Book Four: The Beggar Princess (A retelling of King Thrushbeard)
Book Five: The Goblin Cinderella
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Ellara
“Hurry up, you lazy goblin! You still have to do my hair,” Cerralyn snapped, frowning at my reflection in her looking glass.
“Wait—not yet.” Gwynamer caught my hand. “You call that a proper Vermonese braid circlet? Do it again, from the beginning.”
“Gwyn, we won’t be ready in time if you do a Vermonese braid circlet.”
“Well, I would rather be late to dinner than look like my hair was dressed by a stupid little wench. We’re not just having any old guests over. I hear that Lord Hassari has more gold than a king.” Gwyn twisted her fingers around my wrist before letting my hand go. I could see the marks of her hard fingers, where they had dug into my skin.
I glanced at the clock, suppressing a sigh. They weren’t late. They still had bloody two full hours to get ready for the dinner party. Which meant I still had a lot of this to go.
To say I hated my stepsisters would be kind.
I despised my stepsisters more than vomiting, maggots, and smelly old Toothless John the rag seller telling me I looked pretty and should smile. I despised them more than all of those things combined. The only person, thing, or concept I hated more than my stepsisters was my stepmother, because she had raised these horrid creatures.
It was hard to believe my father had ever fallen in love with her, had ever replaced my mother with her.
“Cinderella, my dear.” I was trying to fix Gwyn’s braids, but stiffened as soon as I heard her voice in the doorway. It was a lovely, musical voice, and every time I heard it, it was like something from a nightmare. I don’t know if I would ever grow used to the nickname, even though I’d been hearing it for years now. “When you are done with the girls’ hair, could you come speak to me in the parlor?”
“Yes,” I said, annoyed every time she called that room a ‘parlor’, which was a fashionable new word. When this was my house, me and my father’s house, we just called it the ‘hearth’, a word that made me think of warmth and home and safety. But all those things were gone now.
“Yes…?” Her sweet voice was barbed.
“Yes, madam.”
She nodded.
“You’d better be quicker than that,” Cerra said, watching my hands carefully twist Gwyn’s fine blonde hair into braids. Gwyn kept fussing with cosmetics on her desk, moving her head. It was not uncommon for my sisters to spend hours in front of their vanities, primping and preening, caking makeup on their faces.
My stepmother was very beautiful. My stepsisters…a little less so. They had the beautiful elven hair that was so cooperative, unlike my coarse black goblin curls, and the refined features. But something was…off. They looked pinched and mean and beady-eyed; exactly as ugly as their true natures. And although they would never admit it, I knew they knew it. They were not popular in town, and when they did attract a beau he didn’t stay for long. I think they spent so much time at the mirror because they were hoping that makeup would change things.
But makeup can’t fix rot that comes from the inside. At least, that’s what I told myself. I wished I could take more satisfaction in this thought than I did.
Maybe, deep down, I was just angry.
“Please, try to be still,” I said, in the gentlest voice I could manage. It was impossible not to annoy her. If I told her what to do, she would snap at me, and if I didn’t and messed up her braids again, the result would be the same.
“I bet you wish you could come to dinner,” she said, apparently deciding that it would be more fun to nibble at my confidence today than grouse about my braiding skills.
“I’d rather be alone anyway,” I said, which was not quite true.
“It’s too bad. You could have been very beautiful, I think, if your mother was an elf. Sometimes—here, turn your head to the mirror for a moment.” Reluctantly, I did as she said. “Yes, I mean, you do have elven cheekbones and a nice enough mouth.”
Cerra snorted. “As long as she doesn’t open it.”
With my mouth closed and my goblin fangs hidden, I did almost look like an elf. I stayed like that, looking at myself, just a moment too long. Gwyn beat my hand with a hairbrush. “Go on, lazybones. This is my mirror, I only gave you permission to gaze in it for a moment.”
When I was done, Gwyn’s long fair hair formed an elaborate crown around her head. Cerra was the younger sister and she liked her strawberry locks to be styled younger and looser, so for her I only braided the front sections and then pulled them back, twisting them around her loose hair, fixed with a cascade of flowers.
“Hmm,” Cerra said, drawing out the moment just to torture me.
I fidgeted. Their mother was waiting for me, and they knew it. Finally, I had to say, “I beg your pardon, misses, but may I be dismissed?”
“I suppose. Hurry back to help us with our dresses.”
“No one yanks on corset strings better than your muscular goblin arms,” Cerra said, with false sweetness, attempting to make me sound like a brute.
