by Anita Valle
I’m shaking. Edgar crouches beside me, hands resting on his knees. “My offer of marriage,” he says in a low, cutting voice, “was merely a courtesy. Do not think for a moment that you have a choice. You are my bride, little crow. Now stand up and tell me your name.”
I’m still too shocked to move. My thoughts fly like bats in a cave, whirling, screeching. I remember that Moody once courted a man, a man who seemed nice. But she ended it suddenly and I didn’t know why until I overheard Stepmother talking to her late at night. “You can be sure of one thing,” Stepmother said, “If a man hits you once, he will hit you again. And again and again and again. Have nothing to do with such a man. Ever.”
I do not want to be hit for the rest of my life.
“Are you having trouble obeying me?” Edgar grabs my arms and wrenches me upward. “Let me make something clear, darling. As my wife you will do exactly as I say.” He shook me when he said ‘exactly’. “And that includes having sons. Do not fail me in this as my last wife did.”
“D-did she?” I gasp out. His grip is so hard. I don’t know what to do.
“Sadly,” he says. “The birth of our daughter was dangerous, both of them nearly died. The physicians told me my wife would never have another child. Such a pity - I really did like her. But she was no longer useful, you know? Let us hope you can do better. I would hate to have to clip your wings.”
He killed his wife. Oh Papa! Papa, help me! I wriggle and flail but Edgar is too strong. He drags me to the door of that horrible tower while whispering soothing words in my ear, as if I’m a child having a tantrum. I scream but he claps a hand on my mouth and crushes me against his chest. I try to bite his hand but his fingers are clamped around my jaw. He knows what he’s doing - he’s done this before.
“Edgar? Edgar is something wrong?”
The voice – a woman’s voice – comes up to us from the garden staircase. I feel Edgar’s grip slacken instinctively.
“It’s nothing, Mother!” he calls. “No need to-”
I slam my elbow into Edgar’s stomach and wrench out of his grasp. The distraction gave me the moment I needed. I grab my skirt and run, as hard and as fast as I can. Across the terrace, down some stairs, around a corner, under an archway. I don’t know where I’m going, except away. Away from him.
From somewhere high above the castle, I hear the long, heavy tolls of a clock striking midnight.
~*~ 18 ~*~
I turn another corner and find myself at the front of the castle. I hear pounding steps from behind that tells me Edgar is chasing. Papa help me! He is the wolf now and I am the rabbit.
The terrace is too high for me to jump, I need the stairs. They’re not far ahead, another thirty yards or so. The tall, double doors pour out their golden light. The two guards stand calm and quiet on either side, as if the world didn’t just become a living nightmare.
I reach the staircase and hurl myself down it. My crystal slippers hammer the steps - clink! clink! clink! clink! clink! - fast as the tripping of my heart. I spy a team and carriage on the gravel drive below me – my carriage! Waiting for me just as I asked. Bless you, mouse-driver! Bless you forever and ever and always!
And then my foot turns under me and I fall.
I’m going too fast to stop. I tumble heavily, arms over legs, the hard edges of the stairs slamming my back, my hips, my shins. I roll to a stop near the bottom of the stairs, my skirt bunched over my knees. I’ve lost a shoe. Flash quick, I whip off the other shoe and sprint to the carriage on my bare feet. The mouse-driver quietly holds the door and I leap inside.
“Drive! Drive!” I shriek. “There’s a cat!”
I’m right in guessing he would understand this. He springs up to the driver’s seat and the carriage jerks forward, the horses jumping into full gallop. I’m kneeling on the floor, my whole body a throbbing bruise, peering over the edge of the window.
Edgar is at the bottom of the stairs. He’s holding something white and shiny in his hand – my crystal slipper. He lifts it high as my carriage barrels away, his voice ringing out over the night.
“Do not think you can fly, little crow! I will find you!”
