Cinderella Is Dead(60)
I suddenly feel like I’m looking at a relic, a magical object not unlike the enchanted slippers or even the remains of Cinderella herself.
“It’s a collection of peculiar stories,” says Constance. “Put together by two sisters who spent the entirety of their lives traveling the world in search of strange tales. The story of the queen with the magic mirror is there, so vain she could not suffer anyone to be prettier than she. ‘The White Snake,’ ‘The Two Brothers’—they’re all here in these pages. Of course Cinderella’s story is there, too.” She points to a piece of parchment stuck between the pages at the back. Amina turns to the story.
I haven’t read the story since before the ball, but as I peer down at the book, something catches my eye.
“The drawings,” I say. “They’re so different from the palace-approved version of the story.”
“Indeed,” says Amina. She studies the images and then glances up as the cart bounces on the uneven dirt road. She inhales sharply, and I follow her gaze. The palace comes into view over a sloping hill. As much as I hate looking back at Lille, seeing the castle ahead is worse. Trepidation looms over me as we ride closer.
Amina tucks the book into the bed of the cart as Constance brings us to a stop near where I emerged from the woods on the night I escaped from the ball. Constance unhitches the horse, and we push the cart into the brush on the side of the road where no one will see it. We tie the horse to a tree a little farther in.
“We’ll cut through this way,” says Constance, ducking into the tree line.
Amina follows her in, carrying her supplies, but I hang back for a moment. The sun nestles into the horizon, casting an orange-yellow glow through the sky. That familiar movement of the setting sun is the only predictable thing that still holds any sense of wonder for me. Everything else in my life that was meant to be predictable has irrevocably changed. One decision and a turn of miraculous events have set my life on a new and uncertain path.
Out the corner of my eye, I see Amina standing so still she might have been mistaken for a shadow by a passerby. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. She simply watches intently as I honor the feeling inside myself that told me to wait, to watch the sunset, and to realize that something is shifting.
We navigate the woods by the dying light; long shadows cast in the confines of the forest make ghosts of the trees, and we come upon the tomb, shrouded in complete darkness. Constance guides us here with barely an upward glance, which makes me wonder how many times she has made this perilous trek.
The grand marble structure looms large in the dark. My life had been forever changed the last time I was here, and I hope that the same will be true of this night. I try to calm the racing of my heart as we slip inside.
Amina walks to the rear of the tomb, to the little alcove where the glass slippers are housed. “It’s been so long,” she says in a whisper.
The glow from the enchanted shoes dances across the walls of the tomb like sunlight reflecting off the surface of a pond. The entire enclosure is bathed in a soft blue-white light, much brighter than when I’d been here the first time.
Amina takes the sachets from her bag, along with several small jars, and hands them to me. Red ochre, burned myrrh, wormwood juice, and powdered evergreen leaves. I spoon them out in the proper proportions and mix them together in a glass jar. Constance fumbles with a piece of parchment that has been folded into a makeshift envelope where a single flax leaf is stored. I gently take the paper from her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m shaken up all of a sudden.”
I put my hand on her arm. “It’s going to be okay.”
Amina walks up to the marble coffin, and we gather around her.
“We’ll need to push the lid back,” says Amina, looking at me questioningly.
I place my hands on the lid. Constance sets her still-trembling hands beside mine, and the three of us push. It doesn’t budge.
“Again,” Amina says.
“It’s not going to work,” says Constance. “It’s too heavy.”
“We have to open it,” says Amina, and a sense of urgency fills her voice. A little stab of panic. We are forbidden to be here. I don’t know if the king has his guards anywhere close by, but if they find us here, we’re dead.
“We have to lever it,” I say. I run outside to search for a large, sturdy branch. I find one thicker around than my arm and bring it back inside. “We’ll need to break a piece of the marble off and wedge this inside, and then we can slide it open.”
Constance hurries out and returns with a stone the size of a small melon. She holds it up and brings it down hard at the corner of the lid. It breaks off, sending a shower of chipped pieces to the floor. I put the stick in the jagged hole, and we all lean on it. Groaning, the lid slides completely away from Cinderella’s head, so it sits at an angle across the coffin. In the dim light emanating from the glass slippers, particles of dust float all around us, and the smell of lavender and jasmine permeates the air.
Constance leans in to look at what remains, gasping sharply. I peer in, afraid of what I might see. A mass of ringlets, silver to the point of shimmering, peek out from beneath a silken shroud, which has decayed around the edges. The outline of a body lies underneath. This is all that is left of the fabled princess.
“Remove the burial shroud,” says Amina, glancing at Constance.