"Smells just right, too, Godmother," she said with satisfaction. "Just perfect. Like you'd washed it all and left it to dry in the sun, then put it away with some lavender."
"Excellent. Hands now, I think."
"Right-oh." Kalinda held hers out as models.
Kalinda was a Brownie accustomed to hard work, and her hands showed it. There were tiny scars, the nails were groomed but uneven and the thumb was a bit chipped. The skin was brown, there were calluses in the right places from using household implements, and the middle two knuckles of the right hand were just a little scraped. Lily replicated all of that for her illusion.
Now the head. First, gray hair, long, neatly braided, fastened up on the top of the head in a sort of crown. Over that — because in this kingdom no respectable married woman or widow went with her head uncovered — a faded red kerchief, tied under the nape. Kalinda checked those details for feel, while she went to work on the face.
She tried never to duplicate the face of someone living, but she had been alive for three centuries, and she had met a great many people in that time. So she considered her options, and chose an old woman who had been the nursemaid for Prince Sebastian some two hundred years ago.
She stepped back and examined the kindly face she'd created, adding a few more wrinkles, a couple of moles that hadn't been on the original's face, and making the forehead just a little lumpy. There. This was the point where people sometimes back uneasily out of the room, because this looked like a person, only one without any life.
Then Lily untied the cloak, swirled it around her shoulders, and tied it in place.
She didn't feel any different, but when she looked down at herself, she saw the illusion like a transparent layer over her own body. She walked, bent, jumped a little, trotted back and forth, until Kalinda nodded. "It's solid, Godmother. Unless someone stronger comes along to dispel it, you should be all right."
Lily breathed a sigh of relief and pulled the cloak off. "In that case," she said, "it's time to get to work. Back to the Palace. Queen Sable needs to cement her hold over the Kingdom, or The Tradition will probably do something on its own."
Siegfried von Drachenthal considered himself to be a very lucky Hero, so far. Hero, because, well, he did Heroic things: slew dragons — only the evil, plundering, destructive ones of course, and only the ones that couldn't be reasoned with — defeated wicked knights, drove out bloodthirsty barbarians, destroyed rampaging giants and killed every manner of monstrous beast that your average village was having problems with. He hadn't rescued any Princesses yet...but there was a reason for that. He had come to the aid of a prince or two, a lot of counts, one duke and assorted adventurers. But not Princesses. On the whole, he was trying to avoid Princesses, just on general principle. He could not afford to have the wrong sort of Princess fall in love with him.
At the moment, having crossed over the eastern border of a mountainous Kingdom he was hacking his way through the undergrowth of a forest that seemed to go on for an awfully long way. There were all sorts of rumors of war in this area, and war was a good way to do heroic deeds without the complications of princesses or even maidens in distress.
The first woman that young Siegfried had ever seen was one of his aunts. So was the second. And the third. And the fourth.
And, truth to tell, every other woman up to the point where he left his childhood home of Drachenthal. When your mother and father are also your aunt and uncle, things tend to be complicated that way. When both are half-godlet, and both blessed and cursed by other gods, things get even more complicated.
Such things generally lead to a life of Heroism and Doom. The Heroism part was enjoyable enough. It was the Doom part that Siegfried wasn't too fond of. Doom was generally painful, and there was never anything good when it was over, unless you were a religious fanatic who was really looking forward to the afterlife.
"So, this Kingdom is rich?" he asked his companion, a little, brown, nondescript bird. Heroes didn't usually have any interest in birds, and the names and categorization of them were generally limited in a Hero's education to "good to eat," "not good to eat," and "singing while I have a hangover, kill it with a rock."
Birds don't snort, but the bird, which he just thought of as forest bird, since that was where he had met it, made a derisive chirp. "This Kingdom is rich in the way that Eitri's Forge is a little warm."
"Well, that's good," Siegfried said with relief. "Hero work doesn't exactly pay well. Maybe if I smite enough of whoever is on the side of evil, they'll give me a reward."
Now those who are destined for a life of Heroism often begin it precociously early, often as a mere baby, with little events like strangling great serpents in the cradle — the Hero's cradle, not the serpent's. Siegfried had been no exception to that. But from everything he'd learned since, the rate of his Heroic development had overshot all others by leaps and bounds. Where other Doomed Heroes waited until their beards had begun to sprout, their voices to descend to rich baritone or melodious tenor, and they began to manifest a distinct interest in Females before slaying their first evil, gold-hoarding dragon, Siegfried had done so much earlier.
Age ten, to be precise. The age when Girls are, Traditionally, Icky. Besides, the only Girls he knew were his aunts.
So, when he tasted the Dragon's Blood and suddenly could understand the language of all of the birds and animals, and when the little forest bird began talking sense to him instead of merely shouting "Look! Look! Look at meeeeeee!" he paid attention rather than merely making use of it as a glorified guide.
"Oh I wouldn't take that" the bird had warned as he reached for a particular enticing golden ring. It was a beautiful thing. It glistened in the sunlight as if it was made of liquid, and it called to him. It whispered to him....
But it was, after all, aring. Jewelry. Girlie stuff. So — "Why not?" he had asked the bird.
"Well, since you ask, " the bird had replied, with incredible ebullience in its voice, "I'll tell you why!"
So he learned, well beforehand, that the ring would lead to power and glory — but also to a rather horrible death, being stabbedin the back of all wretched things, and worst of all....by a Girl. Not an aunt, but that didn't make it any better.
"Now on the other hand, if you just dip your sword in that blood and have another taste, you'll learn something worth knowing, and your sword will never break!" the bird had caroled. So he did. And he did. He still carried that sword; he'd been a very large boy at ten and strong for his age, as befitting a Hero, after all.
And at ten years old, Siegfried of Drachenthal learned that he had been a game piece all of his life in the metaphorical hands of The Tradition. That he was supposed to go and wake up a sleeping woman, that they would fall in love, and that this was going to lead to an awful lot of unpleasant things. And that if he didn't somehow find a way around it, he was Doomed.
At ten, Doom didn't seem quite as horrid a fate to try to avoid as a Girl was. But it seemed that by avoiding that one particular Girl, in those particular circumstances, who would be the first woman he had ever seen who was not an aunt, he would also avoid the Doom. So he did. He got away from Drachenthal, had the bird scout on ahead so that the first woman he ever saw was not his aunt but someone's lively old granny, and began searching for a way to have a Happy, rather than a Tragically Heroic, ending.