by Lee Hayton
Cinderella’s golden hair silhouetted against the glowing light of the open chapel door - that was the last beautiful thing that I ever saw.
Francois gave a whistle. A cawing sound echoed in the rafters overhead. Startled by the loud noise, Anastasia and I looked up to see trained hawks circling. One more shrill whistle and the birds wrapped their wings tight to their bodies, falling into a sharp and terrifying dive.
One yard away from my face, the hawk on my side extended its wings again, beating rapidly to slow its descent. The sharp talons on each foot looked like blades in the sunlight. When the first one sank into my eyes, the pain swelled like its own monster. Dreadful agony, horrendous. It made the wound in my heels fade like it was nothing more than a scratch.
The sinking sensation of release as my eyeball burst under the digging claw sent a sharp stab of pure terror through the length of my body. I raised my hands up in feeble protection, but my right hand was tugged from me. Still attached to the train of my stepsister’s dress.
As the first wave of agony faded, drawing back to gather into a larger force, I heard Anastasia’s anguished cries echoing out through the church. Behind that were sharp screams from the assembled wedding party. Noise tumbled in every direction, crazy confusion.
I couldn’t see. My ears begged for the horrendous sounds to stop. I fell to my knees and was dragged by one hand along the polished wood of the floor.
The second agonizing wave crashed upon me, as the bird tugged its talons free to fly away. The one thing tethering me to my senses, the lace encircling my wrist, broke free of the train. My arm thumped down to the floor. A rushing foot, or several, landed on my outstretched hand as the assembled crowd stampeded for the door.
Instinct curled me into a tight ball, hands cradling protectively around my head. I heard my mother yell, and then the cry was abruptly cut off. The confused tangle of sounds faded as the chapel emptied. Soon, the only noises left were Anastasia and my combined whimpers.
The prince who I believed once was the love of my life had trained birds to pluck my eyes out as a wedding present to his wife.
Just before I passed into the welcome comforts of unconsciousness, I heard the sharp, shrill voice of Cinderella screaming. Then the unmistakable sound of a slap. A husband reminding his new bride not to step out of place.
Even with the advances they’ve made since that day, Cinderella’s wedding would have been a hard one to rehearse.
Chapter Eleven
I’m nearing the end of my story now, so you’re almost free of me if you’re exhausted. A few more points, a tad of clarification—dear reader, you’ll be out of here in time for dinner.
Gerald helped Anastasia and me to safety, while my mother found and joined us within a day. As we healed, I grew to rely on him so much that I couldn’t ask him if he’d known beforehand. In the end, it wouldn’t much matter either way. A servant has a master, usually stricter than any conscience. Who am I to judge, if he put his own well being ahead of mine? Once upon a time, I’d done very much the same.
The pain retreated from overwhelming to manageable. Weeks after, there was still residual aching. A phantom pressure in my empty socket that my knuckle could never rub away.
Anastasia became withdrawn. Though mother tried to joke, chide, or scold her into responsiveness, she refused to participate. I couldn’t see her, but I imagined her skin growing ever paler. I could envisage the circles under her eyes spreading until her entire face was one big bruise.
I don’t know that for sure. My mother saw her daughter through eyes of love. To her, the both of us were always beautiful. Gerald was many things to me, but a reliant form of visual aid didn’t make the list. He often lied. To spare Anastasia or to save me grief, I know not which. Certainly, there may not have been enough tissue left under her eye sockets for hollowed circles to spread.
Although I too tried to connect with my dear sister during our recovery, she wouldn’t have it. I tried, but not too hard and not for long enough, I fear. Certainly, it wasn’t enough for her to grow to confide in me. My heart no longer had love spare to invest in others. For many weeks, months even, I kept the shattered remnants for myself.
It should have surprised all of us when Anastasia jumped into the dry well outside of the village. Yet, I didn’t feel shocked or startled when Gerald broke the news to me. Mom cried out her distress for days and carried the burden of her lost daughter all the years until her death. For me, I felt hollow, I felt torn, but I also felt a sweet inevitability. Poor Anastasia may never have been the person that I once believed she was. We were passing strangers, though our childhoods were forever entwined.
