I shrugged. “Okay, but why?”
She let out a grunt like she couldn’t believe I was asking. “Haven’t you ever read any fairy tales? In the classic stories, maidens who come in contact with fairies and tell lies end up having a nasty enchantment. Reptiles and amphibians drop out of their mouths. It isn’t pleasant. I’m just mentioning it because you don’t want to get on the wrong side of magic.”
“Oh.” I put my hand to my mouth. “Thanks for the warning.”
Chrissy picked up her wand and a new wave of sparks shot out the end. “All right then, as soon as you’re done signing you can tell me your first wish.”
I unrolled the scroll on my desk and signed my name across the bottom. Then Chrissy picked up the scroll, tugged at the end, and it rolled itself up as though it were a window shade. She put it back in her purse and turned to me with a satisfied smile. “All right, what’s your heart’s desire?”
“Well . . .” Now that she asked, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. What did I want? My first thought had been to ask for Hunter to break up with Jane and fall in love with me again. But as soon as I opened my mouth, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. It wouldn’t make me happy to have him back if he only cared about me because of a magic spell. I wanted someone who liked the real me, even if I was occasionally late and disorganized, and okay, I admit it—I don’t always take school seriously.
So what did that leave as my heart’s desire?
I guess when it came down to it, I wanted to be someplace different. I didn’t know where, just someplace where no one would judge me against Jane-like standards, and where I hadn’t proved to half the school that I was incompetent when it came to difficult tasks like identifying the right dressing room. But I didn’t know where that place was.
I sat down on my bed, suddenly miserable. I wasn’t happy and couldn’t even think of a way to change my life so I would be.
Chrissy looked at me, her wings fluttering and the wand grasped in one hand. She checked her watch. “Is this going to take a long time? I hate to rush you, but I have a shopping trip planned with some mall pixies.”
I fingered my pillow sham, thinking. “I just wish that somehow my life could be like a fairy tale. You know, with a handsome prince waiting for me at the ball, and that somehow when I meet him, everything will work out happily ever after.”
Chrissy checked her wristwatch again, hardly paying attention to me. “Okay, great. One Cinderella coming up.”
Before I could say another word—and I had planned to say, “Wait, that wasn’t my wish!”—white sparks surrounded me. The next moment I found myself in a cold, dark room.
Chapter 4
After the flash from Chrissy’s magic wand subsided and I could see again, I turned in a slow circle around the room. Rough-hewn stones made up the floor and walls. A limp and dirty mattress with straw sticking out of each side lay at my feet, and a wooden chest sat underneath a narrow, glassless window. Nothing else occupied the room.
“Oh no,” I said, and then louder, “That wasn’t what I meant!” I turned around the room, looking for a telltale sparkler of light that would let me know she was here. I saw nothing. I called her name—even her full name—but Chrissy didn’t materialize.
Finally I pushed open a heavy wooden door and stepped out into a kitchen. Oddly enough, I could see the room in as much detail as if I were wearing my contacts. Perhaps since Cinderella had good eyesight, I did too.
A huge fireplace occupied one wall, with a pot hanging on a hook over the fire. Whatever was inside crackled and steamed, making the room smell good. A rickety cupboard pressed up against another wall. I could see dishes and pots stacked unevenly on its shelves. A plump woman pounded a lump of bread dough on a wooden table in the center of the kitchen. Her hair, assuming she had any, was hidden under a dirty kerchief.
I walked into the room cautiously, my bare feet hardly making a sound against the cold stone floor. I had no idea what to say.
The woman looked at me. Her face had so many wrinkles and jowl lines that it gave the impression her face was melting off her body. She turned her attention back to the bread dough, smacking it into the table. “You’re up late. And a poor day you chose for it too. The mistress is in a foul mood.”
I realized, with a mixture of relief and disappointment, that the woman knew me, or at least knew the person she thought I was: Cinderella.
