“Perfect,” Anita said with a grin, adjusting the oil-stained rag wrapped around my hair. “You’re ready.”
I was not ready. There was no conceivable reality in which I’d ever be ready.
Gilbert watched me as I stared unseeingly beyond the kitchen into the black, cordoned audience area. “What’s wrong, Maddie?”
I forced my gaze from the black wall to Gilbert, his narrow face and his warm brown eyes. “I can’t do this!” I cried. My voice sounded strange. It came out almost like a wail. I remembered the scenes in the story where Cinderella wept at her misfortune, her shoulders shaking, her face buried in her hands to hide the fact that no tears could ever fall from her eyes, and felt a sudden urge to do it myself, of my own accord.
“You can, Maddie,” he said. I shook my head, and he put his hands on my shoulders. “No, really. You can,” he whispered. “Trust me. You look… you look beautiful.”
I couldn’t respond to that. Me, beautiful? But he looked at me so sincerely, and every part of me crawled to a halt, static rippling up and down my arms.
“Places, everyone!” Mother called. “They’re about to let the guests in!”
Before I could say anything more, Gilbert pulled me close to him for just an instant. His arms wrapped around me, squeezing me tight, while mine hung limp and useless at my side. Then he pulled away, gave me one last quick smile, and dashed out of the kitchen.
I stared at the kitchen door until the chimes overhead indicated the doors to the attraction were opening. Frantically, I dashed over to Cinderella’s usual corner in front of the fireplace and snatched up the book she was supposed to be reading in the opening scene. I’d never really looked at it before—it was an old, worn copy of Perrault’s Fairy Tales. A frayed ribbon bookmark was tucked between the pages, and I opened it to find it was marking the first page of Cinderella. Of course it was.
There was a hum from behind the cordoned area as the moving floor swept the guests in. I refused to look at them. I refused to break character, though I could sense their eyes boring into me. They had to know there was something amiss. They had to see that this couldn’t possibly be the real Cinderella. I was too plain, too awkward, too clumsy, too ugly—
Music filled the speakers, and Mr. Tinker’s recorded voice reading the opening narration. I kept my eyes riveted on the book, reading the first line over and over and over: Once upon a time…
“Cinderella!” I heard Mother shriek from offstage. “Stop lazing about and hurry up with my morning tea!”
I jumped to my feet, just as Cinderella was programmed to, just as I’d seen her do a thousand times before. “Coming, Stepmother!” I called, adjusting my voice pitch to sound as close to Cindy’s as possible. The sound that came out surprised my own receivers. Higher, more melodic than my default tone. Believable.
I feigned pouring boiling water from the kettle over the fire into the teapot on the waiting tray. As I did, I dared a glance up at the audience—just a tiny one, just enough to see whether they were whispering among themselves in confusion, pointing at me or frowning at the obvious substitution.
To my shock, none of them were. They had the same rapt looks on their faces as always. And somehow, impossibly, the rapt expressions were pointed at me.
Unbelievable.
The story went on around me as if nothing had changed, as if I’d been Cinderella all along. Cindy’s lines poured out of my mouth automatically. There were no missed cues. When Anita ordered me to fix her hair, I responded two-point-seven seconds later. My usual lines from the story were cut, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. One missing stepsister really was less important to the story than a missing Cinderella. I tried not to let that bother me. I’d always known it to be true, after all.
As the story went on, it came more and more naturally to me. The only moment when my processors started to jam up was the part of the story where Cinderella transformed into her princess costume. This was the area of the story we’d taken liberties with for the park: instead of a fairy godmother animatron, Mr. Tinker himself took the role of Fairy Godfather—in pre-recorded, holographic form. He hadn’t been able to resist that little bit of whimsy; after all, he’d created this whole land like magic, and everyone knew it.
I stared at his holographic image projected against a light mist that sprayed up from the floor, my pupils whirling as his recorded voice echoed through the loudspeakers. Where are you, Mr. Tinker? I thought for one desperate moment.
Then the floor under my feet began to spin. I looked down at my shoes, the soft glow where my soles connected to the grid. Bits of scenery moved around me on a track, a distraction of light and movement for the audience. Quickly, I ripped off the bodice and overskirt of Cinderella’s peasant dress, turning the overskirt inside-out to reveal the glittery tulle of her princess gown. As the floor stilled, the orange pumpkin carriage rumbled toward me. I climbed aboard, Mr. Tinker’s holographic image bidding me farewell before disappearing.
The rest of the story was a blur—the ball, the midnight escape, the prince and Gilbert pursuing me with the slipper. I only numbly registered a gentle spark as Gilbert slipped the glass slipper prop onto my foot, fitting like a glove without the cotton wad inside to make my foot seem too large when all the animatrons in the park had uniform feet.
The story ended. Charming swept me into his arms as a triumphant fanfare played, drowned out by the sound of the audience’s thunderous applause. The lights faded, and the humans, still applauding, were swept out of the attraction on the moving floor.
The sound of the doors swishing closed was followed a moment later with the “all clear” chime through the speakers overhead. Charming pulled away from me. “You did it, Madeline,” he said with a smile.
