Cinderela, Intro and Part 1

I immediately knew something was wrong when my father came home with his new bride. I was eight, and with a child’s certainty I recognized something was not quite right about her. Only I didn’t know what.

She was elegant; black and royal blue robes graced her frame, and hung like a waterfall of slippery fabric. Her face could break into a small, polite smile, but there were no laugh lines on her. Almost every time I saw her, she either was neutral, or smiling that smile that never reached the eyes.

It surprised me to see that the woman he helped out of the carriage was a pale, prim woman who would never be seen without perfect posture, rather than the wild, exuberant, loose-haired woman I had imagined him bringing home. The woman I imagined my mother to have been.

She was everything my father was not: strict, cold, empty, and unloving, and for all that I thought of it, and puzzled over it, and scrutinized the situation, I could not understand it. I could not understand why he would not marry someone like the woman he had been enamored of, but instead marry a woman who possessed none of the qualities he had once loved.

Her behavior was truely unexpected. She ruled the house with her nose held high, with her pale hands tense, and with nothing but a nod in my direction when I came to breakfast. I was used to my father jumping up from the breakfast table, always, and saying, “How’s my beautiful girl today?” and giving me a warm hug. When only he was there, we ate at an unadorned oak table that had been lovingly handmade by my grandfather. He even made a little heart on the side of the table where my seat was. "That’s for my love, even when I am not around," he would say whenever he came over.

When she was here, we had to cover the oak table, with its heart, with a white satin and lace table cloth, one that made you scratch at your arms as though you had poison ivy. We had to use three different forks, and we had to be served three courses, two more than we had previously, because that was "how a duke a duchess should eat." She had hired more than ninety servants, so that we had over one hundred. Everything had to be perfect, especially for her twin daughters, Laurece and Victoria.

And I was Meladria, sometimes Mel, sometimes Mela, and eventually, with all the horrors that came into my life, just Ela. Everytime she said my name, her lips twisted into a grimace, as though she were saying something dirty. And maybe, to her, she was.

***

The streets were slicked with rain, puddles forming in between the rounded cobble-stones. I shivered inside my light jacket, one I had slipped into this morning, not planning on it raining this late in May. I had sneaked out of the house and run to drop the flowers at my mother’s grave every Sunday. Marianne, my nursemaid, probably would have caught on by now, but I believe she feels pity for me and holds her tongue. My father and I used to go together every Sunday, but ever since he married, he hasn’t come. His new wife doesn’t approve of mourning the dead, particularly now that the deceased has been replaced with a new wife and mother. At least that’s part of the reason my father married her, for me to have a mother. But she won’t ever replace my mother. She’s too...proper, something I don’t think of my mother as being.

It had been only my father and I for eight years. I thought of my mother often, but was too young to mourn her loss. I could tell when my father was thinking about her. He would close up, staring into space, and a look of such unadorned sadness would strike his face that, at the time, I was content in not knowing her.

Until she came. Now his closing up makes me feel more incomplete than ever.

So for the last three weeks since their marriage, I had gone with the flowers to my mother’s grave alone. I mourned the time that had been lost between my father and me, but Marianne told me it wasn’t proper to show that in front of my father’s new bride. So I kept quiet, and tried to find a time when I could get my father alone. I never got the chance.

I turned the corner of the road leading to our four-story house. It had been my mother’s father’s before, and he had given it as a wedding present to them and built a new house for himself and my grandmother. It was beautiful as ever, even in the rain, the water adding a softness to the great stone walls. On the third floor a window was open; the lacy drapes flapped outside in the storm-wind. I frowned. My stepmother would never have allowed this to happen. When it was just my father and I, he would open windows in storms all the time, then read me a story, listening to the drops plit-plat on everything. The thunder rolled through the air like an elephant’s stomping, and the rebellious lightning brightened up the dark, cloudy sky as if it were shunning the darkness.

I noticed something between the lace. I squinted, and saw what I took to be someone’s arm. Slowly, the arm extended, and eventually I saw a man leaning out, who seemed to be checking something above him. Behind him, a hand encased in scarlet brocade moved towards his back. And pushed.

“No!” I screamed. I ran toward the house--but he was falling, screaming, to the cobble-stoned courtyard below. I was running ever faster, but that didn’t stop him from splashing onto the pavement--like the rain that was gracing the stones under him. It didn’t stop the crunch of broken bones, and it didn’t stop the blood that slid in the cracks in the stone under his face.

