A Cinderella Retelling

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  I shook my head, unwilling to go into too much detail. “I—I would like your help with something,” I said.

  “Whatever I can do for you, I will,” the princess promised immediately, and I suspected she was about to regret her eagerness to help.

  “Your mirror,” I asked, “do you have it with you?”

  “Always,” she replied, reaching for it then abruptly stopping herself as realization slowly dawned. She narrowed her gaze at me. “It only answers one type of question.”

  “I know.”

  Lyla’s eyes widened. “You are not happy,” she said.

  I shook my head, not trusting myself to answer.

  “Why?” Lyla questioned, but not of me. “You were to have been so good for him,” she added softly.

  “He doesn’t seem to agree,” I countered.

  Here was the second person admitting that they thought I could have done more for the prince, and I didn’t like it. They knew the prince was less than perfect, Lyla had even hinted at it the first time we met, but I had chosen to ignore everything that would have let me know it, too. The difference between us was that they still had hope for him; I didn’t, not anymore. Perhaps I had once been innocent and pure, but like all things pure and white, I had been stained by the blackness I was fighting against. And I was only beginning to glimpse it now.

  “Ella—”

  “Please, just ask.”

  Lyla shook her head at me. “Please, Ella, please don’t do this to yourself.”

  I rubbed my temples in a fruitless attempt to quell the growing headache beating mercilessly behind my forehead. The choice was so simple, really. Either I could ask for an answer I didn’t want to receive, or I could keep living in my blinding faery tale. Considering what Sir Percival had said in the garden, considering what the captain had weaned out of the taster, it seemed everyone acknowledged something dark was lurking in the palace but me. I really just wanted to go back to the way things used to be. Really, really wanted to go back to the simpler life when we were just a prince and princess with a love bright enough to illuminate darker times. But I couldn’t. And now it seemed life had never been that way at all.

  “I need to know,” I said simply. “Please.”

  Lyla still shook her head sadly, but she took out the mirror and held it to me.

  “No,” I pushed it back to her. “You ask.”

  The princess blanched as she looked down at her mirror, building up the courage to do what I had unfairly requested of her.

  “Mirror, Mirror, in my hand,” she chanted, throwing me a look to tell me it wasn’t too late. I shook my head; I wasn’t backing down from this now.

  “Mirror, Mirror, in my hand, who does King Alex think fairest in his land?”

  The face of the mirror swirled ominously, like a thick, blinding fog lurking over a dark swamp. The princess had the good sense to angle the mirror’s face away from me so I couldn’t see the answer taking shape. I waited as the image formed, waited as her eyes studied the face it showed her, waited as her expression turned to shock, then anger, then sadness. She looked up at me and slowly shook her head.

  “Do I know her?”

  “She is known in your court,” she said carefully.

  “Let me see,” I demanded.

  Lyla shook her head and held the mirror away from me. “It is better if you do not.”

  I felt like someone had violently ripped out my insides.

  I had asked the question because my rational mind had demanded it, but my heart never believed that the face that would appear would be anyone’s but mine. And even if my husband thought someone else more fair, that didn’t mean he didn’t love me. Did it? But asking the question and receiving the answer had slammed the door shut on that possibility forever.

  Tears streamed unchecked down Lyla’s cheeks, and though I was too numb to feel them, I was certain they matched my own. After living so long in the clouds, I’d suddenly, viciously, learned that they weren’t strong enough to hold me. It was as if reality was waging war with my conceived fantasy, as if, after being neglected for so long, each truth had decided to ambush me one after the other with their undeniable existence. The first one had shattered my protective bubble, the last one would sweep every last bit away altogether.

  “Stupid, stupid mirror,” Lyla’s sadness turned to rage, sparking her brilliant, intelligent, always caring black eyes.

  And then she was gathering me in her arms, and I could hear her heart breaking for me, the one person she was sure had the happily ever after promised to us all. If even I didn’t have it, then what hope did anyone else have? We would all be locked forever within the image of what was supposed to be, no one daring to look past the illusion to the way ever after had really turned out.

  Her tears, and I suppose mine as well, dried up after a while. I pulled away from her with a promise that I would come to her if I needed someone to talk to, that I would not act without thinking twice. She seemed to understand that I needed time to process what I hadn’t seen, but still seemed loath to let me go on alone. She ended up walking me back to my rooms, clutching my hand in a greater display of emotion than what I was then feeling.

  Because at that point, it all added up. It finally made sense. The dragon, the wine, the taster, Sir Percival. The darkness had been gaining on me all this time, and I’d only looked up once the impending shadows completely blotted out my sun. The only thing left to wonder was whether I had enough light left in me to chase it away.

  Before anything else, however, I entered my rooms and ordered Javotte to draw me a very hot bath. Then I soaked in the water and scrubbed my skin over and over again, as if I could actually remove any lingering sensation from wherever my prince had once touched me.

  Our visit wound down three days later, but the evening before we were off, I was able to make good on my fervent desire to do something for Lyla.

  I was wandering the gardens without much heed for the time, knowing it was dinner soon, but not caring. I ended up walking to the edge of the gardens where a layered stone ledge marked the end of the palace grounds, which overlooked the villages nestled in the plains below.

