A Cinderella Retelling

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  “The mystery lady ran away again—”

  “Three times she fled the prince—”

  “She left a shoe behind—”

  “Castarrean glass. All of it Castarrean glass—”

  Even now, it remains in my mind as broken snippets I couldn’t quite keep out.

  I readied them for bed as swiftly as I could then made sure the house was in order before collapsing onto my narrow mess of straw. A blessed sleep, free from all dreams claimed me and it wasn’t until much later, when such peaceful sleep became scarce, that I would appreciate how curative it really was. A final quiet before the raging storms began.

  Shattered Slipper of Glass

  The next day started late but rambled along like any other. I was too numb to feel anything, even fatigue. My mind and body were subject to unending ripples of shock that mercifully delivered me from contemplating the end, from knowing that the world Marie’s magic had opened before me had slammed shut as surely as my pumpkin had been smashed to bits and left to rot in the uncaring gutters of the capital. I didn’t even have the heart to worry if the king would force the prince to marry some other girl of his choosing.

  After years of keeping me together, my dreams were failing me. My imagination gave up. I grasped at threads of another world fluttering in the wind, just beyond my fingertips.

  Three days passed with me functioning at minimal capacity. Three days during which I endured the brainless twittering of my stepsisters, the cynical skepticism of my stepmother, the topic of conversation always returning to the mystery lady, regurgitating every recycled rumor, every theory no matter how inane. And I, the only one who knew, had to keep silent.

  Those three days were some of the longest of my life. I half expected, half hoped that Princess Lyla would send some word of encouragement, but she only knew my face and not where I lived. I didn’t know if she cared to find out either.

  The young lords who’d been ensnared by my stepsisters actually sent word requesting to call upon them. Although Madame had not yet forgone her ambitions of at least one of her daughters marrying royalty, both men came from wealthy, established families, and both had titles before their names. Good enough to allow their attentions. I would have rejoiced over their visit, over the hours I was able to spend in mind-numbing tedium preparing the house for their arrival. I was certain they would distract my stepfamily from this vicious cycle of gossip they’d dropped into, give them something else to talk about, someone else to fawn over. As it turned out, their arrival would herald in something far worse.

  I should have known it would happen too, because that morning Madame sent word that, in honor of their visit, we were to roast the goose.

  The goose hardly made a sound when I had to wring its neck, turning away from it so I wouldn’t have to see its still-trusting eyes.

  “Well, what did you expect?” I asked when it was done. “This is what you were born to be.”

  I plucked and gathered its feathers. The culmination of his life would be the warmth it provided as a blanket, or even a pillow. Even then, it was far better off than me. I would never be anything.

  The lords arrived on horseback, gaily prancing around the bend on their fine chestnut mares just as the sun tipped over in the sky to signal afternoon. I realize now that I never did learn their names, or which was which. Then, they both seemed the same to me, and as long as someone was there to keep the step-witches out of my hair, I didn’t care much either.

  It was a cruel irony that led me to serve up my coachman on a platter the moment I heard the words that would change my fate. I was just bearing the tray into the room, wondering how it could still weigh so much after all the hours it took us to walk home, when I caught the excited end of conversation.

  “…he really?” Maybelle exclaimed.

  “Really what?” I asked, forgetting I wasn’t supposed to be seen or heard.

  The step-witches were too caught up in the news they’d just received, and one of the lords unwittingly answered my question for me.

  “On my honor,” he replied, addressing the table, “the prince will be traveling all over the land to try the glass slipper on every eligible maiden. I heard the news myself from Sir Percival’s valet’s assistant.”

  Maybelle and Calliope let out giddy shrieks of excitement. I had to wonder why, as not only did we all know the slipper did not belong to either one of them, but they had their own men plying them with attentions. Chance does some funny things to people’s heads.

  The tray of goose fell from my hands with an indelicate thump on the table. Madame glared at me, her gaze burning through my skin, but there was nothing she could sear me with that would hurt worse than the news I just heard. If the prince was so intent on finding the owner of the slipper, then it was only a matter of time before he came here. And if he came here… then what?

  Would I try on the slipper for him? Could I allow myself—rags, soot, and all—to watch a prince bend down and slide a Castarrean glass slipper onto my dirty little foot? And I knew, as others didn’t, that there was little chance he would find anyone else to fit that slipper. No eligible maiden was made tiny as I. I was sure of it.

  So where did that leave me? Was I worthy enough to step forward, accept a prince’s heart, and one day sit beside him to rule over his land? Dressed for the ball with the feeling that magic gave me, I would have said yes, but not anymore. And I doubted Marie would be here to rescue me yet again. She couldn’t see the future, but she’d made it pretty clear the night of the grand ball that it would be the last time magic would dress me. Weren’t the pair of slippers it had left behind proof that it was over?

  I was only Cinderwench. I didn’t get more than I already had.

