A Cinderella Retelling

by E. L. Tenenbaum

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said with a nod to each of them.

  “We’re so pleased to meet you, my lady!” Calliope gushed.

  “Your gown is so magnificent,” Maybelle cut in, “and those shoes!”

  I couldn’t believe what was happening, but I was too happy to be anything but kind that night.

  “Thank you,” I replied sweetly. “I accept your compliments considering how lovely your own costumes are.”

  Maybelle and Calliope flushed modestly with the praise. For the first time, seeing them through the mask of my new person, I actually wondered if, unlike Madame, they weren’t inherently cruel people. Maybelle had a meaner streak than Calliope, but what else could I expect considering their role model in life? I had been lucky to have a kind and patient mother, and while I could have been bitter, I felt that I honored her by trying to be like her. Though little good that had done me with my stepfamily over the years. It was probably why it had been so easy for Madame to manipulate me into being her slave from the start.

  The prince’s arrival broke the moment.

  As my stepsisters stepped aside to allow the prince to present me with the chocolate swans, I caught a glimpse of the time over his shoulder. Noticing that it was fifteen minutes to three, I stood abruptly, causing him to jump back to avoiding knocking over the swans.

  “I had such a lovely time, Your Highness, and I do apologize, but I must leave,” I said, already whisking past him to the stairs, biting down my disappointment that the magic wouldn’t last longer.

  “But—” the prince began hopelessly.

  “You really are so wonderful,” I bumbled on, “and these swans are so dear. But I must go.”

  I took them from his hands and handed one to each of my wide-eyed stepsisters, not caring at the chocolate smudging the gloves that would surely soon disappear.

  “Wait!” the prince cried after me, but it was too late.

  I had already lifted my skirts, and on the euphoria of the night alone, flew up the stone staircase and hurried toward the palace doors. Confusion must have halted the prince’s step, and his captain’s too, because it wasn’t until I had reached the front courtyard that I heard them giving chase behind me.

  My carriage was already waiting for me, the door held open by my faithful footman as I fled down the red carpet. I leaped into the carriage and the door was quickly shut, signaling the coachman to send the stallions into a mad dash for the palace gates. As we slipped through, the command to close them coming too late, I looked back to see the flustered prince standing in middle of the staircase, his captain and a few soldiers by his side. Although they called for their horses, they must have known from the speed with which I flew away that they wouldn’t be able to catch me.

  Thank Heaven magic controlled my horses that night, because we scarce made it to the edges of our land before night struck its darkest hour. By the time we reached the final bend before the house came into sight, what had left as my grand entourage returned as a muddied girl in tattered gown carrying an overgrown pumpkin with a goose clucking at her heels as rats scurried into the grass under her feet. But I was too elated to feel sorry for myself. With a few effortless taps of her wand, Marie had given me a lifetime of fulfilled dreams.

  Returning home, I immediately changed back into my usual rags, then buried the remains of my mother’s dress in the garden alongside her. Then I told her everything, refusing to allow memory to tinge or tweak details that were, and still are, as fresh in my mind as if they were still unfolding. When I was done, I leaned against the pear tree, happy and content that the dreaminess of the night had indeed turned out to be reality. Even staying in Madame’s good graces would not have yielded the night I’d had.

  I dozed against my tree and only woke when I heard the rumble of carriage wheels approaching our home. I flew back through the house to the front door and stood at the top of the steps, waiting properly for Madame and her daughters to descend from the carriage. Beyond them, the sun was first beginning to rise, color returning to the sky just as the beautiful rainbow of men and women were returning home from their night of revelry.

  They were scarcely out of the carriage and carelessly flinging their capes upon me before words tripped and tumbled from their mouths in a muddled attempt to tell me about all that I had supposedly missed.

  “What an incredible night!” Calliope gushed.

  “What an incredible party!” Maybelle agreed.

  “What an incredible prince!” they chimed together, swooning against each other.

