So This is Love

by Elizabeth Lim

  Inside the house, someone peeked through the curtains, hastily closing them when the Grand Duke noticed.

  “It’s him!” he heard a young woman squeal. “The Grand Duke. With my—”

  The duke pulled his hat over his ears before he heard the dreaded words.

  “—glass slipper!”

  It was going to be an excruciatingly long day.

  The door creaked open with a soft groan, and Cinderella braced herself for her stepmother’s arrival.

  I’m leaving, she practiced announcing to Lady Tremaine in her head. I won’t stay here another minute.

  Only . . . where would she go? Where could she go? Dressed in these rags, no one would believe she’d been the girl at the ball with the dazzling gown and glass slippers.

  I’ll . . . I’ll find the Grand Duke and show him that I have the other slipper. She inhaled, bolstered by the plan. He’ll have to believe me then.

  Her stepmother’s shadow spilled through the doorway, snuffing the scant sunlight illuminating Cinderella’s room. Behind her, barricading the exit, stood her stepsisters.

  Cinderella couldn’t remember the last time Anastasia and Drizella had come to the attic. From their wrinkled noses and contemptuous gazes, they must have been wondering the same.

  “I forgot how small this place is,” Drizella grumbled. “We can barely fit in here.”

  “It’s dirty, too,” added Anastasia. “All this dust is getting in my hair.” She tossed a red ringlet over her shoulder and fanned herself with her hands.

  Seeing Lady Tremaine’s curled lip, her stepsisters’ raised chins and turned cheeks, Cinderella straightened. However they mocked her now—she wouldn’t let them hurt her.

  “The Grand Duke has left,” said Lady Tremaine evenly. “He shan’t be returning.”

  “I know,” replied Cinderella.

  “Good. It has come to my attention that you have not been entirely truthful with us.” Cutting off Cinderella’s protest, her stepmother went on, “I have given the matter some thought, and I have a mind to report you.”

  “Report me?” Cinderella frowned. This wasn’t what she had expected at all. “What have I done?”

  “What have you done?” repeated Lady Tremaine. She turned to her daughters, laughing. “She pretends she hasn’t the faintest idea.”

  Anastasia and Drizella didn’t seem to have any idea, either, but they nervously tittered along.

  “You couldn’t have possibly managed to go to the ball in that. Whom did you steal from?”

  “What?” Cinderella blustered, stunned. She bit her lip, trying to calm herself, but her voice shook. “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?” Lady Tremaine sniffed. “The gown, the earrings, the carriage—the glass slippers.”

  Drizella was the first to react. “Her? It couldn’t have been her.”

  “Mother!” chimed in Anastasia with crossed arms. “She’s the girl with the glass slipper? You can’t be serious.”

  “Indeed.” Lady Tremaine’s icy gaze did not leave Cinderella. “It seems we’ve all underestimated her. But she has made a grave error.” She raised a commanding hand to her daughters. “Search the room.”

  “No!”

  Cinderella lurched to stop her stepsisters, but they were too fast. Drizella pushed her away, nearly throwing her against the wall. In a wild frenzy, the two tore apart Cinderella’s bed, pulling off the sheets and grabbing the scissors on her dresser to slash through the mattress.

  Despite her determination to stay calm, Cinderella panicked. The scene was an echo of the prior night, when her stepsisters had ripped apart her dress—her mother’s dress that she had remade—broken her green bead necklace, and cruelly tormented her until she had burst into tears. Every time she thought she was strong enough to endure their malice, they found new ways of hurting her.

  She couldn’t let them find the glass slipper. It was all she possessed of her time at the ball—the only reminder of a rare, treasured moment of happiness. The only thing that could actually help her obtain a new life.

  “Stop, please!” cried Cinderella, trying to pry the scissors from Anastasia’s hands.

  “Mother!” Anastasia yelled.

  Cold fingers encircled Cinderella’s wrist, sharp nails digging into her skin. As her stepmother dragged her back, Cinderella’s eyes widened with alarm.

  Drizella had found the missing glass slipper.

  “You were right!” she shrieked. “Mother, this is—”

  Lady Tremaine extended her hand. “Give it here.”

