A Cinderella Retelling

by E. L. Tenenbaum

“If it pleases Her Highness, I will be a friend,” the captain offered. Blast him and his blasted hawk-like senses. He wasn’t supposed to hear that.

  “Please don’t feel obligated,” I hurried to say.

  The captain looked at me seriously through his brown eyes, at once soft and rich as melted copper, hard and unyielding as a tree. His expression spoke for him.

  “Will you do me a favor then, as a friend?” I asked quickly, veering away from how serious our pleasant conversation had become.

  “Anything, Your Highness,” the captain replied.

  “I would like to go into the capital,” I said, “but not as a princess. Just Ella.”

  The captain took a deep breath, and I knew that wasn’t what he was expecting my request to be. I also knew that I’d backed him against a wall, pouncing on his generous offer of friendship, on his willingness to help me feel at home.

  “Please, just think about it,” I hurried to add. “I understand what I’m asking—but I just—I don’t—I just need to be somewhere where no one knows who I am for a while. Please.”

  The captain nodded, and I wasn’t sure if that was to indicate he would think about it or take me into the capital. I didn’t push him, though. I trusted he’d tell me when he would. And neither of us was going anywhere else in the meantime.

  He cleared his throat. “It would be beneficial to confirm you can protect yourself somewhat, Princess,” he said slowly.

  “I have my sword,” I told him firmly. “I’m ready any time.”

  The captain nodded. “Tomorrow, late morning?”

  “Tomorrow,” I asserted.

  A short pause.

  “Perhaps, Your Highness, it is time to return to your schedule?” he suggested.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “If I must.”

  The captain slid down the tree first, then offered his hand to help me climb down.

  “Oh, let’s just be finished with this,” I said, and swung myself down from the tree right into his waiting arms.

  The captain set me down and stood me up quickly, but not quick enough that I didn’t feel a fleeting sense of security in his arms. If anyone could get me in and out of the capital unnoticed, it was him. I just needed him to say yes.

  The next day, I dressed in the simplest, lightest dress I had, which was rather difficult to find and did require Javotte’s ingenuity and some last second alterations from both of us. I met the captain in the training room, my sword held loosely by my side. Only Javotte came with me.

  The room was blessedly quiet. No doubt, the captain had seen to it that anyone who would think to be here had training elsewhere. At the other end of the palace, perhaps.

  The captain clicked his heels and executed a stiff bow. “Whenever Her Highness is ready.”

  “Captain, I already told you,” I said with a smile, “any time, anywhere.”

  A smirk played at the corners of the captain’s lips. “Is that so?” His hand shot forward from behind his back, the silver of his sword flashing like lighting toward me.

  I wasn’t unprepared, but I wasn’t lightning quick either. I flung my sheath away and raised my blade just in time to parry his blow. That didn’t stop him, he just kept coming at me again and again. For a long while, I took up defense, pushing myself just to keep his blade from getting too close. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, but he also didn’t seem the type to go easy just to let someone, even a princess, win.

  We took a quick break, during which I tried to ignore my burning arms and gasping lungs. I wasn’t out of shape, I took daily walks through the palace gardens and my tiny frame was too small to allow me to overeat much. Still, it had been a while.

  “Whenever Her Highness sees fit to resume,” the captain said with a lazy smile. He was leaning against the far wall of the room, hardly sweating from the first round.

  “Any time, anywhere,” I repeated, and it became the mantra that kept me going through the next two rounds. During the second round, I decided I had enough of always defending myself and struck first as often as I could.

  “I’ll have you know, honorable Captain,” I cautioned between blows, “that I have defeated many an ogre and many a dragon with this blade. Though I am out of practice as it all happened when I was much younger.”

  The captain’s eyes shone from the challenge of cornering my tiny frame, which bobbed, wove, and darted in and out of his reach. He couldn’t keep a merry chuckle from escaping at my words. “We must warn His Highness that his princess may take his place in the ballads as the kingdom’s protector.”

  “But my prince can easily defeat his enemy with his charm and wit,” I countered. “I must still use my sword.”

  After the third round, I decided I’d proven enough, and felt I’d done relatively well. Enough that, when I announced, “It’s been a pleasure, Captain,” the captain bowed low and countered, “It was an honor, Princess.” When he straightened, there was a brief light left over from the sparkle in his eyes.

  I didn’t see the captain for a few days after that, but the next time I saw him, he looked like he needed a good shave. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for the captain to have changed something in his appearance. As head of the crown prince’s guard, he did have to deal with people and situations that no one talked of and knew even less about. However, when I turned a questioningly gaze upon him and pointed to my chin, he returned the look with a sly wink.

  I understood immediately.

  “It quite suits you, Captain,” I informed him two days later, when the shadow on his chin had grown to a tidy brown beard.

  He never did fully shave it off after that.

  A week after my request, the captain appeared in my room with a sack containing an old pair of boots, an unremarkable dress, and a short dagger.

  “I trust you know how to use this, Your Highness?” the captain said more than asked.

  I measured the weight of the dagger in my hand. “I’ll manage.”

