Thankfully, the young ladies were too caught up in the whirlwind of their preparations to grate on my life. They spent the whole day reviewing every aspect of the masquerade, from the entrance hall, to the size of the fruits on the table, to the number of guests in attendance, to the prince himself. Much time was dedicated to the host of the night and they wagered between themselves how many times he would dance with each of them.
And they had cause to be confident. By the time they were ready to leave, Maybelle and Calliope had been transformed into two very beautiful butterflies. They were both rather pretty to begin with, but a day’s worth of primping had turned them irresistible.
I had precious few moments to change by the time the others were ready and waiting for the carriage that would whisk them away to the palace. I didn’t have time to bathe, so I splashed water on my face and hands as best I could. The blackened cloth I dried them with made me believe that most of the dirt and soot had come off.
Ever so carefully, I stepped into the neatly ironed, altered yellow dress, and slipped on my jade earrings. Cradling it like an eggshell, I pressed my mask to my face and securely fastened it behind my head. Only then did I let out my stifled breath. Only then did I let a small smile sneak past my lips. I felt like a lady. I could be anyone.
I took up my invitation, lifted my skirts, and left my cramped attic room, making my way to the front door with quiet, demure steps. I smoothed my dress down once in the entry and waited patiently behind my stepsisters for the carriage to pull up just past the front door.
For one peaceful, blissful second, I believed in the magic of the night.
Then Madame turned her head and shattered it all.
“Why, Ella,” Madame exclaimed innocently, “what are you doing here?”
Maybelle and Calliope turned to stare bug-eyed at me, but I fixed my gaze ahead.
“I’ve finished my chores, Madame,” I replied with more courage than I felt.
“Have you really?” she asked, with what sounded like genuine shock.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Let’s have a look,” she declared, sweeping back into the house with the three of us following close behind her.
Madame ran a finger along every windowsill and shelf, but I knew she would find nothing. I had made sure to banish every speck of dust from the house, fix every wayward scratch, every chip and dent. I had this one chance and I would not lose it to the whims of Madame.
Her inspection finally led us to the kitchen, where even the kettle had been shined hard enough to no longer be called black. Madame spun around slowly, taking in the stark neatness of her house, her mind no doubt unaccepting of the possibility that I had indeed met and exceeded her standards. There was one lone bowl on the kitchen table, one lone bowl ready for the morrow that I should have had the foresight to hide away. But, even after all the years, I couldn’t have foreseen the extent of Madame’s hatred of me.
Suddenly, Madame took the bowl and flung it toward the fireplace, scattering the carefully cleaned lentils into the ashes.
“Oops,” Maybelle giggled.
Madame turned to me with a malicious smile. “Please clean that up.”
I must have hesitated.
“Now!”
I grabbed the apron hanging neatly in my corner and forced myself to put it atop my yellow dress. Against my will, I let go of my invitation, leaving it on the table beside the now empty bowl. Iris, who had been moved to the kitchen for me to tend to while Father was away, squawked fiercely from his perch.
Calliope unhooked the pin from the door of his cage, no doubt hoping to free him into the chaos Madame was causing for me. “Oops,” she deadpanned as he flew free.
But the macaw was the only one in the room that still liked me. He glided toward me and made his new perch on my shoulder, squawking and bobbing his head in time to my calming breaths.
Madame leveled me with an expectant gaze and I winced as I knelt in my beautiful sun-colored dress to gather the lentils from the fireplace, already seeing the darkened clouds the soot would scatter across it if I wasn’t careful enough. The macaw took the liberty of helping me too, though with less care than I to leave behind the ashes.
With Madame’s gaze boring into me and my stepsisters’ snickering behind me, I picked up bit after bit of lentil, the whole while willing my stinging eyes not to cry. The mask over my eyes felt fake, not a mask of silk, but of shame that spread over my face and plunged down my neck to encompass all of me. It didn’t take more than a few puffs of soot to make the dress I had once loved ugly, the night I had so much anticipated ruined.
All the while they stood behind me and watched.
When we were done, I poured some water from a pitcher and tried as best I could to wash the lentils clean. I presented the bowl to Madame, an unworthy offering, even to someone so undeserving.
“A Cinderwench at the masquerade?” she hissed.
Then she lifted my invitation from the table and tore it, and the remains of my heart, in half right before my eyes. She swept out of the room without a backward glance.
Before following in her wake, my stepsisters took the cue from their mother and each heaped one final humiliation upon me before leaving for the waiting carriage.
Calliope snapped the ties of my mask, mockingly took a green feather from her hair and awkwardly placed it in my mine. “Cinderwench at the masquerade?” she crowed.
“Cinderwench at the masquerade!” Maybelle chimed in. She took up a knife and grabbed a handful of my skirts, slashing and cutting it to shreds. Then she unceremoniously dropped the knife at my feet and with her sister followed after her mother, their condescending cackles bowling me over well after their carriage had left the drive.
Once quiet fell, my demeanor fell with it.
