Caffeine and Magix

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3). (Part 4) (part 5) (part 6) (part 7)

Cinderella wakes to birdsong.

It brings her to tears. She tangles her fingers in the soft bedcovers, pulling them up and over her face. Her tears blur the gentle light seeping through the fabric so that she feels like she might still be dreaming. Her body is pleasantly sore from dancing, but not hurting like it does after a day of chores. Her hair smells of the gentle oils Helga patiently brushed into it rather than fireplace soot. The gnawing loneliness that’s accompanied her for so many years is wonderfully quiet, soothed by the long evening spent in the arms of her friend.

The Prince.

Cinderella huffs a laugh, disbelieving, and pulls the sheets away from her face. Her room is pleasantly cool, the air brisk though the windows aren’t open. She breathes in deeply. Her friend is the Prince. Her impossible, magic-wielding friend who saved her life and listened to her worries and always made her laugh is the prince.

And he’s a hell of a dancer too.

Even the memory of their dances thrills her. Cinderella jumps out of bed , unable to bear the sudden surge of energy coursing through her, and braces for the shock of cold stone against her bare feet. It never comes. Instead, the floor hums with the sort of warmth she’s begun to associate with magic. Cinderella laughs and sways to the window, humming portions of the previous night’s songs under her breath.

The people! The music! The colors! Her memory is a kaleidoscope of everything beautiful she’s ever seen in her entire life. At the center of it all is her friend and his gentle smile, his hand outstretched for hers.

Cinderella eases the window open. She’d been too nervous to take a proper look outside yesterday, but today is a different story. For all the elation she feels, there’s also something settled inside of her. A sort of contentment that sits at the bottom of her stomach where it won’t be easily swayed. So she opens the window without worrying if she’s allowed to do so and takes in a lungful of fresh morning air.

“The late Queen’s gardens,” Helga says from the doorway. Cinderella turns to find Helga with a breakfast tray balanced on one hand and a letter held in the other. Helga’s eyes sparkle. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

They are. Cinderella was listening to the birds and not looking at the garden, but she knows it’s true. The greenery is lush and well-maintained, the flowers blooming big and beautiful along a carefully swept path. She can hear water from beyond a row of hedges. A fountain?

“Everything is beautiful,” Cinderella says. The Prince’s green eyes against the night sky comes to mind and Cinderella’s heart flips. She clears her throat. “The grounds. The castle. It’s all very beautiful.”

Helga hums and closes the door with her foot. “Would you like to sit by the window then?”

“Yes,” Cinderella says. The idea of eating the croissant and eggs Helga brought while listening to the birds and watching the flowers gently sway in the breeze is so wonderful that Cinderella doesn’t see the problem right away. She frowns and looks around the bedroom. Besides the bed and the vanity, there’s not much more furniture in the room. “I can help you with some chairs…?”

Helga laughs and waves the hand holding the letter. “Don’t be silly, dear. It will only take a moment.”

Cinderella has to bite her tongue to keep from yelping when Helga lets go of the tray suddenly. It doesn’t fall. Instead the food hangs in the air as if set on an invisible table. Helga whips out her wand and flicks it at the stone near the window.

A chair and a small garden table rise from the floor, melting in reverse. The table is set with a series of dainty forks and a crystal glass. After a moment’s thought, Helga waves her wand again and a bottle of orange juice appears.

“Wow,” Cinderella says.

Helga is frowning. “Yes, well, it will do. Somehow, I always conjure garden furniture even when I had the loveliest tea table in mind…” She busies herself setting up the breakfast tray. “Come now, sit, sit, sit. Before everything gets cold.”

Cinderella doesn’t move. She’s never noticed it before because of the low lighting at night, but Helga’s magic looks a little like her friend’s magic. There aren’t as many colors and it’s very faint, but when the sunlight catches it just right, the air shines. As she watches, the shine sinks into the floor until the chair and table look as mundane as can be. Cinderella is fascinated. “How does that work?”

“How does what work?” Helga asks absently. She holds the orange juice up to the light, squinting at it. “I swear I meant to conjure peach juice…”

“The conjuring magic,” Cinderella says. She waves her hand to the table and chair. “That looked different than the floating magic you do.”

That gets Helga’s attention. Her gaze snaps from the orange juice to Cinderella. “Looked?”

“The magic came up from the stone,” Cinderella explains. She waves her hands in a vague approximation of it. “Then, when you finished, it went back.”

Helga doesn’t answer right away. She stares at Cinderella very hard, her gaze piercing, as if trying to see if Cinderella is being serious or not. She chews her cheek and finally says, “You’ve seen a lot of magic?”