  One of the young lords took up the knife to carve the goose, allowing me to back away from the dining room and general revelry as quickly as I could. I had to wait a few more agonizing hours until the meal was over, dessert was served, the lords sent on their way, and the family to bed. I don’t know how I made it through then, but somehow, my years under Madame’s cruelty taught me to dull my senses enough that I was able to scrape by. As soon as the last bedroom door shut, I fled across the yard to my mother’s grave and fell into bitter sobs upon it.

  Marie didn’t show, and I didn’t even have the blasted goose to wander after me anymore.

  For the first time since my mother passed, I felt completely and utterly alone. But not the type of loneliness that stems from being stranded on an island in the middle of a tumbling sea that no one cares to sail past. Rather, I had fallen head over heels into a dark and slippery well, yelling for help from passersby. I was able to see daylight, I was able to see potential escape, but they did not look down, and they could not hear me call. Worse than being alone without anyone is being alone among others. Little did I know then, but in the ensuing years, that awful solitude would revisit me more times than I ever care to count.

  Somehow, the night passed, and the morning sun rose without a care for those in the world. It may have been my imagination, but it was almost brighter, sunnier, illuminating our garden in such a way as to bring out life and colors I hadn’t noticed before.

  Blasted sun. Even it couldn’t hide its glee of a new day behind a cloud long enough to commiserate with me.

  Once the first bit of news about the prince and his plans for the slipper reached us, it seemed that updates would not stop coming. The prince chose to start at the furthest reaches of the kingdom, thinking that was how the woman hid her identity for so long, and then work in to the capital. The royal entourage had chosen large cities where they would set up in the main square and allow all eligible maidens in the area to try on the shoe. Noblemen and other wealthy individuals living in the surrounding countryside were not made to suffer such indignities. For them, the prince joined the entourage and showed up at the house himself.

  Each week, we received word on failure in new cities. Each day, the prince came that much closer to us.

  I would
be remiss not to say that the entire prospect excited me a bit. To think I had made such an impression on the prince that he was willing to go door-to-door, willing to wait for hours while women tried on the shoe I left behind was, quite simply, flattering. It was more than that as well. No one, ever, had gone to such great lengths for me, and even though the prince didn’t know who I was, I was too humbled and gratified to bother with the difference. At the same time, worry gnawed at my stomach until I wondered how there was anything left of it.

  “I would do anything to make the shoe fit,” Calliope announced one day.

  “Would you even cut off your toe?” Maybelle wanted to know.

  “Certainly!” she replied.

  “Would you even cut off your heel?” Maybelle pressed.

  “Absolutely!” Calliope affirmed.

  Maybelle arched her eyebrows. “So you would cut off your toe and cut off your heel, mutilate your foot for the rest of your life, just so you could marry a prince?”

  “Yes,” Calliope insisted. “And don’t pretend you wouldn’t do the same. A queen has servants to carry her anyway.”

  Foolish girls. The ring that came with the shoe was not worth losing a toe over.

  As the prince and his entourage circled closer to the capital, Madame kept us busy scrubbing down every nook, cranny, and corner of the house, because this time the prince really was coming here. The cleaning did me good, as each night I collapsed into bed too tired to consider the endless possibilities of what could be. Not knowing when the prince would arrive also proved to help somewhat, because I could always push off his arrival until tomorrow which was so much easier to think of than today.

  According to the route he’d taken, which I later traced for myself on a map, the prince had to ride through Camallea to get to our little corner of land. Because of that, his progress slowed as his entourage decided it best to just get it over with there once they were already passing through. Therefore, as things turned out, our house was one of the last ones the prince visited.

  Actually, it was the last one.

  The prince arrived late morning, as good a time as any to ruin my life. I was in the study cleaning out Iris’s cage when Madame came rushing in with a feverish look in her eyes.

  “He’s coming,” the words tumbled out.

  I stared at her a moment, honestly unsure of what she wanted from me then.

  “Go upstairs and change your dress,” she told me impatiently. “Try to find something clean.”

  Iris squawked.

  “And take that beast with you!”

  I dashed out, bringing Iris along.

  My heart was beating too loud when I reached my attic room, so I never heard the footsteps that followed me up. In fact, I wasn’t aware of another presence until I was slipping on my less tattered dress, tucking the other shoe into my pocket, and hearing the key in the lock.

  “No!” I ran toward the door and banged fruitlessly on its hard wooden surface. “No, no, no!” I sobbed. “Why?”

  “Because you are too good,” came the unexpected response, cool and uncaring. “Because you are too kind. Because even covered in soot, you outshine all those around you and I can’t abide by your little foot fitting that slipper.”

  The acidity of her hatred was strong enough to melt the lock between us. However, even then, it was almost a relief to finally hear her say those words. It was the first time I entirely understood I was not to blame for my troubles, but she and her hatred were. It would take a long time to digest, but it was finally a start, a release of sorts.

  Would she have known then, could she have seen the years to follow, she never would have locked me in my attic room. Instead, she would have bathed me herself, dressed me in her finest gown, dripped me in jewels and the three Castarrean glass necklaces, and lent me her title of Baroness on a silver platter. She would have presented me to the prince at the top of the stairs and tried the shoe on my foot herself.