At his words, my legs gave out. The joints in my knees locked up and then gave way, and I crumpled to the ground. Mother and Anita cried out and hurried to my side, but Gilbert made it there first, crouching beside me. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I slowly nodded. “I think so,” I said. Gilbert put his arm around me and helped me to my feet. He seemed inclined to stay that way, but I pushed him away before my processors overloaded again. “There’s no time,” I said. “We have to look for Cinderella.”
“I’ll try Mr. Tinker again,” Charming said.
“I’ll search the tunnels,” added Mother.
“Madeline, you need to sit for a minute,” Gilbert said, looking at me carefully. “You look like you’re on the verge of an overload.”
I protested, but he led me back into the kitchen and directed me to sit. I sank into Cinderella’s chair by the fire, then started as I felt something beneath my skirt. I stood up again. In the seat of the chair was a folded-up piece of paper.
That hadn’t been there when I’d done my scene earlier.
I snatched it up, hurriedly unfolding it. It was a note, the handwriting so uniformly even that I knew no human could have written it.
You were beautiful. I knew you didn’t need me. Wish me luck! My happily-ever-after is on the horizon.
I stared at it, reading it over and over, my mind crawling. It wasn’t signed, but I knew exactly who’d written it. She’d been here! Had she been in the audience, hidden in plain sight? If I’d looked out into the crowd, my sensors surely would have picked up the presence of an animatron, but I hadn’t apart from that initial glance. I hadn’t wanted to break character. How could nobody in the crowd have noticed that the real Cinderella was standing just feet away from them?!
“What is it, Madeline?” Gilbert asked. I handed him the note without a word.
He read it in less than a second. “What does this mean? She was here all along?”
“She must have been.”
“But where is she now?”
“I’m afraid to find out. I think… I think she’s leaving, Gilbert.”
He stared at me, aghast. “But she can’t just leave! Our power source is in the park! She’ll—”
“I know.” It k
ept replaying over and over in my mind, Cinderella with the dark-haired stranger. What had he told her that made her think this was a viable option? “We have to stop her before she leaves the park.”
“It’s closing in ten minutes. If she sneaks out with the crowd, we’ll never be able to stop her without being seen ourselves.”
“Maybe we could disguise ourselves,” I said thoughtfully.
“What?”
I looked up at Gilbert. “Like how we did just now. The audience had no idea I wasn’t really Cinderella. And Cindy was apparently in the audience the whole time and nobody noticed her. We look just like humans, Gil, apart from our eyes. If we don’t make eye contact with anyone, they might not notice us. Just for a few minutes—just so we can stop her.”
He nodded. “We can access the staff room from the service tunnels. There’re plenty of employee uniforms in there. We can dress as employees and monitor the biological signals of everyone leaving.”
He jumped over the cordon and I hurried after him. There was no time to wait for Mr. Tinker, wherever he might be. We’d have to save Cinderella ourselves.
♛
Despite our confidence, a small seed of doubt had embedded itself in my chest. There was no way we could just blend in with the other employees. We’d stand out. Someone was bound to notice how different Gilbert and I were, to recognize us as who we really were. Even without his monocle, Gilbert just seemed so identifiable to me. Regardless of my bio-sensors, he stood out in the crowd, halfway across the park now next to the side exit, smiling and waving departing patrons by. Tall, narrow, he seemed like a target to anyone’s wandering eye.
But no one noticed. It was incredible.
We’d slipped in among the other park staff, joining them in their gentle ushering of the crowd out through the main gates, cheerfully wishing them good night—though I’d noticed more than a few of them grumbling under their breath when there were no guests around that they wished the people would hurry up and get a move on.
I was stationed beside the main entrance, scanning every guest as they went by. Human, human, human. Not a single animatron slipped by. I glanced up at the big clock over the Little Engine That Could Train Depot. It was after nine o’clock now. Where was she? The park was almost empty by now…
As the last of the guests straggled out the gates, the human employee across the way from me lifted her walkie-talkie to her mouth. “We’re clear at the front.”
The radio crackled as employees throughout the park announced their areas were clear. “Side gate is clear,” Gilbert said through the radio, just like he was any of the other employees.
The park was empty. We hadn’t seen Cinderella go by. Had she escaped before Gilbert and I had made it out here? If she had, there was no way we could stop her now. My CPU surged to one hundred percent, then dropped, surged then dropped. I needed to calm down before I bricked up out here in front of everyone.
The girl with the radio was locking the gate now. I watched her, my pupils spinning. She looked up at me, and I quickly looked down, hoping she hadn’t seen my eyes moving in a completely inhuman way.
“Got any plans for this weekend?” she asked with a smile.
I opened my mouth, the words stalling in my voice box. She hadn’t noticed. She thought I was human. She thought I was human.
“Nothing exciting,” I said with a shrug, still looking down and hoping she took that as me being shy.
“Me, either,” she said with a laugh. “I’m honestly just ready to get home and keep binging Liars’ Game. Have you been watching it?”
“Uh, no,” I said hesitantly. “I haven’t gotten a chance yet.”
“You should totally check it out!” She chattered on, enthusiastically telling me about a TV show I’d never seen. Mr. Tinker had given us a TV, but I’d never bothered to turn it on. It had seemed pointless at the time.
