at the end of which was a frosted-glass door marked simply:
FAIRYLAND KINGDOM INC.
PINELAND, NEW JERSEY
Behind the door was your average, everyday office painted a calming sage green and with three chairs, a coffee table littered with magazines, a potted fern, and a blue watercooler.
The only difference from my dad’s boring accounting office was that here the walls were lined with framed photos of park highlights—the princes and princesses dancing on the stage outside the Princess Palace; Humpty Dumpty sitting on his wall talking to a group of children; Hansel and Gretel pushing a witch into the oven; all seven of the dwarfs hugging Snow White at her cottage; and, front and center, Cinderella and her Prince Charming, cheek to cheek.
A huge plaque that read Fairyland Kingdom . . . Wow!™ in glittering gold letters hung over the large desk where a woman with short brown hair and a flowered shirt sat picking at a blueberry muffin on a napkin. She was the spitting image of Mrs. Herman, our high school’s attendance person.
“Excuse me. I’m Zoe Kiefer,” I said, unsure as to whether this was the dreaded Queen. “Andy told me I should see you.”
The woman brushed crumbs from her desk. “I didn’t ask to see you. You probably mean . . . her. Let me buzz.”
“So you’re not—”
“Lord, no. I’m just Evelyn, her secretary.” She emitted a light titter and said into the phone, “Ma’am, I have someone here to see you. A Zoe . . . Yes. I’ll send her right in.”
There was a buzzzz, and a part of the wall slid open. The door had been completely hidden, like something out of a spy movie.
“Good luck!” Evelyn said.
I wish people would stop saying that, I thought as the hidden door closed behind me and I stepped into mission control. That was what popped into my brain when I saw the wall of monitors displaying every aspect of the park in black-and-white. Five rows of ten. Fifty in all. And in front of them sat the strangest figure in a high-backed, black chair poring over a stack of papers at her glass desk.
She said nothing, and I remained standing with my hands behind my back, since Andy had said I shouldn’t sit until she gave me permission, though that didn’t seem to be coming any time soon. In fact, it was difficult to discern if this creature knew I was there, so engrossed was she in sorting through the piles of paperwork, her spidery fingers slipping in and out of the pages as if she were spinning a web.
Her gown was a luminescent shade of deep violet. A gold crown was perched on a tasseled red pillow nearby. Her hair, sleek and black like a cat’s, had been cut in a downward bob probably to minimize her freakishly long white neck on top of her stick-thin body. The room smelled oddly of overheated electronics, tea, and rosewater perfume.
I cleared my throat, and she lifted a finger. At last she went, “A-ha!” and removed a manila file marked Kiefer, Zoe. She flipped it open and ran her black lacquered nail over what I recognized with some trepidation as my application. Now and then she’d go, “Hmmm” or make a note with a red pen in the margins. Every two seconds she twirled to check the screens before twirling back to her desk, whereupon she continued to read. It was very unnerving because she was reading about me.
There was a tiny yip! from a fluffy white dog no bigger than a hand puppet that was curled on a purple satin pillow with a matching purple bow in her hair. This must have been the famous Tinker Bell.
The Queen snapped the file shut and whipped off her half glasses to reveal a pair of black eyes under similarly black arched eyebrows. Her lips were painted in two tones of crimson and violet. “Zoe Kiefer, let me have a look at you.”
I stepped back and she said, “Hmm, hmm. Do you exercise?”
“Not lately. Except for gym class.” (And not even then if I can help it.)
“Lately. You mean since your mother died.” This was said matter-of-factly, as if we were discussing that it might rain.
“Yes . . . ma’am.”
“Pity, that.” She bit the end of her glasses, scrutinizing. “It says in your application that when you were small, your mother took you to Storytown, and that it was your most favorite place on earth. Is that true?”
Before there was Fairyland Kingdom, there was