Truly, though, although my arms were strong, I didn’t look that strong. I was rarely fed more than boiled vegetables and broth, except for the scraps I ate off their plates when they were finished. Goblin women were already known for being lean and scrappy, but I really had not grown much since my father died, as if not just hunger but also grief had sapped me of my will to achieve adulthood. My breasts had half-heartedly grown, while my stepmother kept me from my goblin birthright: looking dangerous. She insisted I trim my claws and wear a loose kerchief over my head to hide my horns. Only my fangs, she could do nothing about. But she didn’t let me leave the house, so no one ever saw them, except the various delivery boys and peddlers who came to the door with rags, pans, milk, oysters, flowers, and countless other things, for we lived in the capital city of Wyndyr with its throngs of aggressive merchants.
It was from them that I started to wonder what I really looked like, because in the past few years, I noticed the merchants had grown rather flirtatious with me. Not just Toothless John, either. Even Ferthin the egg seller, who was about my age and not a bad looking boy. He was very kind to me these days.
“Cinderella!” I heard my stepmother call my name, and hurried downstairs into the gloomy room. My stepmother usually kept thin curtains drawn over the windows. She didn’t like the way the windows faced the street. She complained about it like it was my father’s fault, as if he was both architect and city planner.
“Yes, madam?” I asked, as deferentially as I could manage without it slipping into sarcasm.
“Didn’t I tell you to trim all the candles yesterday?” Her elegant, mask-like face had a yellow pallor in the diluted sunlight.
“Yes, madam…”
She thrust a candle into my face with the air of a deeply wounded party. “Well? What have you to say about this? I found this, right here in the parlor.”
“I must have…missed one.”
She drew in a slow breath, and took a few equally slow steps around the brand new imported rug she had bought with my late father’s money. “I certainly hope we can find a place to keep you when the girls are married. I certainly do hope that, Cinderella. I would hate to have to turn you out into a city that is not friendly to goblin girls.”
She liked to go on like this, and there was nothing I could do but wait.
“I will not need such a grand house, then. You are eighteen, my dear. It’s about time you started to consider making your way in the world.”
“You never let me leave the house,” I said. “What would I make my way to?”
She looked at me with feigned pity. “I simply can’t have anyone knowing such a girl comes from this house, not until my daughters are wed. The time will come soon. Who knows, maybe one of them will be chosen by the prince?”
They were al
ways her daughters, and I was no one’s daughter now. My father had married this woman without knowing how she would treat me.
I still remembered when he brought her home, with her two girls. Two girls my age, Father said, hoping I would finally have sisters. They had all worn such elegant clothes, and all of them wore gloves although it had been summer. I thought it was strange—how could they stand having to feel everything through a layer of fabric?
Before long, it was obvious. These were not people who liked touching things.
“Mind your place tonight, of all nights,” my stepmother said. “We have some very fine people coming to dinner and I don’t want them reminded of your father’s transgressions.”
I should know better, but I couldn’t let this slide. “It wasn’t a transgression. He loved her. They were married.”
She sucked in a warning breath, her narrow nostrils flaring. “If I hear one peep out of your insolent mouth tonight, tomorrow I will send you to the work house down by the docks. Do you understand me?”
“The work house?” I didn’t even quite know what a work house was, but it sounded bad.
“Yes. They are always in need of girls. If you were to go there, you would have nothing, not even privacy. You would sleep in a room with a dozen strangers, work all day and eat gruel for dinner. Now, you’d better get back to the bedroom. I know my daughters have much still to do.”
By now, I was absolutely dreaming of making them suffer. I didn’t go straight to the bedroom to spend more time taking orders from Gwyn and Cerra, but detoured to my garret. Where once I had a proper bed, now I had a pallet stuffed with straw and an old horse blanket. The mice? No, they had earned more than mice tonight. I crouched in the corner and put my hand out. “Spiders and mice…,” I called. “Please, I call upon all of the bravest among you. My stepfamily is having a grand party tonight, with lots of wealthy guests…”
I didn’t remember my mother, but my father used to say she had witch blood in her. I thought it must be true, because when I called a spider to me, it crawled right into my hand. Now, several of them came creeping out of the cracks in the floorboards and the corners of the room. Mice scurried in, squeaking.
I probably should have behaved myself, with the threat of the work house hanging over my head. But, whether or not I was a witch, I was certainly a goblin. They never let me forget it. And goblins loved nothing more than making trouble.
I would make sure no one forgot this dinner party.
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About the Author
Lidiya Foxglove has always loved a good fairy tale, whether it’s sweet or steamy, and she likes to throw in a little of both. Sometimes she thinks she ought to do something other than reading and writing, but that would require doing more laundry. So…never mind.
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The Beggar Princess Page 13