A Grimm Curse: A Grimm Tales Novella (Volume 3)

by Janna Jennings

  “Calm yourself!” Lady Wellington snapped. She stood and began to pace in the space Cynthia had cleared. “You still have time to break the curse before the feast. What’s more, I’ve managed to arrange for you and Portia to give a concert for the royal family on the first night!” Lady Wellington quivered with excitement. “You both play so beautifully, one of you will win him over for sure.”

  They both played tolerable, in Cynthia’s opinion. She took a broom out of the hall closet and started sweeping, making sure to keep her head down.

  “I. Can’t. Go. Like. This.” Coriander’s voice was deep and guttural. Her eyes flashed a feral yellow.

  Lady Wellington leaned both hands on the edge of the bed and snarled directly in Coriander’s face. “You will go, whether the curse is lifted or not. Do you know why?”

  Coriander jerked her head from side to side, watching her mother with wide eyes.

  “Because this may be the family’s only opportunity to get back in royal favor, to have any kind of power and prestige. So unless you want to spend the rest of your life as the stepdaughter of a dead man who once sat on the king’s advisory board, I suggest you get out of that bed and beg i n practicing.”

  Lady Wellington straightened up, smoothing the front of her tailored silk shirt. “We’ll make sure you have gloves and a high collared dress if they’re needed. No one will ever be the wiser.”

  At least Remi’s curiosity would be satisfied. She was sure the frog had hung on to every word that filtered into her pocket.

  “Schubert’s Fantasie.”

  Both women turned to stare at Cynthia like the wardrobe had started talking. She cleared her throat, unsure of why she’d opened her mouth except for Remi’s voice that seemed to be playing on repeat in her head. Perhaps you can provide an opportunity for her.

  “It’s always been your best piece,” Cynthia said. She bowed her head and returned to her sweeping.

  Lady Wellington turned to Coriander with an overly bright smile. “There, you see? Even your stepsister knows how good you are.”

  She turned on her heel and tapped out of the room. “I want you on that piano bench in half an hour.” She paused long enough to bark at Cynthia. “Help her get cleaned up.”

  Chapter

  7

  “It would seem she’s not the ex act same size she was last week. ”

  “I CAN’T DO IT!” Coriander screamed for the fourth or fifth time. Cynthia had to agree. The noise coming from that room for the last hour had not been melodic.

  Lady Wellington had sent Cynthia to scrub the library fireplace, which was adjacent to the parlor where the piano was kept. This had given her a front row seat to the frustration and musical disaster going on in the next room. All the other servants had fled.

  “Again!” Lady Wellington commanded . Portia’s portion of music soared gently into the library, the piano piece joined in. It was jarring and out of time. Occasionally Coriander hit not one, but two wrong notes. Simultaneously.

  Cynthia had a suspicion that her stepmother wanted her close by for some reason, but couldn’t fathom what. She’d drawn too much attention to herself that afternoon. She never spoke out of turn.

  Cynthia ducked her head back into the chimney and attacked the flue with her brush and bottle of ammonia. The sharp, chemical smell made her sneeze and ash floated in a gray cloud around her. She was going to be picking black stuff out of her nails for a week.

  The rehearsal ground to a halt again. Cynthia ignored Lady Wellington’s harsh tones and Coriander’s wet wails, concentrating on the brush and the brick. It was no wonder Coriander couldn’t play. Cynthia had seen her hands while getting her ready. They had become even more paw-like. She’d been nearly unable to grasp a hairbrush and a bar of soap had been impossible.

  The noise from the parlor had vanished. A prickly sensation on the back of Cynthia’s neck made butterflies swirl around her stomach. She ducked out of the chimney and slowly turned around. Lady Wellington stood in the doorway, finger pressed to her lips, eyes narrowed directly at Cynthia. Her look was calculating.

  “You play,” Lady Wellington said. It wasn’t a question.

  Cynthia set down the brush on the brick and wiped her sweaty hands on her soot-covered skirt. She forced herself to look calmly and directly into her stepmother’s eyes.

