WWC WK8: The Rat Prince

Author's Note: this was my first attempt at one of the HarperCollins/Inkpop writing contests. I won second place for their Weekly Writer's Challenge #9, the revisited fairytale contest. This story incorporates "The Pied Piper," "Cinderella," "Rapunzel," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Snow White." I'd forgotten all about this story, actually, until I was going through my Inkpop/Figment account. I remember the girl who beat me did a great retelling of "Cinderella" that was just amazing, called "Frailty."

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It wasn’t murder.

When my father told me what he intended to do, the knowledge hit me with the surety of the sunrise: of course I would have to kill him. But it wouldn't be murder. It would be justice. I wasn’t the murderer in this family; he was.

He killed my mother. They don't tell you that in the story, do they? Who planted the tree for her? Who tended it, watered it, pruned its branches? I did.

Who allowed my mother to drink a goblet of wine sprinkled with ground-up glass? He did.

Glass has always been the bane of my existence. The wood of my mother's tree, planted at the head of her grave when I was a little girl, would be the end of my father's. I wouldn't let him murder Rafe without consequence.

There was no way I could stop him, of course, for I was just the servant girl and the town wanted to see Rafe dead. My love was only a rat, after all. My father was a lord of men.

And who am I? You should know me by now: the girl in the fireplace, the ash-girl—Cinderella.

The morning of my father's death, I pressed my cheek against the smooth bark of my mother's tree. It had given me so much... and taken so much away. It had given me a prince... then taken away my love. It had been my father's excuse to steal the one who meant the most; it was the means by which I would avenge him.

Wind whistled through the flute I would give my father. A simple tune, sweet and clear—a sound like angels singing—breathed through my mind from the plain wooden instrument. Thank God I wasn't the one the song was intended for, or I would've thrown myself from the cliffs near my home and plummet to my death.

That was the fate my father intended for Rafe.

My stepsisters cried the day I confessed my father's plans, because they knew they would lose everything. The stories say my sisters despised me, that my stepmother forced me to be her slave. The tellers of the tales have never met my father. They never took the time to learn the cruelties of silken courtiers and sweet-tongued noblemen.

"Is this it?" My younger stepsister, Rose, asked me softly. The swish of her dress whispered over the dying scrub grass behind our house. The branches of my mother's tree cast shadow claws over her face.

Soon Rose, whom all called Beauty, would have her own claws to deal with—her Beast was still combing the world for her, intent on saving her from my father.

"Yes."

"Snow is ready for you," Rose whispered. "She and Mother have finished."

"You sound like a conspirator," I said to my fair-haired younger sister, reaching out to take her hand in mine. People mistook us often for true sisters, because of our similar looks and because of our closeness. "Why are you whispering?"

"Are you sure it will work?"

"Yes," I said, meeting her leaf green eyes with my blue ones. "Rafe will die, then my father will die, and then I will no longer be the ash-girl in the fireplace."

"I'm going to miss you."

I didn't respond. What was there to say? I would miss her, too.

ᴥᴥᴥ

In Snow's room, where countless mirrors hung and her potted apple tree sapling stretched its bird-like limbs toward the open window, my stepmother varnished the flute. The polished wood gleamed in the light. Beside my stepmother, with her bloodless skin and ebony hair, sat Snow, the daughter in her exact image.

I could never understand how strawberry blond Rose could be Snow's twin. They were complete opposites—Snow, with her jet curls and ivory skin, and Rose, crimson-tinted blond with a healthy blush in her cheeks. I could never understand how they could love me so completely, when my own father despised me.

"When he plays, he'll die, Crystal," my stepmother told me absently, her mind occupied with coating the flute with poison. "It won't be right away—I have nothing poisonous enough for that. But he will die."

"Rafe and I have talked about it," I whispered, staring at my reflection in one of Snow's mirrors—my soot-smudged face, the eyes as blue as glass, my silvery blond hair tied up under its kerchief, my dirty work dress. "We've accepted it."

"The apple," my stepmother said, nodding towards the scarlet fruit glinting on the nightstand beside Snow's bed. "I don't know why I've agreed to this."

She had been saying that since I'd outlined my plan, but it wasn't true. I knew why she'd agreed to create the poison for me: she knew what it was to lose the only one you'd ever loved. Rose and Snow's father had been murdered by their grandmother, his eyes gouged out and his heart pierced by a rose thorn. If not for the twins, she would've done exactly as I planned to do.

"I finished these just in time, I guess," Snow murmured, looking everywhere but at me. She lifted an ebony box from beside the poisonous apple and popped the lid so I could see inside. Within lay a key, white as bone, on a thin silver chain. A ruby hung from the chain beside the key.

"What's this?"

"The last gift," Snow said. A tear rolled down her cheek. I felt wetness on my face, and reached out to hug her.

ᴥᴥᴥ

The key belonged to Snow's hope chest. Lightly tracing my fingers over the gold inlay, the leaves and flowering vines and trees on the lid, I thought of Snow, felt the tears begin to burn. I forced them back and opened the trunk.

Inside, I found a letter from my stepmother, Aurora, and wedding garments—a white dress, a diamond comb, diamond earrings and necklace, and slippers that glittered like crystal. The pendant made me laugh. It was a 14 karat pumpkin.

I memorized the letter. Then I folded everything neatly and put it back inside.

A single teardrop splashed the lid of my sister's hope chest.

ᴥᴥᴥ

Because I have never known agony, because I have never known the all-consuming grief of true loss, and because I had made a promise, I watched that afternoon as my father raised the poison flute to his lips and began to play.

Then the rats came.

From all over Hamlin, the rats came, a river of black-furred bodies heaving with the effort of racing towards that music, that beautiful melody—a sound like angels singing. First the sewer rats and barn rats and river rats and forest rats...and then the rats who were not rats began to stumble towards the cliffs near our house.

I saw Rafe, my sweetheart, the man who had asked me only a week ago to marry him, trying to resist. He kept his eyes on my window, where I had promised to stay, to bear witness...but his feet dragged onward.

In the last few years, Hamlin had begun to systematically wipe out the faeries. After the last Elf had been drowned, the humans turned their thoughts towards the shape shifters. The rats came first.

My father was the executioner. His actions would bring a slaughter down on the mortals of Hamlin, because Rafe was prince of the shifters. War would come, violent and bloody. The humans would die, thrown from the very cliffs the rat shifters now leapt from.

And before the bloodbath to come, my father would receive the payment I knew the city would deny him.

Aurora, Rose and Snow would be safe—they were witches, all. I would've been safe, but I would not live without Rafe.

High above the world in my tower room, I watched, tears rolling down my cheeks, as Rafe lifted his hand in farewell and walked off the edge of the cliffs. He disappeared in seconds, with not even a scream or yelp to mark his passing.

I screamed for both of us. Screamed until my father began to convulse; screamed until Aurora rushed from the house and plunged her knitting needles deep into his heart; screamed until Rose and Snow began hacking at him with the wood axe and the carving knife.

I bit into the apple.

In a white wedding dress, wearing a poisoned diamond comb, diamond earrings, and a diamond pumpkin pendant, I fell to the ground as a haze slipped across my eyes and sudden weakness flooded my limbs.

I knew I was dying. I welcomed it. Soon I would be with Rafe, and my long-dead mother. I would be free of my father's hate. My stepmother and stepsisters would bury me in a glass coffin.

The air eased from my lungs. The last thing I heard was the tinkling of shattering glass as my slippers crashed to the floor. The apple lay amongst the glass, poison among the pain.