Stepsister(3)

But he was not. He was lying on his back, cradled in the canopy of a gondola. The boat was rocking violently from side to side, but Chance was fine.

“Row, my fine fellow!” he called to the gondolier. The man obliged. The boat moved off.

Chance sat up, eyeing the Fates with a diamond-bright intensity. “You must accept my stakes now! You have no choice!” he shouted.

The gondola grew smaller and smaller as it made its way down the canal. A moment later, it rounded a bend and disappeared.

“This is a bad state of affairs,” the crone said darkly. “We cannot have mortals making their own choices. When they do, disaster follows.”

The maiden and the mother stepped back into the room. The crone trailed them. “Pack a trunk,” she barked at a servant. “I’ll need quills and inks …” Her hand hovered over the bottles upon the table. She selected a deep ebony. “Fear, yes. Jealousy will be useful, too,” she said, reaching for a poisonous green.

“Where are you going?” the maiden asked.

“To the village of Saint-Michel,” the crone replied.

“You will stop Chance from taking hold of the girl?” asked the mother.

The crone smiled grimly. “No, I cannot. But I will do what we Fates have always done. I will stop the girl from taking hold of a chance.”





One


In the kitchen of a mansion, a girl sat clutching a knife.

Her name was Isabelle. She was not pretty.

She held the knife’s blade over the flames of a fire burning in the hearth. Behind her, sprawled half-conscious in another chair, was her sister, Octavia.

Octavia’s face was deathly pale. Her eyes were closed. The once-white stocking covering her right foot was crimson with blood. Adélie, the sisters’ old nursemaid, peeled it off and gasped. Octavia’s heel was gone. Blood dripped from the ugly wound where it used to be and pooled on the floor. Though she tried to hold it in, a moan of pain escaped her.

“Hush, Tavi!” Maman scolded. “The prince will hear you! Just because your chances are ruined doesn’t mean your sister’s must be.”

Maman was the girls’ mother. She was standing by the sink, rinsing blood out of a glass slipper.

The prince had come searching for the one who’d worn it. He’d danced all night with a beautiful girl at a masquerade ball three days ago and had fallen in love with her, but at the stroke of midnight, the girl had run away, leaving only a glass slipper behind. He would marry the girl who’d worn it, he’d vowed. Her and no other.

Maman was determined that one of her daughters would be that girl. She’d greeted the royal party in the foyer and requested that Isabelle and Octavia be allowed to try the slipper on in privacy, in deference to their maidenly modesty. The prince had agreed. The grand duke had held out a velvet pillow. Maman had carefully lifted the slipper off it and carried it into the kitchen. Her daughters had followed her.

“We should’ve heated the blade for Tavi,” Maman fretted now. “Why didn’t I think of it? Heat sears the vessels. It stops the bleeding. Ah, well. It will go better for you, Isabelle.”

Isabelle swallowed. “But, Maman, how will I walk?” she asked in a small voice.

“Silly girl! You will ride. In a golden carriage. Servants will lift you in and out.”

Flames licked the silver blade. It grew red. Isabelle’s eyes grew large with fear. She thought of a stallion, lost to her now, that she had once loved.

“But, Maman, how will I gallop through the forest?”

“The time has come to put childish pursuits aside,” Maman said, drying the slipper. “I’ve bankrupted myself trying to attract suitors for you and your sister. Pretty gowns and fine jewels cost a fortune. A girl’s only hope in life is to make a good marriage, and there’s no finer match than the prince of France.”

“I can’t do it,” Isabelle whispered. “I can’t.”

Maman put the glass slipper down. She walked to the hearth and took Isabelle’s face in her hands. “Listen to me, child, and listen well. Love is pain. Love is sacrifice. The sooner you learn that, the better.”

Isabelle squeezed her eyes shut. She shook her head.

Maman released her. She was silent for a bit. When she finally spoke again, her voice was cold, but her words were scalding.

“You are ugly, Isabelle. Dull. Lumpy as a dumpling. I could not even convince the schoolmaster’s knock-kneed clod of a son to marry you. Now a prince waits on the other side of the door—a prince, Isabelle—and all you have to do to make him yours is cut off a few toes. Just a few useless little toes …”

Maman wielded shame like an assassin wields a dagger, driving it straight into her victim’s heart. She would win; she always won. Isabelle knew that. How many times had she cut away parts of herself at her mother’s demand? The part that laughed too loudly. That rode too fast and jumped too high. The part that wished for a second helping, more gravy, a bigger slice of cake.

If I marry the prince, I will be a princess, Isabelle thought. And one day, a queen. And no one will dare call me ugly ever again.

She opened her eyes.

“Good girl. Be brave. Be quick,” Maman said. “Cut at the joint.”

Isabelle pulled the blade from the flames.

And tried to forget the rest.