  “Yes. At least, I used to.” It was close enough to the truth. She hadn’t had a lesson since her father died.

  The cotton candy-pink fingernail tapped the lips. Cynthia could see the cogs turning. “Come play for me,” she said. Lady Wellington had attempted a friendly request, but she wasn’t much in practice. Cynthia knew what it really was anyway. A command.

  Cynthia bobbed a brief curtsey and crossed into the parlor.

  “Wash first.” Lady Wellington waved her away as if the soot might jump from Cynthia’s clothes and attack her.

  In the servant’s downstairs bathroom, Cynthia quickly scrubbed her face and hands, trying to shake the worst of the soot out of her dress.

  Remi climbed out of her pocket and onto the tap so he could face her.

  “Why is she making you play?” he asked.

  Cynthia finished her hands and started on her nails. There was no ways she’d get all the soot out.

  “I used to play a lot when my parents were alive. I was still taking lessons when she married my father. She must have remembered.”

  Remi pushed on the hot water handle and adjusted the water temperature.

  “Are you any good?”

  Cynthia didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t take lessons anymore.”

  Remi climbed the wall behind the sink until he was level with her eyes. The sticky pads of his feet suctioned to the wall as he craned his head around and tried to look her in the face.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Cynthia couldn’t help it, her eyes flicked up and caught his for a brief second, but it was enough.

  “You are good,” he said.

  Cynthia turned off the water and dried her hands. “I play at the music shop in town when I can.” She sighed into her damp hands. “I know I shouldn’t, but my music was something my mother loved, like our flower garden —” —“ Cynthia swallowed her emotions and buried them deep again. She’d been letting them get the best of her lately. “Lady Wellington doesn’t know. She won’t be expecting much.”

  “No, no, no, no.” Remi made a flying leap for her and landed on her shoulder. He tugged at her dress, desperate. “You’re going to play badly on purpose.”

  “Of course I am! If I don’t she’s going to drag me off to that awful feast and make me play in front of the royal family.” Cynthia shuddered as if torture awaited her.

  Remi vaulted to the doorknob of the bathroom and wrapped his tiny frog body around it like that could keep her from opening the door.

  “Why do you stay here?”

  “I don’t have time for this conversation right now, Remi!” she hissed, trying to pry him from the knob.

  “No , really.” He held on tight, his delicate limbs like rubber bands. “Why don’t you just leave? I’ve seen the way they treat you.”

  Cynthia gave up trying to tug him off and instead spoke in a rush. “It’s not that simple. Where would I go? What would I do? Hire myself out to scrub? So I can live this same life with a master who may or may not be as awful as my stepfamily? Except I wouldn’t be in my home. I wouldn’t be close to the shreds of my old life that this place still holds. I know my life is crummy, Remi. But this way I can at least hold on to the good memories.”

  “Don’t you see? The feast could be an opportunity!” Remi said, still clutching the doorknob for dear life.

  “Cynthia!”

  Lady Wellington’s voice was loud and clear even through the heavy oak door.

  “What if you met someone there who could make a difference in your life?”

  Cynthia plucked him off and stuffed him into her pocket with a little less care than usual. She hurried to
the parlor.

  His voice, quiet and pleading whispered from her pocket. “Would you do it for me?”

  She paused, her hand on the door to the parlor.

  “What do you mean for you?”

  “It’s a three day party at a palace. There has to be princesses there. What if one of them—”

  “—could break your curse,” she finished in a whisper.

  Cynthia pushed open the door to the parlor. Remi was silent.

  “How long were you going to keep us waiting, exactly?” Lady Wellington asked.

  Portia stood beside the baby grand piano. She whipped her bow into the palm of her hand with an impatient, smack, smack. Coriander had retreated to the corner of the room and taken refuge behind a book. Cynthia doubted she was reading it. Cynthia lowered herself onto the piano bench and tripped her fingers lightly over the keys. She polished it occasionally, but she hadn’t played it since her father died.

  “You know this piece?” Lady Wellington asked her.

