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.