My skirts tripped me as I ran, and I was crying by the time I reached him. I knelt beside him and tried to turn him, pushing uselessly at his side. My tears blurred the image so much I wasn’t sure who I cried for, and my mind was rebelling against any recognition of the man. Again I tried to turn him, but few eight-year-olds can turn a grown, portly man, so I just sat by him and cried, and called pleas for help.

As I shrieked, Marianne ran out to me. She knelt beside me with an outcry, and turned the man over, and screamed.

I rubbed at my eyes and looked at the ruin of his nose, and cheekbones.

Blood. So much blood.

It was my father.


After the screams reached her, my stepmother came, the crimson of her overrobe making her pale flesh stand out even more.

Tears ran down my face violently, my back wracking with sobs, as I tried to explain what I had seen. “The window . . . hand . . . pushed . . . fell down.”

And she stared at me with cold, cold eyes, which no sorrow had seen, no pity now enveloped. And I felt more alone than I had ever in my whole life.

**

“Servant, your duchess needs you,” I called to Charles, who was wandering down the corridor.

I had an aquisition for him. One for that remarkable little girl, who had shattered my plan for her father’s death so easily. It would have seemed accidental, and was so well-planned. Everyone in the town knew that the duke loved storms; he was even known to ride with his daughter on horseback through them. His windows were always open during them, and the town would probably see the death as unfortunate, but bound to happen eventually. But then she had to see me push her loving father out the window. It was my own fault, really. I hadn't realized just how stubborn or autonomous she would be. Her father stopped visiting the grave of his dead wife when I told him to, and I knew he told his daughter not to as well. Well, we would take care of her while my daughters and I attend the funeral. I truely wouldn't put it past her to realize that this marriage was more...good business. And God forbid she get older, if she was this deductive now. I had seen it all in her eyes when I watched her. What kind of tutor had she, that she would piece together the brocade of my robe with that three stories up in the window, during a storm?

“Yes, madam?” Charles asked. His ordinary brown hair fell slightly across his eyes, as he looked up at me his ordinary brown hair fell slightly across his eyes, an image I had seen so many times in the last three weeks.

"The dust in this room is up to my earlobes. It needs to be cleaned now." I gestured to the sitting room with the silk fan I held. I walked into a room off that hall, a small sitting room where the deceased duke had taken his meetings. I looked each way down the hall, and quietly shut the door once I was assured we were alone.

I turned, and his lips met mine, fiercefully, and he pushed me against the door, his tongue in my mouth. I ran my hands through his hair, and he sighed, and ran his hands up my skirt. I stopped his hand at the top of my thigh, and pulled back from him slightly. "Charles, how long have you worked here?" I whispered, the barest of breaths on his face.

He pressed his lips against mine. "Three weeks; you were the one who hired me. But my sister--"

"Shut up," I whispered, and pulled him towards me again. When we came up for air, I gasped, "Charles--Charles, would you do something for me? Would you do anything for me?"

"Of course. Anything."

"Anything?"

"Well, almost anything. I won't castrate myself with a spoon, if that's what you mean." He grinned.

I laughed softly. "Now, Charles, why would I want you castrated?"

His eyes darkened, and he pushed me to the floor. "I don't know," he whispered into my neck, making me shiver.

I grabbed his chin, and he met my eyes questioningly. “What–”

“Charles, I need you to do something for me,” I said, and I leaned closer to him. “Just a little something and I promise you,” I whispered, “things will be like they are now, always.”

His eyes looked confused. “Why? Why can’t we–”

“Charles, this is just one little thing which must be done while we’re at the funeral. Just one thing, and you can have this.” I pushed his hand up my leg more. “You can have me. Just one thing...” I pressed my lips against his, and they parted.

He pulled away, gasping slightly. “What is it you need done?” he asked hoarsely.

I smiled, and leaned close to whisper in his ear my plan.

**

After, the duchess left the room, and Charles stayed to clean and pick of the pieces of a vase they had knocked over and broken. But with the duchess gone, and him thinking over their time together, he was assaulted with guilt and unease at what he had promised.

How could I promise to kill her? My sister’s charge? With the room still partially a mess, he ran out, almost sprinting to the kitchen. He raced into the room and , seeing she was alone, said, “Marianne, I think I’ve done something awful.”

