“Clumsy and lazy.” Gwendolyn kicked the shoe again. “This room is filthy—look at the trail of mud—and I still don’t have my tonic.”
Cinderella dropped all the shoes to the floor. “It wasn’t me who tracked mud in, it was you. And the tonic’s right there. Pour it yourself. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Busy?” Gwendolyn stood, indignant. “You ungrateful brat. How could you possibly be busy? You stay in this house all day long. Your only responsibility is to do a little tidying, while Agatha and I are tasked with all the important duties.”
“Yes,” Agatha added. “We do everything.”
Towering a good eight inches above Cinderella’s diminutive frame, Gwendolyn shoved her. “You have no worries, no serious duties to perform. You have no need to shop, or pick out an outfit each day, or ensure your handbag matches your slippers.”
Cinderella bit her tongue. Her stepsisters had terrible taste and relied on her to select their clothes each day. Not that Gwen was likely to admit it out loud.
“Goodness knows she never does anything with her hair,” Agatha said, and smiled at Gwen.
“Why bother?” Gwendolyn sneered. “That straight, stringy stuff? It looks like straw.” Cinderella fumed as Gwendolyn patted the deep brown hair that Cinderella had spent hours twisting and coiling that morning.
She couldn’t help it if her own hair was limp and straight. If she stole a fraction of the time she spent on her stepsisters’ hair each morning for herself, her own hair would show a great deal of improvement. The one time she’d managed to sneak some of her stepsisters’ hair soap and use hot water, her hair had shone like gold when she passed through a sunbeam.
“Speaking of grooming”—Gwendolyn’s lip curled into a sneer—“does she even bathe?”
“Oh, Gwen, you’re terrible.” Agatha lifted a hand to her lips.
Gwendolyn smiled at her sister. “At least the soot on her cheeks almost covers those hideous freckles.” The two stepsisters giggled.
Cinderella drew deep breaths to calm herself, remembering her ninja training. Sticks and stones, she thought. Sticks and stones.
“No wonder she’s never asked to attend the endless luncheons and teas and banquets and balls we frequent,” Gwendolyn said.
“I wish I could stay home all day.” Agatha plopped back onto her chair. “We have so many obligations.”
“She has no idea how hard we work.” Gwendolyn crossed her arms and glared at Cinderella.
The deep breathing was not working for Cinderella and she wondered if ninjas ever had to deal with people as horrible as her stepsisters. Agatha and Gwendolyn wouldn’t recognize work if it stepped up to shake their manicured hands.
“How ungrateful.” Gwendolyn picked up one of the shoes and threw it at Cinderella. “In spite of your plain looks and utter uselessness, our mother has generously put a roof over your head.”
“This is my house,” Cinderella muttered under her breath.
“What did you say?” Gwen stepped forward and towered over her much shorter stepsister.
“This house belonged to my father.” Cinderella stood her ground, bracing for whatever might come. “I was born in this house.”
“Yeah, and killed your mother in the process,” Gwendolyn snickered.
Cinderella’s throat caught. How dare Gwendolyn be so cruel as to bring up her mother’s death? She’d died during childbirth. Her mother’s absence weighed like a stone on Cinderella’s chest, and the loss had broken her poor father’s heart.
“Your father hated you so much for killing your mother”—Gwen examined her nails—“that he had to find new daughters. Better daughters.” She smiled at Agatha.
“That’s not true!” Cinderella’s cheeks flushed. “He was sad, but he didn’t blame me.”
Had he blamed her? She fought to keep her lips from quivering. Her stepsisters had gone several steps beyond mean. “My father loved me. If he were still alive—”
“But he’s not, is he?” boomed her stepmother in a deep voice as she entered the room.
Oh, great, thought Cinderella. As if this day couldn’t get any worse.
The tall, dark-haired woman strode in, wearing a bright blue gown, a scarlet velvet jacket, and a menacing scowl.
“Your father is dead, Cinderella. Get over it already.”
Cinderella’s insides shook, and she tried not to let the tremors show on her face.