Deny it. It’s not a voice, not really. It’s an ancient instinct and Cinderella works very hard to make sure that none of it shows on her face. Carefully, Cinderella shrugs. “No. But my friend uses a lot around me. Sometimes I can guess where it is.”

Slowly Helga’s shoulders relax. “…from exposure makes sense,” she murmurs under her breath. Then, louder, “You shouldn’t look at magic, dear. It can hurt your eyes.”

It doesn’t hurt. Cinderella smiles. “I’ll try not to.”

Satisfied, Helga says, “To answer your question, it looked different because that wasn’t a spell. I don’t have magic, remember?” She twirls her wand. “I use this to direct what my Lord lends me. What I did just then was—well. This castle is very old, yes? It’s got magic of its own that I can ask for help from time to time.”

“The castle did this?” Cinderella asks. She studies the table and chair with renewed interest. They look solid and well-made and the food seems edible. She thinks about the way the magic rose from the ground. “I wonder…”

“Pardon?”

But Cinderella is already extending her hand. The single chair next to the window looks lonely. It would be so wonderful if there was another chair for Helga to sit and have breakfast with her… “If you would?” she asks the castle.

Where the magic curled and bent to Helga’s will, it explodes under Cinderella’s. Another chair springs into existence faster than Cinderella expected. The table extends another foot with a pop! and a second bottle of orange juice appears next to a second glass.

“Oh my,” Cinderella says. She flexes her hand. The magic twines around her fingers before slipping back into the stone floor. She grins. “How wonderful!”

Helga blinks very quickly. “Yes…yes, wonderful.” She studies Cinderella, almost speaks, and then seems to reconsider. Finally, she says, “I take it the second chair is an invitation?”

“Yes,” Cinderella says. Perhaps she should have asked Helga before she acted, but she didn’t feel as if she needed to. Like Helga said, the castle was right there to help. “I would enjoy the company.”

They settle at the little table, Helga pouring juice and serving the breakfast pastries she brought. Cinderella’s feet are warm from the magic sitting so close to the surface of the stone and her heart is warm when, unthinking, Helga spreads jam over a croissant for Cinderella.

“Oh,” Helga says when she notices. She’d been staring into space as she prepared Cinderella’s breakfast and, now, jolts back to herself. There’s a light flush on her cheeks when she says, “Excuse me, my mind was elsewhere. Do you like strawberry jam? I can go to the kitchens for fresh pastries—”

“It’s perfect,” Cinderella assures. She remembers her mother’s hands around a crystal jar of jam, a whisper of just a little before dinner. She takes a bite of her croissant and feels a thrill at the sweetness of the jam. Just like she remembers. “Delicious.”

“An invitation came for you at dawn,” Helga says after a few moments of silent eating. Her eyes sparkle as she draws the envelope out from her skirts and holds it so the sunlight reflects off the golden seal. “I wonder who it could be from?”

The second invitation. The Prince told her it was coming, but Cinderella’s heart flips when she sees it anyway. She takes the envelope from Helga as if it were made of butterfly wings and opens it carefully. The faint smell of oranges drifts from the card inside.

The Baron’s Daughter is hereby cordially invited to the Castle on this day for a continuation of festivities…

Then, at the bottom, her friend has written I’ll pick you up in his own handwriting.

Cinderella strokes the letters of her friend’s writing. Each one is elegantly shaped and perfectly placed. She can imagine him as a boy sitting politely during his lessons, quill clutched tightly in hand, and brow furrowed as he practiced each letter.

“What was he like?” Cinderella asks.

“Pardon?”

“I want to know how the Prince was as a boy,” Cinderella says. When the silence stretches, she looks up from her invitation to see unease on Helga’s face. “Helga?”

“That’s…difficult for me to say,” Helga says.

“Were you not with him as a child? I assumed from the way you spoke…”

“No, I was,” Helga says. She tucks her hands under the table and looks out the window. The sunlight falls across the older woman’s face, highlighting the way the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth deepen when she frowns. “The Prince now and the Prince then are two very separate people. I don’t want to scare you away with stories of a person who no longer exists.”

Cinderella waits for Helga to say more. When the silence again goes on for too long, she prompts, “What do you think would scare me away?”

Again, Helga hesitates. There seems to be a war going on behind her pale eyes. Cinderella thinks that she must be twisting her apron under the table.

“He wasn’t kind,” Helga says at last. She busies herself wiping a stray smear of butter from the table. “Anything more, you’d need to ask him.”