~*~ 19 ~*~
We make it about one mile before the spell is broken. I just eased my sore body up onto the seat and peeked out the window. We’re in the middle of a forest, still part of the king’s land. Then the carriage groans and shudders. A few pumpkin seeds fall onto my skirt. When I look up, the ceiling has become soft and pulpy, flecked with pale seeds. With a wet, squishy sound, the walls begin to shrink around me.
I kick the door open. I do not want to die being crushed inside a pumpkin.
I throw myself out and hit the ground tumbling, the earth pounding my new bruises. Groaning, I push myself up to sitting and notice my dress is now the simple gray I always wear. A short distance ahead, the carriage is shrinking fast, losing its details. My rats scuttle toward me, no longer horses. And I catch the barest glimpse of the mouse before he darts into the forest, probably still thinking a cat is after us. Poor little mouse. Thank you. May you live a long and prosperous mouse-life.
Slowly, stiffly, I manage to stand up. The forest is quiet, other than noisy night bugs. I listen but hear no distant shouts or thunder of galloping hooves. I don’t think Edgar is chasing me now.
Bending down, I hold out my hands. “Come here, boys.” My rats crawl into my palms and I tuck them against my chest. I have a long, weary, barefooted walk ahead of me. But at least I’ll have company.
I’ve hobbled only a few steps when the moon glints off something near the pumpkin. Oh no, NO! My slipper! Why didn’t it disappear? Did Godnutter want to leave me a souvenir of my disastrous night? That sounds like her sick sense of humor. But... she didn’t know how this would end. She only sensed it and warned me not to go.
I didn’t listen.
Sobs rumble up in my throat but I choke them down. I don’t want to be heard, just in case. My whole body is shaking. I feel like I just crawled out of a hole in the earth, lucky to be alive. I desperately want someone to hold me, comfort me, tell me it was all a bad dream. But I have no one.
What a horrible man. Who knew our prince could be such a monster? A few must know, probably some unfortunate girls like me. His daughter will likely grow up as cruel and vicious as he is. No, I am lucky to escape that family. Even my stupid steps are not as bad as they are.
The gravel is sharp beneath my feet. The black treetops slide over me, leaves whispering together. I move to the side of the road and try walking on weeds. But they’re too long and tangled.
He’ll forget about me. I’m only one girl and his kind is easily distracted. He might search for a while because he’s mad I got away, but he’ll get bored. I’m so glad I didn’t tell him my name.
But as I stumble through that depressing wood, the rats and slipper growing heavy in my arms, I almost want to laugh.
I never thought I’d meet someone even badder than I am.
~*~ 20 ~*~
“Cinderella.”
I open my eyes, instantly conscious that my feet are in agony. Late morning glows white at my window and Stepmother stands near my bed, cold as uncooked meat.
“It was you,” she says quietly. “I can’t imagine how I failed to recognize you. But just as we were leaving, I realized-”
“Stepmother!” I spring off the bed and fall against her soft chest. “Stepmother, hold me, I’m so scared!” I squeeze her arms and whimper into the lacey front of her gown.
“Heavens, child, what’s the matter?” She sounds more curious than sympathetic.
I tell her what happened. I leave out the magic stuff (like Godnutter) and say the black dress belonged to my mother. I tell her how the prince treated me. That doesn’t seem to surprise her as much as the offer of marriage.
“He truly asked you to be his queen?” she says.
“Do you think he’ll look for me?” I ask, pulling her sleeves. “Do you think he’ll find me?”
Step
mother looks over my head, thoughtful. “Without knowing your name, it will be difficult. I suspect he’ll lose interest.”
I sniff and try nestling into her. She puts a firm hand on my shoulder and pries me off. “Well, thank goodness it’s over. Now dry your face and come lay the table for breakfast.” She turns stiffly and heads down the attic stairs.
I rub my face with my hand. Stepmother is about as comforting as a cactus. But like she said, at least it’s over.
Then a sudden thought grabs hold of my throat.
Is it over? I limp over to the small, square mirror on my wall. Godnutter said if I failed to win the prince, I would turn back into ordinary Cinderella. But the face in the mirror is still pretty Cinderella. Which means that the prince still wants me.
Which means it’s not over.