**

Marianne left the room with the duchess shaking her head. When Meladria had first told her what she had seen, and the possibility that it was the duchess, Marianne had scoffed at it. Now she believed it fully. And now, she would have to devise a plan to save Mela from her possible death and the prospect of growing up in a household where the occupants wanted her dead.

**

I lay in my room, shivering under the heavy blankets Marianne had covered me in. I had started picking the down feathers from my pillow yesterday, so it was nearly flat today. I felt as though my heart was a meek, fragile glass sculpture, and it had been shattered, and badly glued together again.

I had never been able to imagine life without my father; without his warm hugs in the evenings and mornings, without his readings to me at night. The soft, low tone of his voice had set me to sleep so many times, and now it was gone. The gentle kiss on my forehead when I was nearly asleep; the joy that had filled our Saturday and Sundays, with its little games and cards and violin.

I thought of playing hide-and-seek in the garden, giggling as my father noisily ‘tried’ to find me. The times when he took me to the river to go fishing, and catching a tiny fish, and having my father tell me it was the most wonderful catch in the world.

I tried and tried, for long times, to stop thinking about it, but the memories came still. Swimming in the summer, hiding behind rocks where he would sneak up on me and splash me. The way he would take me into his lap, and tell me stories of far-off imaginary places, and stories of my mother. The way she had walked, the way she had talked, was completely unknown to me, but I felt that, through his words, I knew her forever.

And, most of all, the way he had looked at me. As though I was his world, and nothing could change that. At least nothing until she came.

Tears slid down my cheeks, pooling at my ears as I stared at the canopy above my bed. It was white and pink striped, the same color as the candy canes my father bought around the holidays, the ones that tasted of peppermint, and stuck to everything. The tears started coming faster.

The door quietly slid open, and Marianne slipped through it, gently closing it behind her. She saw my state, and immediately knelt by me and held me. She was the only one in the world who could hold me now.

After I had quieted, she whispered, “Honey-dear, we must get out of this household. There is nothing in the world that would make me want to stay now.”

“My house? My room? Why?” I asked, tears trembling beneath my lids.

“Mela . . . What you said you saw the day your father . . . Well, let us say that the duchess has surprised me once more, and to say that she has admitted to being a felon would be untruthful, but there are no longer any doubts that you missaw that day. She drew me aside today, and asked me to rid this household of you, which I am most willing to do myself. We could take your inheritance, and we could start over, a new life, away from these three evils. What would you think?”

I shook my head stubbornly. “No. This is not how it works. She came, and killed my only family. It is her that has to leave.”

“Honey, I know that is how it should work, but that’s not how it does. By marriage, she now owns much of this land and properties. She has told me that you should be gone at the time of the funeral, this coming Saturday. I would hope to not have to leave everything you know here, especially considering the recent events that have taken place.”

“I want to stay here.” My throat had gone thick with the need to cry, again, and I buried my head in the pillow. “Let’s stay here.”

“Alright, my honey-dear. We will talk of this later.” She patted my head once more, than left me to myself, something I would not wish of at the moment.

I buried myself among all the blankets and pillow, and burrowed into the bed and let go, and cried, cried out all the broken shards of my heart. Unfortunately, it did nothing to ease the pain of the pieces digging into me.


The day of the funeral drew closer and closer. I still refused to release my beautiful home, the last thing that I could connect and remember with, to this wretched family that had ruined my very world. I barely left my room over those days, waking in the early morning, and slithering to the kitchen to get food in the shadows, hiding as much as one could in a white dressing gown. I then went back to my room with a cup of tea and two muffins. Sneaking was difficult, crouching with a full cup of tea and muffins occupying my hands, while I tried to lean as close to the wall and shadow as was physically possible. Lying in bed drawing or just lying, looking at the ceiling, then occupied my day until the stomach told me a trip to the kitchen was in order. When the house was busy, then I sent Marianne to get me something to eat; otherwise I went alone, walking as with the morning routine, although this time it was much harder, with golden honey sunlight pouring through the sheer curtains that donned the windows. I hid where I could, in small alcoves and under lace-clothed tables with beautiful, cheerful, misleading flowers in hand-painted vases that my father had brought back from one of his trips.

And while I did nothing, I longed for something to do. I felt as if my heart broke again, again, and again each time I saw something that my father had once touched, once felt, or once helped with.

