Cinderella Is Dead Read online

  7

  My mother is standing over me, nudging me out of bed.

  “I’ve drawn you a bath,” she whispers. Her hands are like ice as she pulls the blankets off me. I blink repeatedly. “Get up, Sophia. We have work to do.”

  I look out my bedroom window to see the sun cresting over the horizon. Against my sincerest wishes, the day of the ball has arrived, and my mother is already preparing. I slide out of bed and plant my feet on the cold wood floor. My mother shakes her head as she looks at me.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Nothing.” Her voice cracks, and she quickly looks away. “Into the tub. We don’t have much time.”

  “It’s dawn,” I say. “The ball doesn’t begin for hours.” I want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

  She stops in my doorway, her hand resting on the jamb. She doesn’t look at me. “We’ll be at this all day. Best to get started right now.” She disappears into the hallway.

  I trudge into the washroom and bathe, stalling until the water turns cold and my fingertips wrinkle. I slip into a dressing gown my mother has left for me. Uncontrollable hopelessness sweeps over me, the feeling of hurtling off a cliff and not being able to do anything about it. I could be chosen, and my life would be only what my husband said it could be. Or I might not be chosen at all. I wonder if my parents could forfeit me so easily, the same way Louis’s parents had.

  A knock at the door startles me out of my thoughts. I open it to find four women waiting for me on the other side. I don’t recognize any of them. I move to close the door, and one woman pushes it open again.

  “Now, now, dearie,” she croaks. “No need to be nervous.”

  They pounce on me instantly, and I push them away as they pull at my dressing gown.

  “Mother!” I call out.

  “For goodness’ sake, Sophia, they are dressers,” my mother says as she stands in the hall.

  “Is this really necessary? I’ve been getting dressed on my own since I was seven. I’m sure I can manage.”

  “You hush now and let them do what I’m paying them for.”

  The women begin again. Two of them help me into a set of undergarments, while the other two rub scented oils into my skin. My mother oversees every detail, like the perfectionist she is.

  “Make sure the garters are knotted tightly,” she says. “We can’t have her stockings rolling down.”

  “Oh no. We can’t have that. What would people say if they knew about my droopy stockings?” I exaggerate every word, and one of the dressers cackles. My mother is stone-faced. I know I’m being silly, uncooperative, but I don’t see how my stockings make a single bit of difference in all this. They tug at the corset, and I let out a yelp as someone yanks the laces together. “Does it have to be this tight?”

  “Yes,” says my mother. “We’ll need to move downstairs to fit the farthingale. There’s not enough room up here.”

  The women buzz around me as I go downstairs. I’m trying to figure out what a farthingale is, while focusing on not breathing too deeply. The walls and ceiling switch places right before my eyes, and I hear a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Someone lightly tugs at my back, and then suddenly I can take a deeper breath. I gulp in air and glance at the woman behind me. She winks. I’m not going to faint, but vomiting isn’t completely ruled out.

  The curtains in our front room are drawn, and a stool sits in the middle of the room. My mother brings in a petticoat and a camisole that I slip on. As soon as I stumble onto the stool, the women tug at my hair. Tears well up in my eyes as I tip my head back to keep them from pouring down my face.

  “Aww, don’t cry,” says the woman who had loosened my corset. “You’ll catch a husband like a fish on a hook with a face like that.”

  “No, it’s not that.” I try to slow my breathing and concentrate on not running out the front door. My mother watches me with concern in her eyes.

  “We should straighten her hair with an iron,” one of the women says. “It would be prettier that way. And I’ve heard that the king himself prefers it.”

  “Or we could leave it the way it is,” I say through clenched teeth. They all laugh as if I’d made a joke. It isn’t funny. It feels like another part of me is being changed to fit someone else’s vision of what is pretty. I especially don’t want to do anything the king prefers.

  “Pull it straight and pin it up,” my mother says. “And use the ribbons.”

  It takes hours for them to finish my hair. When they are done, they set to work on my makeup.

  “Which one do you like?” asks one of the younger women. She holds up three small tins, each with varying shades of pink. “It’s for the lips.”

  I reach out to touch the least ostentatious of the three when my mother steps in and chooses the color most akin to actual blood.

  After the women finish my makeup, they bring in something that looks like a large hoop made from reeds with bits of fabric connected to the rim and gathered in the middle. They place it on the floor, then motion for me to step into the center. As I stand in the middle, they pull the hoop up, attaching the fabric strips around my waist like a belt. I can just barely touch the edges of the thing as it hangs around me.

  “It looks wonderful,” my mother says.

  “How am I supposed to sit down?”

  “You don’t need to sit. You need to mingle. Dance, if you’re asked. The shape of the farthingale is accentuated when you stand.”

  “Please don’t say farthingale anymore,” I say dryly. “It sounds like a torture device.” Which is accurate.

  My mother goes into the next room and returns with the main part of the gown. She and one of the other women pull the light-blue frock out of its cloth sack. They slip the upper part over my head and adjust it before attaching the skirt to the hoop. The weight of it all holds me in place, like an animal in a trap.