  I followed them to their rooms and helped them undress to the tune of their accounts of the masquerade.

  “Look at this, Ella,” Calliope instructed, before I even had a chance to unlace the back of her dress.

  In her proffered hand sat a chocolate swan, its form slightly smudged from the heat of her palm, but the one the prince had brought for me nonetheless.

  “How lovely!” I dutifully exclaimed.

  “I got one, too,” Maybelle cut in. “But I ate it.”

  Calliope gently set hers on her vanity table. “I’m not going to eat mine,” she smiled at it dreamily, “not yet.”

  “Why not?” I blurted out.

  “Because it’s from the prince!” Calliope explained.

  “It’s not from the prince,” Maybelle corrected. “It’s from the prince’s mystery lady.”

  At that point, Madame appeared at the door, distracting her daughters long enough for me to school my features.

  “I have made inquiries about this mysterious woman,” she announced, “and no one knows a thing about her. She is either a criminal posing as a lady, or a faery.”

  Maybelle rolled her eyes. “Or she’s just a lady.”

  “She was too kind to be a lady,” Calliope dismissed.

  “Her posture was admirable,” Madame allowed, and I quickly hid my flushing face in the ribbons of Calliope’s dress.

  “Mama,” Calliope called, trying to jerk forward despite my attempt to unlace her, “may I please have feathers for the next party?”

  “Me too, Mama,” Maybelle cried out, “and sequins for my shoes and swirls of blues and greens for my gown—”

  Madame frowned slightly. “We’ll speak about it in the morning.”

  “It is morning, Mama!” both girls exclaimed at once.

  “After some sleep,” Madame elaborated.

  I should have been thrilled that my stepsisters wanted to imitate the fashion of the mystery woman who had so captured the prince’s attentions, which of course meant that after all these years my stepsisters were actually seeking to imitate me. Instead, my mind had fixated on…

  “There’s to be another party?” I blurted out.

  “Surely you didn’t expect the prince to find the right girl in one night,” Madame sniffed. “There’s to be a festival in one week, and you’re to make new gowns for both girls by then. In addition to your other chores, of course.”

  “Of course, Madame,” I echoed dumbly.

  Madame spun from the room, and it was several excited seconds before anyone spoke. Then Calliope, finally stepping out of her dress, gripped my arms and told me excitedly, “It’s so the prince can find his mystery lady, I’m sure of it!”

  “It’s positively thrilling.” Maybelle clapped her hands gleefully. “Will he find her, or,” she dragged out the word, “will he gain sense and find someone else…like me?”

  “Or me!” Calliope rejoined, and that sent them spinning about the room in the arms of wishful thinking.

  My mind was too numb to take any of it in.

  For hours, I had danced with a prince, and until Calliope spoke, I had thought that enough for a simple servant girl like me. I was horribly mistaken. Having tasted another life, I suddenly realized how hungry I was, how thirsty for something better than the crowded square of attic I called a room and the soot filled corner that was my world.

  I hadn’t even thought that there would be another chance to go to the palace, hadn
’t thought much past the feeling of the prince spinning me across the dance floor.

  I couldn’t be content with what I already had, not when I now wanted so much more. I had to go again.

  The Second Mistake

  Over the next week, my feet didn’t once touch the ground. The moment the prince took me in his arms, the floor fell out from under me, sending me to float above the air of my stifled life. I relived the masquerade every night, from the moment I took those last steps on that wide, stone staircase; to the curtsy; the crook of his smile; his arms; the waltzing; down to those chocolate swans and thrilling race against time.

  When no one was watching, I danced with the broom, the duster, the fireplace poker, the trays of food, the chicken feed, and around the fattening goose that had developed a sudden need to follow close behind me in the yard. When I walked, it was no longer a suppressed, minified shuffle, but every step was part of a waltz, a grand waltz that had overtaken my life and showed me a world larger and more dazzling than anything I could have conjured.