  A figure stood at the top of the ledge, unrecognizable at first because the setting sun was turning everything black as it sucked all color into its burst of orange flame. Stepping closer, I recognized Prince Daimyon, and the opportunity Heaven had sent my way.

  Daimyon motioned for me to join him, though I’m sure he doubted I actually would. His fearsome pet bat circled the air above him, but that didn’t stop me from accepting his invitation. I tried my best to climb the tall step-like ledges. He had to help me up toward the top, but I made it. The view spread out below us was magnificent, so I had no question as to what he was doing up there by himself.

  As for myself, I never would have done anything like this just months before, but I had faced death, and I had faced hatred, and I was still standing. There really wasn’t much that could bring me down now. Not even a fall off a steep palace ledge.

  A lone wolf howled in the distance, and Prince Daimyon’s head rose up, as if ready to return the call. Instead, he turned to me and said, “Whenever a wolf calls, I think on what once was. I suppose a part of us will never really let go of the things we left behind.”

  “No, stop,” I shook my head, my newfound clarity finally allowing me to understand so many things I had been told all along. I would not commiserate. I would take away his self-pity. “We were given a gift,” I told him firmly, pointing up toward the darkening sky, “because of what we can do with it. There is purpose in all this, and we have to make it real. We were raised up to royalty, commoners among princes and kings, princes and kings who know the hearts of commoners.”

  Prince Daimyon shook his head at me. “I never asked for this,” he said. “I don’t want it either.”

  “Which is why you live in a palace, yet yearn to roam with wolves,” I said sharply. “Did you know that my people call me CinderElla?” I added fo
r good measure.

  Daimyon shook his head wordlessly.

  “Alexander kept it from me, but I found out.” There was a note of defiance in my voice now that I wasn’t bothering to keep out. “They gave it to me, because I mean something to them, because I was one of them. Don’t you understand: our good fortune is their good fortune, too?”

  “How can you say that?” Prince Daimyon whispered, still shaking his head. “True love gave me a princess; a glass slipper gave you a prince. That’s not—Then what—” his voice tapered off as he fumbled to put into words what he was feeling.

  We don’t make a difference.

  Don’t give the people reason to hope in what will never be.

  There is no happily ever after.

  Haven’t you learned that yet?

  I caught his gaze and held it so he couldn’t look away. “There is so much we can do,” I insisted.

  “They don’t need us,” he disagreed.

  “Yes, they do. They know much, but they don’t know that feeling of disappearing without anyone noticing you’ve gone. This is our life now, and we have to believe in what we can do. Your wife is one of the best people I’ve ever been blessed to know,” I added. “She is fierce and loyal, and though she tries to hide it, her heart is warm, caring, and filled with more love than she has people to share it with. And she wants to share it with you.”

  The prince listened quietly, and though he still held my gaze, his dark gray eyes took on a distant hue. His voice was low when he finally spoke. “At thirteen, I became the queen’s youngest huntsman, a title that didn’t come easy.”

  His voice trailed off into memory and I waited for him to come back. I knew most of Lyla’s story by now, but it was different hearing it from him.

  “Two years later, I disobeyed my first direct order from the queen. I had never been near the young princess before, but once I had, I couldn’t go through with it. How could I kill such magnificent beauty? I would not be responsible for taking it from the world, and I paid a heavy price for refusing.”

  The prince smiled sadly at something only he could see. “Four years later, there she was, so still, so serene in that glass casket the dwarves built for her.” He looked up at me suddenly. “Did you know that one third of the king’s council is made up of dwarves because of what they did for her?”

  I shook my head no. I didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me either. Lyla, driven and passionate, fierce and daring, would never forget to repay people who were so good to her. He was only proving my point in saying so.

  “When I saw her there, I couldn’t control myself,” he ended with a shrug. “I just never—I did not anticipate this.”

  “Those used to being unseen rarely do,” I said, repeating the captain’s words from what felt like a lifetime ago. “You don’t really have anything against her,” I added, speaking to myself as much as to him, “you’re more upset with yourself.”

  I studied him in the fading light, studied the good man before me and looked at him through Lyla’s eyes, through my eyes, through my king’s eyes, through his own eyes. I saw that though he was brave, he was still frightened of the beauty he’d been given, still unsure of how he’d risen so high, because when he looked in the mirror, he still only saw a simple huntsman. I was sure Lyla would show him otherwise, if he would only let her.

  “Do you know what Lyla’s favorite color is?” I finally asked.

  My heart hurt when he shook his head no.

  “Yellow,” I supplied. “Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “Because she loves the way the sun brightens everything with a single touch,” I explained.

  A short pause.

  Then the prince lowered his head. “I’ve been a fool,” he said simply.

  “You have,” I agreed. “The shadows you hid in are long gone. You may as well leave a mark to be seen.”

  Now it was Prince Daimyon’s turn to study me, and though I wasn’t sure if he had accepted what I’d said, at least I could be sure that he’d listened. He seemed then to notice that night had fallen and there was somewhere we both needed to be. He stepped down from the ledge first so he could offer me his hand to help me after him.

