Ash Rising

by Katya Lebeque

  That was when Ash looked again at the piece of paper in her hand. She turned it over. It was Stepmother’s cherished old invitation from the Cinderella ball, still folded with utmost care, with ‘Notice of end of service’ scrawled on its back.

  Chapter Ten

  Magick Something Up

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  Ash stepped inside. Stepmother was leaning against the kitchen table, head hung low. She was so thin now.

  Her stepmother did not look up. She tried again.

  “Even if I were to go to this idiotic ball, there is absolutely nothing for me to wear.”

  At this, Stepmother lifted her head.

  “I could help.”

  Ash turned around a bit too suddenly. She had almost forgotten the Pathfinder was there. How long had she been standing and listening to them squabble? “How do you two know each other?” she asked instead.

  A look passed between stepmother and Pathfinder. “Never you mind that. Enrosa, are saying that you can magick something up?” her stepmother was straightening now.

  “It’s very simple. I can perform minor acts of awareness on myself, temporarily altering the perception of reality so my form appears invisible to raiders or brightening a dimming candle’s light should I need to read. In times of need with enough mental preparation I can temporarily transform other things not on my person, too, into something else – as long as it is the right size and shape. So, I could, say, turn one dress into another dress.”

  This was clearly the right thing to say. Stepmother was standing fully upright in an instant. “I kept one of Ash’s mother’s dresses, for posterity.”

  “Excellent. That should do.”

  Ash looked at the two women incredulously. “And just how do you suppose we get to the palace? On foot? I’m sure Vanita will be thrilled.”

  “You have no carriage?” the aunt frowned, mildly scandalised.

  Ash glared at her. “We are not all kept women, Pathfinder. Not all of us live off the palace. We sold the coach long ago. And all the horses have been eaten. Just like everyone else’s.”

  “I have an idea,” said a small voice in the doorway. Vanita, looking small and sleepy, stepped into the hearth light. She must have been standing there the whole time, listening.

  “What about the pumpkin Ash? She said as long as something is the right size and shape for a carriage…”

  Ash groaned. “Seriously? Like Cinderella?”

  Vanita blushed a deep crimson, but only shrugged her shoulders. “Well, why not?”

  “No! Vee, listen to yourself! We cannot. That is our food, our survival.”

  “Vanita is our survival if we get her to this ball,” replied Stepmother smugly.

  “What is wrong with you people? Am I the only one who ever thinks?” But they were no longer listening - Stepmother, Pathfinder and Vanita were walking out of the kitchen the walled-off vegetable patch where she had hidden the pumpkin.

  The Pathfinder went out first and as soon as she had, Ash stepped in front of the doorway and looked hard at her family.

  “Vanita, how do you feel about all of this?”

  Her stepsister shrugged in a childlike way. “I was scared before but now we have Pathfinder magick to use. And besides, you won’t let anything bad happen to me Ash, I know it.” She smiled with all the innocence in the world, the smile that made Ash’s heart close up in fear, but before she could say anything, Vanita was heading out the door.

  As her stepmother moved to pass her, Ash gripped her forearm and pulled her close.

  “If I do this thing, this ridiculous thing and we somehow survive, you have to promise me that you will never jeopardise Vanita like this again. I don’t care if the prince and king both are waiting in a chapel to marry Vanita in a second. Never. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  She released Stepmother’s arm. “Good. Make sure there are candles on and that someone is awake at all times to unbar the door. If there is a chance, I will lure any bandits or carriors to myself and Derrick and send the coach back with Vanita inside. You have my word.”

  Something that was not hardness glittered in Stepmother’s eyes, but she said nothing. She simply walked out the door.

  “Yes, this would do nicely,” the Pathfinder was saying when Ash caught up. She was making her robes glow like a candle again, looking the Expansion pumpkin over. “I can always simply tell it to go on a certain path at certain times, if there are no horses. And make it look like a coach, of course.”

  Ash sighed, still unwilling to believe this conversation was even happening. Just like some Cinderella parody… Then she stepped in between the Pathfinder and the pumpkin.