I think now that the sweet girl I imagined Anastasia to be was a figment. Just the same as imaginary friends or the ghosts of relatives long passed away. The memory of her as a teasing, mocking child, leading others through the playground was probably closer to the truth. With so little time passed since that memory emerged, when my sister died I was already in mourning. Bereft because the person in my head had never been real.
I don’t know if anybody else attended Anastasia’s funeral. My stepfather didn’t dare, and I would have smelled his rank sweat a mile away. Gerald and my mother both told me that the church service had been well-attended. I smiled and nodded, but my hearing said that their words were a lie. While sitting ramrod straight in the pew, I’d heard no shuffling feet, no murmuring. I heard more chatter from the woods as I walked the trail to the castle than I heard inside the chapel that day.
Yes, I said the castle. My mother could never bring herself to return, but I needed to make myself useful. The head butler picked up my employment where it had dropped on the day of the grand ball. Either no one noticed, or no one cared that a blind woman can’t see the difference between polished and tarnished. If someone switched the cutlery from one side to the other, I’d happily re-polish each piece while whistling a cheery tune.
Besides giving me a purpose, there were two further reasons I’d gone back there, after my ordeal. The first and most obvious, I needed the money. Two in a household may be able to eat as cheaply as one, but three can’t. The price of goods kept climbing, no matter whether I was sick or well, grieving or content.
The most important reason, though, was to listen for news of my stepsister. Frustratingly for me, the castle was reluctant to spread any gossip my way. I assume out of courtesy, although that had never stopped mean conjecture before. No matter how much my reliance on hearing improved my ability to listen, the sharp tongues of tattle-tales were silent. Or silenced.
One day, I could no longer make the trek to work. My bulging, hard belly and swollen, aching legs refused point blank. Sadly, physical strength can’t be argued into compliance. I tried, believe me, but my shaking knees sent me tumbling. First to the floor, and second into bed. Luckily for our household’s paycheck, the contractions started soon after my legs stopped. Well, I say luckily. I think it’s evident that at the time it didn’t feel that way. I screamed and moaned and shook my fist while sweat and tears streamed down my clenched jaw.
Gerald and Mom took turns holding my hand and rubbing my back over the long hours. Sometimes with me squeezing them so tightly, I feared I’d break their fingers. When no progress was being made despite the pain, despite my grunting effort, Gerald bade us goodbye and trekked to fetch the village midwife.
Alone with my mother, in the darkness that was now my life, I felt my muscles change their focus. An urge grew in my abdomen until it became a need. A need turned into an imperative. My mother taught me how to pant and turn my stomach into knotted muscles of steel. With her encouragement, I pushed. Once my abdomen got a taste it locked into the motion. Scarcely letting me break for air until I came close to passing out from exhaustion.
As the contraction finally eased, I collapsed forward while my mother rubbed my back. I gasped while she stroked the sweat wetted fringe back from my forehead. Despite my heaving chest, my lungs couldn’t seem to fill with air.
Before I was ready, the urge took me over once more. My body forced me into another round of pushing. This time I could feel the baby move, though by that stage most of my downstairs body was a jumbled mass of nerves. Each one on fire or numbed into confusion. Again, the urge eased, and I gasped before steeling my body and curling the sheets tightly in my fist for another round. This time, the head slid out from me. My mother gave a cry and guided my hand down to touch my baby’s head.
Mom guided out one painful shoulder at a time. By then she could pull the baby free, giving a short stretch of relief to my aching body. Although I could feel her lift the body away, there was no cry, no sound. My hands reached out, grasping. My soul was full of devastation that I couldn’t see.
As my mother sat behind me, propping me up and guiding my hands, she placed my baby in my arms. Drawing it close to me, I pulled my blouse open wide and placed my child, skin to skin upon my chest. Its little lungs hitched, and the baby mewled, then whimpered, then gave an ear-piercing cry.
