Straw into Gold

by Hilary McKay

  “Petal?” whispered the hob.

  “My mother,” said the boy, and rubbed away a tear.

  “She’s gone?” asked the hob.

  The boy nodded. “She used to sing to me,” he said.

  “She had a voice sweet as a bird, did Petal,” said the hob.

  “The straw into gold. And your name. She was sorry. She told me where to find you. I promised her I would. She wanted you to know she was sorry that she tricked you.”

  “No matter,” said the hob, his heart thumping with gladness. “No matter. She sang to you. That’s what you must remember.”

  The boy lifted his head and looked around him.

  “I used to dream dreams of a place like this. There was music there too.”

  “That’d be the wind in the reedbeds,” said the hob.

  So the afternoon passed. The hob and his boy sat together contentedly until the air grew cold. Then they built a fire of driftwood and it burned with small blue flames while above them, one by one, the stars opened like blossoms in the painted evening sky.

  The Roses Round the Palace

  or

  Cinderella

  There was the Prince, dark-haired and tall, intelligent and rich. He was a most royal prince; his blood was bright blue, and his throne was bright gold, and his crown was bright with rubies and sapphires and emeralds. Naturally he lived in a palace with gilded turrets and diamond-paned windows and banners streaming in the wind. Also roses, climbing the old stone walls to the balconies, with a smell so sweet that on still summer nights the scent rolled down the hill and over the little river and bathed the town in perfume.

  There were many, many royal princesses who would have liked to marry the Prince.

  There was Buttons, the palace bootboy, a great grumbler who said that the Prince made him feel shivery and the roses made him sneeze.

  And there was Cinderella. But hardly anyone knew about her, as she lived so hidden away.

  Cinderella lived in a great dark kitchen at the bottom of a tall, narrow house. The kitchen was all flagstones and beetles and cobwebby rafters. At one end a heavy old door led into a little stone yard. At the other end was a fireplace as large as a cave. Steep steps came down from the rooms above. In those rooms lived Cinderella’s family: her stepmother and stepsisters. Her own mother was dead, and her father’s business had been in a city far away, until it failed. He had never understood that it failed. He stayed in the city, old and ill, with a memory like a dying fire. Sometimes, rarer and rarer times, it flamed into life, and he remembered he had a child named Cinderella. Then he came home and crept carefully down the steps into the kitchen to put his shaky old hand on Cinderella’s brown silk hair and whisper, “My dear. My dearest.”

  Those times were so precious to Cinderella that they were worth the long gray stretches in between.

  During the gray times, Cinderella would go for whole weeks without seeing her stepmother or stepsisters. She didn’t mind a bit. She could hear them, and she thought that was more than enough. Their sharp, greedy voices called down the stairs, “Cinderella! Cinderella! CinderELLA! Pulley! Be quick!”

  The pulley was a creaky old thing that swayed on ropes up and down a long shaft between the kitchen and the rest of the house. Cinderella, at intervals during the day, would load it with such things as breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea and cakes, dinner, late supper, snacks and nibbles. Also ironed gowns, clean stockings, polished shoes, shining candlesticks, filled log baskets, loaded coal buckets, and a hundred other things.

  In return, down to the kitchen would come empty dishes, grubby boots, tumbled bags of supplies from the market, and bundles of laundry, all to be dealt with by Cinderella as quickly as possible.

  “You should run off,” advised Buttons, but Cinderella shook her head. She had nowhere to run to, and no shoes to run in, only tatty thin slippers with her toes peeping out of them. And anyway, her father might come back.

  “You could leave him a message,” said Buttons, who had never met Cinderella’s father.

  “They’d never tell him.”

  “Write it down.”

  “His eyes find reading hard these days.”

  “You’ll just have to wait, then,” said Buttons, “until something turns up.”

  “That’s what I think too,” said Cinderella cheerfully.

