Dearest Cinderella (3 page)

Cinderella read over it
cautiously, he almost sounded as if he wanted to start a friendship
with her. It simultaneously confused and excited Cinderella. For
she couldn't understand why he would wish to befriend a complete
stranger, but the prospect of having a friend was one she hadn't
hoped for since childhood. As she thought on her reply she walked
to a nearby tree, dug a small trench and deposited her diary in the
hope that nobody would ever accidentally stumble upon it again. She
walked back over to the tree and sat by the hole, turning the page
over, and began.

Hello Jon, you may call me
Cinderella. I have given your proposal some thought and I accept.
How, may I ask, do you fail to interact with others properly? I
assume you do not begin every friendship by reading the other
person's diary. Shall I begin our rapport with some type of innate
chatter that I'm sure must be traditional somehow? Let me begin
with saying, I am in the best of moods today. I am sure you will
have received one too, an invitation to the King's ball. Now, I
will encourage your reply by asking, do you mean to attend? I hope
to go, if my family allows it. Now, I suppose I shall have to wait
until you see fit to respond.

Tomorrow came and there was
another missive...

I may be attending the ball.
Though I am not quite certain, as of yet. Do you attend in the hope
of meeting the Prince and falling in love? If so I confess myself
disappointed. I had the impression of you being a rational young
lady. Many people will be attending, making fools of themselves to
impress the royal family. I would rather be miles away from that
debacle.

Every afternoon the Prince would
write and every morning, hours later, Cinderella replied.

I would rather be right in the
centre of it. I have far too little excitement in my life to miss
attending such a debacle. I am not opposed to meeting the Prince
and falling in love, though I know the probability of that
happening is slimmer than that of me actually meeting him. I
suppose I could settle for falling in love with a simple gentleman,
one who could take me away from my family. Why do you look at the
ball with such a critical eye? Do you dislike the royal family or
just merriment in general?

Cinderella's quick wit in script
drew the Prince to her, nobody had ever had the nerve to speak to
him in such a manor.

Aha! You mock me now but you've
never had the displeasure of attending such an event. Write to me
after and I can assure you that you will be singing another tune.
Tell me, why do you hide your diary in the forest? I assume it's
still here. You didn't answer earlier.

Their easy friendship led to
trust, which led to Cinderella finally confiding to him about her
family.

I hide it in the forest so that
my family do not read it and use it against me. I thought nobody
would find it here, it seems quite ironic now. The thing I was most
anxious to hide led to this. I would never hope to have changed
it.

Slowly, a steady friendship grew
between them, bonding them together. For, although neither of them
would openly admit it, their friendship meant too much to both of
them to be considered platonic.

Neither would I, finding your
dairy was a blessing I could not regret, it has led to this. I am
thankful for you when I read your jests and laugh. It allows me
some peace among all the noise and orders and responsibilities that
inhabit my world.

Neither of them knew how to tell
the other, and so they continued writing under the guise of
friendship. When the paper had run out of space the Prince replaced
it with a book of his own.

I gathered this might be
needed, it was getting dastardly hard to write on that dirty sheet.
Would you trust me with the location of your diary now that you
know where mine is, in your hands.

This proved to be a mistake as
the paper was at such a fine quality that it immediately made
Cinderella apprehensive

Where did you find such a
beautifully crafted book? I've never seen one so ornate before.

Which led to more lies.

It was a gift from the king, I
completed a project for him and the book, along with a few other
trinkets, were a gift for my service. Does your avoiding my
question mean that no, you will not tell me where it is hidden? It
is a shame for I had wished to see another portrait of your family.
I haven't laughed quite so hard in years. Might you favour me with
an original, Cinderella?

The letters were filled with
questions, each curious of the other, wanting to learn more. Where
the Prince lied about being a titled lord, Cinderella lied about
being a common young miss.

Of course my lord, but what
shall I draw for you? As you already know, my talents are vast.