I looked around at the tatters of my life, and for the first time wondered how things had gone so far. What had my life come to? How had a home so full of kindness and laughter, warmth and delight become so corrupted with jealousy, pain, and spite? Why was there no one to protect me? And even if Father were here, I doubted anything would have gone differently. Madame was careful to hide her cruelties to me from him and I never had the courage to share them with his already broken heart. In that moment, I despaired of ever knowing love, or at the very least compassion, ever again.
That glimpse of my future was the final nail for me. I turned on my heel and fled to my corner of the garden, collapsing in tears under my pear tree, over my mother’s grave.
The First Mistake
If a girl must cry, she should never do so over her mother’s grave under a mysteriously rejuvenated pear tree.
She should not talk to anyone, especially matronly figures.
These rules are unbreakable. There are no exceptions.
I learned the hard way.
As the step-witches were surely reveling in palace finery, partaking of mouth-melting delicacies, and swishing about the masquerade on the arms of dukes and lords, I lay in the mud and cried the years away. Tears had stung my eyes more than once in the years since Madame and her progeny were brought to our home, but I had never dared release the floodgates until then.
I was there some time before the squish of footsteps and the tap-tap-tapping of a stick against stone caught my attention. Someone was definitely coming my way, but as I didn’t care to see or speak with anyone, I pressed myself further into the ground, the dirt muddy from my tears.
“Ella?” a gentle voice asked. “What happened?”
Marie. The woman from the other side of the wall. I never knew if she was our neighbor or just a crazy old woman living in the wild fields behind our land. She always seemed harmless, and often enough I shared what little I had with her when she came to rest her feet a while at the wall. She was probably my only friend then, though I really didn’t know much about her besides her name. I enjoyed speaking with her if only because she was one of few people who still called me by mine.
“It’s no matter, Marie,
” I tried to reassure her.
I sat up and wiped at my eyes, only to worsen them by smudging the mud across my face. Marie looked at me expectantly. She couldn’t be so crazy if she could see right through me. Or rather…
“Tell me, Ella,” she coaxed.
I didn’t want to, but I did, telling her not just about that night, but all the others that had led to it. When I finished, Marie studied me with pursed lips, fearsome looking enough to make me glad her anger was not directed at me.
I fished around in my pockets for a handkerchief of sorts, when my fingers stumbled against the gold coin the prince had tossed my way. For a moment, I lost myself in sliding my fingers along the surface, recalling, as I had at least three times a day for the past two weeks, the man who had given the coin to me. The little gold coin represented a whole other life, a world so different from mine. A world I had been so desperate to see. One in which I could buy pretty things that belonged only to me. Wearing my mother’s dress had been the first step into a paradise awaiting me with gates flung wide open. I should have known Madame would never let me go. Now the coin was only a burning reminder of once more broken dreams.
But sitting beside my mother’s remains, I remembered that even when I had nothing, I still had kindness and so I hadn’t truly lost everything. I pulled the coin out of my pocket and offered it to Marie without a second thought.
Marie took it from me curiously and examined it from all angles, a hint of amusement teasing her lips. “Whatever is this for?”
“It’s for you. Someone gave it to me and I want you to have it.”
“And what am I to do with it?”
“Treat yourself to something nice, share it with friends, pass it on,” I suggested. “As long as it’s something good.”
Marie’s face cleared, and a kindly smile took hold of her features. She took my hand and gave it a quick squeeze. A simple touch from her would usually make me feel better, but tonight the feeling was hollow. Marie must have understood, because she shook her head at me.
“There’s only one thing to do about it, then,” she decided. “We must send you to the palace.”
I stared at her. Just when I thought her sanity was beyond question, she proved otherwise. I appreciated her trying to cheer me up, but “I’m in no mood for pretend,” I desisted.
“Pretend? Pretend?” Marie giggled as if the word was the most delightful one in the world. Her laugh reminded me of little bells chiming merrily in the wind. “Dear Ella, you will be going to the masquerade tonight.”
“Please, Marie—” I began, but stopped midsentence.
Somehow, without lifting her skirts, without climbing at all, Marie had appeared on the other side of the wall. I shook my head to clear my sight. Surely in my misery, I had overlooked her clambering over.
“Really, Ella,” Marie began, throwing back her raggedy hood with a flourish, “I expected you of all people to have more faith in your faery godmother.”
My what? I stared at Marie, the walking stick she always held had taken on a more cylindrical form and each time she swirled her hand, bright sparks of light danced behind it. With her hood back, I saw her face clearly for the first time, and of course the first thing I noticed was—
“Your eyes,” I breathed, fixating on her purple gaze. “I can’t believe—”
“Yes, yes, enough of that dear.”
“It’s impossible!”
“Is it? Dear, what have those women done to you?”
“But a faery godmother?”
“Grandmère.”
“My grandmère?”
“Heavens, no,” Marie chuckled, “you’re human enough, so we’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got. But you must have something to call me.”
“But…my eyes?”
“We haven’t much time, so I’ll tell you quickly,” Marie conceded. “Long ago, my father was running away from an evil little man intent on killing him so he could steal his magic.”