  “You have to give your word that it will turn back afterwards, Pathfinder. Without that pumpkin we’ll die.”

  “Yes, yes,” she agreed impatiently. “So, how about it being a coach for two days? The longer it stays, the more unpredictable the magick will become. Around forty hours, enough time for both nights at the ball. Yes?”

  “We won’t need it for two nights.”

  “Well, we shall see. And in terms of it returning to Rhodopalais, it will have to be on a certain time, as I will be using my own awareness to make it to leave, so only my awareness can bring it back.”

  “How could we know exactly when it will leave?”

  “I will make sure of a certain, easy time. Say at the start of sunrise?”

  “We wouldn’t need that long at all. It is not yet eight o’ clock!”

  “Oh, well, good, that’s easier. Then after the last stroke of midnight. That should be well heralded enough, thanks to the Cinderella tradition.”

  “Now, shall we go back inside? Cinderella was right about one thing – dress is important. I assumed I’ll be magicking old ballgowns and if I remember both your mothers’ styles correctly, this is going to take some energy.”

  ***

  That was how Ash found herself talking about dresses and hair three hours after shooting arrows at a mob.

  “Higher,” Stepmother said to herself as she piled Vanita’s bright hair on top of her head. “It must look like a crown...”

  Vanita in turn was brushing through Ash’s hair and Ash felt like she would rather have faced a carrior than go through this pain. “There are only knots, Vanita, leave them be! I haven’t brushed my hair for longer than I can remember and you know it!”

  “Well, there hasn’t been a ball for longer than you can remember either,” said Vanita, uncharacteristically sternly.

  “Shush Vanita.” Stepmother seemed to at last be happy with Vanita’s hair. To Ash, it looked a bit like a copper-coloured cat had fallen asleep on her head. “Now stop fussing you two and come get your dresses seen to by Enrosa.”

  “But Mother, Ash’s hair is hardly done! It’s still loose!”

  “Yes, well, it’s also almost barely past her shoulders. Scandalous. If she wanted properly dressed hair, she shouldn’t have hacked it off with a carving knife!”

  “It was getting in the way of me hunting! Anyway, I’m fine with it loose.”

  The swishing noise of silken fabric filled the room, just a little bit more loudly than fabric ordinarily would. The Pathfinder entered, looking impatient. “When you’re all ready? There is a ball to get to, that begins at a certain time…”

  “Vanita first,” blurted out Stepmother, pushing her daughter forward with a little shove. The hair wobbled dangerously as she did but managed to right itself.

  “Fine. Where is the dress? Is it this one she’s wearing?”

  Vanita blushed beneath her bouquet of hair. It was her second gown, the one kept in her wardrobe and not worn anymore. Its flattened bodice was fashionable years ago and it was the ruined beauty of a once russet rose colour. She was clearly mortified, and her mother was not helping. “She has no stomacher, no gloves or muff! And look – the train is completely ruined”

  Vanita looked about to cry. “Hush Stepmother! She happe
ns to be a lady of marriageable age not eaten by a carrior. Who cares if she has a stomacher? Not that she needs one, or any of us for that matter. I could fit two of my current waistlines into one of my old stomachers. And remember, she’s going across the wastelands for your stupid idea. Is that not enough?”

  “Yes, yes… Silence now.” The Pathfinder waved them impatiently into silence, staring fiercely at Vanita’s dress as though she expected it to burst into flame. After a few moments, the Pathfinder frowned and tucked her head down as though concentrating. Then, with a genteel swish of her hand, some subtle thing in the air began moving.