Her stepmother took off her long, scarlet gloves. “It’s bad enough the man inconsiderately left me with the costs and responsibilities of maintaining this property. He also saddled me with you.” She snapped the gloves against one hand. “Child or not, the day of my thoughtless husband’s tragic fall to his death, I should have put you out for the wolves. Perhaps I still should.”
“Then do it,” Cinderella muttered as she picked up her stepsisters’ shoes. “Let me go, please.” She hated her stepmother for putting the image of her father’s broken body back into her mind.
Her stepmother pursed her lips. “Cinderella, as I’ve told you many times, you may leave when you learn to behave.” She strode up to Cinderella and glared down at her. “Or when you give me what I want.”
Cinderella clamped her mouth shut and lowered her gaze. Years ago, she’d given up trying to convince her stepmother that she didn’t know where her real mother’s wand was hidden. She truly had no idea, but her stepmother’s continued suspicion that she did was likely the only thing that was keeping her from throwing Cinderella to the wolves.
The tall woman circled Cinderella like a mountain lion teasing its prey. “Besides, I can’t toss you out. That would be cruel. A girl like you, with no skills, who’s lived a sheltered life under my protection—you wouldn’t survive one day in the real world.”
Cinderella drew a deep breath to keep herself from saying anything. She’d talked back enough today. Provoking her stepmother never paid—it cost. Over the years it had cost Cinderella burns and bruises and, three times, broken bones.
And what her stepmother said about her chances of survival outside this house? They had to be better than her chances of surviving in it.
She might not know the ways of the world, she might not have been blessed with great beauty, she might not be able to break a strong wizard’s entrapment spells or get past vicious wolves, but she had a secret weapon: determination. If obeying her stepmother didn’t earn Cinderella her release, she was determined to obtain a wand—somehow, someway—and with it, master enough magic to burst out from under her stepmother’s crushing grip.
Her stepmother looked down. “Cinderella, why is there dirt all over these floors? And why were you chatting with your sisters when clearly there’s work to be done?”
“She hasn’t fetched my tonic yet,” Gwendolyn said. “And I asked her for it ages ago. She’s so lazy.”
“Lazy, ungrateful girls need to be taught a lesson,” her stepmother said as she pulled her shiny black wand from its sleek holder strapped around her waist.
Cinderella braced herself. Would she spend another night as a mouse? Last time that happened, she’d had to hide behind a cupboard to ensure she didn’t end up as Max’s dinner.
Her stepmother strode around the room, her wand raised high. “When was the last time this room was dusted?”
“Two hours ago.” The words had barely left Cinderella’s mouth when a thick blanket of black dust landed on every surface except a small circle surrounding Agatha and Gwendolyn, who laughed loudly when they saw Cinderella’s new predicament.
“I see you’re a liar, too, Cinderella. Either that or you’re highly incompetent and should take more care, have a little pride in your work.” Her stepmother’s eyes narrowed and darkened, and a chill fell over the room. “And if I find even one of my precious statues cracked or broken, you’ll pay with a few breaks of your own.”
Cinderella’s muscles tensed as she glanced around at the hundreds of glass figurines it took her hours to dust each day.
Her ste
pmother flicked her magic wand and a life-sized parrot sculpture with lifelike feathers etched into crystal tipped off the edge of the stone mantel.
Cinderella leaped straight over her stepsisters in a gravity-defying hurdle, and snatched the delicate sculpture before it smashed into the stone hearth. She barely had time to rise up on her tiptoes to set it carefully back on the mantel before a life-size glass statue of a wolf teetered back and forth on its wooden stand on the other side of the room.
She vaulted over Agatha’s brocade chair, narrowly missing Agatha herself, and set the wolf gently on the carpet.
“Clumsy girl.” Her stepmother’s voice was hard and sharp. “I’ll teach you to be more careful with my things.”
Cinderella scanned the room, wondering what her next challenge would be. An ornate sculpture of a vulture, with drops of red glass dripping from its beak—one she’d always hated—shifted toward the edge of its pedestal high above the floor.
She raced toward it.
“What a fool.”