  Cynthia glanced at the sheet music propped in front of her. It was Schubert’s Fantasie, the one she had recommended. She nodded at Lady Wellington. Adjusting her feet on the pedals, she lightly poised her hands over the keys. In her pocket Remi’s tiny heart pumped so fast the beats blurred together. Cynthia’s thoughts swirled with indecision. Lady Wellington set the metronome swinging. Cynthia counted a few beats to herself and began to play.

  Fantasie was written for two pianists. Four hands and forty fingers skipping up, down, and around the keys, trying to keep up with each other and the beat. Cynthia used to play it with her mother. As a young child, her fingers tripped her mother’s up and the song would dissolve into giggles. An older Cynthia had considered the piece a competition, seeing if she could play longer without a mistake. After her mother died, Cynthia didn’t want to give up the piece and found the modified two-handed version. Her fingers remembered what to do.

  She gave herself up to the haunting melody, the violin accompaniment creating in Cynthia a yearning for her mother that was almost palpable. She poured the bittersweet memories back into the keys, rising with the wistful first theme and tumbling into the trilling grace notes.

  Driving into the second movement, the rhythm became dotted, breaking into fast, turbulent measures. The tension in the music reflected the conflict warring inside her, and she emptied her frustrations into the piano.

  Cynthia played as the music altered into the quiet, lyrical baroque inspired luxury and then rippled into the bright notes that mimicked a waltz. She played until her fingers ached and a pain built behind her eyes from squinting at the sheet music. She played the fourth and last movement, dragging forward the wistful melody from the beginning, which quickly changed into a spirited fugue. Several bars of tremendous cords, and the piece ended abruptly, subsiding into a quiet close that belied the full emotions of the music.

  Cynthia let the quiet vibrations of the last cord fade. She sat back from the piano and bowed her head, staring at the keys. In her pocket, Remi was a frozen lump. She wondered what he was thinking. Taking several deep breaths she slowed her breathing and schooled the emotions she knew were flashing across her face. She looked up. Portia and Lady Wellington were staring at her. She caught brief glimpses of a few staff that had peeked in the door of the parlor to see what was going on.

  The expressions on the faces of her stepfamily were varied. Portia was one of astonishment and pleasure. She had played well, after all. Lady Wellington’s shock was evident, but something was warring underneath, something that Cynthia couldn’t quite name, but she feared was resentment or anger. She had to turn her head to look at Coriander in the corner of the room. She was gone.

  “I think that will do,” Lady Wellington said. She sniffed at Cynthia and gave her daughter a wide, proud smile. “Portia certainly played well.”

  “She did,” Cynthia said with a nod in her stepsister’s direction.

  “I think the royal family will be most pleased.” Lady Wellington clasped her hands together and paced the Oriental rug. “You’ll have to practice, there were a few moments of loose tempo, and don’t think I didn’t notice those sour notes!” The end of the sentence was aimed directly at Cynthia.

  She nodded at her stepmother in acknowledgment. She had hardly played the piece flawlessly. She hadn’t warmed up or practiced her Shubert in months.

  “There are dresses to see about and the coach to service ,” Lady Wellington said, flying for the door. “Getting ready for that the feast is your only job from here on out!”

  Cynthia wasn’t sure if that last direction was aimed at her or Portia, but she supposed it didn’t matter.

  The next four days passed in a blur of music notes, metronome beats, and dress fittings. Hours on end were spent at the piano until Cynthia’s backside was uncomfortable and sore, and her fingers swelled. The worst part was the amount of time she was forced to spend in the presence of Lady Wellington and Portia. It hadn’t taken Cynthia long to master the piece, the tricky timing, the grace notes. But Lady Wellington kept finding phantom mistakes, and Portia wasn’t polishing her violin accompaniment as quickly.

  Cynthia would have preferred peeling le e ches from the calves legs after they got in the creek or prying mold off the cellar walls than playing the piano hour after hour for people who were neither patient nor appreciative.

