by Sky Sommers
CINDERS:
NECESSARY EVIL
by Sky Sommers
Published by Sommersby OÜ
Copyright © Sky Sommers 2020
Illustrations by Steven Noor
Cover art by Rusham Riyas
Editors: Shreeya Nanda, Belle Manuel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Sky Sommers has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise - without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Magic Mirror Saga ISBN: 978-9949-7383-2-8
E-book ISBN: 978-9949-7383-4-2
Other books by Sky:
Goddesses: Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
Someone To Watch Over Me
King of Time
Short stories:
Three Rocking Pigs:
For my parents. Especially my mom
For raising me right and for staying sane
while functioning on minimal sleep for four years.
And for weathering my teenage sulks.
And my dad.
For getting me into fairy tales by reading
The Three Little Pigs to me at bedtime
And for rocking me asleep when my ears hurt
like hell at age three.
I love and appreciate both of you.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Shreeya Nanda and Belle Manuel, my editors as well as Astrid V.J. whose insightful comments made this book a smoother and more integrated double version of itself.
I would also like to thank my husband Marek, who when he heard how much money I’ve made so far in royalties from my other books didn’t tell me to delete Scrivener, but rather asked about my release date and helped me get there.
Thank you to all my amazing indie author friends especially Elena and Susan – I cherish your support. Thank you for pushing me to grow and learn about marketing and mailing lists and SiteStripes and affiliate codes and just for plain being there and helping me when in my true fashion I kept texting the author group with ‘It’s not working. How do I do this. Help!’
Thank you to Külli Tammes, my paginator and creative multitalent.
And, of course, to Steven Noor for his uber-cool drawings and to Rusham Riyas, for the amazing cover.
Thank you!
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1. The Evil Stepmother
Chapter 2. The Kitchen
Chapter 3. The Crazy
Chapter 4. Cinders
Chapter 5. The Toys
Chapter 6. Fairy Godmother
Chapter 7. Tom the Pauper
Chapter 8. The Food
Chapter 9. The Accusations
Chapter 10. The Royals
Chapter 11. The Boyfriends
Chapter 12. I See Red
Chapter 13. Keeping Calm
Chapter 14. Real Fairy Godmothers
Chapter 15. The Stand-off
Chapter 16. The Witch
Chapter 17. Wishes Granted
Chapter 18. Reunion
Chapter 19. Beaus and Carriages
Chapter 20. The Invite
Chapter 21. The Spring Ball
Chapter 22. The Problem
Chapter 23. The Check
Chapter 24. The King
Chapter 25. The Deal
Chapter 26. The Plan
Chapter 27. The Truth
Chapter 28. The Queen
Chapter 29. The Cavalry
Chapter 30. The Ball, Take Two
Chapter 31. The Shoes
Chapter 32. The Wedding
Chapter 33. The Choice
Epilogue
teaser for Book #2 MAGIC MIRRORS SAGA
Prologue
Grace
The pixie manning the priority screens of the Agency of Guardian Angels heard the ping of someone’s prayer for help. She saw a car nose-dive into the Thames River in London and pushed the red button next to her. On screen, everything froze.
‘Gabriel, I have no one else to send. It’s…it’s…’ the pixie mumbled, looking up at her Boss, a blond hunk of a man with a sword hilt peeking between the knuckles of his white wings.
‘Grace.’ In a split second Gabriel had jumped into the screen and underwater to drag two bodies – one of a man and of a heavily pregnant woman – onto the steps of London Bridge.
Reality regained consciousness.
Paramedics descended with a nearby siren wailing its woes.
The man coughed up murky river water.
The woman wasn’t moving.
‘Grace?’ Gabriel said.
‘You’ve done your part, now move,’ the paramedic said, jostling him aside to measure the woman’s pulse. The angel, now looking like an ordinary, soaked man in jeans and a white T-shirt started warding off the onlookers.
The coughing man crawled closer to the woman’s body, ‘Grace! Grace!!’
‘Are you the husband?’ the paramedic enquired.
‘Yes.’
‘Does she have a DNR order? Do not resuscitate?’
‘Erm…no. Why?’
‘2222. Adult and possible obstetric peri-arrest. We need a C-section. Now.’ The paramedic spoke softly into her shoulder mic.
‘A C-section?’ the husband looked wild-eyed and grabbed his wife’s hand.
‘Once the baby is out, we can try bringing her back,’ the paramedic explained.
The woman’s body was whisked away, her short raven hair plastered across the face with her belly bouncing around as if someone had glued a balloon to her stomach.
‘Once the baby is out, we can try bringing her back.’
Ella
November 11th
Dear diary,
My name is Elizabeth Jane Goodall and I can read peoples’ minds.
Well, it’s Goodall now. Six months ago when Mother was still with us, I was Betty Lyman.
