by Lindsey Kelk
‘He’s in trouble with me,’ her mother replied. ‘Imagine sending everyone in the entire kingdom home early and without so much as a thank-you for coming. Frère Jacques came all the way from France! And for what? A couple of hours of dancing and a slice of sub-par cake? I don’t know, the prince has proven himself to be quite the spoiled young man.’
Inside, Cinders wriggled out of Aggy’s pink dress, threw the towel down on the floor and ran as fast as she could to her tiny little cupboard of a bedroom, clutching her mother’s glass slipper to her chest. The old wooden door stuck on its hinges, protesting with a loud creak as she tried her hardest to crack it open.
‘Now, now, Margery,’ Cinders’s father said as his keys jingle-jangled in the lock. ‘Prince Joderick is a fine young man. Imagine being presented with a room full of people you’ve never met and being told to pick one to live with for the rest of your life. That’s not how love works, my dear.’
‘Who’s talking about love?’ Margery retorted. ‘I’m talking about marriage.’
‘You old romantic,’ Cinders’s father chuckled. ‘Why don’t you make us some hot chocolate while I go and check on my alleged little gatecrasher? And, for the record, I thought the cake was marvellous.’
Beginning to panic, the gatecrasher in question pushed and pushed and PUSHED on the door, but it just wouldn’t budge.
‘I’m telling you, Mama,’ Aggy wailed, ‘the prince definitely said her name!’
‘Then I’ll be popping in to say goodnight to an empty bed,’ her father replied. ‘Don’t be so silly, Agnes.’
At that second, Cinders’s door flew open and she hurled herself under the covers just in time for her father to poke his head into her room.
‘There’s my little princess,’ he said softly, leaning down to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. ‘I knew it. Thank goodness you weren’t there this evening. What an absolute palaver.
What a palaver indeed, Cinders thought as she rolled over with a smile on her face. Still holding her mother’s shoe, she fell fast asleep to dreams of brownies and horse-mice and a night full to the brim with adventure.
Back at the palace, Prince Joderick wasn’t having nearly as nice a night as Cinders.
‘It’s a disgrace!’ the king shouted, striding up and down the throne room.
‘A disgrace,’ agreed the queen.
‘You’ve made a mockery of the crown!’ the king bellowed.
‘A mockery,’ the queen echoed.
‘The whole kingdom must be wondering what is wrong with you!’ the king cried.
‘The whole kingdom,’ the queen sighed.
‘If I might interrupt for just a sec,’ Joderick interrupted. ‘The thing is I really didn’t want to dance with anyone at the ball. They all just seemed a bit …’ He paused and considered his mother’s pink ruffled gown and enormous white wig. ‘They weren’t for me.’
‘I really don’t care,’ the king replied. ‘If you don’t choose someone to marry by midsummer’s eve, you’ll have to marry the Princess of Fairyland and then where will we be?’
‘Where will we be?’ the queen repeated.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Joderick sat down slowly, scratching his head. ‘I’ll have to marry who?’
The king took to his throne and removed his crown, turning it round in his hands and inspecting the diamonds and rubies set within.
‘Long ago, we were at war with the fairies and there was no way we could win,’ he explained. ‘They have terrible powers, my son – what wicked little things they are. All claws and teeth and spindly legs, obsessed with cakes and shiny things, and always using magic against us. But your clever great-great-grandfather made a pact with the King of Fairyland to get rid of them once and for all.’
Joderick’s eyes opened wide. Since he was a boy, his nannies and mannies had told him stories of the fairies, but he just thought they were making them up. He’d never seen a fairy and truly believed they didn’t exist. In the stories he’d been told, fairies were tricksy, deceitful creatures. Legend said some of them could fly, some of them could disappear and some of them had even been known to eat people. It was enough to make him long for a bowl of Brussels sprouts.
‘Fairies are real?’ Joderick asked, swallowing a lump in his throat.