I tried to guess who the woman at the table was. She was too old and shabbily dressed to be an ugly stepsister, and yet she wasn’t the mistress either. Perhaps this was one of those pumpkin-into-bloated-walrus mistakes and Chrissy had transported me into an entirely wrong fairy tale?
“Don’t stand there dawdling, child. Are you waiting for the cow to come calling on you? Get the bucket and go.”
Apparently I needed to milk a cow. It would have been helpful to know certain things, like how to milk a cow and where the bucket was. You’d think that Chrissy might have helped me out with a few of those details before she sent me off to the Middle Ages. But no.
“Um, there’s been a mistake,” I said. “I’m not really supposed to be here doing this—”
“I know, I know. ’Twas your father’s mistake in marrying that she-wolf, but there’s no time now for regretting what the dead have done. If our lady doesn’t have milk with her breakfast we’ll both see her fangs.”
Okay, so probably this was the right fairy tale since my father had married a wicked stepmother—oh wait, Snow White also had a wicked stepmother and so did Hansel and Gretel. Come to think of it, fairy tales just brimmed with the wreckage of men who’d chosen the wrong women. Which went to show you that men hadn’t changed over the centuries. Hunter. Humph.
Still, I needed to know what I was up against. When I met this stepmother was she going to work me to the bone or try to kill me?
I noticed a bucket hanging on a peg by a door and walked over to it. “Um . . . would you mind answering a couple questions for me? Do I happen to have a brother named Hansel?”
The woman looked at me blankly. Her bushy eyebrows knit together.
Which probably meant no. I took the bucket from the peg. “Or does anyone—particularly any enchanted mirrors— consider me to be the fairest in the land?”
Now she laughed. I caught sight of several blackened teeth. “What a notion, Ella. You, the fairest of the land. Yes, in between the suds and the cinders the bards line up to sing your praises. Off with you, and don’t come back for your breakfast until the swine and the chickens are fed.”
So I was in the right fairy tale, but none of the versions I’d read mentioned any other servants. How long was I going to be here before Chrissy checked on me? I mean, sooner or later she was going to have to come back and grant me my other two wishes. I walked outside, shivering as I left the warmth of the kitchen. I didn’t have any shoes and the way to the barn was littered with animal droppings. I dodged around those like a dancer doing some odd hopping routine.
The cook may have thought I looked like Cinderella, but the cow clearly knew I was a stranger. Every time I set the stool and the bucket down beside her, she decided to take three steps forward. I would move the stool and bucket over, sit down, and she’d walk off again. For fifteen minutes I scooted around the barn in a slow cow chase.
An old man with a matted gray beard came into the barn carrying a bundle of hay. I didn’t see him at first because I was busy giving a lecture to the cow on hamburger. He watched me for a moment then took a rope from the wall, looped it around the cow’s neck and attached it to a peg on the wall. “You feeling all right today, Ella?” he asked me.
“Not really, well, you see . . .” Any excuse I could come up with—and actually I couldn’t come up with any—would be a lie. I’d told Chrissy I wouldn’t lie but I was only a few minutes into this fairy tale and already in danger of having reptiles drop from my mouth. I looked at the man, bit my lip, and then let out a sigh of defeat. “I don’t know how to milk a cow. Could you s
how me?”
He did. He also showed me where to get the feed for the chickens and the pigs. He clearly thought I’d lost my mind, and kept eyeing me over like a shopper eyes defective merchandise. As he helped me with the last of the chores I said, “Thanks. You probably think it’s strange that I’ve forgotten how to do all of this, don’t you?”
He shook his scraggly head. “Not my place to say nothing about the master’s daughter. God rest his soul.”
I took the milk back to the kitchen and held the bucket out to the cook. She cut slices of meat onto a platter and glared at me as though I ought to know better. “Pour it in the pitcher and take it to the table. It’s a miracle the mistress isn’t already down and screeching at your sloth.”
