Invitations were sent to every young woman in the Kingdom. The Prince’s purpose in staging the gala was to get Cinderella’s stepmother and her daughters out of the house. His teacher, the Fairy Godmother, would prepare Cinderella and escort her to the celebration under her protection. The Prince vowed to recapture the love he and Charlotte shared.
At midnight when Charlotte transformed into Cinderella the servant, his plan was to ask her to be his wife in front of the entire court. But when the clock struck midnight reverberating throughout the castle Cinderella noticed her stepmother bearing down on them. She panicked and ran.
Wow! He had forgotten how fast she could run! Shouting orders, he gathered a crew of his fastest men. They chased her all the way back to her parent’s stone cottage. Bright lights of the castle left behind, the dark night settled around them. The Prince did not need light. His feet knew the forest trails.
He wasn’t prepared for the treachery of Cinderella’s stepmother.
She raced along the edges of forest. Knowing the Prince followed close behind, Cinderella’s stepmother conjured oil. Black and sticky the spill extended across the narrowing path instantly suffocating the plants along the roadside. In the chaos that followed bodies fell, twisting into piles, the guards tumbled one-over-another.
A wicked smile curving her lips the stepmother thought, “If I’d had more time I would have thrown fire.” Envisioning the flames leaping along the edges of piled up bodies her smile deepened. But the spell required too much concentration. The agile Prince avoided falling by leaping past his men. Now he was beginning to out pace her. She ignited her power and sped after Cinderella.
Wrenching open the heavy wood door Cinderella’s stepmother fell into the kitchen panting and out of breath. Standing at the kitchen sink Cinderella understood this would be their final encounter.
Maybe you wonder why Cinderella stayed after her parent’s death in a home where she was treated like a servant. At first she was numb with shock. Who was she a girl alone, without family, in the world? Later Cinderella stayed to protect her family’s treasures. She could have fled into the forest. But her stepmother’s magic would have found her. Every part of the forest helping her would be made to suffer.
Tonight she realized her stepmother would try and kill her with magic. Instinctively she backed away. Just moments before she danced with the Prince, now she confronted death, just as her parents had at the hands of stepmother.
In the near distance the Prince was shouting, “Charlotte! Charlotte! Come to me!” Cinderella swiveled her head to look out the window. With supernatural strength her stepmother shoved Cinderella toward the fireplace. She stumbled. One shoe flew across the room. Her head struck the stone mantle and Cinderella crumpled. Her stepmother smiled, pushing a loose strand of hair away from her face.
When the Prince catapulted through the open door the first thing he saw was Cinderella’s shoe. A shoe his Fairy Godmother had created. Made of clear quartz crystal it sparkled in the dim light. Pretending not to notice the slipper, the Prince moved toward the wicked stepmother.
Yes, the Prince could see through her disguise. Yellow teeth, shriveled hands more claw than fingers, and her thin hair revealed a thickly veined blue scalp. Her hiss spewed acid. Droplets formed on the shield he threw up to protect his face.
Where was Charlotte? It was difficult to see past the crone without the light of a fire. Yet he didn’t want to use magic. Changing the environment without knowing where Cinderella was located could be dangerous. The first lesson with his Fairy Godmother the Prince learned magic rebounds, splinters taking detours. It’s not reliable. Stories written tell us the successes of magic. Too few stories are told of magic’s failures.
Outside, rain turned to hail beating a vicious tempo along the copper roof. Cinderella heard the Prince calling. A muddy blue cloud, her stepmother’s enchantment, obscured her sight. Guards tumbled into the kitchen. The noise amplified the enchantment making it difficult to breathe. Stamping grew to stomping. Yelling expanded. Not one word was decipherable. The hail receded leaving a soft misty rain in its place.
When the Prince picked up Cinderella’s shoe the witch’s spell wavered. Coughing and belching the enchantment’s gritty residue, the Prince could not see her but then, a sound – out of place with the carnage in the room–caught his ear.
Inspired Cinderella tapped out a musical phrase with a piece of kindling on the stone fireplace. The Prince might not be able to see her but if he heard the familiar cadence of her rhythmic tapping maybe he could find her.