  Meanwhile, things were not so bad, because Cinderella, as well as being very brave and very pretty, was very good at being happy with very small things. She admired the square of blue sky that made a roof to her little stone yard, and she enjoyed the flickering light on the rafters when the fire was alight in the hearth. On washing days she blew bubbles with soap suds and sent them sailing into the wind; on baking days she made braided loaves and pastry roses; and every day she threw crumbs to the sparrows that waited on the doorstep.

  It made no difference that when her stepmother and stepsisters caught her at these things they were dreadfully angry.

  “Waste of bread!” they said, about the sparrows and the crumbs.

  “Waste of soap!” they cried, about the bubbles.

  “Waste of time!” they complained, about the braided loaves and pastry roses. “And it uses too much flour.”

  Then the sparrows were chased away, and various methods of making Cinderella uncomfortable were invented, such as taking away the small kitchen rocking chair or the faded quilt that covered her bed in the alcove. Cinderella put up with the punishments quite calmly and did not stop blowing bubbles or making pastry roses or feeding the sparrows.

  “It’s worth it,” she told Buttons, when he climbed the yard wall to visit her.

  “You could give up the baking,” said Buttons.

  “Baking keeps me warm,” said Cinderella.

  “Well then, the sparrows.”

  “What, and leave them hungry?”

  “Then the bubbles,” said Buttons.

  “The first bubbles I ever blew flew over the wall and you saw them. Don’t you remember how you followed them back to the kitchen door?”

  “With the Prince’s boots,” said Buttons.

  “All muddy in a sack!” remembered Cinderella. “And you were going to swish them in the river to try and get them clean!”

  “Well, how was I to know what to do with boots?” asked Buttons.

  “Lucky for you that I knew!” said Cinderella, smiling. And Buttons, although he didn’t really approve of cheerfulness, had to agree. It had been lucky, and it still was lucky, because ever since that first day as a bootboy to the Prince he had brought a sack of the royal boots with him when he visited Cinderella. He didn’t like polishing on his own, he said, and since Cinderella was so good at it, they did it together, Buttons doing the left boots, and Cinderella the right ones, and then all the extra left ones that Buttons hadn’t finished, because she was by far the fastest at polishing.

  And some people might have thought it wasn’t fair, that Cinderella should have to do such a large amount of Buttons’s work, as well as her own, but:

  “It’s worth it,” said Cinderella.

  It was worth it, because with Buttons came all the news from the palace, from the banners above the turrets to the roses around the walls.

  “Blooming things!” said Buttons. “And the Prince never leaves them alone! He pushes them on people; that’s what he does! This morning he heaved down a great bunch and shoved them up me nose! ‘Look!’ he says. ‘Ruby red!’ ”

  “Oh, how gorgeous!”

  “ ‘Smell!’ he orders. ‘Perfumes of paradise!’ ”

  “Lucky, lucky Buttons!” murmured Cinderella.

  “ ‘Touch!’ he tells me. ‘Satin and silk!’ ”

  “Mmm,” sighed Cinderella.

  “And the next thing I know,” said Buttons indignantly, “there was a thorn!”

  “Well, roses have thorns.”

  “Jabbed in my thumb!”

  “But satin and silk!” remembered Cinderella.

  “Stabbed!” said Butto
ns. “Agony!”

  “But perfumes of paradise!” said Cinderella.

  “And actual blood!”

  “Ruby red!” said Cinderella. “Poor Buttons, but wasn’t it worth it?”

  “They make me sneeze, and he gives me the shivers,” said poor gloomy Buttons. “Him and his roses. He laughed at my thumb.”

  “Laughed?”

  “Well, smiled. Bloodthirsty, I call it!”

  “Poor Buttons,” said Cinderella, and to cheer him up she carefully unwound the bandage on his thumb and looked for the place where the thorn had been. It was not easy to see, even when Buttons stood in the sun and pointed to the exact agonizing spot.

  “He’s daft about those roses,” said Buttons. “He loves them.”

  “So would I,” said Cinderella.

  “He’s worst about the red ones.”

  “Are there other colors?”

  “They start off snow white, but he doesn’t like that. And some of them’s blue . . .”

  “Blue?”

