“Yeah,” the boy said finally, gently letting down the hammer and putting the gun back into the pocket of his jacket. “Not to you.”

  They drove in silence for a while, as the plains flattened out and the sky went even flatter and the sun went dim behind the gray overcast. “Richard Nixon, huh?” the boy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You really think they’ll let us get near him?”

  “I’ll see to it,” Siggy said. And it occurred to him for the first time that fairy godmothers might fulfill wishes in unpleasant ways. Wish him dead? I should wish Nixion dead, and this boy goes to prison forever for killing him? Watch it, fairy godmother, he warned. I won’t let you trick me. I have a plan, and I won’t let you trick me into hurting this boy.

  “Hungry, Son?” Siggy asked. “Or can you hold out till Denver?”

  “Denver’s fine,” said the boy. “But don’t call me Son.”

  It was hot in Los Angeles, but as Siggy neared the sea the breezes became steadily cooler. He was tired. He was used to driving, but not so long a stretch, not so far. In a way the freeways were restful—no traffic, no guesswork about where the car to the right would be a few minutes later. People actually paid attention to the lines between lanes. But the freeways went on, relentlessly, mile after mile, until he felt like he was standing still and the road and the scenery played swiftly past him and under him. At last they had brought Los Angeles to him, and here the scenery would stop for him and wait for him to act. San Clemente. Richard Nixon’s house. He found them easily, as if he had always known the way. The boy, asleep beside him for the last few hundred miles, woke up when Siggy brought the cab to a halt.

  “What?” asked the boy, sleepily.

  “Go back to sleep,” Siggy said, getting out of the car. The boy got out, too.

  “This is it?”

  “Yes,” Siggy said, already walking toward the entrance.

  “I gotta pee,” the boy said. But Siggy ignored him, and kept on walking. The boy followed, ran a little, caught up, saying softly, “Shit can’t you even wait a minute?”

  Secret Service men were everywhere, of course, but by now Siggy’s madness was complete. He knew that they could not stop him. He had to meet Richard Nixon, and so he would. He had parked a long way from the mansion, and he just walked in, the boy at his heels. He didn’t climb fences or do anything extraordinary. Just walked up the drive, around the house, and out onto the beach. No one saw him. No one called out to him. Secret Servicemen seemed always to have their backs to him, or to be on an urgent errand somewhere else. He would have his meeting with Richard Nixon. He would use his wish.

  And he was standing where the water charged up the sand, always falling short of its last achievement as the tide ebbed. The boy stood beside him. Siggy watched the house, but the boy watched Siggy. “I thought they had us,” the boy said. “I can’t believe we got in here.”

  “Sh,” Siggy answered softly. “Sh.”

  Siggy felt as nervous as a virgin at her wedding, more dreading than longing for what was to come. What if Nixon thinks I’m a fool? he thought. He needn’t have worried. As he stood in the sand, Nixon emerged from the house, came down to the beach, and stopped at the waterline, staring out to sea. He was alone.

  Taking a deep breath, Siggy walked to him. The sand kept slipping under his feet, so that every step forward tried to turn him out of his path. He persevered, and stood beside Richard Nixon. It was the face, the nose, at once the heavily shadowed evil face of the Herblock cartoons and the hopeful, strong face of the man Siggy had voted for three times.

  “Mr. Nixon,” Siggy said.

  Nixon did not turn at first. He just said, “How did you get here?”

  Siggy shrugged. “I had to see you.”

  Then Nixon turned to him, his face set to smile. Siggy watched as Nixon’s eyes met his, then glanced over his shoulder at the boy, who was walking up, who stopped just behind Siggy.

  The boy spoke. “We’ve come to kill you,” he said.

  And the boy had his hand in his pocket, where the gun was, and Siggy felt a moment of panic. But the voice of the fairy godmother sounded gently in his ear. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Take your time.”