  Before Drizella could obey, Cinderella twisted out of her stepmother’s grip and scooped up the slipper.

  Her stepmother’s face darkened. “Cinderella, give me the slipper.”

  “No.”

  “At once, Cinderella.”

  Cinderella didn’t budge. The royal proclamation had stated that the prince would marry the girl who fit the glass slipper he had found at the ball. If she gave hers to Lady Tremaine, Anastasia or Drizella would claim it, bring it to the palace, and lie to the king that they had danced with the prince. Even if he didn’t recognize the women—which, surely, he wouldn’t—it would be a powerful bargaining tool.

  Firmly, she repeated, “No.”

  “Very well, then,” said her stepmother, strangely calm. “Drizella, Anastasia.”

  Coming from both sides of the room, the sisters lunged for her, and Cinderella’s mind reeled with panic. She couldn’t let them have the slipper. As they tore at her, shouting, “Give it here!” Cinderella suddenly knew what she had to do.

  Mustering as much strength as she could, she raised the glass slipper high above her head, watching the iridescent glass catch the light outside and sparkle like diamonds.

  Then she flung it at the wall.

  It shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Drizella shouted, “Look what you’ve done!”

  Breathing hard, Cinderella barely heard her stepsister. The sight of her shattered slipper stung, and a sharp ache rose to her chest. The shoe had been her key to finding the young man from the ball again, to making a new life for herself outside Lady Tremaine’s domain. Now that it was no more . . .

  Cinderella gritted her teeth. Now that it was no more, her stepmother couldn’t use it to her advantage.

  “Mother!” Anastasia cried. “How could she?”

  “I don’t understand how she got the glass slipper in the first place—”

  “Silence!” Lady Tremaine cut in. Then her voice became lethally soft. “Girls, step outside, please.”

  “But, Mother!”

  “I will not repeat myself.”

  In a huff, Drizella and Anastasia paraded out of the room and shut the door. Once they were gone, Lady Tremaine stepped over the pile of glass shards and regarded Cinderella with an icy gaze.

  “So. You lied to me.”

  “Stepmother, you can’t possibly think that I stole—”

  “I don’t care where you got the dress or the shoes,” Lady Tremaine interrupted. “Or how you managed to go to the ball.” Her pale green eyes narrowed. “You have overstepped your place for the last time. Look at yourself—you are nothing. An orphan and a servant. Who would want you? Certainly not His Royal Highness.”

  The words cut deep, and Cinderella struggled to keep her tone steady. “I—I’m my father’s daughter. Your stepdaughter. I’m a member of this family.”

  Her stepmother gave a hollow laugh. “A member of this family? Your imagination is to be commended if you truly believe that.”

  Cinderella’s lip quivered. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “Hate you?” Disbelief, then amusement glittered in Lady Tremaine’s eyes. “What makes you think you’re worthy of my consideration, let alone hatred?”

  “But—”

  “Have I ever beaten you, Cinderella? Or starved you, or publicly shamed you? That’s what they do to girls at the orphanage.”

  Mutely, Cinderella shook her head.
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br />   “I locked you here because you were deceitful. You lied to me and my daughters.”

  “I never lied,” Cinderella argued, gathering her courage. “At every turn, I’ve done what you have asked. I’ve cleaned, I’ve cooked, and I’ve never complained. All I wanted was for you to think of me as one of your daughters—”

  “How could I think of you as a daughter of mine?” Lady Tremaine barked. Calming herself, she went on, “Until the day I met you, you’d never done a day’s work. Do you remember what you said to your father?

  “ ‘Papa! You brought me a mother.’ ” Her stepmother scowled. “As if I were a thing to be brought, an object to be shopped for.”

  Cinderella did remember. In her joy at seeing Lady Tremaine, the words had gushed out of her mouth. She hadn’t meant them as an insult. “I was happy to meet you. I didn’t mean—”

  “I remember how you looked down on my daughters. You, with your fine dresses and music lessons. Your riding clothes and flowers and little songs for the birds and that dog.” Lady Tremaine scoffed. “The first thing you did was mock me and embarrass my daughters in front of your father.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Of course you didn’t know. You presume ignorance is innocence. I’ve had to build my life from nothing. Give my daughters a place in this society. But you, you scoffed at our old clothes and Drizella’s teeth, Anastasia’s hair.”