Carried by the density of stone she tapped, “DA, da, da, duh. DA, da, da, duh.” Urgency was building a fire in her veins. Double time the rhythm changed. “BA-ba-ba—buh—TA-ta-ta-Tah-TA-ta-ta-Tah.”
The Prince froze. Within his stillness he heard, transformed by her love and fear, a symphony. He heard her song: “Please hurry…..I love you…..….”
Beyond the stench of the stepmother’s incantations he saw her surrounded in bursts of pink. Suffering in the stifling reek, hinting of blood and violence, the Prince saw Cinderella hidden in the stepmother’s grainy shadows and disease.
In this way, although Cinderella was hidden from view by her stepmother’s spell, the Prince located her. Standing by the massive hearth the Prince stripped the spell. He shouted orders. Guards moved toward the stepmother. A snarl from the depths of jealousy obscured the witch.
She screamed, “I will never be your newest occupant in the palace prisons!” Growing to enormous proportions she sealed all the exits. Her hair shot out in a hundred different directions. Her breath stank of freshly clotted blood. Sweet with disease it petrified the surrounding air. No one could breathe without gagging… A riptide of rage, the wave of putrid odor, exploded across the room.
Horrified, every eye entrained. They watched the stepmother transform, from an obsequious fawning woman at the ball, into a primordial creature sobbing with anguish. The guards froze in the horror.
Launching herself at Cinderella she attacked. Talons tore at the fireplace mantle. Lightening left acrid, toxic fumes. Thunder rocked the foundation of the cottage. Plates, knives, vases and even chairs shuddered then flew across the room. The room exploded as flames shot out the doors and windows.
The spell hiding Cinderella had faded yet she was trapped on the apron of stone, frozen by the witch’s immobilization spell. She choked on the black smoke pouring out of the fireplace. Her stepmother’s nails tore at her clothes and face, narrowly missing an eye. A knife shooting like an arrow sank in the limestone just over Cinderella’s shoulder. A wooden spoon hit her head. Windows shattered. Hundreds of pieces of tiny glass fragments targeted Cinderella embedding in her face and arms. The acrid stink; values twisted by greed and despair, turned the room a dirty dusky blue. Eyes watered, noses swelled.
Cinderella trained her eyes on the Prince. A nimbus of light was growing, golden and deep. Tendrils extended to fill the room. His eye fell on Cinderella. In the space of a heartbeat his love and concerned wrapped around her.
He didn’t see her torn clothing or the deep circles under her eyes. He saw his lifetime friend. He saw the woman he loved, just as he had known for his entire life he would love her. Looking through the filters of his magic he checked for traps in Cinderella’s aura. He could see no physical damage. He bit back rage when he saw her spirit bent with sorrow. Was it shame he saw in her heart?
He pulled Cinderella from the hearth, wrapped her in his cloak and set her behind him. The entire room filled with a soft glow. House ware, transformed into missiles, settled to the floor. A collective sigh filled the silence. The sweetness of honeysuckle was drawn into the house on a current of fresh air.
Cinderella stood on shaking legs. She was never more grateful for the honeysuckle vine. Intertwined with the garden gate, without restraint the flowers shared their sticky fragrance. It mixed with Cinderella’s gratitude; a subliminal message restoring the spirits of every warrior standing in the stone kitchen.
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Then the massive kitchen island trembled. Cinderella looked at her stepmother. Her blood shot eyes, hair standing on end with power; her psychotic hatred laced with insanity was their only warning.
The stepmother’s rage fractured the calm with jagged bolts muddy red. Her face contorted. Her scream raised the roof. Hair crackling, eyes red with broken vessels, she called up hurricane winds. Rain tore across the kitchen.
The limestone fireplace cracked. Family treasures disintegrated. Furniture exploded. The seams holding the house to its foundation groaned. Stone screamed shifting along mortar. Guards could not fight the wind.
Pressure building exploded ear drums. The men fell to the floor holding their heads, screaming their pain. Darkness tore at uniforms cleaving long red welts. Cinderella and the Prince were doubled over in agony.
