Authors: Janette Rallison
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 82/431
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 refused 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 83/431
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 84/431
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.
They sent notice they were coming, but only one day’s notice, which was something the servants complained quite a bit about when the WSM wasn’t around. It meant we all had to scurry around like panicked rodents trying to prepare the manor for royalty. Not that they were staying long. They were just resting here for the night, using us like a hotel stop on their journey to see some important noble in the south.
Since we not only had to provide food and quarters for the royals but for their knights, groomsmen, horses, and servants, the kitchen buzzed with activity all day long. When I wasn’t working to the point of exhaustion, I admit I was curious about Edmond, the blind date—er, life—Chrissy was trying to set me up on. Surely my stepsisters were wrong about him. He couldn’t be some tyrant who hanged people unnecessarily. Chrissy was supposed to find some wonderful, charming guy for me.
The question was, could he be so wonderful that he’d make living in the Middle Ages, make everything I’d gone through, worth it?
I am obviously a hopeless romantic.
86/431
Late in the afternoon, Prince Edmond, his younger brother, Prince Hugh, and his sister, Princess Margaret, arrived in a procession of knights and carriages. The other servants and I crowded around one of the windows in a top room to watch them. When the royals descended from a gilded carriage, my stepfamily did a lot of bowing and fawning. Their colorful skirts swished and swayed as they moved. I had only soot-stained rags to wear, and I was embarrassed that Edmond would see me this way.
WSM ushered the guests into the manor and all of the servants went downstairs, ready to answer any whim or fancy of our visitors.
I recognized Edmond right away. He stood at least six feet tall—perhaps even a couple of inches more—a whole head taller than a lot of the men I’d met in the Middle Ages. He had sleek brown hair, a square jaw, and perfect teeth. Every time he looked in Hildegard’s direction she giggled. Matilda wore a covering over her head to hide her missing hair and kept tugging on it nervously as she watched him.
Prince Edmond’s younger brother, Prince Hugh, was no less handsome. Although he was not as tall and had a curl to his brown hair, he had the same flawless features and square jaw. The two of them walked, talked, and looked about the room with an air of haughtiness that 87/431
only those doubly blessed with looks and fortune could pull off and still be considered charming.
Their younger sister, Princess Margaret, looked to be about my age. She had the same conceited expression as her brothers, and their good looks as well. Her blond hair was piled on her head with blue ribbons that exactly matched her velvet dress.
She glanced around the manor and let out a sigh. “I suppose it will do for the night.” If her brothers noticed her rudeness, they didn’t say anything. They divided their time between talking to the WSM and ordering their groomsmen around.
Edmond, my Prince Charming, didn’t look at me. Not even once.
A dozen tables had been set up in the great room and the meal started as soon as the royals dressed for dinner. We, the servants, hauled in a never-ending supply of food for our guests. Roasted pig. Roasted lamb. Roasted swan. We also carried in breads, cheeses, pies, and a sugary gelatin-like statue that had been molded into the shape of a castle in their honor. The WSM had hired musicians to play and I tried to hear her orders over the music. She sat on the left-hand side of Prince Edmond, a fact that seemed to elevate her importance in her own eyes, and she gave orders with extra disdain thrown in.
88/431
Once while I walked past the table with a pitcher of mead, Prince Edmond held up his goblet and said,
“Serving wench, my glass is empty.” When I didn’t move fast enough he snapped his fingers at me.
Real charming. I filled his glass and he turned away from me without giving me any more notice.
On his right side, Prince Hugh lifted his goblet to me as well. “Be quick about it, wench.” I bit my tongue and filled his glass too. Then I turned my gaze back to Edmond, who, for all of his impatience a moment before, hadn’t taken a drink yet. Really, I was so unimpressed.
Hildegard walked up beside me. She had apparently come to talk to her mother, or to flirt with Prince Edmond, but since she was watching him and not me, she bumped into me as I turned to leave.
The mead in my pitcher sloshed over the edges, spilling mostly on the floor but also splattering both of our dresses. As I steadied the pitcher, trying not to spill anything more, she reached out and slapped me.
“Oaf!” she yelled. “Look what you’ve done to my dress!”
The WSM turned to me, her gaze all spikes and dag-gers. “Ella, your clumsiness will not be tolerated.” The next moment she looked over at the prince and her voice 89/431
smoothed over with honey. “I’m so sorry, your highness.
Did any spill on you? I promise the girl will not go unpunished.”
Edmond wiped at his embroidered tunic, though I doubt anything had splattered there. “Very good. I find that servants are like dogs. Left undisciplined, they become worthless.”
The WSM turned back to me, her lips set in a tight smile. “Well, Ella, what do you have to say?” I knew she expected me to beg for lenience, to apolo-gize over and over again. But I’d had enough of these people, this life, and everything to do with it. “I
am
clumsy,” I said. “Constantly spilling things. In fact—oops!” I held out the pitcher and emptied its contents over my stepmother’s head.