  It was one of the best weeks of my life, when my enchantment was still fresh, when I had only touched the surface, before I fell in too deep.

  My days grew longer, and nights inevitably shrank to keep up with the housework and design the new gowns for the upcoming festival. These dresses had to be fashionable and fun, captivating and classy. Madame had a seamstress whom she relied upon to sew the basic pattern, but I was always called upon to be there in deciding the design, and afterward charged with fixing “this horrid excuse of a dress.”

  I didn’t bother asking Madame permission to go to the palace again. My mother had left no more dresses, and if there were any I had missed, I would never consider them presentable enough after the touch of winged sky I had worn. Madame probably thought my silence a sure sign of my submission, but inside my heart, my mind, my imagination was anything but quiet. While designing the dresses for my stepsisters, I thought only of what other dresses Marie could contrive for me. While affixing sequins to their shoes, I thought only of the sparkle and shine of my hair, my fingers, my own shoes when Marie’s magic took hold.

  And all this without knowing if Marie would be there for me again. Hadn’t my greatest hour of need already passed?

  For seven days, I waited for her under the pear tree beside my mother’s grave, peeking over the low stone wall, and once even standing on it to look beyond, but there was no hint of her anywhere. I wondered where she went when she wasn’t turning sobbing young maidens into beautiful princesses for a night. I didn’t just want to ask her if she would transform me again, but also to thank her and tell her every juicy detail about what had undoubtedly been the most magnificent night of my life.

  The festival finally came, and I had to slow my hands more than once to make sure they worked at their usual pace. Even worse than not knowing about Marie was the thought that my stepfamily would sense my desire to go and humiliate me enough to wrench that desire from me.

  “Does this make me look mysterious?” Calliope asked, adjusting her kingfisher feather-bedecked hat as I helped her dress.

  “Very mysterious,” I agreed.

  She’d wanted to look like the mystery lady and had described it very specifically, though I embellished it with every stitch I had remembered.

  Calliope giggled and spun in place so the material of her dress stretched out to its fullest length. She’d wanted an exact copy of the dress, but I’d convinced her to go with something slightly different. Instead of the stiff silks of my gown, I’d persuaded her to try a much lighter material, a thinner silk that better mirrored the easy flow of water. The material was also an array of blues without greens to better suit her complexion. Twirling now, she looked like a splash of ocean spray, her hat a bird diving to fish beneath the surface.

  Maybelle pranced into the room with her kingfisher feather hat already in place. Her dress was of the same material as Calliope’s, but in greens and yellows, a steady river beneath a sunny forest sky.

  “You look very pretty,” I told them both sincerely.

  Calliope giggled again and, without thinking, gave my hand a small squeeze. Maybelle looked down her nose at me, but without some of her usual harsh disdain.

  “Do you think the lady will be there?” I asked, pretending to revel in a mystery I already thought I knew the answer to.

  “I hope not,” Maybelle sniffed. “For then the prince will spend all his time with her and I will never get my turn.”

  “I hope she is,” Calliope said. “She was so lovely and so very kind to us.”

  “Girls,” Madame commanded from the doorway.

  Even though she wasn’t talking to me, I automatically pulled my shoulders back and lifted my ribcage with the others. Madame entered the room and slowly circled each of her daughters, straightening and tightening until all was to her approval.

  Finally, she nodded. “Come along, then.”

  As they went to the door, I followed behind to see them off. Madame let her daughters pass then turned to block my way.

  “Cinderwench,” she indicated behind me with a nod of her head, “the room.”

  I stifled my sigh until I was sure she was already down the stairs. Why couldn’t Marie appear now to tap-tap the house clean for me? I stared at Calliope’s room. She could not keep her space clean for a minute. As soon as she saw an empty spot, she was compelled to fill it with something. What was the use in cleaning up if she would only muddle it all the moment she returned?