  “Then we’ll set out tomorrow, after lunch,” the captain said. “Javotte will assist you.”

  “You told Javotte?”

  The captain shrugged unapologetically. “We need her help, Princess.”

  I sighed recognizing his logic. Still, I didn’t like that someone else knew where I was going. The captain bowed and spun to leave the room.

  “One more thing, Captain,” I called after him.

  The captain raised his brow, unsure of what I would come up with next. “Yes, Princess?”

  “I would like a map of the city,” I said.

  The captain’s brow dropped into a studious furrow. “As you wish, Your Highness.”

  Good at his word, the captain sent over the map later that evening, rolled up and tied with a ribbon so it looked like a regular missive. I studied the map late into the night, tracing and retracing the streets and alleys of the city, memorizing piazzas and parks, seeking to match memory to sketches on paper. I even searched out the piazza where I’d first met the prince, but it wasn’t on the map. The memory of that place was to remain untouched for now.

  The next morning, I was so giddy with nerves and excitement, I had to focus to maintain proper composure. I didn’t want anyone talking about my altered mood, however slight, because with so many eyes always watching, it was bound to be noticed. Considering my last attempt to leave without an entourage, I knew the prince would try to stop me if he caught on. Or he’d decide to join me, not in disguise, but as the prince, and I would be made to ride in a carriage beside him as we waved merrily to our faithful, rose-slinging citizens. I loved roses, but that was the opposite of what I was yearning for today.

  After lunch, word was passed around that I would be retiring to my chambers for an afternoon rest. I slipped into my bedroom and changed into the stiff, old dress the captain had brought. I tied an oversized head kerchief over my auburn hair and, with some difficulty, forced myself into the uncomfortable boots I would have once considered myself lucky to own.

  Especially compared
to my clothes now, the dress was itchy and all around hideous. I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to find the Ella that used to look like the girl looking back at me. I must have buried her rather deep, because I could find no trace of her in my reflection. Without the hours in the sun taking care of the livestock, gardening, and beating rugs, my skin had lightened. My hair had lost some of its red streaks, but it had also become thicker, fuller, healthier. After months of ointments and lotions, the skin on my hands and bottom of my feet had smoothed, the way a hot drink helped even Madame relax a few moments.

  I felt like someone else in those clothes. At first, I was a Cinderwench pretending to be a princess. Now, I was a princess pretending to be a Cinderwench, and one charade didn’t feel so different from the other.

  Javotte led me out of the side door of my chambers, unused but by my prince at night, from which we turned away from the main hallway, toward a skinny one that opened into the maze of servants’ corridors running unseen throughout the palace. She deposited me near a quiet part of the palace wall, purposely well hidden from prying eyes by overgrown ivy.

  The captain was waiting for me there, stalwart and stoic as always, even in his patched vest and slightly-ragged trousers, as if we often met each other dressed as we were in peasant disguise.

  “Almost like the first time we met,” I told him, as he took me from Javotte’s care.

  “I remember,” the captain replied quietly, two words I hated to admit the prince simply could not say.

  The captain took my hand and led me through a few more twists and turns until we came across a small stone door, well hidden in the greater wall around it. The captain rapped a code and the door swung open. He pulled me after him, down a steep incline, and into the busy traffic of the palace bridge before I could decipher where we’d been or who’d let us through the secret door he and his network probably used at their convenience. It was the kind of door a princess didn’t ask questions about because there were things even she shouldn’t know.

  Neither of us spoke until we were almost fully across the bridge. At the end, stretching in either direction, was a wide promenade that ran the length of the water surrounding the palace. Sprinkled along the way were benches and parks, much like the one I had been in when I first found out about the masquerade that changed my life. Crossing over the promenade toward the bridge was the main road that eventually forked to either turn toward the city or continue past it.

  “You must forgive me, Princess,” the captain spoke first, as we turned right to walk along the promenade, two regular citizens out for an afternoon stroll, “but I must have a name to call you by in the city.”

  “Call me by the name I was given,” I replied easily.

  The captain hesitated to speak it. “Ella,” he finally said, and the deep baritone of his voice made those few letters sound like slow rolling thunder across an open plain.

  “And what must I call you?” I asked in return.

  “Cap,” he said immediately.

  I frowned. “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Don’t you have a name of your own?”

  “I did once, before,” the captain replied. “But its lack of use has left me out of practice answering to it.”

  “Very well, then,” I accepted his explanation.

  We walked along at a leisurely pace, not rushing to any appointment or lesson or banquet or party or meeting. The sun angled down on us, warming us even as a cool breeze skipped across the waters. It felt so good to be out of the palace, to be no one for a while.

  Then something caught my eye.

  Along the walk of the promenade, the side overlooking the water that surrounded the royal island, was a small monument I was sure hadn’t been on any map. Some people were milling about it, and I would have passed by had I not seen the too familiar fractured rainbow of color caused by Castarrean glass swallowing the rays of the sun.

  I pulled up short and the captain stopped beside me. “Don’t you want to go on?” he urged.

  “Not yet,” I replied, already weaving my way toward the glass.

