I was standing in the middle of a dark, quiet street with two spiders, six mice, and one slightly bruised pumpkin.
“Climb on,” I told my friends, motioning them toward the pumpkin. The mice and insects all scampered up around the stem, and I hauled the thing home the rest of the way, still missing one slipper. The one thing that didn’t change back was the glass slipper. Before I walked in the back door, I put the pumpkin back into the garden so my friends could make their own way into the house. I kicked the slipper into the bushes and slipped the prince’s ring into my pocket.
I saw a faint glow in the windows. I wondered if Aunt Kayska had taken care of my stepmother. I was a little nervous about what I’d find in there.
I pushed open the door, keeping my ears pricked. My bare feet padded across the cold floor, into the back hall near the kitchens. The cook was passed out on the ground, like a drunk in an alley.
Footsteps came down the staircase ahead. I immediately recognized my stepmother’s shoes and the hem of her dress. Uh-oh. “Kayska?” I shouted.
My stepmother moved faster, a lamp in her hand to illuminate the gloom of downstairs.
No answer from Kayska.
I tried to run.
“Going somewhere?” she asked. “Are you looking for the woman who invaded my home?”
I backed out the door, so I’d have a better chance of running away. “She’s my aunt. Where is she?”
“She’s gone back home.”
“What?”
“Yes. I came home and I found her asleep. A goblin woman, asleep in my chair! I put her in the carriage and brought her to the docks, and sold her unconscious body to a ship captain to keep his men amused. I wonder if they will wait for her to wake up?”
This story sounded so horrible and yet so preposterous that I wasn’t really sure how to respond. “I don’t believe it.”
“Well, you’ll have time to consider it while you wait for her to come back.” I tried to run, but suddenly my stepsisters sprang out from behind the walls that led to the alley.
“There you are, you little impostor!” Gwyn cried. They both looked uglier than ever, their faces twisted with jealousy. I panicked, unsure what to do.
What happened to the man Mr. Hassari was supposed to send? Where was Ravok?
My stepsisters grabbed me and shoved me toward my stepmother. She smacked me hard across the face. “You went to the ball,” she said. “You danced with the princes. I hope you enjoyed it, because you will never see daylight again.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ellara
“You thought you were special, dancing with the princes?” Gwyn kicked her slipper at me.
“You never deserved to be there!” Cerra was almost in tears. “Goblins don’t belong in the Palace of Waterfalls!”
“Goblins belong in dark hovels,” my stepmother said smugly. “Which is why you will be spending the rest of your life tied up in the basement with the spiders and mice where you belong. And we are leaving, so you might die there before you’re found.”
“You’re leaving?”
“We’re going to Cabria,” she said. “To reclaim my poor late husband’s saffron farm.”
I started to feel like maybe something really terrible had happened. Somehow, she had out-schemed my aunt and Mr. Hassari both. What if it was all true? What if my aunt really had been sold to be a ship’s whore, and my stepmother really was going to tie me up down here to die?
I could think of no more terrifying fate, and the trouble was, the only people who knew I lived here were impoverished deliverymen. If no one answered the door, they would just move on. Maybe if Ithrin issued a decree looking for a goblin girl…but then, if all of this took a few days…
I was scrambling—and furious. I would have to take a risk.
“You don’t want to do that,” I said, anger flaring in my voice. “You think goblins don’t belong in the Palace of Waterfalls? Well, Prince Ithrin thinks otherwise. He has chosen me as his bride, and if I don’t return to him tomorrow morning, he’ll come for me. He knows where I live.”
My stepmother laughed. “Oh, of course he did. The prince.” She started talking to me like you would talk to a baby. Well, if you really hated the baby. “The prince wants to marry poor little goblin. I’m quite sure. He probably said that to get rid of you.”
“He didn’t.” I took the ring out of my pocket. “He gave me this as a promise.”