  “An ’orrible blue, like a bruise, but the Prince puts gloves on and weeds them out. Sighing and groaning.”

  “Oh, the poor Prince!”

  “Poor! The Prince!” scoffed Buttons, repacking his bag with polished boots. “You’ll see how poor he is on Friday!”

  “How will I see on Friday?”

  “At the palace ball!”

  “There’s to be a palace ball?”

  For one long moment Cinderella’s heart stopped beating.

  “Everybody knows he has to find a wife—and that’s how they find ’em, princes: at balls,” continued Buttons, not noticing Cinderella’s suddenly pale cheeks. “All the town’s invited, but no princesses! That’s the Prince’s orders! ‘None of those blue-blood royals,’ he says.

  “I’ve had all the invitations to give out. Here’s yours!” Then, to Cinderella’s utter amazement, Buttons reached into the boot sack and pulled out a large ruby-red envelope, scented with roses, and addressed to her in gold ink. And while Cinderella was still staring, he wound the bandage back around his thumb, picked up his sack, and hopped off over the wall.

  “Buttons!” cried Cinderella. “Buttons! Come back!”

  Buttons’s head popped back over the wall.

  “I can’t go, Buttons!”

  “Why ever not?” asked Buttons, rather indignantly.

  “I haven’t got anything to wear!”

  “That’s what all the girls say,” said Buttons. “Every single one I give an invitation to.”

  “And then what happens?” asked Cinderella.

  “They rush to the shops,” said Buttons simply.

  “Oh,” said Cinderella. “Oh well, never mind. Thank you for the lovely invitation. I’ll keep it always. You do see that I can’t rush to the shops, don’t you, Buttons?”

  Buttons looked at Cinderella, at her tatty slippers, her empty pockets, her brave eager smile and her wide blue eyes, and he said the wrong thing.

  “There was one girl didn’t rush to the shops . . . ,” he began.

  “Was there? Was there? Oh, what will she wear?” asked Cinderella breathlessly.

  “But she . . .”

  “Oh, if there were two of us not in new clothes,” said Cinderella, “it wouldn’t matter so much!”

  “Yes,” said Buttons, “but she . . .”

  “It wouldn’t matter hardly at all!” said Cinderella, and now her eyes were sparkling, and her smile was radiant.

  “Yes-but-she-remembered-her-yellow-silk-dress,” said Buttons, all in a rush.

  “Yellow silk?” asked Cinderella in a very small voice.

  “Yellow silk and green shoes and dangly green earrings. I think it’ll look awful.”

  Cinderella’s brown head dropped, and when she looked up again the sparkle had gone from her eyes. It was a minute before she could get her voice steady enough to whisper, “I think it will look lovely.”

  It was another minute more before she could say, “Anyway, I don’t care. It will probably be boring.”

  And after that, there was nothing left to say, and Buttons had gone, back to the palace with his bag of polished boots.

  The first person he met back at the palace was the Prince, who was either talking to himself, or talking to his roses. Buttons had no respect for people who did either of those things, and so when he heard the Prince murmur, “It will be much better after the ball!” he sprang into immediate rudeness.

  “I don’t see why,” he said. “A boring ball won’t change anything. What does that writing mean?”

  The Prince, who had been holding a label fastened to the stem of a rose, turned it carefully over so that only the blank side was visible, and looked thoughtfully at Buttons, half questioning, half amused.

  “Can you read?” he inquired, and he took out a gold pencil and wrote on the back of the label, Buttons, if you can read this, I will give you three silver pennies.

  “I can read that,” said Buttons. “Only I don’t want to.”

  “Excellent,” said the Prince, smiling. “The ball won’t be boring.”

  “My friend says it will.”

  “What friend?”

  “A girl.”

  “She’ll change her mind when she gets here,” said the Prince calmly.

  “She’s not coming!”

  “Everyone is coming,” said the Prince, still smiling.

  “She’s not. She told me. She’s not got nothing to wear.”

