It was the same ball, held again. In his red tunic and black trousers, the handsome Prince danced one dance with each maiden. Yetiffe could not have sworn to it, but she thought that the few words she and the Prince exchanged were also the same as before, something about the pleasantness of the music, something about the excitement of the ball. “This is a happy night,” the Prince announced, his face turned away from his partner and toward the top of the wide staircase.
When the clock struck only nine, and there were maidens yet to be escorted through a dance by the Prince, the lady was standing in the doorway. She wore the same dress as before. It billowed out like sheets on a line. Her cloud-colored mask was made of the silvery leaves of birches, and the Prince crossed the wide dance floor to take her hand and lead her out among the dancers, and dance with no other as the night went on.
Once again, the lady visited the chairs where Lysette and Yetiffe sat, their mother silent behind them. Of the young couple, it was the lady alone who spoke, for the Prince had no intention of taking his eyes from her even for a moment. She complimented them for the elegance of their dress and asked after the pleasures of their evening. They said, “Thank you, my lady,” and “Yes, my lady.” The lady did not like to be long out of the arms of her Prince, so she didn’t linger in conversation, and they were none the wiser about her, for all of the attentions she had paid them.
Others, however, didn’t know this. Lysette’s dance card filled with partners, as did Yetiffe’s. They sat down to the midnight supper within a circle of admirers, all beseeching them to tell what they knew of the lady, all bemoaning the sisters’ discreet tongues. Yetiffe and Lysette were too busy and happy to attend to anything else, so it was news of their own conquests they carried home to the stepsister, who waited up for them with hot mulled wine and carried away their worn dancing slippers. It was she who told them, the next day, about the lady.
The stepsister brought news back from the market. The hog butcher had told her how the lady had once again disappeared, long before dawn ended the ball, the greengrocer thought before supper was served; this was what his wife had heard. The baker predicted that the Prince would not wait more than two weeks for another ball. The milkman’s sister’s sister-in-law worked in the palace kitchen and he reported that the King and Queen were almost as distraught as their son, fearing as they did that the lady might be the Queen of the Fairies, the old stories brought to life, and their son might already be lost to them forever.
“Two weeks! How will my gown ever be ready in that time? Will our stepfather forbid us new dresses? How would it be if I wore a golden gown?” Lysette asked. “I am the older,” she said.
“Mine will be silver as moonlight,” Yetiffe answered. “The skirt sewn with pearls, like dew in moonlight.”
But the Stepfather refused to buy the pearls. “Fabric—and fine fabrics, lace also—and another set of dancing slippers,” he said, “those you may have. But no more jewels. You’ll bankrupt me,” he said, from where he filled the doorway to the salon. So the stepsister sewed tiny white pebbles into the skirt instead. Where she found them, Yetiffe didn’t know.
“You are so clever,” Yetiffe told the stepsister. “I never want to be parted from you, you are so clever. And pretty, too,” she added. “Although there are those who say your face lacks character.” Yetiffe had never had so heavy a skirt. All would wish to have a gown like hers, once they had seen her. It was almost a queen’s skirt she wore.
Not that Yetiffe dreamed that the Prince loved her. But a prince could not always choose to wed the she he loved, even though whoever a prince wed would be the queen.
They drove off to the ball on a warm evening, just as the sun was slipping behind the clouds at earth’s end. The gentle golden light shone on the white feathery bellies of the doves that rose up in alarm in the courtyard, so loud did the horses’ hooves clatter. The doves rose up in a wave around the carriage, like sea foam stirred by the wind.
The mysterious lady came on time to that ball, which itself opened impatiently early. Her mask was made of the petals of white roses, their edges tinged with a pale pink. She wore the same gown she had worn twice before, as white as the soft bellies of doves.
This time she spoke only with the Prince and he only with her. They stood and talked more than they danced, he tall and strong, she slender and graceful. They laughed, for all to see, and leaned toward each other. They were watched by all.
Not all who watched watched in envy. Some watched in worry. The guards and ministers were never all that far from the young couple, nor did the King and Queen relax their vigilance. All of the guests, too, watched closely, for the third is the well-known charm, and the fairies, especially, practice charms. But these guards did not keep the Prince close, for two reasons. The first was that he would not tolerate it; so that, for example, when the Prince and the masked lady stepped outside to walk along the balustrade, guards followed them to the opened French doors but remained within. The second reason for maintaining distance was this: The lady had, on the previous occasions, danced until the supper was being set out on the tables. In the first hours of the ball, then, she would remain at the Prince’s side.
Except, of course, when she must be excused from the company, to do that which every living creature needs to do. The Prince bent his head to hear her request; that, Yetiffe could see. Yetiffe was near enough to see pink rise into the Prince’s cheek at the lady’s question and guess what it must be, before her partner whirled her away. To her chagrin, it was Lysette—partnerless for the gavotte and so able to watch events with her full attention—who could report what happened next. The Prince walked at the lady’s side up the staircase, and at its top gestured with his arm to point her in the direction she should go, to reach the room she sought. He stood waiting. Now he was watching her when no one else could any longer see her.