“Let me see that.” She wrested it out my hand and inspected the royal seal. “You probably stole this.”
“I stole a ring right off the prince’s hand? If I was that good at stealing valuables, do you think I’d still be here?”
Gwyn and Cerra looked at it with horrified expressions; they believed me right away. Of course, they had seen Prince Ithrin holding me so close at the ball.
“Hmm. All right. Change of plans. Girls, help me tie her up.”
At this point, there was nothing left to do but fight for my life. I whirled and hit Cerra right in the nose. She shrieked, but she also hit me back. One could give my stepsisters that. The girls could genuinely fight. When they were younger, occasionally they were sent home from school for fighting, in fact. Once they realized I was going to fight back, they plunged into it, tearing at my clothes, jabbing me with elbows and stomping on my bare feet. I got in a few satisfying retaliatory blows, kicking Gwyn hard and ripping the sash of my stepmother’s dress. But it was three against one, and I never really had a chance. As I was reeling from a blow to the head, hands suddenly seized mine, and the sash I had torn from my stepmother’s dress was now used to bind my hands behind my back.
“Help! Heeeelp!” I screamed, now hoping to attract the attention of a sympathetic neighbor. Gwyn shoved her lacy handkerchief in my mouth. I tried to bite her.
It was my last attempt at striking back. They collectively muscled me into the carriage, shoving me like they were trying to manhandle livestock. They seemed to be in a hurry. Once I was inside, they tied my feet.
“Come now, quickly, girls,” my stepmother said. “If this is true, we can’t dawdle.”
They climbed into the carriage. My arms were killing me from being twisted behind me as my stepsisters jammed into the carriage around me, on top of countless fresh bruises and scratches that marked my body. My stepmother had the front seat, taking the reins. I glared at them. “You’ll pay for this,” I tried to say. It came out, of course, as just an angry bunch of “mmfmm mmh!” that seemed to amuse my stepmother.
My stepsisters, I noticed, were looking pretty frightened by now.
“Now, Gwyn, when we reach the ship, you’re going to be Ellara,” my stepmother said.
Gwyn didn’t look at me anymore. “Why do I have to be Ellara?”
“Because you’re a better actress than Cerra.”
“But—I can’t be Ellara forever.”
“Of course you can. None of these people know who Ellara is. You can just be yourself, but you’ll be called Ellara, except you can occasionally mention Ellara’s life story.”
“I don’t want to be a goblin!”
“Oh, don’t worry! Everyone will forget all about your supposed goblin blood before long! Ellara’s father is an elf and you favor him, don’t you, dear? Anyway, listen carefully—you’ll have fun with this part. I am concerned Mr. Hassari may have told his crew that Ellara’s family wasn’t very nice to her. So I want you to act as if Cerra and I have not been very nice to you, only out of the goodness of your heart, you didn’t want to leave us behind.”
At this point I couldn’t resist another round of “Mmffmm mhm mm!?”
What in all the gods had happened? My stepmother was going to pass Gwyn off as me? But Mr. Hassari had met me!
“Oh, yes, Cinderella. I know what you are saying back there. You’re wondering how I will trick Mr. Hassari into taking us to Cabria instead of you? Well, Mr. Hassari is dead. Poor man. He had a heart attack. He did mention at the dinner party that his heart gave him trouble, and I
suppose it caught up with him.”
My father had died of a heart attack, too.
A ‘heart attack’.
“You killed him?” I mhmphed.
She smiled at me with all the sweetness and charm that must have tricked my father once. She slipped the prince’s ring over her finger. “Lovely ring,” she said. “It is too bad I’ll have to pawn it. Far too conspicuous.”
In that terrible moment, it felt crystal clear. She really had married my father for his money, and killed him. After his death, she had done her best to scrub me out of existence. Why had I ever asked the prince about seances? I had known it was true from the day of his funeral. I just didn’t want to think I was left in the hands of his murderer.
