“But Nanny said she would help me,” Lady Tremaine pleaded. “She said she would see if she could talk the Fairy Council into helping me. She made a promise! You have to help me, Fairy Godmother, you just have to. You can’t abandon me now.”
The Fairy Godmother narrowed her eyes. “I see why my sister was so easily fooled by you. You are convincing, but even if I could help you, I wouldn’t. Not after what you have done to Cinderella.”
Lady Tremaine wanted to cry. She felt like she was losing her grip on reality, and she clutched her brooch for strength.
“You may not have been a villain when you landed on Morningstar shores, but you have become one since,” the Fairy Godmother continued. “You have urged your daughters down the same path, encouraging them to be as nasty and miserable as you are and using them to torture my Cinderella. No, Lady Tremaine, you deserve what comes next in your story.”
“What comes next? What will happen to me and my daughters?” Lady Tremaine asked, feeling as if she were trapped in some horrible nightmare where everything was upside down. She had thought she was the heroine of her own story. She had fallen in love and traveled to a foreign land to start a new life, only to realize she had been tricked. She had endured years of abuse. And now a real fairy godmother was telling her she was, in fact, not the heroine of her own tale, but the villain in someone else’s. “Please tell me, what is going to happen?” she begged, grasping her brooch and willing herself to remain as calm and cold as she could be.
“You will just have to wait and see,” said the Fairy Godmother, raising her wand.
“What are you doing?” asked Lady Tremaine.
“Making you forget, and setting everything back on its proper course,” said the Fairy Godmother. “Oh, look, and just in time for Cinderella’s arrival. I see her carriage pulling up in front of the palace now.” She began to wave her wand, but the room started to rumble and shake, causing her to whirl around, searching for the source of the magic.
“Fairy Godmother, stop!” the Odd Sisters screamed, all four of them suddenly standing before the fairy and Lady Tremaine.
“Don’t do this,” said Circe. “We’re not here to meddle with Cinderella. We’re here to help Lady Tremaine. Cinderella can have her prince, just let us help Lady Tremaine and her daughters. Nanny saw what was really happening. She wanted to help the lady and her girls, but where is she now? Why has she never come back to help them?”
“My sister was sent away,” the Fairy Godmother said. “I’m afraid she won’t remember who she is for quite some time, let alone remember Lady Tremaine.”
“You wiped her memory?” Circe was shocked.
“It was for the best. She was threatening our way of life, threatening fairy tradition. She had to be stopped,” the Fairy Godmother said.
“Mark my words, Fairy Godmother,” said Circe. “Your sister will be back one day, and she will take her rightful place! And we will sing and dance in the ashes when the Dark Fairy destroys the Fairylands! This, too, has been written!”
“There is no Dark Fairy, Circe. As usual you and your sisters are talking nonsense,” said the Fairy Godmother.
“Oh, there will be, and one day when the stars are not right, she will destroy you for all the harm you have caused in the Many Kingdoms.” The room shook as Circe spoke.
“That is enough!” The Fairy Godmother waved her wand to create a swirling vortex behind the sisters. “I told Nanny years ago we would regret setting you loose on the Many Kingdoms.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lucinda, her head cocked to the side.
“Yes, what do you mean?” asked Circe, raising her hands and causing the room to shake so violently now the walls were starting to crack, and the frozen ladies and gentlemen were toppling over.
“We demand that you tell us what you mean,” said all four sisters with one voice.
“Tell us now or we will destroy you!” Circe added, her eyes filled with rage.
Now it was the Fairy Godmother’s turn to laugh. “Oh, please. This is my domain. You have no power over me here. We are in the princess’s chapter of the story.” She put her hands on her hips and had a satisfied look on her face. “I have had enough of witches. The last thing I need is to contend with the likes of you on this night of all nights. Now leave this place at once, or I will send you to Hades’s domain where you belong!”
“Send us there,” said Lucinda, smiling.
“I think he’d be happy to see us,” said Circe, laughing.
