Cinderella Is Dead(61)

Constance hesitates, her hands trembling at the edge of the open coffin. She slowly reaches in and pulls the cloth away. I clasp my hand over my mouth. Amina’s eyes grow wide, and her mouth opens into a little O.

Constance shakes her head. “This can’t be right. What is this?”





28





Cinderella was thirty-eight when she died, and she’s been in this coffin for almost two hundred years. She should be bones and dust, but Cinderella lies, hands crossed over her chest, as if she is sleeping. Decay hasn’t touched her, but something else has.

Her hair is so white it is nearly transparent. Her face is crisscrossed with a road map of lines, and her eyelids droop down in paper-thin folds. Her hands are withered, the nails yellowed and cracked, and every inch of her skin is a pallid gray color. Her appearance is almost identical to Liv’s the morning the palace guards hauled her up out of the ditch.

“It’s not right,” Constance says, shaking her head. “Why does she look like this? This isn’t what a body should look like at all.”

I cover Constance’s hand with mine. I don’t know what to say.

Amina reaches into the folds of her cloak and takes out a bundle of mugwort held together with twine. She lights the end, and a thick, earthy-smelling smoke clouds the confines of the tomb. She then tucks her sachets all around Cinderella’s body. “Sophia, prepare the ink.”

Giving Constance’s hand one last squeeze, I add a vial of rainwater to the jar where I’d mixed the powders. After stirring the contents, I hand it to Amina, along with the flax leaf. Constance grips the side of the coffin. She doesn’t look away from Cinderella. Amina carefully writes on the leaf with a quill and the freshly prepared ink.



Reaching into the coffin, Amina gently pulls Cinderella’s mouth open, placing the leaf inside. Turning and kneeling at the foot of the sarcophagus, she motions for us to join her. I take Constance by the arm and guide her away. She seems to be in some kind of trance.

“Come,” says Amina. “Sit down here. It will be all right.” It is the most comforting thing she’s ever said to Constance in my presence, and still it is a bit gruff. We kneel at Amina’s side.

She takes out the grimoire and, using a pair of silver shears, clips the ribbons that hold the pages together near the end of the book. The book falls open along a crack in the wax seal. She runs her fingers through the pages and stops when she comes to what she is looking for.

Scrawled across the two open pages are ingredients, the phases of the moon, and the instructions for the spell. There are sketches of a freshly opened grave, a flower, its petals pressed flat by the pages, crumbling and rotted. At the bottom of the page there are words written in red ink.



Amina’s hands tremble at the edge of the page. This magic scares her.

In the little wooden cage, the rabbit runs around in circles. Amina reaches in and takes it by the scruff of its neck. In her opposite hand is a small knife. Its blade glints in the light of the glass slippers.

“I can’t watch,” I say. All I can think of is the seamstress’s head rolling into the dirt.

Amina sighs. “Then don’t.”

I close my eyes and hear Constance groan. When I open them again, Amina holds the small, still-pulsing heart in the palm of her hand.

“Quickly, each of us must speak her name once. Clearly and with the intent that she should rejoin the living.” Amina pauses and closes her eyes. “Cinderella.”

A shock of energy pulses through me, and I look around wildly, my heart racing. The hair on my arms and at the back of my neck stands straight up.

“Say her name,” Amina says.

“Cinderella,” I say. Another pulse of energy and a chorus of whispers, like people are having a discussion somewhere nearby.

The air grows heavy, and a low, resonant hum rises from the ground. My skin pricks up as I look at Constance. Her eyes are closed. She takes a deep breath.

“Cinderella.”

A muffled noise comes from inside the coffin. My heart leaps into a furious rhythm, as does the one that Amina holds in her hand. I shut my eyes tight, afraid to look. There is a noise like the rustling of leaves and then a long, slow exhale.

“Please,” says an unfamiliar voice. “Please help me.”

I open my eyes, looking not ahead but straight down at the floor, my heart still thudding. Constance stands up, and so does Amina. I rise slowly and level my gaze with the coffin, where a figure is sitting upright. In the flickering light, her eyelids flutter open, revealing the milky-white orbs beneath.

“Who’s there?” Cinderella asks, her voice hoarse and crackling like the sound of burning paper.

Constance stands in an unblinking haze at the side of the coffin. Amina holds the rabbit’s heart. It withers and crumples into a ball of dust before my eyes.

“I’m not meant to be here,” Cinderella whispers.

“I have summoned you,” says Amina. “I would not have done so if it weren’t absolutely necessary.”

Cinderella’s snow-white hair hangs down her back, and she looks from me to Amina and then to Constance. A shower of dust shakes free from her as she cocks her head to the side. “Gabrielle?”

A literal ghost is speaking to us, and it takes everything I have not to give in to the little voice in my head that is screaming at me to run.