  Apart from earlier in the garden, Ash had never seen magic – or whatever the Pathfinder wanted to call it - done at close range before. She had to admit that despite her beliefs it certainly was aweing. A hush fell over the room, something like whispers echoed in Ash’s mind, though everything was perfectly still. Before her eyes, Vanita’s dress began a softening, a fluffing up, a finishing, a filling. In a graceful swoop, the neckline sank, revealing just a hint of cleavage, straightening into an arc off the narrow white shoulders with a dancer’s grace. Ever so slowly, the sleeves shortened just an inch and filled out just below the shoulder into decadent cream puffs of sunset-coloured fabric. Almost imperceptibly, the waist came in, caressing the flat chest and waist where the dress had ballooned just moments before. Then, with an almost audible sigh, the various layers of silks seemed to gather themselves together at the waist, as though gathering their strength and gushed forth like a fountain of pinks and oranges right down to the floor where they pooled, contented. The whispering, sighing feeling was gone from the room and Vanita stood in an entirely new dress.

  Vanita looked not to her mother, but shrugged her shoulders and arched her eyebrows at Ash: how do I look? Ash smiled her approval. The gown was perfect. The silk and brocade shone against Vanita’s copper hair and pale face. It was the sweetness of Vanita, a pink like spun sugar, with the grace of her good nature in the way the gown moved and a fiery orange beneath that was Ash, strengthening her. Her white slim form looked swanlike, transcendent. Ash turned aside, almost embarrassed by her sister’s beauty, to see that her stepmother had tears running down her lined cheeks.

  Ash’s aunt pulled a small mirror from some hidden pocket within her orange robes and held it up to Vanita so that she could see herself. When she did, the smile that shone out was like the sun itself. As if by some further enchantment, she was the beauty, not the dress.

  “Oh Vee,” Ash sighed. “You look... Wow.”

  “Well and so will you! It’s your turn now.”

  The three women turned on her and Ash found herself suddenly nervous, standing there still in her smock and ragged chemise. She felt like a serf in front of a queen beside Vanita. And she had no russet coloured dress to transform.

  She turned to her stepmother. “Well, it’s not quite the same raw material as Vanita. What do you think?”

  Stepmother walked out the room.

  “Come here Ash,” said the Pathfinder quickly, too quickly and Ash tried to compose her face into not revealing what she felt inside. “Just stand the way Vanita did, right there, that’s fine.”

  Unperturbed by her lack of dress, Ash’s aunt walked towards her, looking at her intently as she had done with Vanita’s dress. Only, this time, she was looking at Ash herself and not the rags she wore. “Do you know why your mother named you Ashlynne?”

  Ash shook her head, still looking down.

  “Ashlynne means a dream, a dream that is roused by the rustling sighs through a grove of trees. Your mother believed in the power of looking up, beyond circumstances, into the eternal beauty of trees. After she got sick, she used to say that no matter what happened, if you could hear the wind sighing through the trees, you could still dream. And if you could still dream, all was not lost.”

  “I remember hearing that story when I first married Lord Cerentola.”

  Ash had not seen Stepmother come back in the room, but now she was there, right there,

  so close that she could feel her warmth at her elbow. She did not know when last they had been so close to each other. And she was holding something.

  “Ash, this was the dress of your mother’s that I kept.”

  Ash stared down at her mother’s old receiving gown, from her salon days, her breath catching in her throat. She thought she would never see something of her mother’s again, had no idea that Stepmother had kept it. Ash ran her hands along it, feeling the weave of the fabric and taking in every detail. It looked old now and hopelessly old-fashioned with its high waistline and its ratty long train. But it was her mother’s. The sea green satin had the extra sheen of age, it’s lining a dull gold colour inside, not far from the colour of Ash’s hair. Inside, sewn in at the waist was a label, hand-written in green ink. ‘From Ashes to beauty’ it said. The words were familiar. Was it a play on her name? Her mother had never called her Ash. But before Ash could think on it further, the Pathfinder cleared her throat nervously.

  Ash smiled at her aunt for the first time. “That story about my name was beautiful. Are you going to turn this sea green darker, change me into a green tree?”

  “No, you are bigger than that. I am going to turn you into the air that moves the trees, its sighing and the whole night sky.”

  The aunt stepped back and began bigger, more deliberate arm movements than she had with Vanita. As she did, the whispering in the room came back and then heightened into a hum, a buzz that flowed with energy and seemed to flood the room before it all came upon Ash, filling her completely.