‘I’m afraid so,’ the king confirmed. ‘They agreed our lands could live in harmony provided the firstborn son of every king in this realm would marry a fairy of their choosing on midsummer’s eve. Once the pact was made, the fairies were forbidden to cross beyond the Dark Mountains and, after a while, everyone in our kingdom forgot they were there.’
‘But you’re not married to a fairy,’ Joderick pointed out. ‘And I’m fairly certain you’re the first son of the first son of the first son of your great-grandfather.’
‘Actually, I’m the first son of the first son of the second son,’ said the king. ‘My grandfather was a second son. His older brother married a fairy and was never seen again.’
Joderick scratched his head, frowning, trying to figure out the family tree.
‘Which is why you need to choose someone from this kingdom and you need to do it now,’ his father insisted. ‘There is a way out – as my own father discovered. If you’re already married before midsummer’s eve, then you don’t have to marry one of those tricksy fairies.’
‘Oh, can you imagine?’ The queen pressed her hand to her forehead. ‘What if one of them were to come and live in the palace? Or, even worse, you had to go and live in Fairyland?’
‘And that’s what would happen,’ the king confirmed as the queen began to sob. ‘As it did to my grandfather’s brother, and his uncle before him. You would have to leave the kingdom and never, ever come back. You’d spend the rest of your life in the dark, dangerous place beyond the mountains and, let me tell you, no amount of horse riding could prepare you for a thing like that. It might not sound like it but Fairyland is a fearsome place, my son, and I won’t let them take you away.’
Joderick straightened his crown with a gulp. ‘When you put it like that, I suppose we’d better find me someone to marry.’Clapping his hands together, the king leaped to his feet and two pages appeared instantly, carrying a very, very, very long scroll. And a laptop.
‘This is a list of every eligible person who attended the ball,’ explained the king, logging on to the computer. ‘I’ve got their names and addresses and, on the scroll there, a humorous caricature, which, I must admit, was my idea.’ He chuckled. ‘Some of these are very good. Those ears!’ He coughed. ‘Um. Anyway, my son, tell me. Who caught your eye this evening?’
The prince thought long and hard. He had met so many people that it was hard to remember them all. But there was one who had immediately sprung to mind.
‘I didn’t find out her last name,’ Joderick said slowly, ‘but I did meet a girl underneath the salad station.’
‘Oh, the scandal,’ the king gasped as the queen fainted.
‘Her name was Cinders,’ Joderick added, pulling a glass slipper out of his rather large pocket. ‘She left this behind when she disappeared. She was really funny and she liked my baking. I wouldn’t mind marrying her.’
‘I really don’t care!’ the king whooped, and he waved to the pages who immediately began scanning the scroll for a Cinders. ‘As long as you’re married by midsummer’s eve and she’s not a fairy, she’s all right by me.’
The prince looked on as his father scooped his mother up in his arms and began to dance her all round the throne room.
By this time tomorrow, Joderick would be engaged and the entire kingdom would rejoice.
So why wasn’t he feeling happier about the whole situation?
‘Joderick, my son.’ The king was exasperated. ‘Are you quite sure of the name?’
‘Cinders.’ Joderick nodded. ‘Short for Cinderella.’
The king, the prince, their royal guard, three dozen pages and a hundred and one soldiers had been searching the length and breadth of the kingdom for three lo
ng days, and so far they’d found nothing.
They were riding through a clearing, Joderick on a pony and his father on a magnificent charger. Beautiful sunlight dappled the forest floor, yet there was nothing sunny about the king’s expression.
‘But there isn’t a single person in the land called Cinders or Cinderella and, according to our records, there never has been,’ the king said with a sigh. ‘Every single baby born within my realm is required to be presented to the royal family and added to the register to stop any of those fanciful fairies from sneaking across our borders uninvited.’
The horses stopped, and the king swung himself down from the saddle, kicking at a tussock in frustration.
‘She definitely wasn’t a fairy,’ Joderick argued. ‘She didn’t have wings, sharp fangs or creepy claws. She was a real human girl.’
‘Then why haven’t we found her?’ the king said as his horse wandered off the track to drink at a stream. ‘And what kind of person loses a shoe? I’m starting to think you’re making this girl up. It’s almost as if you want to marry one of those terrible fairies.’