With tears of relief, I hugged my baby tightly to me. In seconds, I learned the contours of its body with my desperate fingers. I felt that there were two eyes, one nose, two ears, one mouth: a list of perfections. I traced down the tiny baby arms until I reached the fingers. Five on one side, five on the other. I was a lucky Mom, indeed.
Then I felt it.
I shoved the baby away from me and scrambled backward, my body jerking in desperation against my mother. In my haste to move, I fell in a tangle of bedsheets to the floor. The horror that I’d felt was one tiny penis, limp underneath my hand. My baby was a boy.
Is it still the fashion now to pretend that you’ll be happy with whatever sex you end up with? Do women still bat their eyelids and pretend they won’t care if it’s a girl or boy.
I cared. I don’t mind anyone hearing it. What my mother and I did next, no female kin should ever have to do.
Although we never discussed it, for fear of making the nightmare-like scene real or for fear of eavesdropping gossips, I know my mother thought on it each day. Just like my thoughts will tarry upon it every hour until I die. The act sounds like one of cruelty and horror, but from the bottom of our hearts, it was an act of kindness. What baby wants to grow up to become a monster like his father? The genes in the Ivy family run rotten through this Kingdom. No child of mine will be condemned to suffer that degenerate fate.
Gerald had been gone awhile already. The both of us knew he would soon be pulling back into the lane. At any minute, he would dismount his horse and walk toward the door.
While my mother wept and held me tightly, I pinched my son’s nose shut with one hand and clasped my hand over his mouth with the other. As my cramping body twisted with another contraction, intent on delivering the placenta of my monster spawn, I fought against the pain and held my shaking grip fast.
Time elongated until the hands of the ticking clock left vast chasms between them. Each beat brought Gerald and the midwife a step closer. Each tick took my baby farther away.
Ice ages came and went, hell froze over and thawed back out in the time it took me to kill my infant son. Only when my mother whispered that the task was over, did I dare to pull my hands away.
Mom wrapped the cooling body into a blanket so I could cradle him in my arms. The blanket was a gift that had been presented to me by the castle staff. So many workers there loved Gerald just as deeply as I cared and depended on him. A bounty of baby gifts had been bestowed to repay his many kindnesses.
I cuddled my baby close. The warm fluids from my womb had long turned clammy on his lifeless skin. Still, I traced my thumb against his face, feeling the shape of my father in his nose. My mother described his coloring to me, talked about the blue eyes and the shock of curly black hair.
By the time Gerald returned, dragging a grumpy midwife in his stead, our exhausted tears of sorrow had washed the baby clean.
Chapter Twelve
It’s all so many years ago, that to think back to those days is like listening to faraway birdsong with ears stuffed full of cotton wool. My anger hasn’t faded so much as muted. Still there but not the same.
Grief corrupts everything it touches. For a while after the birth and death of my son, I allowed myself the pleasure of wallowing in it. But life goes on, needs must. The choice to dedicate your life to things lost is a privilege earned only by the wealthy. I had a mother to support, silver to polish, a man to grow to love, and a stepsister to locate.
My life went on. Improved, but otherwise as it ever was.
The news of my stepfather’s death a few months ago came as no great shock to me. It preceded the accidental death of my mother and Gerald by only a few weeks. After ten years of comfortable companionship, a sneaking wolf and a rearing horse stole both my mom and my lover away.
At least my stepfather’s death was welcome and expected. A person can only pickle themselves for so long until their mind and body rebels. First dementia claimed most of his faculties, then his body turned frail soon after. The landlord at the public house came to tell our family the grim news.
I don’t know what his life was like, losing his daughter to the same bully-boy that destroyed the rest of his family. Maybe once, we could have healed together and even grown close, but that time slipped by unnoticed and unannounced.