No! I’ll hide. I’ll stay indoors for months if I have to. At least in this I can trust Stepmother. The last thing she’d want is for me to become queen. She’ll lock me in the attic before she ever lets that happen.
The prince will give up. He has to, all he’s got is my shoe. And whoever heard of finding someone with just a shoe?
~*~ 21 ~*~
Nothing happens for a whole week. Everything feels the same: I do my chores; Stepmother barely speaks to me; Loony rages about how ugly I looked at the ball. This, I know, comes from jealously. Even though the prince turned out to be a weasel, she’s still furious he wanted me and not her. Stupid pig. I wish he wanted her!
I check the mirror often but my beauty doesn’t fade. I wish I had white magic to change something, make myself fat and pimpled, at least for a while. But the decanter is empty, locked back in my cupboard upstairs. And my nerves have made me snappish, if my chores earned any white magic all, I lost it right away.
And I won’t call on Godnutter, absolutely not. She’s a sneaking traitor. Wasn’t the white magic supposed to make my life better? She’s probably cackling somewhere in a cloud of smoke. If I ever see her again I’ll shove that pipe through her ears.
It is Moody, finally, that drops the axe. I’m scrubbing a muddy footprint out of that wretched white carpet in the sitting room while she lounges on the couch, pretending to read a book. She flips a page and speaks without looking at me.
“He’s looking for you, you know.”
I stop scrubbing because my arms just turned to lead. “H-how – how do you know?”
“It’s all over the kingdom.” She turns her dull eyes and there’s no pity there, not a drop. But the fact she’s telling me at all must mean she feels something.
“Word’s gone out that the prince is madly in love with the mysterious woman from the ball. He won’t rest until he finds her. He is personally visiting every house in the kingdom and making all the young maidens try on that glass shoe. It’s nuts.”
“It was a crystal slipper,” I murmur. My hand is still clamped around the scrubbing brush, my fingers wet. This can’t be happening.
“He thinks the shoe will help him find her. It is uncommonly small.”
Curse you, white magic. Curse you Godnutter for giving it to me. And curse myself for being so stupid. I’m about to become the prince’s prisoner because of my freaking feet!
“Been going on for several days now.” Moody turns back to her book.
I stand up, drying my hand on my skirt. “Thank you,” is all I can say. I need to get to the attic, do some hard thinking. Maybe I can leave for a while, run off to another kingdom. I don’t have any relatives to stay with but I could work in a tavern somewhere. Taverns always seem to want pretty girls.
I reach the door and look back. “Do you know where Stepmother is? I need to speak to her for a minute.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Moody says dryly. “She’s trying to help him find you.”
~*~ 22 ~*~
I whirl around in the doorway. “What?”
Moody shrugs. “You know how she is. She doesn’t like you much, but a queen in the family is a good thing. It’ll mean more money, more prestige for the rest of us. She even wrote a letter.”
“She wrote a letter!”
“Lunilla took it to the palace yesterday. Of course she read it on the way. Mother told the prince your name, described what you look like, and told him where we live. But I wouldn’t worry.”
I’m clutching the doorframe, my body a seething flame of fury. “Why not?”
“Because every mother wants the prince to choose her daughter. Lunilla says they’re all making fools of themselves, claiming their daughter was the woman in black. He’s probably received a thousand such letters.” Moody shrugs again. “Just thought I’d tell you because you haven’t been out.”
I’m still holding the scrubbing brush in my hand. Now I hurl it at Moody. It strikes her shoulder, making her flinch and jump off the couch. “What was that for!” she shouts.
“Because you’re useless!” I scream.
I turn down the hallway and see Loony coming toward me. She smirks and lifts her eyebrows like she wants to say something snarky. But I don’t let her.
“Where is Stepmother?” I reach out and roughly grab her ear, digging my fingernails into the lobe. “Where is she?”
“Ow. OW! Stop it!” Loony shrieks, her head tilting against my hand. “She’s in her room, get OFF me!”