Through the trees, Joderick spotted a thin stream of smoke coming from a pink brick chimney.
He remembered what Cinders had said. ‘My pink cottage in the forest …’
‘This way!’ Joderick called, pulling his pony round and charging off through the trees. ‘I think I know where she is!’
Cinders, meanwhile, was slowly making her way back from the well, with Sparks close at hand, when she heard all the commotion. She always took her time when bringing water back to the cottage. There were always interesting things to see in the woods and she was still hoping Brian might show her face again. Ever since the ball, Cinders hadn’t been able to make a single wish come true, no matter how hard she tried.
Was Sparks right? Was it to do with how hard she wished? With how much she wanted the thing she was wishing for?
That didn’t make sense, though, because she really wished Brian would come and explain this all and it wasn’t happening. Magic, it turned out, was complicated.
She slowed. The garden in front of the cottage was full of people. The yard behind the cottage was full of people. Some were wearing big black furry hats and others were wearing red-and-gold uniforms, and right in the middle were two men with crowns on top of their heads.
‘Is it me,’ Sparks said, slowing down until he had almost stopped, ‘or does that look an awful lot like the king and Prince Joderick?’
‘It does rather,’ Cinders agreed. ‘Whatever could they be doing at my house?’
‘I’d like to say they’ve just stopped by to say hello, but that seems rather unlikely,’ he replied. ‘Maybe we should make a run for it.’
But it was too late.
‘There she is!’
Margery, eyes as wide as the dinner plates Cinders had not washed that morning, came running down the lane and grabbed her stepdaughter by the arm.
‘We have her, Your Highness!’ she bellowed to the king before leaning in to whisper in Cinders’s ear. ‘Whatever you’ve been up to, you’re for it now, you little madam.’
‘But I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Cinders protested, not entirely sure it was true. Sparks kept close to her, growling as they approached the royal party.
‘It’s all right, my little princess,’ her father reassured her, even though from the look on his face things were far from all right.
‘This is the one, is it?’ the king said, eyeing her up and down. ‘The one you met at the ball? You’re positive?’
‘I think so,’ Joderick said, squinting at the messy girl with ratty hair.
She did look really quite different to the girl he remembered.
‘You’d better make sure,’ the king said, as clearly Joderick was not sure about this at all. ‘Because there are a lot of people in the kingdom, son. People who know how to wear clean clothes and curtsey to their king when he appears in their very own garden. Your mother tells me Belle broke up with the Beast, so she’s available, but who knows for how long? Good-looking girl like that, decent pedigree, won’t stay single.’
Cinders felt a soft bonk on the top of her head.
‘Curtsey,’ her stepmother ordered, a big, broad smile pasted across her face. ‘Now.’
‘But I can’t curtsey,’ Cinders reminded her. ‘I always fall over.’
‘Try,’ Margery hissed.
‘Can someone please explain what’s going on?’ Cinders asked as she folded herself over into a curtsey. ‘Why are you all here?’
Then she fell over. She picked herself up again, cheeks turning hot and red.
Prince Joderick hurried off to his horse and rummaged around in his saddlebag for a moment. When he turned round, he was holding something in his hands. Something small, pointy and sparkly.
‘My shoe!’ Cinders gasped. Her missing glass slipper.
‘She was at the ball,’ said Aggy.
‘Oh, good detective work,’ said Margery sarcastically.
The prince held up the glass slipper. ‘I, Joderick Jorenson Picklebottom, crown prince of this realm, do declare that whomever this shoe should fit, will sit beside me on the throne.’
Cinders stared at him, unimpressed.
‘Um, you’re supposed to try on the shoe,’ Joderick whispered to Cinders. ‘To find out if it’s yours.’
‘But it’s already mine,’ she replied. ‘I don’t need to try it on. I know it fits.’
‘Yes, but you’re supposed to try it on so everyone else can see,’ Joderick explained. ‘It was Mum’s idea. To make it seem more exciting for the media, and less like you’re just, um, a commoner. I mean, not that I think of you as a commoner. But you are. A commoner. Sorry. And then we can get married!’