Then he stiffened where he stood.
Then he ran off. If he called out, the music buried his voice as he ran. It took the guards a full minute to notice that he was gone, and themselves surge up the long flight of stairs after him.
The King and Queen had by that time risen from their thrones in alarm.
Abruptly, the music ceased.
The dancers froze in place.
Into an echoing silence the Prince returned, holding in his hand a dancing slipper of pure glass, his face as pale and lifeless as the shoe. At a signal from the King, the musicians struck up the sprightly piece again.
Yetiffe almost wished to leave the ball then, so she could see the stepsister’s eyes widen at this new development. Except that the lady had not on this occasion singled them out and made them the envy of the room, she might have pleaded a headache and been taken home, where she could speak confidingly to her stepsister. “How I wish you had been there to actually be a part of the excitement. How you would have liked to have seen her, and how he looked at her, and how his heart was broken, as any fool could see in his face.” But Yetiffe didn’t leave the ball. There were captains and lieutenants in need of partners, and ministers’ sons, and lords come in from the countryside for the occasion. There was news to hear and pass on, for soon everyone knew the Prince’s plan.
He would send the glass slipper to every house. His lady alone had feet small enough to fit into the glass slipper, and she alone was his chosen wife.
Yetiffe did not tell her thoughts then, not to anyone. The glass slipper was set out, for all to see, and she stared at it where it stood on its blue silk cushion, as if she wished later to draw it from memory. She held it in the palm of her hand. Only she and Lysette dared to handle the slipper so intimately; they were the only ones to whom the lady had spoken. Except for the Prince, of course.
The lady had, of course, spoken to the prince at great length.
But she had spoken to no other, unless you counted her curtsy and “Good evening, sir, good evening, madam,” to the King and Queen. Yetiffe didn’t count that. She made her plan.
To be princess
, and later queen, was to be someone all must admire, and from whom all must welcome any attentions, however small. To be princess was to be picked out, set upon a high place while the people cheered from below. To be queen set you above sister, and mother too, and even aristocratic father were he still living, over even all men in the kingdom, excepting always the King.
Few would be your equal in the whole world.
That night Yetiffe did not sleep. She lay on her bed until all four stories of the Stepfather’s house grew still. She listened for long minutes after the dark silence had settled into the house, moving slowly as a sun pulling light down into the western sky.
Was that the wind? making the shutters creak like a thief on the stairs. Was that a thief? knowing that whatever jewels a rich household possessed would be laid out in the mistress’s chamber on the night of the ball. Yetiffe pulled the bedclothes up over her head, making a safe velvet darkness within the forbidding blackness of night.
Later—she did not think she had slept—there was what sounded like an owl’s cry, or a rabbit’s. Yetiffe crept out of bed then, and opened her window to a starry night. She slid the soft linen cover from her fat feather pillow and took out her scissors, to make long linen strips. She took a slim stick out of the wood box and wrapped one of the linen strips around it. She crept down the stairs to the starlit kitchen, where coals still burned hot in the fireplace, and as she hacked off her thick, bony heel, she bit down hard on the stick. Any sound might awaken the house and it was secrecy she counted on for the working out of her plan. The silence trembled all around her, but it did not shatter. It was not long before she could crawl back up the staircase—which creaked only once—and back up into her high bed, where she wrapped her foot in linen strips and feverishly awaited the day, and the Prince.
It was only messengers who came to the door, however, bearing a glass slipper. This looked to be the exact same dancing slipper they had seen the night before, so—when they had said yes, there were two unmarried daughters of the house—Yetiffe was shocked when Lysette’s right foot slipped easily into the dainty shoe.
It was the right slipper that had been left behind.
“Ah,” the messenger said. “Have you the mate?”
Lysette, pale, almost speechless, shook her head and whispered, “No. Shattered, smashed.” To Yetiffe, Lysette seemed somehow altered, but Yetiffe herself felt icy hot, and weak as a woman after childbirth, not herself. And now this shocking thing, Lysette’s foot fitting into the glass slipper that would be worn by the Prince’s bride, who would be the Queen, and all would be her inferiors.
A sister, however, would be closer to the Queen than any other lady of the Kingdom, and so Yetiffe said not a word as Lysette rose to her feet, both of her hands clutching the messenger’s arm.
Lysette’s smile was proud, and she breathed in a hissing breath as she looked back at her sister and their mother, and the Stepfather. She walked awkwardly and Yetiffe thought she knew why. Lysette was no more the masked lady of the Prince’s heart than she was.
In the doorway, Lysette stumbled, clutched at her escort’s arm, took two steps, tottered onto the sidewalk, and fell down in a faint. Everyone gasped, rushed near, carried her inside, called for water, called for a doctor, said no doctor was necessary, it was only exhaustion from the ball and excitement of this event. The stepsister held a crystal bowl of cool water to Lysette’s lips while their mother held Lysette’s head elevated against her shoulder.
Lysette moaned.
So Yetiffe knelt down and pulled off the glass slipper. She pulled the lacy stocking down her sister’s right leg and down over her sister’s right foot. This revealed five stumps, one broader than the others and one as tiny as a baby’s knuckle. The stumps were as black as those wounds a surgeon has cauterized, and they oozed black blood.
