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gabriel
Love and ferrets and pretending to be a writer.

2005-01-31 7:27 AM
Cinerella

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This is another of those writing exercises where you complete a sentence they have started. Unedited.

Isabella tapped her foot impatiently against the glass floor of the carriage. It was bad enough that she had to call this tedious Cinderella her mistress at home in the palace, but to ride with her and play lady-in-waiting out and about as well as at home was difficult to bear. She herself was a duchess, or would be when her father the duke had the good grace to die, but she had to dance attendance up on this commoner, a princess only by marriage. Marriage! To her prince! The man whom she'd had every right to expect would become her husband, her most cherished mate. Handsome and a good dancer, he was all she'd ever wanted.

And yet Cinderella never mentioned these good qualities of his in their conversations -- and there were very many of these loathsome conversations, for what was a lady-in-waiting but a sounding board? A companion, really, is what she was supposed to be, along with the others, but while Cinderella had won their feeble hearts quickly enough she'd never win Isabella's. Not ever. The little fool could talk only of the Prince's goodness, his accomplishments in the library, his fairness to the peasantry. That last bit would obviously impress her. Isabella sniffed.

As their glass carriage - an appurtenance Cinderella rarely failed to flaunt - was pulling into Isabella's ancestral home, the memory of a secret little place came to her and the gleam of a wicked new use for it came into her mind. But perhaps it would be too cruel a trick to play on a princess.

Nah.

She followed the princess in alighting, and accompanied her and two other ladies up the stairs ad into the reception room where she dutifully kissed her father's cheek, and her stepmother's as well. The old hag had to be thirty if she was a day. After paying their respects, Isabella suggested a walk in the garden, an idea gratefully accepted by the other three. Once she had shown them the topiary, being sure to fawn over Cinderella at every turn, she offered to take them through the maze. Cinderella clapped her hands and bounced, the little simpleton.

Isabella led the way inthe betginning, then dropped back and restrained the other two ladies. One looked puzzled, and Isabella put a finger to her lips. "Let's play hide and seek with our princess. You know she loves a good game." They seemed a bit uneasy until Isabella hunched her shoulders and feigned a giggle. They were delighted, of course, at this unwonted show of gaiety and gladly complied.

And so Cinderella would find herself alone in the maze and she would panic and surely do something un-princesslike. Isabella nearly burst her stays as she led the others far in another direction that nearly parlleled the way the princess had taken for far enough that the ladies thought they were staying near her. In truth, Isabella was leading them out the far side of the maze and leaving Cinderella behind.

Isabella showed the other ladies the back side of the garden, bragging about the roses and this and that cultiviar while they becamse visible worried about Cinderella. "Well, let's go back in and find her, then," Isabella suggested, and led them back into the maze in a way that she knew led to a dead end. She had played in here for many happy hours as a child, and knew all the ways. It was growing dark when she grew weary of the joke and began to fear that she would come into punishment, and relented and took the ladies in a way that would take them all through the maze and the more popular deadends, the spots that might well be littered with condoms that the gardeners would pick up mornings following parties.

Cinderella was not to be found.

Both of the ladies were weeping, and Isabella was near to it herself, by the time they gave up the search and made their way back to the patio, heads low, two of them from grief, and one from shame. What had Cinderella ever truly done to hurt her, other than marrying the one she'd hoped was heres? He'd never paid her any attention anyway, and likely never would have. It was the bitter truth, and Isabella knew it now for the foolish fantasy it was.

She trailed behind, planning what to say to her father, he who would have to answer to the Prince, and, what was worse, to the King, when she heard delighted cries and the pat of running slippers upon clipped grass. She looked up and saw Cinderella, looking rather bedraggled, but very happy. "The Duke stopped me from looking for you all, but I was so worried! He said to me, 'Princess, my daughter knows the maze like she knows the way around a pastry. Don't trouble yourself over her. She'll bob up head first, always does. You'll see,' and he was right, for here you are!"

Isabella swallowed. "How did you get out, Princess?"

"When I realized that I'd lost my way, silly girl that I am, not knowing the way of mazes, I simply dropped down on my belly," there were gasps at the crude word, "and crawled out under the laurels. It wasn't so bad. I have been having tea with your family, and what delightful people they are, especially your dear stepmother." Then Cinderella rolled her eyes, a gesture that won Isabella's rotten little heart forever.

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:: JOURNAL HOME :: SUBSCRIBE TO THIS JOURNAL :: Click on Kathy Gabriel and read my stories :: 2-in-1 Romance by me (but the back cover's misspelled!. grrrrr.) :: November is National Novel Writing Month! :: The Feel Good Manual - happiness can be learned :: Mugs with the wet ferret :: Fractured Frugal Frieds - the best frugality site around :: The ferrets, and other pics by a talented local (very local) photographer :: Kettins_Bob's journal :: Clarion SF & F writing workshop :: Genevieve's journal (Clarion classmate) :: Phil's website (Clarion classmate) :: Nnedi Okorafor's blog (Clarion classmate) :: Online magnetic poetry :: Dave's interactive html tutorial :: Make a snowflake here - WARNING: Addictive! ::