In the confusing tumble of pain that followed Cinderella’s marriage, Anastasia and I never returned to the house. My mother was dragged there after the ceremony, my stepfather running in fear for his life. They spent one night there together, the both decamped, never to return.
My mother’s destination, you know already. She chose to follow her two daughters. Erik decided to camp out at the pub. To hear the landlord tell it, my stepfather had been confident the prince would soon send for him. Bestowing upon him every comfort, in reward for his only daughter’s hand in marriage.
The landlord said he’d kicked him out at times, but Erik always returned to his favorite stool. Although no money ever changed hands, the publican was too frightened of the royal connection to cut off the bar tab that was never paid.
So, my stepfather had never returned to the cottage again. When I visited, the animals were long gone. The new well he’d had freshly bored before my mother swept across his threshold, had dried up and gone sour.
The door to the cottage was stiff, the air inside rank and stale. I could believe at the first inhalation that no one had entered the house since the nights after the wedding. Gerald held my hand in a firm grip as he helped me find my way around inside.
The walls had shrunk in the intervening decade. My bedroom, in my memory a large room easily encompassing two young sisters, was pokey and cramped. Before I took three steps, my toes struck against the skirting board. With my recalled visions so inaccurate, I clung heavier on Gerald’s arm. When we’d done one short circuit, I rested at the table while he checked further out the back.
I leaned my head forward onto my arms and breathed in the stained smell of the old wood table. There’d been so many meals I’d eaten sitting here, trying to ignore Cinderella shrinking in the corner. Her only food on many nights came solely from the leftovers on ours. My mother’s appetite had become birdlike after moving here. Whereas once my father joked, she ate so well he should stable her with the other horses, here she’d only picked at her food. Making sure to leave enough so that a girl, not even her own flesh and blood, would have sufficient scraps to feed on.
I miss my mother so. When the news of her death came through, I mourned her more quickly than poor Gerald. For a while, there was a disconnect, before the love I felt for him came flooding out in grief.
He’d once seemed so much older than me, but already I’m close to the age he was when we first met. Maybe one day, I’ll tell you another story. A love story to warm you more than sitting by a cozy fire. A tale not born of raging passion but of care, respect, and stable comfort. Not lust or the quick thrill of darting desire but an intoxicating whiskey, enriching year after year inside it
s cask.
The love between Gerald and I was like a pair of oak trees in the garden. You can’t see them getting larger, growing stronger, letting their branches caress and entwine. They do, though, every day a little more until they’re soaring into the sky.
When one of a pair of entangled trees is cut down, for firewood or for lumber, the other tree slowly tilts and falls. Once its exposed roots leave the ground, it withers and dies. After years of shared dependence, building strength and stability, living alone is just too hard.
In the weeks following Gerald’s death, that’s what I was waiting for. Not the next thing but the last thing—the slow erosion of my body and mind. For a long time, I was sure I’d soon follow Gerald into a grave. At times, I sensed the enclosing coffin would feel like welcoming arms.
Then last week, kneeling in the castle gravely polishing, I heard a far-off trill of cheeky laughter followed by a slap. My head jerked up as though my eyes would see a golden-haired woman scampering through the corridor beside me. I stood and moved to the doorway. Holding my breath, I tilted my head to catch another trill of a songbird I’d long believed was silenced.
I didn’t hear any more that day. I did, however, start mining every person I knew. Each contact at the castle who’d I’d met or talked to, or had ever owed a favor to my sweet Gerald was hit up in my scramble. I twisted each last tangle of my relationships to try to wring out information. They say you can’t get blood from a stone. Well, everything bleeds if you stab at it long enough. Right now, as I sit here, I have a name, a plan, and a path to freedom.
It will cost me money, my life, or both to free my dearest Cinderella. A sacrifice I’ll gladly make if it wins her passage outside these castle walls. I’ve money stored up and secreted away in a few different care packages. Their contents are buried deep in the scariest center of the darkest woods. Separated in case a demon creature stumbles across one while foraging in the failing heart of the forest.