Her heart squeezed painfully. Each inhale burned long striations of acid. Facing death, in that pivotal moment, Cinderella chose. She chose love. Showering the Prince with her love, she dove into a benevolent grace. Golden droplets, dewy and sweet, infused with honeysuckle, burst, spreading the potency of love’s protection throughout the room.
Yet the tornado of grainy debris, impenetrable, continued to assault. The Prince recoiled against the darkness scraping across every soul. Pain and paralysis gripped his muscles. Even his heart threatening to stop, for this brief moment, violence diminished in the luminosity of Cinderella’s love.
He had this one liberated instant. Reaching for the silver chain, infinitesimally thin, hanging at his side he jerked it free. The length whipped across the room. A flash of supernatural silver parted the grainy debris. The thunder of freedom, a collective inhale; bodies dropped to the floor, free of pain. As the Prince fell, choking out words of power, the silver snake sliced through fumes and furniture alike. Glittering with magic, it lashed around Cinderella’s stepmother, transforming her back into a woman.
All of the darkness infiltrating molecules constellated around the stepmother trapped in the silver chain binding her. Her scream tore at the walls and extinguished. This was how the Prince discovered Cinderella hidden in the fireplace. She was tapping with a piece of kindling on the stone.
Chapter Three
Reunion
In the wake of the cottage’s destruction a sob shattered the silence. Cinderella, quaking like the leaf of the Bay Laurel tree outside her home, buried her face in her hands. The Prince gave curt directions to remove the remains of the sorceress.
When brooms appeared the guards raked the floors covered in broken china and crystal. Brandy materialized in a cracked mug. The Prince carried Cinderella out to the gardens.
He gently sat her next to the arbor of honeysuckle marking the entrance to the rose garden tended first by her mother and then, in memory of her mother, cared for by Cinderella. The Prince pulled the cloak away from her face and traced the path of her tears with calming hands. Cuts and bruises faded.
Joy shuddered through her muscles cramped by years of misery and abuse. In that instant Cinderella understood. Her parents had been weakened and killed by her stepmother’s use of supernatural magic. A strangled cry and she crumpled. Curving over her spine, face in her hands, the universal supplication of grief, Cinderella sobbed a storm. Her body shook like trees buffeted in the bluster of a spring rain. Very carefully the Prince bundled her in his midnight blue cloak. He held her until the outburst passed.
While the sun rose in the east, guards continued repairs to her home. She told her story with the Prince leaning against the wooden arbor his arms encircling her. They shared the cup of brandy and then water. Cinderella’s dog, Blackie, climbed out from beneath the porch to sit next to them. As the sun shed the horizon, air fragrant with roses, lights shining from the cottage; Cinderella realized she was freed from her stepmother’s tyranny. She fell into a deep sleep.
The Prince brought Cinderella home to the palace. Over the following weeks they walked garden paths. Talking and holding hands. Lilac bushes were in bloom, their fragrance carried on tendrils of spring warmth.
Morning horseback rides were a time to play. They followed mountain streams. Running water and the horse’s shoes clomping against the stones sprayed droplets that hung in the air amid the dappled light of morning sun filtered through the boughs and leaves of Bay Laurel trees. Only when Cinderella spotted an herb she wanted to collect did they pause. Blackie splashed in the streams tempting them to play. Settling for chasing squirrels up the trees, who from their safe perch high amid branches, chattered and squealed their disapproval.
On rainy afternoons they read, hidden by the bookshelves of the library. Sometimes they played music, losing track of time, absorbed in the chains of rhythm and melody. Evenings they dined with the King and Queen. Conversations flowed, ebbing only when they played Bridge or Hearts.
Cinderella spent nights writing in her journal. She described the wonders of the palace. Running water poured from pipes into bath and bowls. Controlled by a lever it was a miracle of technology. Curtains made from silk as fine as the most beautiful dresses opened and closed in front of windows.
The views of the gardens and green rolling hills gave Cinderella a feeling of safety she had not known since childhood. She tried to write about the losses of her parents but the trauma lodged in her throat cutting off words from hand and mouth. Instead she wrote about the beautiful wardrobe, impeccably cut, simple and elegant, the Queen designed for her.