I started to worry that this girl was going to keep talking to me all the way back to the staff room, and then what would I do? But then I heard someone say, “Ready to go, Maddie?”
My eyes had been glued to the ground, but I looked up at Gilbert’s voice. He grinned at me, and the human employee made a noise of approval in the back of her throat. “Ah, I see why you haven’t had time for Liars’ Game. Well, it was nice chatting with you, Maddie! I’ll see you on Monday?”
“Sure,” I blurted out, wanting her to go away before she noticed anything amiss about the two people standing next to her. She grinned and gave us a small wave before continuing on her way. Gilbert quickly ushered me into the shadows.
“I can’t believe that,” I said, my volume as low as I could make it. “She thought I was human.”
“I see how Cinderella was able to pull it off now,” Gilbert said, his voice as quiet as mine. “I didn’t see her.”
“She didn’t go through the main gate, either. At least as long as I was there.”
“What do you think? Did she get out before we made it out here? Or is she still in the park?”
“I don’t see how she could still be in the park. We’ve all been searching for her. And the employees did that check before they locked the gates to make sure no one was here. Where could she hide—” I broke off. How could I have been so stupid? Slow-witted, just like I’d been programmed to be. That was the only excuse I could come up with for how I could have missed what had been right in front of me.
“Madeline? What’s wrong?”
I looked up at Gilbert, my pupils whirling, clicking noisily in my head with each rotation. “If she’s still here, I know where she is.”
♛
Gilbert and I hurried to the half-constructed Western Town, careful to avoid any employees as they trickled out of the staff area in their regular clothes, keys and cell phones in hand, waving to their friends as they left for the night. This area was deserted—the construction workers didn’t come on Saturdays.
This is where they’d been before. Cinderella and that… man. If she was still in the park, I had to believe this is where she would be.
And there, at the end of the main street, where the parking area for the contractors was located, I saw them. Two figures, huddled together.
Leaving.
“Cinderella, wait!” I shouted, my volume turned up as loud as I could make it. My voice echoed off the empty buildings around us. Too loud. If there were any employees left in the park, surely they’d have heard that. But there wasn’t time to care. I raced after them, as quickly as my mechanical legs could carry me, but I skidded to a halt when I reached the end of the main street and saw.
Cinderella’s shoes lay abandoned at the end of the pavement next to a chest full of carpenters’ tools, dark and empty. There were no power lines laid beneath the gravel of the parking lot. She couldn’t have gone any farther on her own.
The man turned around to face me. Cinderella was slumped in his arms. Off. Powered down completely.
Would we be able to turn her back on?
“Well, if it isn’t the Ugly Stepsister,” the man said. He glanced over at Gilbert as he came up beside me. “And the Grand Duke! This is an odd alliance.”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“You don’t recognize me? I’m not surprised. For all the emphasis Roger puts on family in this place, you know nothing about his own family, do you?”
Roger—I’d heard employees call Mr. Tinker that before. He was talking about our creator.
“Where is Mr. Tinker?” Gilbert asked.
“He’s at the hospital. Very poor cell reception there, especially in the emergency room—it’s in the basement, you know. Nearly impossible to place or receive a call.”
“What did you do to him?” I asked, my voice lower than I meant it to be.
“I didn’t do anything to him. I just told him that Mother had a rather nasty fall. She’ll live, I imagine. Might need to move her hip replacement surgery up.” He barked out a laugh. “But it was enough to keep him out of commission for the night.”
I could see now—they didn’t look alike, but this man was close to Mr. Tinker’s age, middle-aged for a human. His dark hair and smooth complexion had made him look younger when I’d seen him with Cinderella, but his temples were graying and there were fine lines around his eyes. Had they grown up together? Had they played as children, only for one to grow up to betray the other?
We know nothing about Mr. Tinker’s family.
“You’re his brother, aren’t you?” I said.
The man grinned, taking a few steps closer, dragging Cinderella’s prone form along with him.
“Stepbrother, actually,” he said. “Our stories are very similar—what was it that Cindy called you? Oh, yes. Madeline. Just like you, I’ve always had to live in my stepbrother’s shadow. Fame, riches, international acclaim—he has it all. And I have nothing.”
“What does that have to do with Cinderella?” I asked, trying to ignore the strange way his words stung me.
“He’s done a good job of keeping you all a secret from the world. But I know what you are. I know what you’re capable of. All I needed was proof.” He grinned down at Cinderella, slumped beside him, no light in her dull, empty eyes. “And now I’ve got that.”
“Let her go,” Gilbert growled, stepping forward with his fist clenched. But he couldn’t go any farther. The end of the street, the end of the power grid, was like an invisible wall.
“What are you planning to do?” I asked, desperately trying to think of a solution, a way to lure the man back into the gridded area.
“That depends. If Roger is willing to make me a partner, this will be the end of it. But if not… I have plenty of contacts in the media who’d love to know what my dear stepbrother’s been up to out here in the woods. Considering the ethical debate the scientific community’s been engaged in over artificial intelligence, there could be quite the maelstrom.”
Magic at Midnight Page 3