Yetiffe pushed her own right foot into the glass slipper, and stood up.
Held the foot out to show the messenger.
Who failed to offer her his arm.
Stepped back from her, in fact.
Away. Up. Screams in the hall. The floor rose like a wave. Slammed like a door.
She wept, and the stepsister wiped her poor right foot with water and wrapped it tightly in her own clean petticoat, which she ripped out from under her skirts with no thought for the messenger’s presence. In her hand the stepsister held the glass slipper, now smeared with red blood at its heel and black with blood at its toe.
“What have you done, my daughters?” their mother wept.
“The disgrace!” cried the Stepfather.
“Give it to me, girl,” the messenger said to the stepsister, but she did not obey. She put her own right foot into the glass slipper, without rising from her place beside Yetiffe on the floor where Yetiffe lay with a cushion under her head, which flamed. The stepsister brought the slipper’s mate out from under her apron, and put that one on her left foot.
The messenger knelt before her, as if to a queen.
The stepsister turned to Yetiffe. “I didn’t mean . . . ,” she said.
“I never thought . . . ,” she said to Lysette.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and she was weeping. She knew that they were foolish, and vain, and greedy, and had no kindness for her, but she had always known that, long before she went unbidden to the ball. Her grief when they buried Yetiffe was sharp; her sorrow lasted a long time.
After she had married the Prince, with Lysette as an attendant who, although she could never dance again because of her maimed right foot, could move at a stately pace in the bridal procession, the stepsister invited Lysette to live with her in the palace until such time as she herself should wed, which, in due course, she did, to a privy minister. Lysette had her own salon then, where significant talk—of statecraft and diplomacy, economics and sometimes poetry or painting—was the order of the evenings, to which only a select few were summoned. Never was the name of poor, foolish Yetiffe mentioned, who did not know enough to cauterize a wound. Often, it was not possible to include the dear Prince and the dear Princess in these gatherings. Lysette and her husband were in constant attendance at the palace, however, their presence requested for every occasion, from the birthday parties of the little princes and princesses to the most formal receptions for visiting royalties. No occasion would be the same without her, the young Queen frequently remarked, and Lysette did not disagree.
CORNELIA FUNKE
ROSANNA
Rosanna had an admirer, and he was the strongest boy in her class. Every day after school he would wait exactly where Rosanna took the shortcut through the meadows and he would threaten to hit her if she didn’t give him a kiss right away—on the mouth, of course.
Rosanna did not feel like kissing the thug, but she also did not want to give up on her wonderful shortcut.
So she said, “Go away, you meatball, or I will get my big brother. He is much stronger than you. He’ll need just one hand to throw you into the stingy nettles.”
Sadly, that fattest of all fat lies did not impress the beefcake at all.
“Yeah, right, sugarface,” he said with a nasty grin. “You don’t even have a big brother.”
And Rosanna, her face burning, had no choice but to turn around and walk the long and terribly boring way back home.
For Rosanna did actually have an older brother, but he was completely useless as a defender. His name was Boris and he was exactly one inch shorter than Rosanna. He was also as thin as a straw and more frightened than a rabbit. It really was enough to drive anyone up the wall!
She could do nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Until one morning, when she saw an advertisement on the back page of the newspaper her father was, as usual, holding up in front of her nose during breakfast: “Professor Ferdinand Flimfaker makes your lies come true,” it said clearly in fat print. And beneath, a little smaller, was an address.
So Rosanna stuffed all her savings into her pockets, and after school she set off. Professor
Flimfaker lived in a house behind the park, right up on the highest floor. Rosanna counted 123 steps until she finally stood in front of his apartment door. There was no buzzer, just a big iron ring that Rosanna barely managed to reach, even when she stood on her toes. She knocked the iron ring against the door. Dong-dong, it echoed through the stairwell.
The door opened and a tall, thin man looked down at Rosanna with a smile.
“I saw your ad in the newspaper,” she said.
“Oh yes?” the professor said. “And what kind of lie did you come to see me about? Emergency lie, bragging lie, schoolreport lie, consolation lie . . .”
“I’d say a protection lie,” Rosanna answered.
“Ah!” said the professor. “Those are the most interesting kind. Please, come in.”
He led Rosanna into a room with two green chairs standing next to a table with a lightbulb in the middle. Underneath the table lay a bright yellow dragon.
“Don’t let him disturb you,” the professor said. “He’s one of my lies, very friendly, and mostly very tired.” The dragon opened one eye. Rosanna sat down and told the professor about her problem.
“Goodness me, that really is quite a brazen fellow!” he said. “But you know, the lie about the big brother is used quite often and it only works very rarely. I am guessing you don’t have a big brother, do you?”
“I do!” Rosanna said with a sigh. “But he is not strong at all and not a bit violent.”
“Hmm, I understand,” the professor said. “There is no problem making your lie come true, then, but are you sure you really want such a strong and aggressive brother?”
“Of course!” Rosanna called out.
What You Wish For Page 14