I found a pitcher in the cupboard, then walked out the door, wandering around the manor house until I found the dining room. Two girls who looked to be my age sat at a long wooden table. I was expecting them to be hideous—I mean, so far I’d met two people in this fairy tale and neither had been attractive. For the girls to be known as the “ugly stepsisters” clearly indicated some sort of horrible deformity. But besides looking as though they hadn’t showered in, well, ever, they both seemed like normal, attractive teenagers. One was a bit tall and had dirty blond hair—in this case the term “dirty blond” being a description of cleanliness, not hair color—but her features were even and proportioned. The shorter of the two was a bit on the plump side, but not overly so. It made her look healthy. When one overlooked her greasy brown hair, there was nothing wrong with her looks.
The surprise made me speak out loud. “You’re both so pretty. I don’t know why anyone would call you . . .”
It was at this point that both girls smiled at me. Between the two of them I saw only a dozen teeth.
“Oh,” I said. “Never mind.”
“Do go on, Ella,” the taller one said. “You were telling me how well I look in your dresses. I think so too.”
“Speaking of dresses,” the shorter one said. “What have you got on? Did you trade clothes with a plow hand?”
“I’ve never seen leggings so loose,” the tall one said. “He must have been a fat plow hand. I should tell Mamá that we’re overfeeding them.”
The short one giggled. “Perhaps Ella has just lost weight. I shall save you some scraps from my breakfast, Ella, unless I’m very hungry.”
“You are always very hungry,” the tall one said.
“True,” her sister said. “Poor Ella will just have to find skinnier peasants to trade clothes with.”
Yeah, that whole “ugly” part of their name just became much clearer. I set the pitcher down on the table so hard that some of the milk sloshed over the edges.
It was then that the WSM—wicked stepmother—swept into the room. I could tell it was her, both by her dress and her air of authority. Her light brown hair had streaks of gray, and her skin had begun to loosen around her jawline, but she was still a handsome woman. She walked to the table, dabbed a finger into the spilled milk, and sat down. “You stupid, clumsy girl. If you can’t do your duties inside I will send you outside with the field hands. Do you understand?”
I stared at her for a moment. Normally I wouldn’t have put up with people treating me this way. I mean, it did occur to me that if there were field hands around, some might know how to wield pitchforks, and it was entirely likely I could get them to side with me and turn against these encroachers. But that wasn’t how the fairy tale went, and I didn’t dare mess it up. If I wasn’t inside to hear about the prince’s ball, I wouldn’t get to the point where my Fair Godmother—aka Chrissy—stopped by to make my dreams come true. And when she stopped by, I was getting out of the wish.
I bowed my head in my WSM’s direction. “Sorry.”
“Sorry, what?” she repeated.
“Sorry I spilled the milk,” I said.
She pounded her fist against the table, making the silverware jump. “No, you stupid, ignorant girl. You’re to say, ‘Sorry, m’lady.’ ”
“Oh. Sorry, m’lady.”
She pointed to the door, her eyes sharp and glinting. “Back to the kitchen with you and make haste serving us. I’ve plenty of chores for you today.”
This, by the way, was not an exaggeration. Along with a couple of scullery maids and a kitchen boy, I washed dishes, swept floors, laundered clothes, set them out to dry, helped prepare lunch, washed more dishes, ironed clothes, and churned butter. I also shoveled ashes out of the fireplaces and did my best to clean the chimney. That was my job alone, and by the time I was done with it, my hands, arms, face, and hair were smeared with greasy soot. The stepsisters breezed into the manor while I did that job to watch me and comment on my appearance.
“I rather like her hair black,” the tall one said. “It matches her complexion quite well.”
The plump one gave me a simpering smile. “Fine ladies always powder their faces. Ella uses cinders—that’s why she’s our cinder-ella.”
I mostly ignored them whenever they were around. During the day, they did nothing as far as I could tell, except steal some candles from the cupboard, light them, and then take them out behind the barn, where they played guess-whose-straw-will-burn-quickest. I’m serious. Then they moved on to twigs, pinecones, and beetles. They spent most of the afternoon igniting things. This apparently is what hoodlum teenagers did back before street corners were invented.