  When my mother brings out my shoes, I almost faint and not because I can barely breathe. The heels of the glittering monstrosities are nearly five inches tall, and the toes are so pointed that a normal human foot could never fill its proportions.

  “Am I supposed to wear those?” I ask.

  “Obviously,” my mother says.

  I’m reminded that this isn’t about what I want or what I like. It’s about what everyone else thinks is best, and I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

  My shoulders sit exposed, and the woman beside me dusts my décolletage with a fine pearly powder that sparkles in the dancing candlelight. I try to tune out their chatter about the king, the ball, how they had all met their husbands at an event just like this one, and how Cinderella herself had once sat by her prince to preside over the gathering.

  “She was a beauty, to be sure,” says one woman. “And not just on the outside. She was a kind person. Heart of gold. Something about her shined. Everybody was drawn to her.”

  “It’s a tragedy that she died so young,” says another of the women. “I think she would have loved to see all the young women following in her footsteps.”

  “I picked the blue to honor her,” says my mother.

  I look down at the dress. Its pale-blue color matches the descriptions of the dress in the story, but I think that is where our similarities end. Would Cinderella really have been delighted to see so many girls unhappy, dreading this moment?

  “It’s all we can do now, isn’t it?” asks one of the helpers. “To honor her we have to do it in these small, sentimental ways. We used to be able to pay our respects in a more traditional way.”

  My mother’s face grows tight, which always means someone is saying something they shouldn’t be.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  The woman sighs, and my mother shoots her a pointed glance. She continues anyway. “My great-grandmother told me that her grandmother had actually seen Cinderella’s tomb with her own eyes, that people used to leave flowers and trinkets for her.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why leave anything
for her?”

  The women all stare at me like I have two heads, and I stop talking. My mother looks like she might faint. Cinderella’s story is the reason I’m being forced to go to the ball, the reason my parents have gone into debt to provide me a dress and shoes and all the pretty things I could ever need. Her story is the reason why none of the things I want for myself matter.

  “Are we finished?” my mother asks.

  “Finished,” the woman says.

  The other women step back, admiring their handiwork. They drag a full-length mirror into the room, and I gasp at the sight of myself. My painted face, the dress squeezing me in at the waist—it isn’t me. It can’t be. The dress, though beautiful, is not something I would have chosen. My hair and makeup are done in a way that I wouldn’t have picked. My eyes well up, and my mother rushes in to catch my tears on a handkerchief before they roll down my cheeks.

  “Now, now. We’ll have none of that,” she says, her voice soft.

  “Here.” One of the women presses a small glass vial into my hand. “Drink.”

  I hold it up to the light. The liquid inside is yellow. “What is this?”

  “A little something from Helen’s Wonderments,” says the dresser. “I was going to give it to my niece, but—” Her eyes glaze over, and she shakes her head. “Well, never mind that. Drink up.”

  “A potion?” I ask.

  I see my mother bite the inside of her lip.

  “For luck,” says the woman. “You look lovely. You’ll be the prettiest girl at the ball and I’m sure you won’t need it, but—just in case.”

  I turn to my mother. I want to tell her again how much I don’t want to go, but before I have a chance to speak, the front door creaks open behind me and my father steps in. The women fall silent. I tuck the vial between my skin and the corset as my mother takes his coat and hat while he stands watching me. He doesn’t look at my dress. He stares directly into my eyes.

  “Would you all excuse us for a moment?” The helpers scatter, but my mother hovers nearby. “What do you think?” he asks.

  I don’t answer. What I think doesn’t matter. Smoothing out his vest and rumpled sleeves, he comes to stand in front of me. He is tall. His frame next to mine makes me feel small, but not in the way I feel when I stand by men in the market or in town. He wants to protect me, but he, like my mother, has no real idea of how to do that.

  He reaches into his breast pocket and produces a small package secured with brown twine. His eyes, deep and brown, mist over as the firelight casts shadows across his warm umber skin. He presses the package into my hand.

  “You must be feeling quite conflicted,” he says.

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Angry. Resentful. Those are probably much better words.”

  “Probably.”

  “You are rebellious. Always have been. Where you get your fiery spirit, I’ll never know.” He gives me a knowing little wink and motions toward the package. “Are you going to open it?”

  I pull the wrapping apart, and a beaded necklace with a sapphire cut into the shape of a heart falls into my hand.

  “Just a trinket. It pales in comparison to you.” He takes the necklace and clasps it around my neck. “It was your grandmother’s. She asked me to give it to you when the day came for you to go off to the ball.”

  “Is that really what she said?” I ask.

  He narrows his eyes at me. My grandmother was like a storm, wild and unpredictable and sometimes a little too harsh for my father’s comfort. When she would speak about the ball, she never made it seem like it was something that was inevitable. She always used the word if when she spoke of it. If the day came for Sophia to go to the ball. If we were still doing this when young Sophia got older. It was her spitfire spirit, her hatred of the way Lille was run that got her killed. She had said too much to the wrong person, and the palace guards came to get her on a cold rainy afternoon. She kicked one of them on the way out the door.

  A week later my father received a letter that informed him where he could pick up her body for burial.

  My father sighs and casts his gaze to the floor. “She said if, not when. I miss her every single day, but I hate that she planted such nonsense in your head.”