  “Hasn’t got anything to wear,” corrected the Prince, pulling down a spray of roses. “Smell a rose! Everyone is coming. Arrangements have been made for all circumstances. It won’t be boring. Oh dear, did you prick your nose?”

  “Not that you care!” said cross little Buttons.

  “Au contraire, my poor damaged friend,” said the Prince, charmingly. “I care very much indeed.”

  Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters were completely thrilled about the ball. The sisters rushed to the shops and bought pink satin and green velvet and purple shoes and gold sandals and bangles and beads and bags to match. All these things appeared in the kitchen to be stitched and ironed and polished and strapped, and Cinderella’s stepsisters appeared too, with requests concerning Sudden Diets, Tryings-On, and The Holding of Mirrors so they could see what they looked like from the back. There was a good deal of snapping and slapping at first, but as time went on, and the outfits became perfect, the stepsisters mellowed.

  “How do we look?” they asked, as the evening of the ball finally arrived. And Cinderella replied most truthfully that they looked more beautiful than they had ever looked before. This put them in very good tempers, and they waltzed with each other round and round the kitchen, and Cinderella waltzed with the broom, and for that little space of time it was as if she were part of the magic.

  But as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The stepsisters gathered their beads and their dresses and fled away, and there was nothing left to show that they had been there, except a scattering of sequins and snippets of silk. Cinderella picked them up one by one until she held them all in her hand, a handful of brightness in the cold gray kitchen.

  Then she sat at the table with her head in her arms and she said very quietly, “Oh, I wish I could go to the ball.”

  She was still sitting there, when she heard the voices.

  Buttons’s voice, high and squeaky: “She doesn’t want to go! She told me!”

  And another voice, very old and cross and deep: “Move away from the door AT ONCE!”

  At the word “ONCE” there was a flash of bright light, the door flung itself inward, and there was Buttons, spread like a starfish on the doormat, his eyes tight shut and his mouth wide open, and a very tall, very bony old woman stepping over him.

  “I am here for the young person who owns no clothes,” this person announced to Cinderella. “Kindly show me where I might find her.”

  Cinderella, speechless with surprise, shook her head. “She means you,” said Buttons, still w
ith his eyes screwed shut.

  “Me?” said Cinderella, a little outraged. “Me? I have clothes! I have this dress and my brown dress and my apron and two pairs of—”

  “For the ball!” interrupted Buttons, now sitting up and glaring. “You said you had nothing to wear for the ball and I told the Prince and the Prince told her . . .”

  Buttons stopped speaking and blinked, rubbed his dazzled eyes and stared, first at Cinderella, then at the visitor, then back at Cinderella again. Silently, without the faintest murmur of a spell, or the quietest crackle of magic, she had been transformed.

  “Why,” he demanded huskily, “are you dressed like that?”

  It sparkled like woven snowflakes, and whispered as Cinderella moved, and it was very soft and light. It was the most beautiful dress she had ever seen or imagined.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Cinderella. “But how . . . ?”

  “Clearly you haven’t read your invitation very carefully,” snapped Buttons’s strange companion. “People always skip the small print. I suggest you look at it properly now.”

  As if in a dream, Cinderella crossed the kitchen to the shadowy alcove where she slept, lifted the invitation from beneath her thin little pillow, and carried it into the light of the lamp.

  “On the back!” directed the old woman.

  “Dress code,” read Cinderella aloud, “ASAP.”

  “As Sumptuous As Possible,” translated the old woman.

  “FGP.”

  “Fairy Godmothers Provided.”

  “SCR.”

  “Should Circumstances Require.”

  “Then,” said Cinderella in delight, “you are my fairy godmother!”

  “FLTO,” said the old woman, pointing at the small print with a long finger. “For Limited Time Only . . . until midnight, in fact. At midnight, that dress, those pearls in your hair . . .”

  Cinderella’s hands moved up in astonishment.

  “. . . the necklace and bracelets . . .”

  They were cool against her skin.

  “. . . those enchanting glass slippers . . .”

  “Glass slippers!” marveled Cinderella, and began whirling round and round, shining with joy and pearls.