While I worked I sent whispered pleading messages to Chrissy and worried that my parents were panicked about my disappearance. She never answered.
The second day was worse. Not only did I have the same chores, but I also had to clean the garderobes, which is a fancy way of saying outhouses. I couldn’t bathe—and trust me, I needed to after cleaning the garderobes—because unfortunately no one had had the sense to invent indoor plumbing yet. All I had was a bowl of water, a rag, and a hard, scratchy, foul-smelling block of something that they told me was soap, but it didn’t resemble any soap I’d ever seen. They gave me a threadbare dress to wear and a pair of flimsy leather boots that didn’t fit and smelled as though their last owner had died while wearing them.
I learned that I lived in a land called Pampovilla and that my stepsisters were named Matilda and Hildegard. When they weren’t burning things they spent most of their time ordering me around. I hoped that one of the king’s footmen would show up with the announcement of a ball. I counted on it, but no one visited.
Day three went about the same. The cook yelled at me as much as, if not more than, my stepfamily did—something, I might add, which has totally been overlooked in Grimm’s version of the fairy tale. It should have been a story about the wicked stepmother, ugly pyromaniac stepsisters, and a trollish-looking, short-tempered cook.
Day four was only made interesting by the fact that Matilda—the brunette one—accidentally set her hair on fire. It involved a great deal of screaming on Matilda’s part, and it could have led to serious injury if I hadn’t been nearby with a bucket of pig slop. I threw it over her head to douse the flames. As usual, she didn’t appreciate my efforts on her behalf. I spent the night in my room without supper.
More days came and went by in a blur of chores. My back and arms ached from the workload. Where they weren’t blistered, my hands became dry and chapped. I wanted to cry every morning when I woke up, stiff and itchy from my straw mattress.
By the third week, I missed my home, my parents, and my friends so intently that it felt like a thick stone had wedged itself in my chest. I longed for a hot bath. Electricity. American food. I even missed little things that I’d taken for granted before. Carpet. Clear drinking water. Cold milk. My tennis shoes.
As I worked, I kept my mind on all the things my life had been in Virgina, trying to hold onto them. Even Hunter seemed almost like a dream now. And when he didn’t—when I was washing clothes and the lines of his face suddenly forced their way into my mind—I tried to scrub them away along with the dirt and the grime. He didn’t deserve a place in my memory. I refuse
d to think of Jane or him at all, refused to wonder if either one of them missed me.
Where was my fairy? When was that stupid ball?
I had tried to ask about the ball in roundabout ways before, but no one seemed to know anything about it. One day as I was in my stepsisters’ room braiding Hildegard’s hair, I asked if she wouldn’t like to visit the palace for a dance. Hildegard just sighed wistfully and said, “I do hope Prince Edmond throws one now that he’s done putting down that peasant rebellion.”
“Peasant rebellion?” I repeated.
Matilda said, “The peasants are always asking for too much. If it’s not lower taxes from their lords, it’s the right to leave their manors. As though they should be able to leave when there’s work to be done.” She sat across the room supposedly doing needlework, but I had yet to see her take a stitch. Mostly she was cleaning her fingernails with the needle.
I stopped braiding Hildegard’s hair. “What exactly do you mean when you say he put down a peasant rebellion?”
“It wasn’t a real rebellion,” Hildegard said, as though proud of this fact. “Prince Edmond hung a few of them and the rest scattered. What are a few peasants against the knights of the royal army? They should have learned their place by now.”
My hands gripped the brush harder. “The prince killed peasants? My prince?”
Hildegard’s nose wrinkled in disdain. “Your prince? As though the likes of you had any claim to him.”
Matilda tilted her head, which lost some of the dramatic effect since half her hair was missing. “You’d better watch your tongue or he’ll hang you up with the rest of them. And why do you keep muttering the word ‘Chrissy’ under your breath? What is a Chrissy?”
That was the first I heard of Prince Edmond, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Three days later a royal procession visited the estate.