She gasped, sputtered, then shrieked as the mead flowed from her hair down her face, and then soaked her dress. A group of the knights at the next table over laughed uproariously at the sight of my WSM wiping strands of hair out of her face and jiggling in her seat, as though this would stop the liquid from running down her back. But the only sound from the royal table was Edmond, who said, with a tone between smugness and reproach, “Undisciplined and worthless.” 90/431
I didn’t wait around to hear further critiques. I dropped the pitcher on the ground, hiked up my skirt, and ran. My WSM shouted, “Stop her! Stop her at once!” Neither Hildegard nor any of the servants did though.
Whether out of fear of me or admiration, they stood openmouthed while I rushed by.
I sped out of the manor, past the barn, and into the forest. I had nowhere to go and no way to live, but anger pushed me instead of fear.
How, even for a moment, could a fairy think someone could wish for this sort of life? And why wasn’t she answering me when I called?
I wasn’t exactly sure where fairies lived, but I had the vague idea that it was inside mushrooms. So I walked around stomping on every one I saw. When that didn’t do anything I kicked the trees. Since my boots had never been sturdy to begin with, this probably hurt my feet more than it hurt the trees.
“You’re supposed to be granting me wishes!” I called.
“You can’t just leave me here!” And then I heard Chrissy’s voice behind me. “You know, Cinderella is supposed to have a sweet disposition. I turn my back on you and you’re drenching your elders and kicking poor defenseless trees. Is that really keeping in character?”
91/431
I spun around. She wore the same tank top and miniskirt I’d seen her in before, with her sunglasses in place even though it was dusk.
I clenched my hands into fists. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for three weeks straight.”
“I told you I was going shopping. I’m still not done and I get, like, forty messages from you on my godmother cell phone. Has anyone ever told you that you need to develop a little patience?”
I glared at her.
“No? Well, let me be the first then. Get some patience—it will help you out in life.” Yeah, I could put that on the list right behind my milking skills, which were also woefully undeveloped.
“Who goes shopping for three weeks?” I asked. “Exactly what kind of sale is that?”
Chrissy slipped her sunglasses onto the top of her head and gave me a condescending look. “Time isn’t the same here as it is in your world. You obviously don’t read fantasy books or you’d already know that sort of thing.”
“How much time has elapsed back home?” I asked.
“Well, ideally with these wishes you could live here for years and only seconds would have passed back in your world. Then when you wanted to, you’d come home 92/431
physically unchanged.” She examined her nails instead of looking at me.
“But . . . ,” I prompted.
“Well, that was one of those areas that I didn’t do so well on in school. I never could get time to stop spinning, just to slow down. For every week that passes here, an hour passes back in your world. That’s not really so bad. Your parents are still downstairs at your house watching TV. They won’t miss you until tomorrow morning, and the way you sleep in and then hole up in your room, well, that should give you months here. Then you can decide whether—”
“I don’t want to stay here for months,” I said. “All I’ve done here is work like a dog. No, I take that back. Dogs don’t have to clean out the toilets. I’ve worked like . . .
like . . .”
“Cinderella?” she asked.
“Yes, but with no ball in sight and a prince who is an arrogant jerk.”
She shrugged. “The ball is in about eight months. It wouldn’t be the full Cinderella experience if you only worked a few days and then got to go to the ball. Anyone can do that. It takes no long-term suffering at all.” I held out my rough and calloused hands toward her.
“And who said I wanted to be long-suffering? I don’t remember wishing for that.”
93/431
“If the prince is going to rescue you from your dreary life,” she continued, “it has to be dreary in the first place, doesn’t it?”
Her logic made me sputter. She actually thought she’d done me a favor by turning me into some sort of serf.
“My life was plenty dreary as it was, and besides, I didn’t wish to be Cinderella in the first place. You never let me finish telling you what I wanted.” Her eyebrows arched up. “Well, excuse me for having other things to do with my time besides listen to your love-life woes— I told you I needed to go shopping.” She tossed her hair off her shoulder and pulled first one, then two more shopping bags from her purse. At last she pulled out the scroll and opened it. “You said, and this is a quote, ‘I just wish my life could be like a fairy tale with a handsome prince waiting for me at the ball, and that somehow when I met him, everything would work out happily ever after.’ ”
She pulled on the end of the scroll and it spun shut.
“You asked for a fairy tale. One of us here is an expert on fairy tales, and the only tale with a handsome prince waiting at the ball is Cinderella, which I duly granted.” Another toss of her hair. “If you had a different fairy tale in mind—well, I’m sorry you’re so ill read that you got mixed up and wished for the wrong one.” 94/431
“But I didn’t actually think that . . .” I stopped. It wouldn’t do any good to point out I hadn’t meant those words as a wish at all. I’d just been speaking in generalities. Apparently fairies didn’t do generalities. I tried to make my case in another way. “What about the prince?