
And the word “trophy” comes from the French trophée which means “a spoil or prize of war.”
Once trophies got associated with awards—and when all of that moved to Hollywood—the war metaphor becomes apt. Epic battles, gauntlets, victories, and defeats occur throughout award season. Someone’s always on top, someone’s always losing, someone doesn’t fight hard enough, and someone always does something memorable, although not necessarily in a heroic way.
My earliest experiences with awards season came courtesy of my mother, whom you all know as Caro—so famous that all you need is the nickname.
Yeah, that Caro, whose real name had become unwieldy over the decades: Carolyn Sarah Brown Lodge Young Blondell Reynolds Taylor Mellon Torres.
As most of you probably know, Mother was the most nominated actress in the history of film awards—until Meryl Streep took the title a few years ago.
Mother: Beautiful, powerful, award-nominated, always at the top of her game—at least in public. And a mess in private.
The husbands saw that and fled, leaving me alone with her. Me, the only daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world.
I had three reactions to awards season.
1. I hated what they did to my mother.
2. I loooooooved the clothes.
3. I really, really really loved the clothes.
I was ten when I realized those things could be melded together.