In three days, I started working in the kitchens, baking even when there was nothing that needed it; washing, drying, mixing, pouring, anything an eight-year-old was capable of, until, when I fell into bed that night, I no longer dreamed. I would remember my father every day, every hour, every moment I was awake, but when I slept, I rested my discouragement, my anger, my spite, my tears, and my hate. I released myself from every overpowering emotion I could, and tried to return to the person I could have possibly been these days before if a window had not opened.

I awoke the day of the funeral dismayed, and for a moment, knew not why. I remembered then the ultimatum Marianne had faced me with. I shook my head, and held onto my pillow with all the strength an eight-year-old could possess. “No,” I whispered. And I knew, that I would not leave, not if they had to drag me out screaming.

Marianne had told me Rupert, Juan, and Ethan, three of my father’s best friends, would be at the funeral, but I didn’t want to talk to them. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and I especially didn’t want to talk to anyone who had known my father well.

Marianne came a time later, after they had left for the funeral, and asked me what we were to do. She begged and pleaded with me, but I would not budge. I sat in my bed, hugging my pillow, and telling her no every time she came up with a new idea for escape. Finally, she grew angry and left me lonely.

I moped around my bed for a while more. The soft down comforter was heavy enough to make me feel less alone, but it made me sweat through the sheets. The pillows got wet again, and again, as I remembered why I had the house to myself. The treacherous sunlight leaked through my windows, trying to brighten my gloomy room, and not succeeding by much. Finally, the rain and clouds took over, a scenario I was comfortable with in this mood.

There was a knock on the door, and I sat up. Marianne walked in without an invitation, and took one of my bags out of the closet. “Meladria, there is nothing we can do here. We are leaving. I understand that you don’t want to, and I understand why, but there is no possible way we could saftly stay in the same house with the woman who murdered your father. There is no way.” She started taking my clothes from the drawers and putting them neatly into the leather bag.

“No.”

Marianne turned on me, her anger starting to show. “We are leaving. I know you don’t want to leave the place that is the only link to your father, and your mother, but we must go. Get up.” She pulled the blanket off the bed, sending me tumbling to the floor. We have to leave. Now, get up.” She grabbed me roughly. “She will be home in an hour or less. We must be gone by then.” When I just sat on the floor, she shrieked, “Get up! Do you not understand? She will kill you! She doesn’t care whether or not you want to go! Let’s go! She doesn’t give a damn about you or your father! She never did!” Gasping, she said, “I’m sorry, Mela. I’m sorry.”

But it was too late. Tears were running down my face. “No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head. “No, no, no.” I ran from the room, screeching to a halt in the corridor, deciding which way was the fastest way out. I ran left, and skidded down the stairs to the ground floor. I ran from the house out into the gardens. There were puddles everywhere, and the rain came in sheets, turning ground into endless mud pits. There were seven marble steps from the house down to the garden wall. I ran to them as fast as I could, my tears mixing with the rain and mud that coated my face, and hands, and dress, and body.

I jumped down the first step, and landed. I jumped for the second, and the water beneath my feet reached over me and pulled me down to the step. I saw the rain-filled sky, the sparkling crystals that fell from the sky, then only darkness as my head hit.


I woke in a bed unknown to me, with a pink and white canopy above it, and a thick down comforter on top of me. I couldn’t remember how I got there. I couldn’t remember much at all . . . I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t remember who I was.

A woman bustled to my side. “My honey-dear, are you alright? You did not take too fearful a fall, I hope.”

I shook my head, confused, and immediately regretted it. Pain pulsed through it, and I lay back against the pillows, squinching up my eyes to try to stop the pain forming behind them. When I was able to open my eyes once more, I asked, “Who are you?”

The woman opened her mouth wide, and she dropped the tray she was carrying. “You don’t remember me?” she asked faintly, her eyes staring into nowhere.

I had never seen her in my life. “No.” My brow furrowed. “I don’t remember anything before the time that I woke up. Wait–who am I?” I searched my head frantically, but came up with no answer. I cried out, and squinched my eyes tighter together, trying to block it out. I didn’t know my name. I didn’t know me.

“My dear, my dear.” The woman patted my shoulder. A few minutes later, when I had regained myself, she started.“You are . . . Ela. You have lived in this household for all of your life . . . as a servant. I have taken care of you since your mother’s death when you were younger. No one knows who your father was.”

“W-what?” I let my head fall back onto the pillow, and closed my eyes against it all. I was a bastard-child, and an orphan. And . . . someone else was telling me my life, my very life. And I didn’t know it. Any of it.

View the next chapter: "Cinderela, Part 2"