  So Siggy shook his head at the boy, who frowned but did not shoot, and then Siggy turned back to Nixon. The former president was still smiling, his eyes narrowed a bit, but not showing any fear. Siggy felt a moment of satisfaction. This was the Nixon he had admired, the man with such great physical courage, who had faced mobs of Communists in Venezuela and Peru without flinching.

  “You wouldn’t be the first to want to,” Nixon said.

  “Oh, but I don’t want to,” Siggy said. “I have to. For America.”

  “Ah.” Nixon nodded, knowingly. “We all do the most unpleasant things, don’t we, for America.”

  Siggy felt a stab of relief. He understood, which would make it all so much easier.

  “You’re lucky,” Nixon said. “I came out here alone, this once. To say good-bye. I’m leaving here. Tomorrow I would have been gone.” He shook his head slightly, slowly, from side to side. “Well, get on with it. I can’t stop you.”

  “Oh,” Siggy said. “I’m not going to shoot you. All I have to do is wish you dead.” Behind him Siggy heard the boy gasp a little. And Nixon sighed slightly. For a moment it sounded to Siggy like disappointment. Then he realized it was relief. And the smile returned to Nixon’s face.

  “But not today,” Siggy went on. I can’t just wish for you to be assassinated now, Mr. Nixon. Or for you to die in bed or in an accident. The damage is done. So I’ll have to have you die in the past.”

  The boy made a soft noise behind him.

  Nixon nodded wisely. “That will be much better, I think.”

  “So I’ve decided that the best time will be right after you’re sworn into office the second time. In 1972, before the Watergate thing got out of hand, right after you got a peace treaty from the Vietnamese and right after your landslide victory. Then an assassin picks you off, and you’re a bigger hero and a greater legend than Kennedy.”

  “And everything since then?” Nixon asked.

  “Changed. They won’t keep after you, you see, after you’re dead. You’ll be a pleasant memory to almost everybody. Their hate will be gone, mostly.”

  Nixon shook his head. “You said your wish was supposed to be for the good of America, didn’t you?”

  Siggy nodded.

  “Well, if I had been assassinated then, Spiro Agnew would have become president.”

  Siggy had forgotten. Spiro Agnew. What a bum. There was no way that could be good for the country. “You’re right,” Siggy said. “So it’ll have to be before. Right before the election. It’ll be almost as good then, you were leading in the polls.”

  “But then,” Nixon said, “George McGovern would have been president.”

  Worse and worse. Siggy began to realize the difficulties involved in carrying out his responsibility. Everything he changed would have consequences. How could he fix the country’s woes, if he kept increasing them with the changes he made?

  “And if you have me killed in 1968, it’s either Spiro Agnew or Hubert Humphrey,” Nixon added. “Maybe you’ll just have to wish for me to win in 1960.”

  Siggy thought of that. Thought very carefully. “No,” he said. “That would be good for you. It would have made you a better president, not to have those bad experiences first. But would you have taken us to the moon? Would you have kept the Vietnam War as small as it was?”

  “Smaller,” Nixon said. “I would have won it by 1964.”

  Siggy shook his head. “And been at war with Red China, and the world might have been destroyed, and millions of people killed. I don’t think the wrong man won in 1960.”

  Nixon’s face went kind of sad. “Then maybe it would be kindest of all if you simply wished for me to lose every election I ever tried. Keep me out of Congress, out of the vice-presidency. Let me be a used car salesman.” And he smiled a twisted, sad smile.

  Siggy reached out and touched the man’s shoulder. “Maybe I should,” he said, and the boy behind him made another soft sound.

  “But no,” Nixon said. “You wanted to save America. And it wouldn’t make any difference to keep me out of government. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. There would have been a Richard Nixon anyway. If they hadn’t wanted me, I wouldn’t have been there. If Richard Nixon hadn’t existed, they would have made one.”