  My breath caught as I came upon it, and tears stung my eyes. Seeing this small dedication before me, this small symbol of hope and something more, left me faint and I floundered to stay upright. The captain gave me his hand for balance and placed his other one gently on my back to keep me steady. He would have to ask forgiveness for being so forward in the palace, but here there were no such rules.

  Before me stood a stone pillar, simply carved, simply made, but enduring nonetheless. Sculpted above was a dainty slipper, studded with bits of Castarrean glass, and if I hadn’t already understood it’s meaning, the inscription at the toe of the shoe made it very clear.

  With magic’s grace, she came to the ball

  With beauty and charm and heart above all

  But when midnight struck she made to depart

  Taking with a royal heart

  That third night

  Outwitted in flight

  Abandoned her shoe

  In final adieu

  Her found her a servant, and carried her away

  Happily ever after, till their final day

  Surrounded by love and joy forever

  We wish you dance on, our CinderElla

  I blinked away tears as my fingers traced over the words engraved into the statue. I could never be no one again. “CinderElla,” I mouthed. Then, more loudly, “Did you know about this, Cap? Did the prince?”

  The captain mutely nodded his head.

  “CinderElla,” I repeated out loud, trying the name on for size. “Why did no one tell me?”

  The captain actually looked ashamed, though I wasn’t directly accusing him. “Perhaps the prince thought you would not like it,” he suggested.

  “Would not like it?” I questioned in wonder.

  The captain looked at me. “Do you like it?” he asked softly.

  I nodded. How could I not? For the people, for my people, it combined the best parts of who I was. A girl with the simple commoner’s name my mother had given me raised to royalty from the cinders of hardship. CinderElla. I repeated it over and over in my mind. It was a name of hope.

  The captain cleared his throat. “We haven’t much time. Wouldn’t you like to see something else, Your Hi—Ella?”

  “CinderElla,” I echoed again.

  I studied the statue thinking of all the places I could see. A wide smile tugged across my face. I wanted to do everything, see everything, smell everything, taste everything! But I had to start somewhere.

  “There is a place I’d like to visit first,” I finally said, and with that we were off.

  I stood beside the captain in the glassblower’s shop, enjoying his admiration as the craftsman showed off his few trinkets of Castarrean glass.

  “Aye, I made the glass for that shoe,” the craftsman confirmed, a little more confident when safely outside the glare of a baroness. “And two others like it. One for a goose and one for a pumpkin. They’ll be all over the kingdom soon enough.”

  I blinked, unable to comprehend the first statue and now hearing there were more. Why?

  “For the people,” the man replied, and only then did I realize I’d voiced the question. “Maybe they never saw the princess and maybe they did, but they see her in their mind often. When life gets too weighty, her story is there, a reminder that things get better, that there’s tomorrow.”

  This was not at all what I was expecting when I persuaded the captain to sneak me into the city. I was supposed to be free from all people and responsibilities for a while, not run head first into more. Perhaps, sensing my mood was to become too serious if I stayed there much longer, the captain thanked the man and gently tugged at my arm to get me out of the shop. “There are other things to see.”

  I followed numbly. We stepped into the bustling marketplace, and it didn’t take long for the sights to take over the reins of my thoughts. For a while, we simply strolled along, passing stalls that sold everything from the exot
ic to the mundane. The captain kept close to me, his large frame shield enough to protect my small one, his hand reaching out now and then to reassure himself that I was still beside him.

  After an hour, the aromas got the better of me and we stopped to buy fresh bread from a baker’s shop. Stepping out, nibbling at my small roll, I noticed something curious in the alley across the way, something I’d noticed in quite a few of the alleys we’d already passed. I didn’t remember having ever seen them before on my few trips into the city with Madame and her girls, but I was also accustomed to looking down then.

  “What are those?” I asked the captain, pointing to the small, huddled shapes in the alley.

  “Poor,” he said without emotion. “Hoping for the luck of some dropped coins.”

  I stopped mid-chew, then slowly lowered my roll. Without even realizing it, my feet had already taken a few steps forward, but the captain’s hand urgently grabbed me back. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  I looked back at him. “To share my bread,” I replied, as if the answer was obvious.

  Looking back now, I realize it wasn’t, not to him. Perhaps because I knew what it was to be hungry, perhaps because of Marie, it was the only choice for me. I never thought that despite all I’d been through there were still some with less than me. Even the people Mother and I used to visit still had a roof over their heads, if little else. It seemed Heaven had sent me a way to directly help the less fortunate after all.

  The captain blinked at me, once, twice. “If you give away your roll, and I buy you another, will you give it away as well?”

  I nodded.

  The captain drew a thoughtful breath. “Very well, then,” he agreed.

  And he spun me back into the shop, where he spent the last of the coins he had with him on a basket full of rolls and the basket, too. We left the shop and crossed the alley, where he hovered over me like an eagle as I shared bread to a grateful chorus of praise.

  After that alley, we walked some more until we found another one filled with the wretched shapes. We shared with them and continued on, finding a third alley, where we gave out the last of the bread.