And with that, the Fairy Godmother blasted Circe and her sisters backward into a swirling vortex.
“There!” she said with another twitch of her wand, and the vortex closed. “That was quite enough of them!”
“Where are they? What have you done with them?” cried Lady Tremaine.
The Fairy Godmother smiled. “Never you mind. It’s time to get back to your story now, dear. Let’s forget this ever happened and get my Cinderella married to her prince,” she said, waving her wand. At once, the ballroom sprang back into action. Anastasia and Drizella made their way back to their mother while the music played, people danced, and courtiers continued to announce each eligible maiden to the prince.
Lady Tremaine felt strange, as if she had momentarily fallen asleep. The last thing she remembered was being scolded by her daughters for fidgeting with their dresses and feathers.
“All right, my dears, I’ll stop fussing. I think they are about to announce us,” she said. And like that, as if she had summoned it, their names were called. As Lady Tremaine escorted her daughters to be presented before the prince, she knew this was their last chance at freedom.
The mother and her daughters curtsied before him. But instead of smiling graciously, the prince rolled his eyes, and in that moment Lady Tremaine knew in her heart that she and her daughters would be trapped in the Many Kingdoms forever.
It was then Cinderella came gliding into the ballroom, looking as if she had just stepped from the pages of a fairy tale book. All eyes in the room turned to her. Lady Tremaine hardly recognized her, and she could tell Anastasia and Drizella didn’t either, but it was their stepsister who arrived just in time to steal any chances they may have had with the prince.
“Where did she get that dress?” Lady Tremaine asked through clenched teeth, watching her daughters fumble their way through their curtseys. But the prince was no longer paying attention. His eyes had moved past them, focusing only on Cinderella. Anastasia and Drizella hadn’t even finished straightening up from their curtseys when he stood abruptly, making his way right past the sisters, who looked so foolish just standing there in front of the empty throne.
As Lady Tremaine watched the prince go to Cinderella, she felt her world crumbling around her. She had lost everything. And now the girl who had betrayed her would have everything, everything Lady Tremaine had desired for herself and her own daughters. She hated Cinderella more than ever; she felt it like hot bile churning in her stomach as she stood there watching the prince kiss Cinderella’s hand and then lead her to the dance floor, her silver dress gliding around her gracefully. It made Lady Tremaine sick to look at her.
This was supposed to be her happily ever after, and Cinderella had taken it from her. Everyone was in awe of Cinderella, crowding the edge of the dance floor, and she realized her daughters had made their way from the throne to join those clustered to see who was dancing with the prince. She didn’t have it in her heart to tell them it was their stepsister. She hoped she could spare them this final humiliation at least while they were in public.
“Do we know her?” asked Drizella.
“Well, the prince certainly seems to,” said Anastasia. “I know I’ve never seen her.”
Drizella crouched down to get a better look. Lady Tremaine muttered in agreement, lying while formulating a plan to keep Cinderella from marrying the prince. She would hide her away in the basement! She thought it was a brilliant idea, and she couldn’t wait to share it with her daughters once home.
>
As Drizella and Anastasia craned their necks to get a better look at this mysterious beauty, Lady Tremaine followed the dancing couple to the edge of the dance floor. She pretended she was also curious about the dazzling young woman with whom the prince was so smitten. As she clutched her brooch, she felt her heart grow cold and hard. And she knew what she had to do. She would make sure Cinderella would never marry the prince. If she and her daughters were going to be forced into a miserable life, then she would make sure Cinderella would, too. The girl would suffer for dashing all her dreams.
It had been many years since that fateful ball where the prince fell in love with Cinderella. The memory of that night still filled Lady Tremaine with rage. She would never forget the day Cinderella slipped her foot into the glass slipper and was spirited away to the castle to marry her prince as the entire kingdom rejoiced in celebration. Everyone, that is, except the Tremaines.