I let go and sprint upstairs while Loony shouts “Freak!” and “Maniac!” and threatens to smash my head with a frying pan. I dash down the hall to Stepmother’s bedroom and shove open the door without knocking. Stepmother is at her writing desk, scratching a quill over parchment.
“Writing to the prince again?” I snarl.
Stepmother looks up at me, then down at the parchment again. “No. Next week’s menu for Cook.” She dips the quill in the inkbottle and writes another line. “Who told you?” she asks quietly.
“Melodie.” I’m shaking all over. I want to do so many things to her, each one worse than the next.
Stepmother sets down the quill and turns to me in her chair. She folds her hands in her lap. “I think perhaps you fail to consider the advantages of this match.”
I point at her face. “Don’t even try that. We both know that’s not why you’re doing it!”
Stepmother opens her hands. “Tell me, then. Why am I doing it?”
“Because you hate me. You’ve always hated me. You want the prince to find me so I’ll be unhappy!”
Stepmother stands and paces a little, holding her elbows. She looks down at the floor as if thinking before she speaks.
“When your father came to court me, I admit I was happy. He spoke of you frequently, but I did not perceive you as a problem then. It wasn’t until after we married....” She stops and takes a deep breath. “I saw the way he cherished you, how his eyes shone when he looked at you. They never shone for me. And then one day I realized the truth. He didn’t marry me for me. He married me for you.”
I silently disagree. Yes, perhaps that was part of it. But I do think my father cared for Stepmother. Not as much as he loved my mother, at least I hope not. But he wouldn’t have married her unless he had some regard. My father was a good man.
But there’s no point trying to convince her of that. She allowed her mind to warp the past, by now it’s far beyond repair. And I couldn’t care less.
“So you want to get rid of me,” I say.
“Oh, much more than that, my darling.” Stepmother says, her voice hardening into steel. “I want you to walk in my shoes, to marry a man who cares nothing for you except as a mother for his child. I want you to suffer as I have suffered.”
I clench my fists. “Do you think I have not suffered?” My chest starts to heave. “You could have chosen to love me! I needed you when my father died, but you cast me away! If you had just been the mother I needed, I - I might have....”
“It would have made no difference. You were always a bad piece of work.”
Tears flood up in my eyes. She still has the power to hurt me. “Maybe,” I choke out, “some people turn bad
because they have no one to love them.”
Sniffling, I back towards the doorway. “And you won’t succeed, you know. I’m leaving, right now. I’m going far away where the prince can’t find me. And there’s nothing you can do about that.”
Stepmother looks at me, then past me. “Go ahead,” she says. But I get the sense she’s not talking to me.
When I turn to look, something heavy strikes the side of my head. I feel myself falling as the world goes black.
~*~ 23 ~*~
I wake up in Stepmother’s bed. My head feels heavy and swollen. With a low groan, I elbow myself up. My ankle is tied to the post of her bed with a thin rope, so tightly that my bare foot is puffy and red. I lean forward and start picking the knot with my fingernails.
“Don’t do that or I’ll have to hit you again.”
I turn. Loony is sitting on a chair near the bed, holding onto a cast iron frying pan. So that’s what she hit me with. Funny, I didn’t think she was serious.
I sink back onto the pillow and shut my eyes. My head really hurts. “Where’s Stepmother?”
“Out, trying to find the prince. By the way, what is that?” She points to the table beside Stepmother’s bed. My crystal decanter sits on top, empty and twinkling.
I lunge at it but the rope stops me. Loony laughs and slides the decanter further down the table. “What is it?” she asks.
“You were in my room!” I shout.
“All over it,” Lunilla says. “Me and Mother. She dumped out the drawers while I took an axe to that cupboard of yours. We really thought we’d find something much more interesting besides an empty bottle. What’s it for?”
“Nothing,” I snap.
Loony crosses her broad legs and smiles. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. We were looking for something you wore to the ball, like the dress, some kind of proof. I mean, what’d you do, throw it in the river? Anyhow, Mother came down here and pulled off your loafers. She’s taking them to the prince to show him the size of your feet.”
