By the time Ella was sixteen, she understood that people rarely saw what was in front of them. They saw what they expected to see, and expectation was a kind of blindness. Her stepmother saw a frightened orphan too timid to defend herself. Her stepsisters saw a servant girl who slept beside the ashes because she lacked the courage to demand anything better. The neighbors saw a tragic child reduced to drudgery after her father’s death, a poor creature who deserved pity but not much attention. None of them saw the jars beneath the loose floorboard in Ella’s room, or the little collection of teeth wrapped carefully in linen. No one thought to connect her with the three travelers who had vanished from the forest road behind the estate during the previous winter. Ella had learned early that suffering made excellent camouflage.
Her father had taught her that, though unintentionally. He had been a weak man, forever apologizing, forever yielding, forever explaining that unpleasant things were simply the price of maintaining peace. When his second wife insulted Ella, he looked away. When the woman’s daughters took Ella’s bedroom and pushed her into a narrow chamber beside the kitchen, he suggested patience. When they dismissed the household servants and placed the chores upon Ella instead, he assured her that circumstances would improve. Ella eventually decided that circumstances required assistance.
After his death, the physician blamed his heart. Ella had watched the old man make that diagnosis while Lady Tremaine sobbed convincingly into a lace handkerchief. She had almost smiled. She had not hated her father, exactly. Hatred was such a crude emotion, useful mostly to people who lacked imagination. Her father had simply become an impediment. Once she understood that, the solution had presented itself with remarkable clarity.
Lady Tremaine was different. Ella found her fascinating because, unlike her father, the woman possessed instincts. She recognized weakness and exploited it without guilt. She understood appearances, understood that kindness was often transactional, and understood that society rewarded cruelty so long as cruelty wore silk gloves and spoke politely. For a time, Ella admired her. Eventually, admiration curdled into curiosity, and Ella began wondering what Lady Tremaine would look like when she finally understood that she was not the most dangerous person in the house.
The royal invitation arrived before Ella could answer that question. Every unmarried young woman of suitable age had been summoned to a ball at the palace, where Prince Henry was expected to choose a bride. Ella’s stepsisters shrieked when the sealed envelope arrived, and for three days the house became a frenzy of ribbons, perfume, tailoring, and argument. Ella fastened gowns, polished shoes, curled hair, and listened while Beatrice and Constance insulted one another between fittings.
“You cannot possibly think the prince will choose you,” Beatrice said while Ella tightened the laces of her gown. “You have shoulders like a farmhand.”
“At least I have a chin,” Constance replied.
Lady Tremaine slapped them both before the quarrel could worsen. “Royalty does not marry beauty,” she said. “Royalty marries usefulness.”
Ella, kneeling beside an open trunk, looked up. Of all the things her stepmother had ever said, that was the one worth remembering.
After the carriage departed for the palace, Ella waited until the house had gone quiet. Then she climbed the stairs and opened the cedar chest that had belonged to her mother. Inside lay a silver evening dress wrapped in tissue, preserved despite the years. There was nothing magical about it. No fairy had spun it from moonlight, no enchantment had transformed rags into silk. It was simply a very expensive dress that Ella’s mother had worn before illness hollowed her cheeks and reduced her to something that rattled beneath blankets. Ella had altered the gown several months earlier, carefully and in secret, though until that evening she had not known exactly why.
She washed the soot from her skin, pinned up her hair, and opened another box. Inside rested a pair of glass slippers, absurdly delicate things her father had purchased in Venice years ago. The glass was reinforced beneath the sole with silver, allowing them to be worn briefly for ceremonial occasions. Her mother had treasured them. Ella slipped her feet inside and discovered, as she already knew she would, that they fit perfectly.
At the palace, nobody recognized her. Ella had counted on that. Servants bowed because she looked wealthy. Noblemen stepped aside because she moved as though they should. Women whispered because no one could identify her family, and uncertainty lent her an importance that a pedigree might actually have diminished. By the time she entered the ballroom, Ella already understood that mystery was not magic. Mystery was merely information withheld at the correct moment.
Prince Henry noticed her within twelve minutes.
He was handsome in the bland, symmetrical way royal portraits demanded: tall, broad-shouldered, carefully educated, and visibly bored by every person around him. Ella watched three women approach him in succession, each praising the palace, his uniform, or the evening’s entertainment. When Henry finally came to her and asked whether she was enjoying herself, Ella looked past him toward the painted ceiling.
“It seems exhausting,” she said.
Henry frowned. “What does?”
“Living somewhere everyone pretends to like you.”
For a moment, he simply stared at her. Then he laughed, and Ella knew she had him.
They danced twice. He asked her name during the second dance, and she gave him only Ella. When he asked for her family name, she smiled and said, “Would it matter tonight?” His curiosity sharpened immediately. Ella felt the change in him and filed it away. Desire, she decided, worked much like hunger. It intensified when denied satisfaction.
She left before midnight, though no spell compelled her to do so. There was no enchantment to break and no carriage waiting to turn into a pumpkin. Ella left because remaining would have diminished the effect she had created. At the top of the palace stairs, she deliberately removed one slipper and placed it where the prince’s servants could not possibly miss it. Then she disappeared into the darkness with the other slipper tucked beneath her cloak.