  “Her favorite flowers are lilies, by the way,” I added on our way back to the palace.

  He stopped. “Lilies? They’re funereal.”

  I smiled. “Just like a certain significant moment in her life.”

  We stepped into the dining hall together and went straight to our places, ignoring the curious looks from the others who were already there. When I lowered myself into my seat beside Lyla, she barely leaned over to quietly whisper, “What were you and the prince talking about?”

  “Commoner stuff,” I answered simply.

  “Ella!” she hissed sharply.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” I reassured her, and refused to say anymore.

  Silently, I prayed I was right.

  I knew my work was done when I passed Prince Daimyon that night as I was leaving Lyla’s rooms. He held a modest bouquet of orange-streaked yellow lilies. Honestly, he looked a little scared, and I gave him a warm smile of encouragement. He returned it very tentatively.

  I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself from pressing into the wall around the corner and hiding in the shadows while he knocked on Lyla’s door. Having just seen me out, she was the one to answer his knock.

  “Daimyon?”

  The confusion was plain in her voice.

  “Lyla,” he replied. “I was hoping…I was thinking…we’re always so busy…we need to make time for each other.”

  I didn’t hear her response, but that was because she had pulled him into her rooms and closed the door firmly behind him.

  I didn’t eat much in the months that followed. My small frame rapidly grew even smaller, my eyes sunk in, my skin turned unnaturally pale. I was stuck in a bog of darkness, thick enough to keep my appetite at bay, plus there was also the idea of being poisoned again. At the rate I was going, I would finish the job my unknown assassin had begun.

  I stopped fencing with the captain. Stopped thinking about what I wore. Stopped caring about what my prince thought or how I could make him happy. I became listless, and Princess Lyla tried to help with a constant barrage of letters that ranged from the sympathetic to the outrageous. Javotte was beside herself, ever on the lookout for something, anything that would make me smile. Even the good captain, whenever he could, went out of his way to bring me food from outside the palace, because only he knew the truth about the wine. He’d bring freshly baked rolls and little pastries from the market, anything to coax my appetite back to life. I would eat a little then push the rest away, which did nothing for the worry lines embedding themselves around his eyes.

  Alexander tried to make me laugh, tried to bring me treats and bring me back to myself with his attentions, but it was too late. I hadn’t seen it, but I had known what the mirror had to tell. What did it matter to him if I lived or died?

  Even Sir Percival took to stopping by to ask me about matters of state. I tried my best to engage with him, to continue to prove his newfound trust in me that I may know something about the people I was supposed to rule.

  He once came with an influential individual he introduced as Sir Archivalle, who was “interested in the idea of using the students from our trade school to repair broken roads and bridges throughout the kingdom.” He saw the potential in how this idea could be expanded to all the needs of Laurendale, Sir Percival explained.

  I pulled myself together enough to speak with them about it, a brief spark of energy returning as we spoke of the positive changes we could make. And when they left, I knew that I had finally made my first real ally at court, the beginnings of a network of support that could help me help others.

  After that, and despite Alexander’s protests, I insisted on visiting the building site of the first school about half a day’s ride from the capital multiple times a week. The captain came along
to watch over me, but he didn’t hide the disapproving slant of his lips. Perhaps he knew I would have walked on foot if no one had prepared the carriage, because standing before the slowly rising structure was the only time I felt anything but despondent, the only time I didn’t mind being small only because I was a piece of something bigger.

  I became obsessed with my maps, scouring the towns and topography for ideal school locations, furiously circling the parts of any road that needed strengthened bridges or regular repair. Over and over, I drew thick lines of possible trade routes, pressing so hard my quill often ripped through the paper. Sir Percival had my maps redone on canvas and gave me charcoal to write with instead.

  Most of my information came from Sir Archivalle, who sent me a steady stream of letters about the physical conditions of Laurendale, which he gathered from the vast network of friends he had across the kingdom. He wrote about towns in need of specific craftsmen, about craftsmen who needed new places to work. I reread his letters until the pages wore thin enough to be translucent, and when my husband would try to pry them from me, “You’re driving yourself mad,” I would defiantly tuck them into my pocket, keeping them close, intending to read them again once he’d left.

  Perhaps I really had gone mad, or perhaps the schools were the only things saving me from complete madness. Either way, I needed them desperately, needed to know that I could make a difference in someone else’s life even as mine was falling apart around me. Because I couldn’t think about that fact either, for if I stopped long enough the truth knocked me back, shook my confidence, and drew out rivers of tears for all the things I’d lost.

  Outside in the garden below me, my pear tree continued to wither away. My goldfish bellied up and died.

  I was almost unsurprised when the captain appeared white-faced in my rooms one night, knowing I wouldn’t be asleep, even at this late hour. I was wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a heavily cushioned chair that was so large I always felt it swallowed me up. Buried as such, Sir Archivalle’s letters clenched in my hand, I stared at the fire, entranced by the giddiness with which the flames danced and burned. How could something so destructive, so beneficial be so at peace with itself? Did it never question its own duality?