I can only read the minds of those people who I have emotionally bonded with. Not just the good kind of bond, like love. But also the bad kind of bond like I have with Betty Bonfleur ever since she cornered me at school two months ago. Right after Aunt Mellie took us in and it became public knowledge that Mother was missing. Anyway, Betty told me I had to change my name because there can only be one Betty in our class. We had both been Betties for fifteen years and all of a sudden Betty B and Betty L wasn’t ok?!? Of course, I refused and told her if she didn’t like sharing a name, then she should be the one to change hers! I was so angry I think I might have cursed out loud. Ever since I’ve been able to read Betty’s thoughts when I’m near enough. So I try to stay out of her way. Trust me, lascivious thoughts about John and all the other boys is not something I like having in my brain, thank you very much! She already has John, why does she keep thinking a
bout other boys?!? Even though I stay away, Betty still seeks me out to say mean things and point out my shortcomings.
I tried telling Aunt Mellie about Betty and she just shrugged and said Betty will get her comeuppance some day and left it at that. I didn’t dare contradict her. After all, she was kind enough to come and find us after Mother disappeared.
Mother made herself plenty pretty before she left that Friday night. I thought she was going to meet with a gentleman, but no date lasts three days. She had been disappearing for shorter and longer periods of time all my life. At first, it was over weekends, then for most of the week. The first time she left for longer than that was when the twins were two years old. I was seven. She was gone for two weeks. But she did come back.
When she left six months ago, I thought she would come back. Eventually. Then the weekend turned into another weekend and another and another. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for her to come back. She never did. Two months later, Hans and Greta and I had eaten all of our food supplies, which could have lasted a little while longer, if it weren’t for Hans’ appetite. It was summer, so for another two months we went berry and mushroom-picking and from a wandering huntsman I learnt how to build traps for rabbits, so we had rabbit stew every once in a while.
Then Aunt Mellie rescued us. Melisandra, actually. Mellie hates being called Mellie, but my stepmother calls her that and I think it’s on purpose and I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. Melisandra sounds too formal and is too long to say. Mellie sounds nice, so I call her that too, but not to her face.
I remember it vividly. Mellie threw the door open and just stood there in all of her glory - the purple floor-length silk dress, the gloves, the hat, her black locks flying and her olive skin aglow and she just looked…regal and like she expected us to squeal in delight and run up to her and hug her or something.
Until that day I didn’t know we even had an aunt, much less an aunt who was a Fairy Godmother and procurer of impossible things.
When Hans said ‘Hello, who are you?’ I remember Aunt Mellie blinking a few times, slighted by the non-recognition of a ten-year-old. How was he supposed to know anything about Godmothers? She told us who she was and that we were going to live with her now.
Mellie says that Mother must have had a good reason to leave. How she can defend the indefensible, I don’t know. But I guess blood runs thicker than water.
She took us in and for a week, everything was normal. Then the absences started, just like with Mother. Mellie was gone one weekend and then the next. It brought back all the bad memories. Mellie always brought us nice presents for us from her trips and always reassured me that she would come back for us, but while she was gone it was like I was the substitute Mother for the twins all over again. Tending house, cooking, cleaning, tucking the twins in at night.
As it happened, Mellie had a very good reason for her absences. Apparently, she had been going to all the surrounding villages to leave leaflets for people to notify her if ever they saw our Father.
She never looked for Mother. It was as if she didn’t believe Mother was ever coming back. I think Mellie thinks her dead. How she knows is beyond me.
But would you believe that five months after Mother disappeared and just one month after Aunt Mellie took us in, my absentee Father reappeared! With his new family in tow. After meandering gods-only-know-where for fifteen years he decided to settle down in Borough, the same village where Mother had lived for all of her life. Now, isn’t that strange?
So, now I have a Father, Peter Goodall. Hence, the name change.
The twins and I don’t remember ever seeing him while we were growing up, and I don’t remember Mother bringing a man home, so to the then five-year-old me it seemed that she birthed the twins as a result of an immaculate conception. I guess they ‘met’ elsewhere. Maybe he had this woman he is now married to on the side all along?
As soon as Father offered for us to come live with him, I reached out with my mind to feel if he was sincere. I was shocked to find out that he really did say what he thought and that I could hear his thoughts in the first place. We had…bonded. Maybe it was because someone besides Mellie actually wanted us, all of us!
I remember how I discovered I was special. It was six months ago, on my fifteenth birthday. On the school steps, I dropped my satchel and everything fell out, including the home-made cards by Hans and Greta. John - swoon! - helped me pick up my belongings, took one look at the cards and wished me a happy birthday. He had never even spoken to me before! My forever crush handed my satchel back and I remember blushing like crazy as his hand brushed mine. After that, in class, I could hear his thoughts. He thought I was pretty. He thought very specific body parts of mine were pretty, but that’s boys for you. Although I was quite nonplussed about him thinking that, once switched on, I couldn’t switch his thoughts off when he was nearby. But he was and still is Betty’s boyfriend. John is a year older, tall dark and handsome and we don’t have any joint classes together, so as long as I avoid Betty, I don’t hear him either. Sigh.
