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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 73/431
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 74/431
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.
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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.
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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 ham-burger. 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 show 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 de-fective 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.
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“Pour it in the pitcher and take it to the table. It’s a mir-acle 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.