Horrified, she cast about for ways to rid herself of the hateful creature. She stopped leaving her room altogether in an effort to keep the false wife away from the prince, hoping that the villainess would see the futility of her designs and go back whence she had come; yet the wretched woman did not budge. Next, she thought to scare her away with violence, and went about smashing teacups and pressing china shards into the tender skin of her arms and thighs; but invariably she found the pretender wife unperturbed and herself howling with pain. Desisting, she decided to starve the impostor instead, and tried to stop eating; yet always she broke down and accepted a cracker or a cluster of grapes that Brie and Nibbles pressed upon her, then felt ashamed of her weakness.
(As it happened, the descendants of Maximilian the Long-Tailed were no longer in power. The dynasty had developed an extravagant taste for luxury along with an imperious sense of entitlement. Not content with styling themselves mere Royal Companions, they had demanded to be addressed as Their Majesties and claimed an ever-growing number of prerogatives, from taxing all cheese consumption to exercising the droit du seigneur. King Nibbles pinched the backside of every passing mouse, whether nubile or old, simply to remind them all of his authority, while Queen Brie expected everyone she encountered on the daily inspections of her domains to prostrate themselves before her, and was always preceded by two pages, one of whom heralded her approach by blowing into a peapod, while the other walked backward unrolling a ribbon of crimson silk under her paws. And tyranny and oppression only worsened with time, even though rulers themselves changed rather frequently: numerous members of Maximilian’s family, seduced by the heady prospects of impunity and overindulgence, vied for the throne and deposed one another with clockwork regularity, by means of varied brutality that ranged from plying siblings with poisoned truffles to pushing grandmothers off staircases, and not excluding an occasional bout of surreptitious infant strangling or a more elaborate ploy involving a dozen young cousins who were invited to a birthday party only to find themselves in a locked room with a famished cat. There had, in fact, been so many assassinations and coups that no one paid attention to the regnal numbers anymore.
Still, as long as the royal contenders kept all the murder in the family, the masses grumbled quietly; but when one of the pages tripped while unrolling the ribbon before one of the queens and stepped on her toe and she had him beheaded, the grumbling grew louder. Sewer rats were the first to voice their discontent openly, and the working kitchen mice joined them shortly. In the end, the entire indigent population rose up, led by the intrepid Provolone the One-Eyed, overthrew the tyrants, and liberated their fabled stores of chocolate.
A general democratic election to the positions of Brie and Nibbles was then held in the kitchens. Victory was carried by a landslide by a team of two brothers, Snufflebit and Snifflebit, who were young and carefree, and had won the favor of the electorate by running a hilariously improvised campaign, complete with stand-up comedy, blueberry juggling, and riding along pantry shelves on bottle caps. Grandmothers’ tales had led the brothers to believe that the job would entail hours upon hours of board games, musical diversions, and much merriment, and they were eager to test their dancing skills. Soon after moving to the royal mantelpiece, however, the Mice Elect discovered, much to their dismay, that no dancing was required and that, far from being an enviable boon, the role of the Royal Companions was a grueling charity. It appeared, quite simply, that the princess was not overly intelligent and needed someone sensible to take care of her, day and night, or she might forget to eat, neglect to sleep, and have unfortunate accidents with assorted sharp objects. Less than a month into their one-year term, Snufflebit and Snifflebit grew so wan and thin that their family, alarmed, called an emergency meeting in the broom closet. The brothers were absolved of their duties, and a weekly rotation was set up among volunteers—a week, it seemed, was all it took before even the most stalwart mouse felt utterly worn-out.
As summer days cooled into fall evenings, it became harder and harder to find volunteers. Then someone remembered that in the rat-infested sewers deep below the palace, there was rumored to live an incredibly ancient seer by the name of Sister Charity, so beloved and wise that even the most murderous rat bandits grew as gentle as hairless mouselings in her saintly presence. Many argued that it was only a legend and no such mouse existed, but eventually a rat was found willing to show them the way to Sister Charity’s abode in exchange for a ration of sausages, and a small, nervous delegation with Snufflebit and Snifflebit at the helm was sent down below to ask the venerable seer for guidance.
They found her seated in the darkest underground chamber, telling a quiet story to a circle of mesmerized baby rats at her feet. She looked older than the very stone foundations around them, and in the unsteady halo of light cast by the candle stub in Snufflebit’s shaking paw, they saw that her eyes were milky and blank, for she had gone blind in her great age. Yet when she turned to face them, they felt that she was looking directly at them—looking directly into their souls.
“I know why you’ve come, o mice from above the ground,” she said in a voice like a rustle of leaves, like a creaking of trees. “I see the pleading in your hearts, and your hearts are pure. So be it. For your sakes, I declare the old debt paid, and I release her. Let all her mistakes be her own from now on. You will be free of your toils at the advent of winter.”)
At the advent of winter, a messenger came to the palace with a letter from Melissa, the princess’s younger stepsister, informing her that her stepmother had died. She felt distraught at the prospect of leaving her room. On the day of the funeral, she stood in the front row of mourners, her face buried in the fur of her collar, her eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses; she had drunk three or four potions to calm down, and now her features felt as if they were both numb and melting. Melissa, on her right, was crying openly, but Gloria held herself with her usual haughty self-possession. It was Gloria who, her mouth hard, her back ramrod straight, tossed the first handful of earth onto their mother’s coffin. Afterward, Melissa and Gloria walked off together, Gloria’s arm wrapped protectively around Melissa’s heaving shoulders, but she herself had slipped the tightening noose of sisterly embrace and trailed a few steps behind. As she stumbled through the frozen cemetery, headstones beckoned to her, angels leered suggestively through marble tears, and at last the path buckled beneath her feet, which she was now surprised to find liberated of shoes.