Mornings when the Prince was busy she found her way down to the Healer’s sanctuary. It was a rare opportunity to discuss the medicinal properties of plants, essential oils, homeopathic remedies, and even gems and minerals.
She studied the body’s alignment for health learning to make adjustments. Here was a world of information. She learned how to stretch and manipulate the spine and even the corresponding energy centers. Why had she never made the distinctions between the mind, heart, and spirit? Could she learn to work with these powerful dimensions individually and cohesively?
The King and Queen hoped, while living in the palace, Cinderella would begin repairing the trauma of her cohabitation with a wicked stepmother and two vicious stepsisters. But Cinderella stubbornly turned away from confronting the pains of the past. Only in unguarded moments did her suffering surface.
Anxiously waiting for signs of improvement the weeks flew by. The Prince biding his time could wait no longer. Peril soared as Cinderella’s resistance calcified. Threats to the Kingdom surfaced as tales of dark deeds taking place in the forest were reported.
Nights were broken while the Queen rushed to comfort Cinderella trapped in a nightmare. Laundry shoots carried the reverberations of her menacing dreams. The entire household was poised on the cusp of post-traumatic-stress with Cinderella. Unresolved trauma scraped at serenity like fingernails on chalkboards.
The Royal family worried. Soon town gossips would be squawking. People would start to look at Cinderella through the lens of gossip. They would no longer see a Princess in training. Instead they would see a girl broken beyond repair.
Finally, on an afternoon soft with falling rain, while raindrops clung to flowers and tree branches, the Prince and Cinderella found a stone alcove padded with pillows. The Prince eagerly shared the details of his apprenticeship to the Fairy Godmothers He explained, “There are many Fairy Godmothers! Each year I studied with a Fairy Godmother, one for each of cardinal directions.”
Pausing to swallow past nerves and excitement the Prince continued, “South, West, North and East embody specific powers reflecting their unique natures. Each year was a course of study encompassing the singular qualities that formed the foundation of one direction.”
Cinderella looked at him out of eyes freshly bruised with anguish. He ran his hands through his hair until it stood straight up, his reflection of empathy for her suffering. Desperate to help her understand, more words poured out of him. “Each direction is an existential paradigm for inward knowledge and worldly knowledge. Together the Four Directions form t
he beginning of the wisdom required to govern a Kingdom.”
Taking Cinderella’s quivering hand between his two warm and steady hands, he said, “The dangers inherent in running a Kingdom are immense. If you’ll agree, I’d like you to study with my teachers.”
Cinderella shot to her feet like a ball out of the cannon. Her body trembling violently, voice frail and faded, she whispered, “Study? You want me to study? After losing my parents, struggling to survive, you want to send me away? How could you?”
Jumping up, holding her before she ran, he pulled her into his arms. Hearts pounding, panting like they’d run a race, he waited. When their heart beats synchronized he shattered the silence, “Charlotte, I’d like you to study with the Fairy Godmothers of the Four Directions.”
“No. I can’t. Don’t ask it of me. I’ve only now just begun to feel safe.”
The Prince gripped her elbows. He bent down until they were eye to eye. “That’s just it Charlotte. You aren’t safe here or anywhere in the Kingdom. Studying with the Fairy Godmothers creates a circle of protection.”
Cinderella dropped her head. The Prince pulled her close. She laid her head on his shoulder and wept quiet tears. “Hey, hey,” he chided. “I would wait forever for you Charlotte, but the Kingdom cannot wait any longer. We are vulnerable to attack. Your well-being as Princess and my future wife are essential to the well-being of every individual and family in our Kingdom.”
Gently pushing back into the pillows, he sat beside her. “Without your health, body-mind-spirit, we invite disease and corruption. Which leads to more disease and corruption, do you understand?”
Cinderella hiccupped, “I…I…I’ve…fffelt….sooo….huh,huh.” A storm of emotions colliding chased across her features, “I’ve felt…. felt sooo, sooo, bro…bro…ken!”
Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions Page 2