  But she didn’t know what was to be and, of course, neither did I.

  So my heart shattered like glass when she locked me inside with a screaming macaw diving over and over for the door as if it was a woodpecker whose beak could chop straight through. Between my crying and Iris’s berserk screams, I’m surprised no one heard us sooner. I also understood then how cold Madame’s heart must be.

  My cries died down well before the prince and his entourage rounded the final bend toward our house. I didn’t want to stop, but I was too tired, weak, and thirsty to go on. Marie could’ve sprung me free in an instant, but whatever magic had once allowed her to come to me wasn’t allowing it now. As always, I was on my own.

  Funny as it may seem, and even though I didn’t know then if I would ever be let out or left to waste away in my small piece of room, the first thing I did after I stood up was wash my face and fix my hair. Putting myself together seemed to give my mind permission to pull itself together as well.

  Then I spun about the room and considered my options.

  Madame hadn’t even seen fit to give me a whole attic to myself. Instead, the front part of the room was cluttered with forgotten household items, baby toys, little girl’s clothing, broken mementos, none of which proved sufficient to break me out. I turned every crate inside out, scratched at every nail until my fingers bled, but to no avail. Iris had calmed down somewhat as I desperately turned over the room, but as soon as I sat down in defeat, the macaw flew up and started screeching again.

  The blasted bird was driving me mad and I wouldn’t last another minute without killing it.

  Seeing no other recourse, I piled crates up and pushed open the tiny round window that let a miser’s amount of light into the room. Calling Iris to me, I held out my hand as a perch, then thrust it out the window as fast as I could, slamming the pane shut before it could get in.

  The quiet lasted but a minute before Iris squawked and flung himself against the window over and over again. What was wrong with the goose-brained bird? I had just set it free, and it wanted to come back in?

  As it turned out, that was to be the most fortuitous and most injurious decision either of us could make.

  I have yet to gather courage enough to ask the captain if he ever regrets what came next. If he regrets his bat-like hearing that caught onto the jamming shut of a windowpane just moments before a blur of red and blue feathers started screeching like a banshee, something only he heard and noticed in the din of the leaving entourage. Does he regret staying the prince’s hand when his foot was already in the stirrup? Does he regret the simple question that irrevocably changed our lives forever?

  “Baroness, is someone else in the house?”

  I couldn’t hear it then, but I can hear the question now, hear the way the words must have rumbled out of his throat, menacing and magnificent, like water rushing over the edge as it plunges to its fall.

  Of course, the little glass slipper hadn’t fit either of her daughters, and having seen the size for herself, the baroness knew that I was the only one in the house with a prayer at winning the heart of royalty.

  She tried her most innocent look on a man trained to see the guilt lurking in the hearts of the innocent. “Whatever do you mean, Captain?”

  The captain only looked up but didn’t answer. The look on Madame’s face, that initial annoyance she didn’t yet have time to hide, was all the answer he needed.

  “Your Highness,” he told the prince, “we may not be quite finished here.”

  “Sort it out, Captain,” the prince commanded with a wave of his hand.

  He was desperate to find his lady, but he was tired, too. I couldn’t blame him. Having spent more than two minutes in the house with Madame and her girls, he was must have been willing to swear to a life of celibacy just to get away. And they were only two girls of many, many others.

  The captain strode back into the house. He didn’t pause as he made straight for the steps and climbed them to my prison. He rapped lightly on the door, the unexpected sound near startled me to d
eath.

  “Madame?” I called tentatively.

  I had no idea what had happened outside, could not even guess, because at this point my mind was fixed on that obnoxious bird. Subconsciously, I knew that Madame would never have knocked, she considered this house and every being and item in it as her personal property, so she needed no one’s permission. I highly doubted that either Maybelle or Calliope had come looking for me, but I couldn’t fathom who could be on the other side of that door. Father, as usual, wasn’t home. Maybe Cook had finally taken pity on me after all these years?

  Unsure of what was about to come through the doors, I grabbed the faery sword and brandished it before me, ready to do what I must, ready even to face the hangman’s noose for murder if it meant leaving that place.

  I heard the doorknob rattle and a roll of thunder demand the key. Apparently, it didn’t come fast enough because first I was commanded to “Stand back” and then the door was kicked in by a finely polished leather boot. The rest of the captain joined his foot in the room and his eyes widened at the sight of me. A wave of sadness passed over his features, but he blinked, and it was gone. I knew I saw it there, even if I didn’t understand why.

  “I don’t think you’ll need that, miss,” he said kindly, reaching his hand out for the sword.

  I hesitated, knowing he wouldn’t hurt me, but not wanting to give up the only thing that may have been my last hope of getting out. I was so fed up by then. The charade, the magic, the shoe, my nerves, I was frayed to the root and Madame locking me up was all it took to snap it. I was holding on by a thread, which it now seemed the captain was scrambling for to tow me back to safety.

  Begrudgingly, I handed over the blade, and I couldn’t hide my smirk as I saw him quickly admire the sword before he found the sheath and slid it safely into his belt.