Despite this, the most important
parts of their correspondence remained truthful. The moments when
they confided in each other about their worries for the future.
Whether The Prince would ever live up to his father's expectations,
whether Cinderella would ever step out from the shadow that was her
family. As their letters to each other grew in length, Cinderella's
diary entries shortened. Often she thought of funny things to tell
him and vice versa. On one particular afternoon, Cinderella entered
the forest and saw movement behind the trees in the clearing at the
oak tree. Her breathing stilled in her throat as she stared. Her
heartbeat quickened, her body humming with adrenaline. The idea of
accosting him as he wrote ran through her mind. Although she was
incredibly excited, she was also scared. What if he turned out to
be not what he said? What if he realised she was not what she said?
Questions flew through her mind at a dizzying rate. Her attachment
to him had grown such that his letters were often her favourite
part of the day. She took a step, then halted. Took another step,
heard a masculine laugh through the clearing, stopped dead. I am
not scared, she told herself. I am simply cautious. She took three
quick deep breaths, stiffened her spine and marched into the
clearing, heart in her throat, to meet her Jon.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Instead of seeing one man by the
tree, she saw three. Judging by their clothing they certainly
weren't gentlemen. Without thinking, Cinderella marched straight
into their sight and said,

"Would one of you gentlemen
happen to be Jon?" They looked at each other then burst into
raucous laughter. She waited for their laughter to stop before
sighting what one of them held in their hands. Her diary. "Please
would you give that back? It's private." This was responded to with
more equally loud laughter.

Foolishly, Cinderella, seeing
the man dangling her diary loosely in his hand, lost all sense and
lunged for the diary. In the last moment the man drew the diary to
his chest and Cinderella fell in a heap behind them. Collectively
they turned to her, their faces losing all laughable qualities and
turning menacing. A stroke of fear sliced her heart as they came
closer, drawing a shadow on her person. She looked up fearfully as
they continued to smile down on her.

"She'll fetch a pretty price
with a face like that, eh?" His friends seemed to agree with him as
they picked her thrashing body up off of the ground and took her
arms. Looping them through their own arms and sweeping her off of
the ground so that her swinging feet no longer touched the forest
floor.

"Let me free!" She tried to pull
her arms out of theirs, her shoulders were beginning to ache as a
result of her body's burden. As they came out from the edges of the
forest Cinderella felt the distinct sharpness of a blade spiking
into her right hip.

"Quiet now, missy, we're going
to take you into town, hand you over to the nice man and we won't
hear a peep out of you. Ya hear me?" The thug needn't have warned
her to keep her mouth shut for fear had a hold of her words and was
reluctant to return them. As they reached town the thugs dropped
her so that she was forced to walk next to one of them, the knife
wielder, so that they didn't attract any suspicion. Hopelessly,
Cinderella tried to catch the eyes of anyone walking by, trying to
convey to them that she was in trouble, that she needed help. She
cursed her diary, cursed Jon, and cursed everything that had led
her to this fear stricken moment. They made a few sharp turns until
Cinderella saw someone that made her almost trip before the thug
caught her by the arm. It was Nurse Fairgem. Her Nurse Fairgem. The
woman who had raised her. She couldn't believe her eyes. Nurse
Fairgem coming out of a Modiste, carrying rolls of linen in her
arms and hurrying across the road away from her. The instinctive
need to call out to her nurse clawed through Cinderella but she
remained quiet. The idea of accidentally putting her nurse in the
path of danger was unfathomable and absolutely would not be borne.
Helplessly she watched her enter a shop as the thugs carried her
past. She strained her neck trying to see through the stained glass
window, wanting to catch another glimpse of the woman who had been
like a mother to Cinderella through all of her youth. But she could
no longer see her. They continued walking, the man's dagger digging
deeper into her side, she was almost certain that it must have
pierced her skin by now. They were a few paces further down the
street when the unmistakable crack of a gunshot ricocheted through
the air. The men froze, forgetting her entirely and turning to face
the wielder of the gun. Giving Cinderella enough time to dart out
of their grasp before one of the men grabbed her by the collar and
dragged her back towards them. She turned to see a man, dressed in
military livery, holding a pistol. Beside him directly stood her
fierce and angry Nurse Fairgem. Her arms crossed like a
disapproving mother, she wore a hard exterior but Cinderella could
read the terror in her eyes. She'd never liked guns or violence of
any sort.