Why had she even kept me? Was it for a moment like this, waiting for a fresh chunk of inheritance to come to light? Or was it simply to torment me? It hardly mattered. She had done it to me again. She had killed another innocent man in order to take my money.
“I’ll kill you,” I said behind my gag.
I think my stepsisters knew exactly what I meant. They both edged away from me.
My stepmother drove the poor horses fast, from our wealthy neighborhood to the rough side of town. It was astonishing how close the grand houses were to the shanties where the families of the fishermen lived. I smelled the ocean more strongly here. Wyndyr was a city that relied on the sea, and yet I had not seen the sea in six years. We were getting closer to the docks. But the carriage stopped in front of three stories of somber brick looming above a tall iron gate. It was guarded by a man with a sword, even in the middle of the night.
My stepmother jumped down to speak to him for a moment, and he unlocked the gates for her.
The horses came down the path. Moonlight shone on a grim, barren lawn with a stone well and a single tree that had already shed its autumn leaves. It was hard to believe that this was the same night the prince had made love to me.
My stepmother bade us to wait and she went inside the creaking wooden door of the building. Outside, it was very lonely and my stepsisters were shivering. For some reason, I wasn’t, even though my clothes had been torn up more than theirs. I felt like I was made of stone, and I wanted to cling to that feeling, at least until they left. I hadn’t broken for them in six years. I wouldn’t break now.
When my stepmother came back, she was accompanied by another woman holding a lantern who looked about as much a barrel of fun as you would expect, and behind her, two burly women wearing all black. They hauled me out of the carriage and untied my feet, only to force me along between them. The lantern light bobbed along dark walls that smelled of mildew and misery. It was all making me feel very sick and I wished I had not had so much rich food and champagne at the ball. They urged me through a doorway that said “Admittance Office”.
“Thank you for taking her at such an hour,” my stepmother said. “There has been an expected turn.”
“Oh?”
“The prince might be looking for her, if she is telling the truth.”
“Prince Ithrin?”
“Yes. She says he thinks to take a goblin for a queen!”
“Oh, no, no,” the woman said.
“You are not just the lady of this house of industry now,” my stepmother said. “You are the protector of the very realm itself. Of course, he might go to some lengths to find her, and offer great rewards. But don’t give in. You know they would be false promises.” She handed the woman a silver. “There will be much more sent along soon. The lost inheritance has fallen into my lap.”
The other woman smiled, although her smile seemed like it was broken. It was not really a smile, more of just a lip twist. “Good to hear. I will certainly keep her safe.”
It was pretty clear that this was going to be the worst definition of ‘safe’.
“Good bye, Cinderella,” my stepmother said.
She had been my tormentor for the past six years. And all I had known. I knew what to expect from her and my stepsisters.
When she left, I began trembling all over.
“Well now, Ellara. Welcome to the Home for Industrious Ladies,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Rennick. I’m glad you’re with us. You look quite industrious. I hope so.”
Chapter Fifteen
Prince Ithrin
Once Ellara left, I was useless for the rest of the night. I kept dancing, as I must, but at this point the girls were just plugging through it. They knew as well as I did that I would not choose any other girl on this night. Everyone had seen me dance with Ellara and run after her, and at the end of the evening, as dejected parties of girls abandoned the dance floor, leaving trampled handkerchiefs and flowers behind them, my father came up to me, with Wrindel next to him.
“It’s the goblin girl, isn’t it?” Father asked.
“I know it isn’t the most strategic alliance…”
“I have made it clear, I don’t want the most strategic alliance for you. I want to see you happy for once. And we might make some strategy out of it, in the end. After all, King Nyar is back on the throne and has a male heir already, and I’ve heard good things about the revival of the goblin kingdom. We might be able to ease some of the tense relations between the humans and the goblins in the north. But that’s all far down the road.”
“I’m not sure the people will be happy. Choosing a goblin over one of our own, and then we might have to raise taxes on top of it?”