  Siggy sighed. “Then I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  Nixon turned and looked out over the water. “I only did what they wanted me to do. And when they changed their minds, they were surprised at what I was.” The beach was cold and damp between waves. The breeze from the land carried the air of Los Angeles with it, and it made the beach smell slimy and old. “Maybe,” Nixon said, “there’s nothing you can wish for that will save America. Maybe there’s nothing you can do at all.”

  And the noise the boy made was loud enough that Siggy at last turned to look at him. To his surprise, the boy was no longer standing up. He was sitting cross-legged in the sand, bowed over, his hands gripping each other behind his neck. His body shook.

  “What’s wrong, Son?” Nixon asked. He sounded concerned.

  The boy looked up, anger and grief in his face. “You,” he said, and his voice shook. “You can call me Son.”

  Nixon knelt in the sand, painfully as if his leg hurt, and touched the boy’s shoulder. “What’s wrong, Son?”

  “His brother was killed in Vietnam,” Siggy said, as if that explained anything.

  “I’m sorry,” Nixon said. “I’m really sorry.”

  The boy threw off Nixon’s hand. “Do you think that matters? Do you think it makes any difference how sorry you are?” The words stung Nixon, clearly. He shuddered as if his face had been slapped.

  “I don’t know what else I can do,” Nixon said softly.

  The boy’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the lapels of his suit, pulling him down until they were face to face, and the boy screamed, “You can pay for it! You can pay and pay and pay—” and the boy’s lips and teeth were almost touching Nixon’s face, and Nixon looked pathetic and helpless in the boy’s grip, flecks of the boy’s spit beginning to dot his cheeks and lips. Siggy watched, and realized there was nothing that Nixon could do that would pay it all, that would give the boy back what he had lost, realized that Nixon had not really taken it from the boy. Had not taken it, could not return it, was as much a victim as anyone else. How could Siggy, with a single wish, set it all right? How could he even up all the scales?

  “Think, idiot,” said the fairy godmother. “I’m losing patience.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said to her.

  “And you’re the one with the plan,” she answered contemptuously.

  The boy was still screaming, again and again, and Nixon was weeping now, silently letting the tears flow to join the spittle on his face, as if to agree, as if to make it unanimous.

  “I wish,” said Siggy, “for everyone to forgive you, Mr. Nixon. For everyone in America to stop hating you, little by little, until all the hate is gone.”

  The fairy godmother danced in his mind, waving her wand around and turning everything pink.

  And the boy stopped screaming and let go of Nixon, gazed wonderingly into the old man’s eyes at the tears there, and said, “I’m sorry for you,” and meant it with all his heart. Then Siggy helped the boy to his feet and they turned away, leaving Nixon on the beach. The world was tinged with pink and Siggy put his arm around the boy and they smiled at each other. And they headed back to the cab. Siggy saw the fairy godmother flying away ahead of them, north and east from San Clemente, trailing stars behind her as she flew.

  “Bibbity bobbity boo,” she cried, and she was gone.

  The Princess and the Bear

  Orson Scott Card says he wrote this story for fun, and because he loved it. So did we. It is an unabashed fairy tale, missing only the “once upon a time.” But it’s full of beauty and magic, romance and betrayal, pain and joy. It’s a timeless sort of tale, one which we’ll read to the children in our lives, only to find that it soothes the constant child we carry forever in ourselves . . .

  I know you’ve seen the lions. All over the place: beside the doors, flanking the throne, roaring out of the plates in the pantry, spouting water from under the eaves.

  Haven’t you ever wondered why the statue atop the city gates is a bear?

  Many years ago in this very city, in the very palace that you can see rising granite and gray behind the old crumbly walls of the king’s garden, there lived a princess. It was so long ago that who can ever remember her name? She was just the princess. These days it isn’t in fashion to think that princesses are beautiful, and in fact they tend to be a bit horse-faced and gangling. But in those days it was an absolute requirement that a princess look fetching, at least when wearing the most expensive clothes available.

  This princess, however, would have been beautiful dressed like a slum child or a shepherd girl. She was beautiful the moment she was born. She only got more beautiful as she grew up.