  I press my lips together. I don’t dare tell him that once while I sat in her lap she told me that if I ever went to the ball, I should set the palace on fire and dance on the ashes. It was a fun but dangerous little secret the two of us kept. A knot grows in my throat.

  “I hope you understand why you must stifle the urge to resist this,” my father continues. “I know you want to. I can see it in your eyes. It feels wrong to ask you to deny who you are, but it’s necessary.”

  I step forward and look right up into his face. “I don’t want to go.” I refuse to let the tears fall. “You love me, don’t you?”

  “Of course. More than anything.” He lowers his eyes, his hands resting gently on my shoulders.

  “Then stand with me. Behind me, beside me, something. Please.” I hate how out of control I feel.

  “Sophia, please.” He is pleading, desperate. “I’m trying to save you. I know it’s not right. You think I want you to be unhappy?”

  “Then just stop. Don’t make me go. Don’t let this happen.” I beg him to spare me from this, but it’s like he doesn’t hear me.

  He throws his hands up. “I’m not the one in charge, Sophia.” He slumps down into a chair. My mother puts her hands on his shoulders. “It’s not fair, but I’d rather see you unhappy than imprisoned or killed.”

  “For being who I am?” I ask. “For not wanting a husband? How is that wrong?”

  My mother keeps glancing at the front door like palace guards might knock it down and drag me away at any moment. “Keep your voice down,” she says in a whisper.

  “I can’t change how you feel,” says my father. “But you cannot disobey the king. Your feelings, my feelings, none of that matters to him.” His voice gets lower and lower as he speaks to me, his eyes downcast.

  “He is not the only one who thinks solely of himself.” The words slip out like a curse, and my father winces as if I’ve cut him. That’s not what I want. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. I—I’m sorry I can’t be who you want me to be.”

  A knock at the door startles us both. When my father composes himself enough to answer it, a man in a finely tailored navy-blue suit stands in the doorway.

  “Good evening, sir.” The man bows low. “The carriage is ready.”

  “It’s time,” my mother says.

  She tries to take me by the elbow, but I pull free from her grasp and reluctantly walk out of the house and down the footpath. The carriage, decorated with lavender curtains and matching ribbons, sits there like a beautiful vision ready to ferry me into a nightmare. Two snow-white Clydesdales are hitched to the front, each wearing a lavender sash to match the carriage. Through the glass window, I see Erin seated inside.

  “We split the cost of the carriage with Erin’s parents,” my mother says. “It will give you a chance to say your goodbyes, make peace with the situation.”

  She slips the invitation to the ball into my hand. As the reality sets in, an unfathomable sadness wells up inside me. There will be no more stolen moments, no more rendezvous at the park, no more secrets shared between us. I climb into the carriage.

  “You look stunning, Sophia,” Erin says. I watch her gaze move over me before she looks away.

  “Thank you,” I say. I lean toward her and reach out to touch her hand when my father’s face appears in the window. I sit back immediately.

  “Try to enjoy yourself, Sophia,” he says through the glass.

  He can’t be serious. I begin to speak, but Erin beats me to it.

  “We’ll try, sir,” she says. She gives me a pointed look, and I reluctantly nod back.

  My father and mother watch from the door as the carriage pulls out of the drive and begins the short journey to the castle.

  “I
can’t wait to see what the palace looks like on the inside,” says Erin, staring out the carriage window. Her voice is low, her words measured. “I hear they have tables and tables of food and wine and peacocks just walk around the grounds. Can you imagine it? Real live peacocks.”

  Erin wears a maroon wig that has been elaborately styled and placed on her head in such a way that strands of her dark hair are still visible around the edges. I reach forward and tuck them away, letting my fingers linger near her cheek.

  She is all I want.

  Suddenly, she takes my hand in hers and presses my palm to her lips. She pulls my hands into her lap and leans forward, pressing her forehead against mine.

  “We’re out of time,” she says, her eyes closed.

  “We’re not,” I say, gripping her hands, breathing her in. “We can stop right now. We can run.”

  “Where can we go? If I thought we could make this work—”

  My heart leaps as a glimmer of hope springs to life. “We can. You just have to say it’s what you want. That’s all. It’s easy.”

  She smiles, and as I go to put my arms around her, she presses my hands down into her lap, holding them there. “It’s not. And I know you don’t want to hear this, but this isn’t what I want.”

  That spark of hope is immediately extinguished, replaced by a numbing ache. “Please don’t say that. You don’t mean it.”

  Erin was my first friend, the first person I cared about as more than a friend, the first and only person I’ve ever kissed. In the beginning, I’d been so afraid to tell her how I felt about her that I lied and said another girl had feelings for her, just to see how she would react. Apparently my ability to lie convincingly wasn’t as good as I thought it was, because she saw straight through me. She told me that she cared about me, too, but that we had to keep it a secret. I didn’t want to keep it a secret. But I did. For her. And the moments we shared sustained me, gave me something to look forward to.

  Over time, as the ball grew closer, something began to change. She didn’t want to hold my hand or even hear me talk about us being together. It wounded me in a way I didn’t even know was possible.