  Still, I had no choice, so I started with the bigger things and worked my way through the room, then dusted it for good measure. I even went to Maybelle’s room and straightened the few things that were out of place. Sure that the upstairs was tidy, I stood a moment at the top of the steps and listened to the quiet of the house. Cook and the other servants had the afternoon off—“no one but Cinderwench will be here, and I will not pay for idleness”—so they were surely already long gone. Even Iris must have been occupied with something else because I didn’t even hear him.

  Then, like lighting, the thought of returning to the palace hit me and I flew down the steps, out the back door, and to my pear tree, praying all the while that Marie would be there.

  “Grandmère! Grandmère!” I started to call after I was only halfway across the yard.

  Had anyone been around to hear, they would have surely thought me mad. I have never met, nor do I have, any living grandmère to speak of.

  My call received no response, which only made me run faster. She had to be there, she had to be!

  Reaching the wall, I leaned a moment against my tree and willed air back into my lungs. All seemed quiet and untouched, but then there was a sudden glow and there was Marie, hovering serenely above the stone wall.

  “Ella? What’s all the excitement about?” she asked.

  “There’s a festival today!” the words rushed out of my mouth.

  “There is?” She tilted her head. “How delightful!”

  “Can I go, Grandmère?” I asked. “Will you help me again?”

  “What a question!” Marie waved her wand and sent magical fireflies through the air. I looked at her expectantly. “Of course,” she finally said.

  “Thank you, Grandmère!” I hopped up on the wall and bounced beside her floating frame. “Thank you so much!”

  “Does this mean you had a nice time at the masquerade?” Marie asked, as she led me toward the garden.

  “I had the best night of my life!” I exclaimed. “And I danced with the prince!”

  “Of course you did, dear. You didn’t think he’d ignore you in that dress?” Marie said calmly.

  “Will I wear something like it today?” I asked, ready for anything that would allow me back into the palace.

  “Think bigger, Ella,” Marie encouraged, already waving her wand. “Everyone else will be wearing some variation of it. You must have something new.”

  Having nothing else to say, I clapped my hands in glee. In seconds, the carriage sto
od ready, the pumpkin tinted with a soft silver glow. Next, the jolly coachman, who even tipped his hat to me as if he remembered our last ride together and the week following when he waddled after me in his true form. Two squirrels were to be my footmen, and the gray mice caught in the trap became horses shaded a lovely dapple gray.

  “There’ll be people looking out for you this time,” Marie explained of the changes. “We must make sure you get a chance to slip in before anyone can intercept you.”

  When it was my turn, I closed my eyes and waited impatiently for Marie to decide what I should wear. I only knew she was done when she asked, “Well, how do you like it?”

  I opened my eyes to the shine of a silver dress, lightweight and airy, glowing in the sun like a star plucked from the heavens. Diamonds studded the thin, royal purple embroidery on my hem and bodice, small stars winking in the light. Hiding my calloused hands were crisp white gloves that reached until my elbows, and on my feet were the most wonderful silver shoes. Marie had even made them with extra height under the balls of my feet, to appear a little taller than I was.

  Tilted to shadow my eyes was a velvet hat decorated with pearls and gray and purple feathers.

  “Oh, Grandmère!” I cried, but then all words escaped me. How could I thank her for what she was doing for me? How could I use words for the beauty she was adorning me with?

  “No crying now, dear,” Marie said with a catch in her voice that made it sound like she was in danger of the same, “just remember, your family won’t recognize you and the magic will be gone by sunset.”

  “Can’t I have until three again?” I pleaded.

  “Sunset,” Marie repeated firmly.

  “Then I won’t waste any more time,” I decided, and lifted my voluminous skirts to be helped into the carriage.

  I waved to her until she was out of sight and only then did I turn to watch the way ahead. This time, I paid attention as we rode through Camallea and over the bridge. The path switched back as it climbed the rocky expanse the palace had been built upon, but the magic kept the ride steady. Considering, it was a rather large island, big enough to host a full town if not more, and the view from each angle was more beautiful than the last.