Her head spun at her stepmother’s voice behind her to see her real mother’s vase, a simple, elegant, clear glass vessel, hovering in the air.
Cinderella’s heart pinched and the air whooshed from her lungs. The vase was the only thing left in this house that once belonged to her mother. If the vase were to fall . . .
The vulture slid another inch, started to tip, and Cinderella sucked in a ragged breath. Her ninja acrobatics could take her only so far. Her speed and agility wouldn’t let her save both the vulture and the vase, and her magic skills were too weak.
Even if her magic were stronger, she couldn’t let her stepmother know she’d inherited even a tiny amount of her powerful mother’s skills—at least not yet.
She lunged to save the vulture, and as she caught it, its sharp-edged beak pierced her hand. She winced in pain and set the vulture on the floor, and bright red blood dripped down her arm.
The sound of her mother’s vase smashing into a hundred pieces assaulted her ears and penetrated her heart. Grief grabbed the inside of Cinderella’s throat, and she dropped to her knees. Agony gripped her belly, her chest, the backs of her eyes, but she swallowed the instinct to cry. She could not show her stepmother how much she hurt.
“I’ll take my bath now,” said her stepmother, her voice cold and sharp as an icicle.“And this mess had better be cleaned up by the time I am done.”
After cleaning dust and mud from every surface in the sitting room, scrubbing everyone’s shoes, and ensuring her stepsisters had at least two clothing choices for the next day—each with perfectly matched slippers and handbags—Cinderella set a half-filled watering can at the edge of her small vegetable patch.
All around the edges of the garden, red eyes glared at her through the darkness.
“Go away, wolves!” she shouted to the vicious animals that encircled the property and kept her from escaping through the woods behind the back garden, or down the road that led to the village. At least her stepmother had enchanted the edges of the property—or perhaps the animals themselves. The wolves never took a step past the edge of the trees, and after a few terrifying escape attempts during which she’d narrowly avoided being eaten, Cinderella had never again stepped into the woods. Without a weapon, her ninja skills were no match for a pack of hungry wolves, and her fledgling magic skills certainly weren’t.
Cinderella turned away from the woods and studied her watering can, heavy and glinting in the moonlight. Earlier, she’d used magic to lift the empty container off the ground. It couldn’t be that much harder to lift it partly filled, could it?
But she soon found that it was. And after a few unsuccessful attempts, Cinderella was so exhausted she could barely see straight.
She looked up at the moon. Only four hours before she had to rise and draw the water for the morning baths and make breakfast. Her sisters rarely rose before the sun was high in the sky, but her stepmother was less predictable, and Cinderella knew she’d pay a steep price should her stepmother’s porridge not be ready at the very moment she called for it. She’d pay an even steeper price should she dare taste a spoonful before the rest of her family had taken their fill.
Max nudged against her leg and meowed his encouragement. If he weren’t a cat, she’d swear he was coaching her.
“You’re right, Max.” She crouched to stroke his back. “If I can clean up that mess in the sitting room in only two hours, I can do this.” She rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes and lifted her hand.
Concentrate. Concentrate.
The watering can lifted slowly from the ground, an inch at first, then two, and then three inches. Her mood also lifted with each inch it rose. Every nerve in her body tingled and the feeling trailed out to her fingertips as the watering can continued to rise. Once it reached a foot off the ground, she shifted the angle of her hand and the can tipped. Just another few inches and the water would pour out onto the delicate lettuces below.
A rabbit raced across the garden.
The wolves howled.
Cinderella lost her concentration, and the watering can tumbled into the dirt, spilling water into a puddle.
She sighed, but Max jumped into her arms and licked her chin. “Thanks, Max. I did do better this time.”
Most nights it felt as though she’d never develop the skills to escape. She was a puny, untrained, inexperienced girl, lacking even a wand to amplify and hone what little magic she’d inherited from her mother—no match for a powerful and evil wizard like her stepmother. But every day, she became more sure: if she didn’t escape soon, her stepmother would eventually kill her.
“Is that dirt under your fingernails?” Gwendolyn’s upper lip sneered in disgust as Cinderella stood behind her in front of the ornately carved vanity mirror.