The prince searched for her, just as she expected. Within days, the glass slipper had become the kingdom’s most famous object, and royal representatives were ordered to visit every household containing an unmarried young woman of appropriate age. Ella watched the excitement spread across the countryside and enjoyed the ridiculous solemnity with which grown men carried a shoe from village to village as though transporting a holy relic.
Lady Tremaine did not find it amusing.
Her stepmother’s laughter became too loud when news reached them that the royal party was approaching their district. She watched Ella too carefully at supper and barely touched her wine. Ella recognized fear immediately because she had caused it often enough in others. Something had changed. Perhaps Lady Tremaine had discovered the empty space in the cedar chest. Perhaps she remembered the Venetian slippers. Perhaps, after all those years, she had finally looked at Ella and seen something other than an obedient girl beside the ashes.
That night Lady Tremaine entered Ella’s room and closed the door behind her.
“You will leave this house before morning,” she said.
Ella sat calmly on the edge of the bed. “Why?”
“I know what you are.”
The words sent a pleasant warmth through Ella. At last, someone had noticed.
“What am I?”
Lady Tremaine stared at her for several seconds before answering. “Your father. I knew something was wrong. The dogs would not go near his room that morning, and the physician was an idiot. Everyone believed him because everyone wanted to believe him.”
Ella said nothing.
Her stepmother’s face changed. “The travelers on the forest road. Were those you as well?”
“That stew was excellent, wasn’t it?”
Lady Tremaine ran.
She reached the staircase before Ella caught her.
The household heard a scream, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body tumbling down the stairs. By the time Beatrice and Constance emerged from their rooms, Ella was kneeling beside their mother, calling desperately for help. Lady Tremaine’s neck had broken near the base of the staircase. The death was tragic, sudden, and perfectly understandable in a darkened house.
The prince’s representatives arrived the following morning.
Ella wore black.
She comforted her stepsisters while they cried, accepted condolences from the royal servants, and seemed reluctant when the slipper was brought forward. Beatrice insisted she try it. Constance agreed. The royal chamberlain knelt and placed the glass slipper upon Ella’s foot.
It fit.
Within six months, Ella became Princess of the Realm.
Within two years, she became queen.
King Henry’s father died first, carried away by a fever that spread through the palace but somehow touched no one else severely enough to kill them. Henry inherited the throne and spent the next several months depending increasingly upon his wife for matters of state. Ella discovered that governing suited her. Nations, like households, were filled with people who mistook politeness for weakness and tradition for morality. She learned quickly which ministers could be manipulated, which could be purchased, and which needed to disappear.
Then Henry began suffering headaches.
At first, they were minor. Within months, he required long periods of rest. His hands trembled. His memory failed him. The royal physicians argued endlessly about the cause, blaming everything from an old hunting injury to nervous exhaustion. Ella remained beside him throughout his decline, arranging his medicines, reading correspondence aloud when his vision blurred, and sleeping beside him when he became frightened during the night.
The kingdom adored her devotion.
When Henry finally died in her arms, Ella wept beautifully.
There were no surviving legitimate male heirs, and the succession crisis that followed threatened to divide the country. Parliament debated distant cousins, foreign marriages, and ancient claims for nine days. In the end, faced with unrest along the borders and a queen already performing most of the duties of government, they chose stability.
They crowned Ella.
Years passed, and the kingdom prospered under her rule. Roads improved. Crime declined. Corrupt officials disappeared with astonishing regularity. Wars ended quickly. Seeing impaled soldiers and heads on pikes tended to have that effect. Foreign ambassadors learned that Queen Ella remembered every insult and every broken promise, though few understood what became of those who offended her severely enough.
The old story changed as well.
Children no longer heard about Ella’s father dying under questionable circumstances. They heard that he had been a loving widower taken tragically young. They did not hear about the missing travelers or the bodies eventually discovered in the forest. Lady Tremaine became crueler with every retelling, until she transformed from a calculating but ordinary woman into something almost inhuman. Beatrice and Constance became grotesque caricatures, stupid and ugly and jealous. The silver dress became a magical gown. The Venetian slippers became enchanted glass. Eventually someone invented a fairy godmother to explain how a servant girl could possibly have reached the palace without assistance.
Queen Ella encouraged every revision.
She commissioned illustrated books and rewarded storytellers who produced particularly charming versions. She invited children to the palace on the anniversary of her coronation and allowed them to perform plays about the miserable servant girl who remained gentle despite suffering and was rewarded because goodness inevitably triumphs over cruelty.
Ella found that part especially amusing.
One winter evening, when she was nearly sixty, she visited the palace nursery and found her granddaughter listening to a governess read the familiar tale. Ella remained quietly in the doorway while the woman described the wicked stepmother, the magical transformation, the lost slipper, and the prince who searched the entire kingdom for the mysterious girl he loved.
The child interrupted near the end. “Grandmother, did all of this really happen to you?”
Ella entered the room and sat beside her.
“Stories change,” she said. “People remember what they need to remember.”
The girl considered this. “But did you really live happily ever after?”
Queen Ella looked through the tall windows toward the city below. Thousands of lights burned beneath the winter sky. Beyond them lay an entire kingdom that belonged to her, a kingdom filled with people who loved the woman they believed she had been.
Ella smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “That part is true.”
—
Author Bio:
Michael Porter is a Horror/Science Fiction writer from Chesapeake, VA. Husband and father of two fantastic daughters. I enjoy reading all genres, but have always gravitated toward writing Horror/SciFi.