The Stepsister's Tale

by Tracy Barrett

  “And then he never came back,” Mamma finished, her voice even lower.

  “Open it, Mamma.” Maude sounded in an agony to see what was inside.

  Mamma slowly lifted the lid. She poured the contents, gleaming red and blue and green, onto the table, and then held them to the light one by one. “I remember this necklace. I wore it at the masked ball at the Sutherlands’ manor. And this one—” A little laugh escaped her as she picked up a brooch whose sparkling gems were arranged to look like a tiny harlequin’s face. “Jane, you chewed on this when you were a baby and took off his ruby nose. Papa had a piece of red glass put in its place, see? But the rest isn’t glass. It’s diamonds and rubies and sapphires.”

  She swept the glittering pile into her hand and dropped the gems back in the box. “Did you pick up all the stones, Isabella?”

  “I think so,” Isabella answered. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a gleaming handful, and placed them carefully on the table, where they twinkled. “I found them after that voice called me. Jane, was that you?”

  “Voice?” Jane asked. “I didn’t make a voice. Truly, Mamma, I didn’t.”

  “When did you hear it?” Mamma asked Isabella.

  “About an hour after you left. It was so dark and cold, and I was sitting by the fire wishing I had gone with you. Then someone said to me— Are you sure it wasn’t you?” she asked Jane again.

  Jane shook her head in wonderment. “I was in the wagon by then. We were on our way to the palace.”

  “Well, it spoke quietly, so it was hard to tell who it was,” Isabella went on. “But it said something like, ‘If you would find your heart’s desire, gather your courage and leave the fire. Take yourself to the prince’s throne, and at the ball you will find your home.’” She looked at them apologetically. “I think that’s what it said. Something like that, anyway.”

  “You must have been dreaming,” Mamma said.

  “I wasn’t. I know because when I held up a candle, the light fell on the diamonds on the floor. They sparkled. So I picked them up and followed them to the stable, and there stood Mouse and the carriage, and my gown was hanging on a hook. I put it on and found my glass slippers, and then I went to the ball,” she finished simply.

  Mamma looked dazed.

  Jane picked up one of the bracelets. It was beautiful, with green stones that caught even the faint light, but even more beautiful was the knowledge of what she could do with it. “We can buy more goats and maybe another cow, and we can hire dairymen and have a fine dairy.”

  “And once you have money again, surely one of your relatives will be willing to take you in,” Mamma said to Isabella. The girl scuffed the ground with her toe. Jane saw that her face was turning pink, and she was biting her lip. What was the matter with her?

  “Does she have to leave?” Maude asked suddenly.

  Jane turned to her sister in surprise. “But doesn’t she want— Isabella? Isabella, what do you want to do?” Isabella shrugged, and then made a quick gesture with her hand, indicating the messy room, the cold fireplace, the old comfortable chair pulled up in front of it. To Jane this was as clear as words. “She wants to stay, Mamma.”

  Mamma knelt before the girl. “Look at me,” she said softly. Isabella lifted her face. Her eyes were clouded with tears, and her nose was running. “Oh, my dear.” Mamma pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and gave it to Isabella, who wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  “I do not want you to leave,” Mamma said. “I thought you did. I want you to stay. This is your home. Your father would have wanted it this way.” And at that, the girl began crying in earnest. Then Maude started crying, too, without seeming to know why, and Jane felt herself close to tears. So Maude made them all hot rose hip tea, and they sat and drank it while the day grew brighter around them. Maude picked up the egg basket, and Jane started for the barn. She stopped at the door and turned back.

  “Eggs or barn work, Isabella?” Jane asked, and for an instant the girl hesitated, her mouth set in that familiar stubborn line. Then it softened.

  “Eggs,” Isabella said. Maude took her hand, and the two of them ran outside. Jane lingered in the doorway.

  “Well, Jane?” Mamma asked.

  It came out of her all in a rush. “Why don’t we move to the hunting lodge? There isn’t enough here to repair the whole house and hire servants—”

  “Live in the hunting lodge?” Mamma’s voice was incredulous, but Jane sensed a tinge of hesitation, so she pressed her advantage.

  “What you always say about being a Halsey?” Jane began. She didn’t know how to put it into words, but she tried. “Being a Halsey doesn’t really mean living in this house and not working hard, does it? Wouldn’t we still be Halseys if we kept a dairy and lived in the hunting lodge, as long as we behaved honorably and treated people well?”

  Mamma didn’t answer for so long that Jane feared she never would. Then Mamma gave her a tremulous smile. “We’ll just have to see.”

  Jane smiled back and looked outside, where Maude and Isabella waited for her. The first church bells were ringing, warning that services would start in an hour. I hope they’ll bring Frances for her christening, Jane thought. Surely they will. Her heart lifted at the thought of seeing the baby wearing her brand-new robe in the arms of her mother, with all the rest of the family there. Especially Will.

  “I’ll find four eggs,” Maude was saying.

  “I’ll find six,” Isabella shot back.

  “Six?” Maude’s scorn was unmistakable.

  “Don’t quarrel!” Jane warned them through the window, but the girls ran across the yard and Jane followed them out into the sunshine, which carried the first hint of the warmth of summer to come.

  Epilogue

  Left to itself, the house fell ever more quickly into decay. Animals crept into the pantry and the kitchen, eating the few crumbs and scraps that remained and making their dens inside the walls. Soon, owls discovered this abundant food supply, and they built heavy nests in the entry hall and the ballroom, straining the already weakened rafters. Great gaps appeared in the moldy walls.