  Remi was nothing but sympathetic. He insisted on spending the long hours of practice in her pocket, although she knew he got dried out and tired. His face had glowed when they were finally alone in her room after her initial audition.

  “Thank you,” was all he said, but Cynthia could tell he was elated, hopeful. Probably for the first time since being turned into a frog.

  She just gave him a tired smile in return. “It’s time I start doing things for someone other than myself.” Her commitment to Remi was the only thing that made her bite her lip and play the second movement of Fantasie one more time, or refuse to roll her eyes as she was fitted for what may have been the most hideous dress ever created. The mud-colored wincey fabric wasn’t comfortable or pretty. The puffed sleeves and high neck were horribly out of fashion and unflattering. She would have rather worn her old gray rag to the feast.

  She insisted on a hat to cover her hair, since she could hardly wear her headscarf to the palace, and was pleasantly surprised when Lady Wellington not only readily agreed, but had a half veil of netting added. It partially hid her face and Cynthia was in no more of a hurry to make a spectacle of herself than Lady Wellington was. Being noticed had gotten her into this mess and she could only hope d that she could ride it out to a quiet, uneventful conclusion.

  Coriander had not been seen since the day of Cynthia’s ‘audition.’ She had stayed in her room and it was as if the staff were waiting on a ghost. No noise came from behind her door. T rays of food that were left in the corridor would reappear there, empty—as if by magic.

  Lady Wellington let her be, except for her dress fittings. Mr. Shearing, the tailor—a thin man who was more nose and hair than anything else—was escorted in by Lady Wellington twice a day. She was determined Coriander still attend the feast, and she needed new dresses for all three days, including a costume for the masked ball on the second night.

  The first day of the feast arrived. The opening of the festivities was to be Portia playing for the royal family, with one of the more talented servants accompanying her. Of course Coriander would have loved to play, dear thing, but had a touch of arthritis in her fingers just now.

  And that’s just how Lady Wellington presented the situation to anyone that could have possibly been interested, and a few that weren’t. Cynthia even heard her going on about it to the milkman.

  The music they had slaved over was set aside until the family was ready. The feast didn’t start until seven that night , but Cynthia was woken an hour earlier than usual. The hot water had stopped working and the wom e n’s baths would have to be heated over the fireplaces and on the kitchen stove. Baths,
breakfast, hair, manicures, pedicures, lunch, facial wraps , then a light tea before the hour long process of applying makeup. “Because there will be no eating after your faces have been done!” Lady Wellington said, taking away first a cream puff from Portia, then a small wedge of cheese she had snuck out of the kitchen.

  Mr. Shearing arrived to help the ladies into their gowns and do any last minute adjustments. Cynthia was standing in for one of his assistants who had taken ill that morning. She was stuck holding his basket of notions as the tailor wrestled Portia into her dress.

  “Pins!” he demanded, snapping his fingers at her. Cynthia scrambled to obey. “Scissors . Not that pair! The embroidery ones!” The tailor finally sat back on his heels and scowled at Cynthia’s stepsister half zipped into an immaculate satin dress. The deep purple color brought out the shine in her eyes and her creamy complexion. She was remarkably pretty in that dress, Cynthia thought. Too bad it had to be made out of enough fabric that could have made curtains for the entire house.

  “It’s no good. I’ll have to make some adjustments. It won’t fit,” Mr. Shearing said.

  “What do you mean it doesn’t fit!” Lady Wellington swept into the room and descended on the tailor. “It was perfect at her final fitting last week. I saw it myself.”

  “It would seem she’s not the exact same size she was last week,” the tailor said. Cynthia could tell it wasn’t in his nature to be delicate, but he had at least made an attempt. Lady Wellington pursed her lips together and examined Portia like a flower arrangement that needed tweaking. Cynthia felt a twinge pang of sympathy. She’d endured that scrutiny more than once. Portia had a strange look on her face that Cynthia couldn’t interpret.

  “We’ll just pull her corset tighter then,” Lady Wellington fluttered a hand in the direction of her large daughter, as if it were a magic wand that could fix the problem.