Cinders stared at the assembled crowd. Elly and Aggy were glaring at their stepsister, her father was beaming with happiness, Margery’s mouth hung open in shock and the king, well, he appeared to be checking his elf phone.
A photographer hovered nearby, ready to get a shot of Cinders trying on the shoe.
‘Can I not just have the shoe?’ Cinders asked. ‘Without the married part?’
‘Give it to me!’ Margery yelled, grabbing the slipper and jamming it on to Cinders’s bare foot. ‘Look! It fits! Yes! I’m going to be mother to a princess!’
‘Stepmother,’ Aggy hissed.
‘Hurrah, yippee, etcetera,’ the king said. ‘Pack up her things and get them to the palace. We’ve got a wedding to plan pronto.’
At once, Elly and Aggy burst into tears.
‘But Cinders wasn’t even supposed to be at the ball!’ Aggy complained.
‘And I don’t want her to leave!’ Elly whined.
But their mother couldn’t have cared less. She had always dreamed of one of her daughters marrying the prince. All those riches, all those jewels. It was all she’d ever wanted. And as soon as she was gone she was going to turn Cinders’s room into a yoga studio.
‘Don’t pack up anything! I don’t want to live in the palace,’ Cinders protested, hobbling away from the prince, one foot in a glass slipper. ‘I want to stay here with my dad.’
‘The prince can’t very well come and live here, can he?’ the king replied, waving dismissively at the little pink cottage. ‘You haven’t even got a moat.’
‘We’ll build a moat!’ Margery shrieked, apparently determined to see Cinders married off. ‘Elly! Aggy! Get digging!’
‘Stop!’ Cinders yelled as her sisters grabbed a pair of shovels. ‘You’re not listening! I don’t want to move to the palace and I don’t want to marry the prince!’
One hundred soldiers, three dozen pages, the royal guard, Elly, Aggy, her father, her stepmother and the king himself all gasped.
‘What do you mean you don’t want to marry the prince?’ the king bellowed. ‘It’s not a request – it’s an order!’
‘I know you didn’t have a good time at the ball,’ Joderick said, getting down on one knee, ‘but it would be differe
nt if you lived at the palace. We’ll have so much fun. And, when you’re not in the mood for an adventure, you can read in the library or play in the grounds. Sometimes. When the groundskeepers aren’t around. And I’ll bake you brownies every single day. You’ll be so happy, Cinders, I promise.’
Cinders considered this for a moment. They were very good brownies and Joderick was, as far as boys went, pretty okay. And when she really thought about it she couldn’t help but feel that living at the palace would be an awfully big adventure.
‘Dad –’ she turned to face her father – ‘what do you think I should do?’
‘You should do what feels right,’ he told her with a tear in his eye. ‘Your mother always wanted me to keep you away from the palace. Worried about you getting your head turned, or some such. But. Well. She’s not here, is she?’
‘No, she’s not,’ said Cinders softly. She turned. ‘Would I have to wear a ballgown?’ she asked Joderick.
‘Sometimes,’ the prince replied, ‘but only on special occasions.’
‘Can I bring my dog?’ she asked. ‘And my horse?’
‘You most certainly can,’ the prince replied. ‘I love dogs and horses.’
‘And if you don’t go,’ her stepmother said, smiling like a shark, ‘you’ll have to stay here with me and do chores every day. In fact, I bet we could even think of some new ones to take your mind off making such a huge mistake.’
‘Can you give me two minutes to pack my bag?’ Cinders asked the prince.
Joderick smiled, Margery clapped and, louder than ever, Elly and Aggy continued to cry.
‘Now you’re going to be everyone’s princess,’ her father said, pulling her in for a big hug. ‘Just promise me you’ll try to behave.’
‘I promise,’ she said, wiping away a tear.
‘Speaking of which, any ideas why one of our horses keeps trying to nibble a hole in the stable wall? And squeaking?’
‘Um, no, none,’ said Cinders.