  At the accusation, Cinderella’s brow furrowed. Had she? She could remember the day her stepmother had arrived so clearly. They’d come during her music lesson, and she’d raced out of it as soon as she’d seen her father’s carriage outside the window, trundling toward home. No one had told her about Lady Tremaine, so it had jolted Cinderella to see her: the heart-shaped hair piled high, making her seem even taller than her father, her long neck and unforgiving posture. She’d been wearing a wine-colored dress with a high collar. One daughter on either side, both with evenly curled ringlets, neither smiling.

  “She’s a lady,” one of the servants had said, passing Cinderella, who hid by the stairs. “Best not run to your papa and hug him as you always do. Keep your chin up, and curtsy when you greet his guest.”

  That she’d done. But maybe she’d held her chin too high or curtsied too low. Her papa had never required her to be on such stiff behavior before, and she’d so wanted to impress her new mother. She had been so nervous.

  “Lady Tremaine,” Cinderella had said in greeting, with her deepest curtsy. Papa chuckled, gently pulling her up.

  “No need for that, Cinderella. We are family now.”

  “Oh, Papa!” she exclaimed, hugging him fiercely. “You’ve brought me a mother!”

  In her excitement, her hair bow came undone, and her father retied it for her. “Why don’t you show Drizella and Anastasia the music room while Lady Tremaine and I settle into the chateau?”

  “I have a music lesson this afternoon,” she’d said to her new sisters, careful to be polite and considerate. She’d so wanted Anastasia and Drizella to like her. “My teacher wants me to learn a new song. She’s upstairs waiting now. Would you like to join me?”

  “I want to sing,” Drizella had said. “Anastasia plays the flute.”

  How could she have known that her stepsisters had no talent for music? She hadn’t meant to embarrass them.

  Later Cinderella had caught the servants chatting more in the kitchen. They hadn’t seen her, and she hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but she had never forgotten their conversation:

  “I don’t like the looks of our new mistress. You see the way she eyes the finances? Just now she was telling me I’ve been feeding the chickens too much, and that I’ve a heavy hand with the butter. I fear she married the good master for his money.”

  “Hush, you’ll get yourself in trouble talking like that! Her husband was a lord.”

  “Yes, but a penniless one.”

  “That can’t be true. The master wouldn’t—”

  “The master’s been fooled, I swear. I heard that Lord Tremaine squandered his family’s fortune gambling. When he was called to serve in the war, he joined only to escape his creditors. Then he tried to desert and was hanged. It was a disgrace.”

  “You can’t believe these sorts of rumors.”

  “They’re not rumors! You know what a kind heart the master has. He probably met her during his travels and took pity on her and her daughters. But she isn’t innocent; if only you could hear half the things people say about her! Delusions of grandeur, for one. And now that she’s mistress of the house, who I truly worry about is dear Cin—”

  The servants had seen her then and hadn’t said any more.

  At the time, Cinderella hadn’t understood the importance of what she’d overheard. Even after her father had passed away, leaving Lady Tremaine as head of the household, she hadn’t given her stepmother’s past much thought.

  Whenever her stepmother was cruel to her, she told herself she was better off staying here—in her father’s home with her stepfamily—than venturing outside.

  But what if she’d been wrong? Her stepmother was calculating, and she would stop at nothing to ensure her future as well as her daughters’. She was also ruthless. Cinderella just hadn’t let herself acknowledge how ruthless. She’d shielded herself by burying her unhappiness in daydreams and pretending that she was fine. That they needed her.

  She looked up at Lady Tremaine, a woman who’d once had everything that mattered to her: wealth, status, and the admiration of her peers. Now she lived in a dated chateau, with no servants except her daughters and so little money that she’d had to sell the draperies to pay for their gowns.