They never did escape the Many Kingdoms. As the château decayed over the years, so did Lady Tremaine’s mind. We watched from our magic mirror, wishing there was something we could do to help the lady and her daughters, but the Fairy Godmother’s magic kept us from interfering. It’s not often an antagonist in a fairy tale story lives to see the end of the princess’s story, and we knew it must have been a misery for Lady Tremaine to know Cinderella was living a glorious life as the fair and kind queen she became.
We had hoped in those early days that we would find a way to help the lady and her daughters, but magic took us down new and unexpected paths. Like everyone else, we forgot about Lady Tremaine, tucked away as she was in a prison fashioned by fairies, locked in Cinderella’s childhood home. Doomed to become crueler and more gruesome as the years passed, and how could it be otherwise? She had watched her life slip between her fingers. She had moved to another world to be with a man she thought was in love with her, only to find he was using her for her money and would trap her in her own home and make her fear for her life and for the lives of her daughters. Her whirlwind romance had turned into a nightmare.
As the years passed Lady Tremaine’s mind began to warp in its bitterness and rage. Her singular focus was getting at least one of her daughters married, all to raise them out of the squalor they had been subjected to for more years than she could recollect.
Anastasia and Drizella, too, started to change. As their mother fell deeper into madness and despair, they started to regret how they had treated Cinderella. They saw the story differently, through the eyes of young women rather than children. They would sit up in their rooms at night talking about their childhood and putting all the pieces together. They realized Cinderella wasn’t being horrible to their mother as they thought in those early days; she, too, was just being controlled by her cruel and horrible father. But the most startling revelation they made in those late-night conversations was something they could never share with their mother. Besides, they had long ago stopped trying to make their mother see Cinderella’s point of view. It only sent her into a fit of rage. So they kept this secret close to their hearts, and they did what their mother told them to do. They wore the white wedding gowns and listened to her ravings. It wasn’t until they had grown so weary of living like wraiths in a haunted château that they finally decided to stand up for themselves. Their mother’s future might be lost, but they could still fight for theirs.
It was a day like most others. It started with Lady Tremaine sitting in the dingy front parlor of her château. The room was dark, but shards of light pierced the moth-eaten curtains, making the dust and cobwebs in the room sparkle.
Their mother was ranting, and Anastasia and Drizella were doing their best to avoid her. They were in their rooms but could hear their mother’s voice echoing up the stairway.
“I’ve ruined everything. I’ve ruined my life and the lives of my daughters, all for a man who only had enough love in his heart for his dead wife and his daughter.”
Lady Tremaine was talking to a plump black-and-white cat who looked at her lazily as she spoke.
“We have been trapped in this house since that horrible Cinderella was spirited off by the prince and made his bride! My daughters and I should be in that castle, not that simpering fool of a girl!”
The cat blinked and continued to listen to his lady.
“She was an insane girl, talking to mice, dressing them in handmade clothing. It was disgusting! I wonder, how does the king like his queen filling the castle with grubby little mice?”
“Mother, who are you talking to?” It was Drizella. She was standing in the shadows, avoiding the blinding shards of light coming in through the moth holes of the curtains.
Lady Tremaine narrowed her eyes, trying to see her daughter. “Come into the light, my dear, so I can see you.” Drizella stayed where she was. She was like a statue. She stood stock-still, too afraid to let her mother see her. “Do as I say, Zella! Do it now, and stop acting like a vampiric fool, and come into the light!” Drizella slowly inched her way out of the shadows. “I want to see all of you, girl! Not just the tips of your shoes!”
And then it became clear why Drizella was hiding from her mother. Lady Tremaine’s face turned scarlet with anger. “Ah, now I see. We’ve talked about this, Zella. And what did we agree upon the last time we spoke on this matter?”
“I’m never to come down those stairs without dressing properly!” said the frightened young woman.
“Precisely. Now get upstairs and change your clothes this moment!”
“Mother, please! Don’t make me put that dress back on!” Drizella looked desperate, but her mother’s eyes became wider as her anger grew.