“But—”
Marie held up her hand and shook her head. “My father was badly hurt, bleeding, and near unconscious, so he couldn’t summon the magic to heal himself. Even so, using it would have attracted unwanted attention. He stumbled into a stable and collapsed in one of the stalls. Startled your mother terribly when she came back with her horse. Two weeks your mother cared for him, kept his secret, and he thanked her for it.”
I blinked, expecting more.
“Well, he made her a promise bound by magic,” Marie explained. “That his child would care for hers when most in need, the way she had cared for him. That’s how she found out you were coming along, and it seems your eyes were marked by that promise.”
I stared at her. “I didn’t know,” I finally managed to say.
“Yes, well, now you do,” she said simply. “And tonight, I shall make good on my father’s promise.”
Marie shrugged out of her patchwork cloak revealing a simple, but finely made purple gown with gold stitching forming an elaborate pattern of swirls and curls across the bodice. Bright sparks trailed after her with each step.
“Where to begin?”
She circled me thoughtfully, taking note of my wretched state, my knifed up gown, my mussed up hair, my sullied face, and trampled soul. She waved her wand in little circles in the air.
“Ah, yes, a way to get to the palace. Follow me,” she commanded, as she floated across the field to the modest garden I meticulously tended behind the house.
She flitted between the neat rows of vegetables, passing over carrots, turnips, and tomatoes, until she found what she was looking for. “The pumpkin will do,” she chimed, twirling her wand around until it was cocooned in firefly sparks.
With a few more twists of her wand, Marie set the pumpkin spinning in lazy circles, during which it grew larger and larger with each turn. Within seconds, the pumpkin was bigger than either of us and it paused its transformation a moment before it suddenly jolted. A door, windows, a proper seat for the coachman, and rails for the footmen appeared. The pumpkin burped again and then it was raised up on four large, thin wheels. It wasn’t difficult to see that a pumpkin had inspired the design of the carriage, but at least the burnt orange hue was closer to bronze to the eyes of the unknowing.
“How wonderful,” I breathed, fully enchanted by the prospect of having a faery godmother and all the tricks she must have up her sleeves. Despite everything that was to happen, I don’t ever regret having met Grandmère, though I can’t say the same for everything she was to do.
Marie waved away my wonder. “Posh, dear, we’re only getting started. Now, what else?”
She swiveled about the yard and I scampered after her. Even the magical appearance of a faery godmother and a carriage would have been enough to carry me through the next few years of scrubbing. It wasn’t enough for Marie, though. Faeries are never satisfied with a few flicks of the wrist when they can do so much more.
“Ah, the mousetrap, right here please,” she commanded, with a point and a tap on the ground before the carriage.
The mousetrap floated over from behind the kitchen. Small rodents were always burrowing their way under the door and getting into the flour. One morning, Calliope had a fit when she came in to find a fat gray mouse caught in the cage, so we moved it outside. There were two black rats trapped inside the little cage that night. A look at them, and I shuddered.
With a tap of her wand, Marie sent the walls of the cage flying, and I had a brief thought that I would need to build another later. Then, before the rats could scurry away, she tapped four times and, much like the pumpkin, the rats grew and grew. Then their faces grew long and their tails more hairy, their skins darkened and glistened and by the time they stopped growing, there were two impressive, dark night stallions ready to be harnessed to my enchanted carriage.
“Every noble appreciates a good horse,” Marie nodded to herself. “Now, for the coachman,” she clucked.
She clucked and clucked until her calls were echoed, and
a fat white goose waddled into the yard.
Marie’s eyes lit upon it. “Ah, there.”
“We were saving it for a holiday!” I gasped.
“Nonsense, Ella,” she scoffed with a shower of sparks from her wand. “There is no greater holiday than today.”
The sparks of magic circled the goose and then he stretched and stretched into quite a rotund, but rather jolly coachman.
“Up you go,” Marie pointed to his seat. “The horses must be kept in line.”
With a cry that sounded too close to a honk, the goose-man jumped up and ran to take his seat on the carriage. My mind had since gone silent, the reality of my life having far outpaced anything it could have contrived. I refused to acknowledge the worry that perhaps this was all a dream from which I would soon awake cold and alone on my mother’s muddied grave.
Marie eyed the carriage a moment. “A footman,” she concluded.
She cast her gaze around the garden, looking for the next innocent creature that would adorn her magical creation. Her eyes stopped on a lizard quietly darting along the wall of the house, no doubt trying to escape what it must have felt coming.
“Ew,” I whispered.
But Marie had already decided. With a flick of her wrist, she detached the lizard from the wall and brought it to us. Still in the air, she tapped twice, and it grew and grew, until I had a handsome, if somewhat olive-skinned, footman in my service.
“Tongue in, chin up,” Marie commanded.
The footman scrambled to the carriage, propped the door open and stood at attention beside it, ready to hand me in the moment I gave him leave to do so.
“Granted, I haven’t had much time to prepare considering the short notice, but this should do just fine,” Marie mused.
A Cinderella Retelling Page 4