"We don't want no trouble, it
was just some harmless fun you see." The man released Cinderella,
but as she went to move away from him he caught her by the hand and
held her with his bone-crushing fist.

"I can see that," the man said
sardonically, "you shall release her now." The three men took one
more look at the gun, then at Cinderella and seemed to realise that
she wasn't worth the trouble. With hands raised, they stepped back,
further and further until they were far in the distance. Then they
turned their backs and ran, more raucous laughter emanating from
their moving backs. As soon as the officer saw that there was no
more threat to be seen to, he turned his back and moved off without
any reference to Cinderella, her gratitude or wellbeing. It was all
within another days work and perfectly standard. As he turned his
back and began to walk away Cinderella and Nurse Fairgem embraced,
tears in their eyes and hearts too impossibly full to being to
express with words. They remained hugging, marvelling in their near
death experience and the joy of being reunited. When they broke
away from each other it was only for Nurse Fairgem to reach out
again and pull her daughter closer to her heart for another soul
warming hug. After they'd finished with their hugging and kissing
and crying and laughing Cinderella followed Nurse Fairgem into the
shop she'd exited, behind the counter and into a back room filled
with more fabrics than imaginable. Colours that Cinderella had
never even dreamed of wearing. The room was vibrant and alive with
colour and beauty. It was everything that was Nurse Fairgem.

"I always dreamed that we would
meet again, though I wish it could have been under different
circumstances." She ushered Cinderella to a red velvet stool and
hurried around the room in the perusal of something. "I left it
here somewhere. One moment" with a sound of satisfaction she
revealed a small flask from underneath a mountain of fabric. "Here
take this my dear, I think you will need it." Cinderella looked
dubiously down at the flask in her hands.

"I'm really ok, I don't think it
has affected me quite so..." Her hands involuntarily started
shaking as she watched them in confusion. Nurse Fairgem placed her
hands on Cinderella's trembling ones and said in a soft voice,

"It's quite alright dear, drink
a few sips, it will make you feel better." So Cinderella drank and
although the taste was horrid and it made her shudder, it did
indeed make her feel substantially better.

"Thank you, Nurse Fairgem."

"Oh hush, I am not your Nurse
anymore, call me Fairgem. I would hate for politeness to come
between us after all this time. You know I never had my own
children, nobody except you. You truly were my daughter."

"I still am, as far as I will be
concerned you are my mother." Fairgem's eyes began watering again
as a result of Cinderella's words and she grabbed a handkerchief to
dab at her eyes.

"Dear me." Her face became very
serious as she asked. "How did you come to be accosted by those
thugs? They're a bad lot them, laughing and carrying on, scaring me
half to death when I saw them carrying you across the street.
Hurried straight over to a shop I saw the officer walk into, I did.
Took the gods own will to pretend I hadn't seen you." Cinderella
sighed in relief at her safety, smiling at the idea of her nurse
hurrying across the street with armfuls of fabric ready to rush to
her aid, and she thought that she'd been protecting Fairgem when it
had really been the other way around. Cinderella told her Fairgem
about being in the forest, carried out by the thugs. This led to
questions of why she was in the forest alone, which hesitantly led
to a conversation about Jon.

"He's just a man I exchange
letters with." That mischievous sparkle in her eye warned
Cinderella that she wasn't going to enjoy the following
conversation.

"Oh, ho! A man is it? It's
always a man I tell you. And he sends you letters? What sort of
letters and what does this have to do with you being in the forest
alone, young lady?" Cinderella shyly told her about how Jon had
found her diary, the friendship that had been created.