“It’s all in how you present it,” Wrindel said.
“Yes,” Father said. “A beautiful wedding will brighten everyone’s mood, and she is not just a goblin princess. She’s an elf, too, isn’t she? She is a symbol of love conquering all, crossing barriers. Taxes? Taxes come later. Start of the next fiscal year. Everyone will have forgotten this by then.” He shrugged.
Father’s way of coping with the loss of his wife, eldest son and only daughter was to run the kingdom into debt. My way was communing with the dead. I’m not sure who was more sensible about it, but for once, I was finding his way hard to resist.
The whole thing made me wonder who I was anymore, what had happened. I went to my balcony and didn’t sleep, although by now it was three in the morning.
“Ithrin.” Wrindel came in, having entered my room without knocking, and clapped me on the back. “Just enjoy it for once. I told you, love at first sight. It’s as good a way to fall in love as any.”
“So you say. But you’ve never fallen in love. If you had, you’d stick around the morning after.”
He grinned. “You’re the oldest. I had to wait for you.” Which was of course, nonsense. He had never waited for me about anything.
“Jiriel was the oldest.” I looked at the moon. “I suppose it is time to let them go.”
“I can’t really say anything,” Wrindel said. For once he didn’t joke. “I never had them to begin with.”
“That’s worse,” I said.
“I don’t know. I think it might be easier, not to carry grief like that, the way you and Father have. I’ve always felt responsible for lightening the mood. It’s not a role I mind, really. But…” He trailed off, and I understood. He grew up into a family that was busy mourning the other half of the family, the one he would only know by their crypts. “So,” he said. “Did you fuck her?”
“I’m not answering that. Why not ask if we talked about our hopes and dreams?”
“So, you did.”
“Damn it, how come whenever I don’t want to answer a question everyone assumes the answer is yes?”
“Because that’s how it works.”
Someone pounded on my door. Wrindel and I exchanged a glance before I shoved my hands off the balcony. “At least someone knows how to knock,” I told him before answering.
It was a castle courier. “Your grace, there are two goblins at the gates who are pleading to speak to you. I would never have indulged them except for…um…the girl that you…spent part of the evening with.”
“I’ll come out to meet them.”
> I moved quickly, hoping that Ellara was all right. Visitors in the dead of night rarely bore good news.
Downstairs, the goblins had not been allowed past the great Hall of Marble Pools. There was a woman with some resemblance to Ellara, unusually attractive for a middle-aged goblin, wearing a brown laced bodice and dark red skirt that bared her ankles and more, in the way of goblin women. Her face was frowning with concern, making me pick up my pace even more. Wrindel was still with me, although a few steps behind. The woman was accompanied by a goblin man with a military bearing, clad in light armor.
“Prince Ithrin,” she said. “I do appreciate you seeing me at this hour. I believe you know my niece Ellara.”
“Yes,” I said. “You must be the one who cast the spell on us. That was a pretty nasty trick, coming from someone whose own king suffered under a spell of aphrodisiac.”
“I get good ideas from my foes sometimes. But you must admit, Ellara is beautiful, with or without a spell.”
“Yes…but that is all the more reason why you shouldn’t have to resort to a spell.”
She seized on that answer. “So you do think so? It may interest you to know, she is in grave danger now.” Her facade of a troublemaking old witch slipped for a moment, and she said, “And it’s my fault. I was much too overconfident…”
“What happened?” I wasn’t sure I trusted this woman not to be pulling another scheme.
“After I sent Ellara to the ball, I waited for her in her stepmother’s house. I decided to poke around while I waited, to see what sort of people were keeping my beloved sister’s child. And what did I find in that house? Inside a locked cabinet, in unmarked bottles? I had to use a spell to confirm my suspicions. Poison,” she said. “And worse! Some forged documents that suggested to me that this wily bitch—“
The Goblin Cinderella Page 8