Cinderella glanced down to her hands, holding the ends of a complex pattern of interlocked sections of Gwendolyn’s dark hair. It had taken her nearly an hour to get to this point, and if she so much as shifted her hands now, before she fastened the final sections with pins, the entire hairdo would fall apart and she’d have to start over.
“I asked you a question!” Gwendolyn shrieked angrily. Although Gwendolyn was pretty, with her deep brown hair, rose-tinted skin, and flashing green eyes, she could certainly twist her face into expressions that argued with her beauty.
“I’m almost done.” Cinderella tightened her hold on the complicated plaits and twists, readying it for the first pin. She wiggled one hand out to grab one.
Gwendolyn yanked away. “Ow! You pulled my hair.”
Cinderella’s hands dropped to her sides and she drew a deep breath. “Gwen, it was you who pulled away. Now I need to begin again, and if we don’t start quickly, you’ll never get out of the house today.”
“You’re not touching me with those hands.” Gwendolyn’s nose wrinkled. “My hair is filthy now. I need another bath.” She shuddered in an exaggerated manner that befit her status as a drama queen, and Cinderella withheld the impulse to roll her eyes.
“My hands aren’t dirty.” Cinderella looked at her nails. There was a tiny line of dirt under the nail of her left index finger. How in the world had Gwendolyn even noticed?
She slipped her hands behind her back. “If you like, I’ll scrub them again, but there’s no time to rewash and dry your hair. Not if you want it woven into a butterfly pattern today.”
Agatha poked her head in from her adjoining bedroom. “Cinderella, what is taking you so long?” she demanded.“Help me with my makeup.”
Even with her shiny red hair up in curlers, Agatha, with her lovely, peachy complexion, was genuinely pretty, yet she insisted that Cinderella line her eyes with kohl and adorn her skin with the finest of creams and powders each morning.
“In a moment.” Cinderella backed toward the door.“I’m just running down to the cellar to scrub my fingernails.”
“What?” Agatha burst into the room, and her hooped pannier frame, without the weight of a dress draped on top, bounced ridiculou
sly with each step. “How could you possibly be so inconsiderate?”
“Inconsiderate?” Who was being inconsiderate? Her stepsisters were wasting her time and a small bubble of irritation rose in her chest. There was no chance that even a speck of dirt had landed on either of her sisters this morning. If her ten minutes with the nail brush before she’d gone to bed last night hadn’t dislodged it, no way had working on her sisters’ hair or skin done it.
Agatha strode forward and the cagelike undergarment bounced again, almost making Cinderella laugh. “How can you dawdle on a day like today?” Agatha stuck out her lower lip in a serious pout. Toddlers had nothing on the younger of her two stepsisters, who typically followed her older sister’s lead.
“What’s special about today?” Cinderella asked.
“Idiot! How can you ask such a thing?” Gwendolyn reached forward and poked Cinderella, her long nail nearly piercing the skin just under Cinderella’s collarbone. “ Today is the most important day of my life.”
“Why?”
Gwendolyn rolled her eyes and backed up from her stepsister. “You stupid girl. Today is the day. I can’t possibly risk not being seen in the village today. What if I’m forgotten?”
“Forgotten?” Cinderella’s curiosity grew in spite of her irritation. All this discussion was dragging out the morning dressing ritual even longer than usual.“Who could possibly forget you?” She felt her scant breakfast rise a little in her throat, but flattery was a tool she pulled out of her box of tricks when the occasion warranted.
“Whoever’s handing out invitations to the ball, you idiot.” Gwendolyn picked through her hair as if she might find evidence of a speck of dirt.
Cinderella furrowed her eyebrows. Last night, while she’d been trying to keep the mud on their shoes from grinding into the white rug, her stepsisters had been muttering something about a ball and invitations and the prince, but Cinderella hadn’t paid them much attention.
Agatha sat on the edge of Gwendolyn’s bed and sank into the feather mattress. “Wouldn’t it be dreamy to marry Prince Tiberius?”
Cinderella: Ninja Warrior Page 2