  And there was also a prince. He was not her brother, though. He was the son of a king in a far-off land, and his father was the thirteenth cousin twice removed of the princess’ father. The boy had been sent here to our land to get an education—because the princess’ father, King Ethelred, was known far and wide as a wise man and a good king.

  And if the princess was marvelously beautiful, so was the prince. He was the kind of boy that every mother wants to hug, the kind of boy who gets his hair tousled by every man that meets him.

  He and the princess grew up together. They took lessons together from the teachers in the palace, and when the princess was slow, the prince would help her, and when the prince was slow, the princess would help him. They had no secrets from each other, but they had a million secrets that they two kept from the rest of the world. Secrets like where the bluebirds’ nest was this year, and what color underwear the cook wore, and that if you duck under the stairway to the armory there’s a little underground path that comes up in the wine cellar. They speculated endlessly about which of the princess’ ancestors had used that path for surreptitious imbibing.

  After not too many years the princess stopped being just a little girl and the prince stopped being just a little boy, and then they fell in love. All at once all their million secrets became just one secret, and they told that secret every time they looked at each other, and everyone who saw them said, “Ah, if I were only young again.” That is because so many people think that love belongs to the young: sometime during their lives they stopped loving people, and they think it was just because they got old.

  The prince and the princess decided one day to get married.

  But the very next morning, the prince got a letter from the far-off country where his father lived. The letter told him that his father no longer lived at all, and that the boy was now a man; and not just a man, but a king.

  So the prince got up the next morning, and the servants put his favorite books in a parcel, and his favorite clothes were packed in a trunk, and the trunk, and the parcel, and the prince were all put on a coach with bright red wheels and gold tassels at the corner and the prince was taken away.

  The princess did not cry until after he was out of sight. Then she went into her room and cried for a long time, and only her nurse could come in with food and chatter and cheerfulness. At last the chatter brought smiles to the princess, and she went into her father’s study where he sat by the fire at night and said, “He promised he would write, every day, and I must write every day as well.”

  She did, and the prince did, and once a month a parcel of thirty letters would arrive for her, and the postrider would take away a parcel of thirty letters (heavily perfumed) from her.

  And one day the Bear came to the palace. Now he wasn’t a bear, of course, he was the Bear, with a capital B. He was probably only thirty-five or so, because his hair was still golden brown and his face was only lined around the eyes. But he was massive and grizzly, with great thick arms that looked like he could lift a horse, and great thick legs that looked like he could carry that horse a hundred miles. His eyes were deep, and they looked brightly out from under his bushy eyebrows, and the first time the nurse saw him she squealed and said, “Oh, my, he looks like a bear.”

  He came to the door of the palace and the doorman refused to let him in, because he didn’t have an appointment. But he scribbled a note on a piece of paper that looked like it had held a sandwich for a few days, and the doorman—with grave misgivings—carried the paper to the king.

  The paper said, “If Boris and 5,000 stood on the highway from Rimperdell, would you like to know which way they were going?”

  King Ethel red wanted to know.

  The doorman let the stranger into the palace, and the king brought him into his study and they talked for many hours.

  In the morning the king arose early and went to his captains of cavalry and captains of infantry, and he sent a lord to the knights and their squires, and by dawn all of Ethelred’s little army was gathered on the highway, the one that leads to Rimperdell. They marched for three hours that morning, and then they came to a place and the stranger with golden brown hair spoke to the king and King Ethelred commanded the army to stop. They stopped, and the infantry was sent into the forest on one side of the road, and the cavalry was sent into the tall cornfields on the other side of the road, where they dismounted. Then the king, and the stranger, and the knights waited in the road.

  Soon they saw a dust cloud in the distance, and then the dust cloud grew near, and they saw that it was an army coming down the road. And at the head of the army was King Boris of Rimperdell. And behind him the army seemed to be five thousand men.

  “Hail,” King Ethelred said, looking more than a little irritated, since King Boris’ army was well inside our country’s boundaries.