“How are you going to attract a husband if you’re not dressed properly?” Her booming voice sent the many black-and-white cats that populated their moldering, vine-covered château scattering. “Get upstairs and put on your dress right this moment!” Drizella looked down at her feet as her mother continued to yell. “Zella! Go! I don’t want to see you again until you’ve changed into your dress! And send down your sister!”
The lady of the house watched her daughter disappear up the stairs.
“Foolish girl!” She threw a threadbare velvet pillow across the room. “Sorry, my dear,” she said to the startled cat. “Come here, Lucifer, I’m sorry I frightened you. Come to Mommy.” The cat swaggered grumpily over to his mistress. “Don’t look at me like that. I said I was sorry. What are we going to do about those girls, refusing to wear their best dresses, refusing to find husbands so we can be lifted out of this squalor?”
“Mother, are you talking to the cats again?” It was Anastasia. Her ginger ringlets hung long and loose down her shoulders, framing her frightfully pale face and matching her vivid red lip paint. “You remember that isn’t Lucifer, don’t you? He died many years ago.”
“How dare you say my sweet baby died? You aren’t dead, are you, my dearest?” Lady Tremaine stroked the smug black-and-white cat, pretending to forget her daughter was there. “Don’t listen to that silly girl, Lucifer. You’re just fine.”
“Mother, we’ve talked about this. He just looks like Lucifer.”
“Stasia! How many times do I have to tell you that I’ve named him after his father! Now stop treating me like an addlebrained fool!” Lady Tremaine’s face contorted in rage, but when she finally fixed her gaze on her daughter, the sight of Anastasia in her wedding dress seemed to snap her out of her madness. “Oh, my darling girl! Just look at you! You look so beautiful! Stasia, you will be our savior, unlike your horrible sister! Where is she? Zella! Get down here this instant!”
Drizella slowly made her way down the stairs. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her black eye makeup smudged. “My gods, look at you, Zella! You’re beautiful!” Lady Tremaine stood up and admired both of her daughters, who now stood side by side in tattered and stained wedding dresses. They looked frightful: pale and sickly, as if their skin never saw the light of day. “Look at my precious girls! Like living dolls of perfection!”
“Moth
er! You can’t be serious.”
“What do you mean, Zella? Lucifer, do you see something wrong with the way my daughters look?” The smug cat blinked his eyes. “See! Lucifer thinks you look beautiful! Any man who walks into this house will think you look beautiful!”
“Mother, please!” the girls said in unison. “Let us at least wash these dresses?”
Lady Tremaine turned her attention back to her cat, cooing at him and stroking his ears. “And suppose an eligible young man came to the house while your dresses were hanging to dry and you lost your chance forever? Never!” she said, returning her attentions to her cat.
“Mother! Eligible men don’t come here anymore; they haven’t for ages!” Anastasia said. “Do you know what they say about us in the village? What must Queen Cinderella think each time she hears how you act when the deliveries come from the palace!”
Lady Tremaine erupted; her anger was explosive. “Don’t you ever mention that girl’s name to me! Never! Do you understand?”
She turned her attention back down to the latest Lucifer. “Oh, my handsome man, my only love, my only companion. What will we do with these ungrateful girls? Endlessly complaining about the beautiful dresses I bought them when I still had hope they would marry and get us out of this prison. And they defend that horrible Cinderella at every opportunity!” said Lady Tremaine, still looking at her cat.
“But, Mama, if we were to appeal to Cinderella and tell her how sorry we are for everything we did, maybe she would forgive us and offer her help,” said Anastasia.
“Yes, Mama, I know she would forgive us. She didn’t mean to betray you, I know she didn’t. She was just a child, she didn’t know what she was doing,” added Drizella.
Lady Tremaine’s head snapped in her daughters’ direction. “How dare you defend Cinderella to me! After everything she did! She is the reason we are trapped here. I won’t hear her name again. I won’t!” she said, returning her attention to Lucifer.
Cold Hearted Page 14