  “You misunderstood me, Stepmother,” said Cinderella quietly. “I wish we could have settled this years ago, if this is what’s been bothering you. I didn’t look down on Anastasia or Drizella. I was only wishing I had a mother, like they did. Mine died—”

  “I heard enough about your dead mother from your dead father,” Lady Tremaine snapped. “When he passed, I took it upon myself to reform you. I’ve done my best trying to raise you into a respectable girl, but I can see my efforts have been in vain.” She kicked the glass shards toward Cinderella. “Clean this mess. I’ll decide what to do with you later.”

  Her stepmother turned on her heel, and before Cinderella could lurch for the door, it slammed shut again, the key turning in the lock to keep her from leaving.

  Outside, her stepsisters’ voices echoed up the stairwell.

  “What are you going to do, Mother?” Anastasia asked. “She can’t stay here! What if the Grand Duke comes back and—”

  “I am aware, Anastasia.”

  “W-w-well . . . we can’t keep her locked up in there forever.”

  Lady Tremaine’s tone rose a notch, as if she wanted Cinderella to hear: “I am going to send her away.”

  “Send her away?” Drizella repeated. “Mother, have you thought this through? If you do that, who’s going to press our clothes? Who’ll cook breakfast and bring us tea and—” Drizella went suddenly quiet, a sign that Lady Tremaine had cast her a deadly look.

  During the heavy silence that followed, Cinderella inched toward the door, pressing her ear against the wood. Her heart roared in her ears, but she needed to hear what her stepmother was going to say.

  “There’s a man from the far seas who makes his trade in troublesome girls.” A deliberate pause. “It is to our good fortune that he happens to be in town again tonight.”

  “So . . . you’re going to sell her?”

  “I will certainly consider it. I have considered it before. The price he’s willing to pay will be enough for us to hire a new maid.”

  Cinderella held her breath, panic rioting within her. She pressed her ear against the door to catch more, but all she could hear were Anastasia’s and Drizella’s laughs echoing up into the tower.

  It was too cruel. Sinking to her knees, Cinderella hugged herself. For a moment, she’d let herself fantasize about a world in which she could present h
er glass slipper to the Grand Duke, be brought to the prince, and pick up with him where they had left off. She had thought it possible to ease away the loneliness so deeply set in her heart.

  “Maybe I never should have gone to the ball,” she whispered to herself. “I was happy enough before, wasn’t I? Pretending that everything was all right.”

  She laughed sadly at how miserable that sounded. Even now she was pretending—just to get herself through what was to come.

  And the worst of it was that she couldn’t even fight it.

  All she could do—all she had ever been able to do—was wait.

  The afternoon aged into evening, and the lengthening shadows looming over Cinderella’s walls melted into the black folds of night. In the distance, the moon rose behind the king’s palace.

  Cinderella paced the room, her anxiety heightened by the small space. It wasn’t like her to be so restless, but no matter where she looked, she couldn’t avoid seeing the broken bed, the ripped sheets, and the chaos that her stepmother and stepsisters had made of her room. She couldn’t avoid confronting the locked wooden door that barred her from her freedom.

  She’d tried kicking the door countless times. Tried heaving her chair at it, and she’d almost had some luck picking the lock with two hairpins before one of them snapped in half between her fingers. But it would not budge. The window wasn’t an option. She was too high up, and even if she could fashion some sort of rope, it wouldn’t be long enough for her to climb down with.

  Only when she’d run out of all ideas and collapsed onto her chair, exhausted, did she remember. Her shimmering ball gown, the mice turned into majestic stallions, the pumpkin coach, her glass slippers. None of it would have been possible if not for one person. . . .

  “Fairy Godmother?” she called, tentatively at first. Quietly.

  No answer.

  She tried again. “Fairy Godmother? Please, help me.”

  Maybe her fairy godmother had been a dream. Maybe all of it—the ball, the prince, the castle—had been a hopeless fantasy. Maybe when Cinderella woke up tomorrow all would be as it had been before.

  But no. The prince’s kiss still tingled on her lips, and strains of the song they had danced to together still echoed in her memory. If nothing else, the shattered remains of her glass slipper, strewn across the floor, assured her it had all been real.