That day, I came home and told Mother about my discovery. She looked at me strangely. When I asked if my magic came from Father, since she had none, she said that my Father didn’t have an ounce of magic in him. That all the magic I have comes from her.
Her? There was nothing even remotely magical about Mother…was there?
When I tried asking her what kind of magic she has, she fell silent. I tried reading her mind then and there, but she just waved a finger at me and told me to stop it. That it wouldn’t work on her. I thought that if I could read minds, maybe she has some kind of shielding magic? Maybe she wanted to tell me or needed to show me or something. I never found out what her gift was though. One week later, she was gone.
Having met Father, who insists we call him Peter, I now understand what Mother had meant. He is a far cry from a wizard. When I tapped his mind, Father sounded sincere, honest, kind, considerate and hopeful. He does everything by hand, no waving of wands of any kind. He does say the quill is like a wand and sometimes even more powerful, but it’s just an expression.
Anyway, Father doesn’t seem like a man who would cheat and since Henry is a newborn, maybe he met Grace after my parents had already split up?
Yes, I now have a stepmother. Grace. She seemed timid enough when we first met in my Godmother’s kitchen. I didn’t sense any huge ups and downs in emotions. I hope we’ll get along just fine.
Still, why her?
What does she have that my Mother never did?
Why did he marry her, but not my Mother?
Yes, to my utter shame, it turned out that my Mother and Father were never actually legally married. But Father promised Aunt Mellie to make things right and petition the king for official papers to recognise us all as his legitimate children, which - thank heavens! - he did. Hence, the name change.
Apparently, Grace and our King, whom everyone lovingly calls The Beast, used to play together as kids or something. I didn’t think much as to why until Mellie suggested maybe Grace was something more than just a childhood playmate. When I shrugged and said royal betrothals do happen at an early age, but it doesn’t matter if she married Father, Mellie smirked and said not only betrothed sweethearts, but also siblings play together. I didn’t want to believe it, until I found out it’s Grace who’s the lady, a duchess actually, and my Father has married into the title. So, I guess we might be related to the king. Familial ties.
I’m just thankful that I’m part of her family and therefore also considered to be of noble birth. Which helps with the likes of Betty. When Father suggested I take his name, I asked if I could change all of it and he agreed. So, I became Elizabeth Jane Goodall. I told Betty that on account of my Father and his status I had to take a new middle name like all the ladies of noble birth have and that he forbade me from using Betty as a diminutive because it was too common. She bit
her lips to the quick and almost cried, being a merchant’s daughter herself. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. If she hadn’t pretended to be my friend for fifteen years and stabbed me in the back six months ago the moment she got interested in boys, then I would have felt a smidgen of compassion for her.
We haven’t moved to Father’s just yet. I think Grace is readying the house - a castle! - and Aunt Mellie is taking a careful approach. Aunt Mellie told me I should move first as it would be more proper for a young lady to live under the protection of her Father. Hans and Greta will visit every other weekend until Aunt Mellie is fully satisfied that Father can offer all of us a proper home. Mellie says he is a stranger and none of us know what to expect. I tried telling Mellie I don’t sense any harm from Father, but she insisted this was the best way.
As Grace is a lady, I hope our castle has towers and turrets and a draw-bridge. And I’ll bet you anything I will get a room of my very own!! Maybe I’ll have two or three rooms or an entire wing to myself! Then I will finally have some space to put up all of my drawings of Prince Charmant aka Prince Nicholas Frederick Henry Philip Charmant. Or Prince Charming as we all call him. I started drawing his face from the palace announcements they keep putting up at the town square, right next to the school gates. Prince Nicholas did this and is visiting that there. The best vantage point to sit and draw is under the fountain of the Lady of the Lake, which I have also drawn, countless times. I mean, what’s not to like - a fierce elf-like creature offering King Arthur a sword. Come to think of it, Arthur and Nicholas look similar, like a lot, which is understandable. King Thomas and his ancestors have been ruling this land for aeons. Even during the six years the kingdom fell into an enchantment that Queen Belle rescued everybody from, nobody dared invade us. It could be because of the rumours of the king being the most terrible Beast. So, that’s Prince Charming’s lineage. All courageous and valiant. I bet he’s the kindest, nicest, sweetest guy you could meet. And I bet he values brains and not just beauty. I mean, his father, the king does. He married an inventor. Well, an inventor’s daughter who is an inventor herself. Queen Belle’s gadgets are famous and everyone in the kingdom wants one.