  It was like being in a cloud. She could see the room and her family, but it all seemed misty and far away. She was higher up, somehow. The air rustled around her, seemed to go through her and she looked down with a curious, detached sense of rightness as her dress changed shape and colour, lengthening where Vanita’s had softened and shining in the candlelight.

  Aunt’s arms stopped moving and slowly the room quieted down. Although Ash could swear she had not moved, she had the uncanny sense of drifting slowly back to the floor, her feet once more on the ground. Her aunt held the mirror up to her this time and Ash gasped.

  She was dressed in deep, iridescent blue, the colour of a very special sky just before midnight. Underneath, as though it were a deep pool, she could catch glimpses of varying shades of azure blue, cornflower and turquoise. Some kind of a shimmer to the fabric left it glittering as she moved, as though her waist and skirt were beset with stars. As she turned, Ash saw that the flounces from the gown were all gone and the slim waist fell in a majestic pyramid to the floor. The sleeves were scandalously short, showing her whole forearm, carrior scars and all and even her upper back was mostly bare from some sorcery that made the fabric completely transparent halfway down her spine, the delicate buttons of the dress looking as though they were sewn into her skin. As she moved, her deep blue train rushed behind her like a river. She had never seen anything like it.

  Vanita almost tripped over her own dress in her rush to come over to Ash and hug her. “Ashling! You look on the outside how you always were on the inside…”

  It always unnerved her when Vanita did things like this, crying happy tears she wasn’t even attempting to brush away.

  “Come now Vee, you’ll ruin your hair! You look beautiful too. And besides, we’re not fully ready yet.”

  “Indeed. Shoes girls,” said Stepmother, coming forward with a very tattered old pillow with four dainty shoes perched on top, which looked like they might break if they fell to the floor.

  “Glass slippers,” she announced proudly.

  Ash looked closer, incredulous. They looked like silver embroidered cloth and satin – intricate and detailed, but cloth nonetheless. “These are made of glass?”

  Stepmother snorted. “Silly girl! No, these are Glass slippers. Made by the great Phillipe Glass, outfitter of queens! He used to work for Cinderella herself. Not just any family has Glass slippers. And with him dead now, well… Th
is pair, Ash, was your mother’s.”

  They were indeed beautiful shoes. Ash felt enchanted just looking at them, noticing a new tiny flourish or embroidered detail each new second. But no. The world was different now, life was different. And someone had to take care of Vanita.

  “I don’t know if I could walk in those, never mind shoot a carrior. I’ll wear my boots.”

  “Your boots?” said Stepmother, Vanita and the aunt, all in unison.

  “Yes. I need to be able to run. Especially if Vanita can’t. Anyway, you won’t be able to see what shoes I’m wearing under here. You can’t even see half the floor.”

  “Good grief. Very well. And you Vanita? I suppose you want to wear men’s shoes as well?”

  “Oh no. These are worth dying for!”

  The four girls went down the staircase, Stepmother and aunt ahead to make way for the two rippling trains coming down the stairs after Ash and Vanita, one like dawn and one like midnight water. “You look lovely,” her stepmother said in her ear, just low enough for only them to hear. Ash could not remember the last time she had smiled so much.

  Old Merta and Tansy were standing at the bottom of the grand staircase. When they saw Ash, Tansy gasped and Old Merta wiped her eyes on her ragged apron.

  “Now, are all preparations ready?” said Stepmother in a louder voice. “Do we have everything?”

  At the foot of the stairs, hearing these words, something made Ash look back up.

  And there, coming down from the attic, another miracle.

  “No,” Ash whispered, looking up. “Not everything.”

  There was Derrick, looking abashed. He must have heard everything, for he had stolen into the attic where the last of the family keepsakes were. And he had washed himself and combed out his shaggy brown hair into a genteel coachman’s style. He was wearing one of Father’s old doublets, green and amber embossing that lit up his tanned skin and made his eyes look like a forest.

  Ash gulped. He seemed nervous, gripping the worn banister like a young girl, but he looked… Ash could not help but notice how the small buttons strained against the muscles of his chest in a way they never had done with Father.