  When the cord holding a portrait to the wall rotted through, nobody was there to see if it was Great-Great-Grandmamma Esther or Great-Grandpapa Edwin who lay facedown in the dust. A few years later, heavy snow caused a great section of the roof to cave in, but even the thunder of its collapse was not loud enough to be heard in the warm little lodge at the edge of the forest. The laughter of the wedding guests and the music of the fiddles drowned it out. But the musicians’ gallery in the enormous ballroom fell on an autumn day when all was quiet, startling a baby out of his sleep.

  “Shhh, my darling,” whispered the baby’s mother, as his father went to see what the noise was.

  “Just your family ghosts again, Jane,” he said when he returned. He picked up his fretful little boy. “Hush, my son—here’s some of your Aunt Maude’s teething syrup,” and he rocked the baby back to sleep in his strong woodcutter’s arms.

  And when an errant bolt of lightning in a summer thunderstorm struck the decaying pile several years later, no one attempted to put out the blaze. It had been a wet spring, and there was little danger of the fire spreading, so the villagers and the people of the woods gathered with the family and watched the flames reach higher and higher. They backed away when the heat grew uncomfortable, and rats and mice fled from the ruins and ran squeaking over their feet into the trees behind them.

  “Poor little things,” Isabella said, holding her daughter’s hand, as the little girl leaped and danced to avoid the scrabbling claws. “Don’t be frightened, Serafina. They’re just running from danger. They mean you no harm.”

  And in a few more years, the magnificent mansion with its sweeping staircase, its marble floors, its glaring portraits, was nothing more than a memory. As time went on, the
history of the house and of the family that had once lived in it turned into the stuff of legend, and what was true and what was story blended until nobody could say where one ended and the other began.

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgments

  I wrestled with this story for a long time. Reimagining a well-loved and much-retold fairy tale without losing its heart was tricky, and the creation of a new story while staying within the confines of one of the world’s most familiar tales presented a set of challenges that I had never before faced in quite the same way. If I’ve had any success in meeting these challenges, it is largely due to the support, advice, and patience of my critique group (Shirley Amitrano, Thea Gammans, Candie Moonshower, Cheryl Mendenhall, Carole Stice, and Cheryl Zach); my perceptive and enthusiastic agent, Lara Perkins; my talented and energetic editor, Annie Stone; and always, my husband, Greg Giles.

  Questions for Discussion

  What does Jane think the Halsey name signifies? What about her mother? What power do you think is in a family’s name and reputation, and should children feel a responsibility to live up to that ideal? Is it ever wrong to take pride in your heritage?

  What is the difference between living up to an ideal and closing your eyes to reality? Where in the text do you find evidence of the different characters doing one or the other of these?

  Retelling a classic fairy tale is a very popular storytelling strategy. What are some other Cinderella retellings in today’s literature and film? What do you think makes a retelling particularly successful or interesting? Why do you think Cinderella is the most popular tale to retell?

  The story of Cinderella is familiar, but Tracy Barrett brings new life to the tale by shifting the perspective from Cinderella to her “evil” stepsister, Jane. What other perspectives might be interesting from a narrative standpoint? How would Maude tell the story that Jane tells in The Stepsister’s Tale? How would Will tell it?

  Are Jane and Maude unfairly predisposed to resent their new sister, Ella? What about vice versa? What defines a family, if not simply blood relations?

  Mamma is too stuck in her family’s past to be an effective parent, and Harry spoils Isabella. Find some examples (not always human!) of good parenting in the text that the author uses to serve as a contrast to these characters’ poor parenting.

  In The Stepsister’s Tale, outsiders believe Ella’s claim that she is a victim because she is charming and beautiful. What typical signals does a storyteller use to relay information about which characters are “good guys” versus “bad guys,” and how does the author use these signals for other purposes in this retelling?

  Why does Jane change her mind about trying to get Ella married to the prince? When do you start seeing a shift in her thinking about this?

  Jane thinks that Will is scornful of her because their families belong to different social classes. Will thinks the same of Jane. Find places in the text that show why they think this, and where one of them has misinterpreted an action or words of the other.

  In many Western societies of the past, people usually married for money or to improve their social standing, as Mamma and Harry do, and no one thought anything was wrong with this. Do you think these are acceptable reasons for marrying today? Does Jane? How do you know how she feels about this?

  Do you think that a fairy godmother (or some other supernatural being) told Isabella to go to the stable and find the carriage and the ball gown, or did the suggestion come from some other person, or from Isabella’s imagination? Find evidence in the text to support your opinion.

  One theme of The Stepsister’s Tale is the importance of the difference between appearance and reality. Find examples in the text of places where appearance and reality don’t mesh.

  “Captivating, mysterious, fun and deep…for readers of John Green or any realistic YA authors, I would highly recommend this new wonderful novel.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Five Strangers. Countless adventures. One epic way to get lost. Don’t miss one of the most anticipated debuts of 2014, Let’s Get Lost (August 2014) by Adi Alsaid.

  Available in ebook.

  Order your copy today!

  Four teens across the country have only one thing in common: a girl named Leila.

  She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.

  Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila. And when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed. But it is during Leila’s own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth—sometimes, what you need most is right where you started. And maybe the only way to find what you’re looking for is to get lost along the way.

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  ISBN-13: 9781460326695

  THE STEPSISTER’S TALE

  Copyright © 2014 by Tracy Barrett

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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