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.” 78/431
“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 79/431
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 80/431
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 81/431
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 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?