Helga means to end the conversation there. Cinderella could let it end – should let it end – but the words echo. He wasn’t kind.

Cinderella’s first thought is good. She’s glad that her friend wasn’t kind. Cinderella has lived her entire life being kind and she’s seen what rewards are at the end of that road. Good that her friend knew better than to let others extract kindness from him like blood, good he didn’t sleep next to an empty hearth praying for the ones who put him there to return kindness with affection, good that he protected himself in a way Cinderella never could.

Cinderella’s second thought is why? Why did Helga sound apologetic? Did she think Cinderella would think less of him?

“When I was a little girl,” Cinderella finds herself saying, “I spent many hours in the garden.” She looks out the window and sees a different garden than the former Queen’s. She sees roses and sprigs of lavender as far as the eye can see. Her mother’s garden. “My mother had quite the green thumb. The things she could grow! I was so young then and didn’t have much reference, but it seemed as if every flower bloomed bigger and every bush grew fuller under her touch.”

“That’s quite the gift,” Helga says.

Cinderella hums. She loved her mother best in the garden. When her mother waited for her father by the window, she seemed colder and more distant. In the garden, her mother smiled. “It was. If we lived anywhere else, we would have had butterflies all year round. But being where the estate is, we only had a few weeks in spring and a little in fall when the butterflies would pass through the garden on their way to the Capital.”

“I didn’t realize you come from so far west,” Helga says.

Cinderella nods. “Near the mountains.” She finds her gaze being pulled toward the west as she talks. How far away is her home? At least a week’s ride by carriage. “I always waited for the butterflies to visit. One day, when I was very young, I woke up to see they’d come during the night. I raced outside to see them up close. There weren’t many of them yet, just a few, and I had the good luck to spot one resting on the ground.” Cinderella’s lip curls. “Only it wasn’t resting any longer. It had the misfortune to land on an anthill. The ants were hungry, I suppose. They were tearing the butterfly apart piece by piece.”

Even now she remembers the sick horror that filled her at the sight. The vicious hold the ants had on the blue wings, pinning the poor thing to the ground. The way the butterfly’s antennae waved in panic. The smell of the ants as they poured from their mound to feast.

“How awful,” Helga says. She’s watching Cinderella carefully, her hands still in her lap. “What happened then?”

“Nature,” Cinderella says. She feels as if her mouth is not her own when she says, “There’s nothing awful about nature. The ants needed food after the harsh winter and the butterfly was unlucky. It wasn’t the ants’ fault that they killed the butterfly. It was simply nature.” Cinderella breathes in through her nose and stiffens like a woman freed from a trance. “That’s what my mother said when she caught me killing the ants.”

A sense memory: her shiny black shoes coming down on the damp, red dirt as she collapsed the ant hill. The flecks of mud that splattered her ankles when she crushed their exoskeletons under her heel. Her mother’s hand hot on her shoulder. The percussive force of her mother’s shout ringing in her ears.

“She told me that I needed to try and understand the ants,” Cinderella continues. Her feet aren’t cold and muddy now. They’re warm from the magic coating them, tucked neatly under her chair. “She understood I was upset about the butterfly, but being upset was no excuse for the violence I responded with. I shouldn’t have punished the ants for what was in their nature to do.”

“A wise woman.”

Cinderella smiles with closed lips. The sun is well and truly risen now and its harsh rays feel hot against Cinderella’s cheek and collarbones. “A kind woman.”

“Ah,” Helga says, understanding.

Cinderella wonders what it is Helga’s understood. “Hm?”

Helga weighs each word carefully. “If I may offer my two cents, my lady?” When Cinderella nods, she says, “Your mother was right that it was in the ants’ nature to kill.”

Why is she disappointed in Helga’s response? Cinderella sips her juice to hide her frown. “That’s true.”

“However,” Helga says, “nature does not protect one from another’s nature. Yes, it was in the ants’ nature to eat the butterfly. But perhaps it is in your nature to kill ants for tormenting butterflies.”

Cinderella sets down her juice and gives Helga her full attention.

“Considering that,” Helga says lightly, “was it so wrong to kill them for hurting something that meant so much to you?”

Oh. Cinderella swallows, desperately willing away the ache in her throat. Her lip trembles. Helga is looking at her with such deep understanding that Cinderella feels shaken to her core.

All these years and she understands now why her mother’s words bothered her so much. Her mother always seemed to think Cinderella should behave as if nothing affected her, not her mother’s absence, not her father absence, and not the violence of the ants against the butterfly. Helga is saying the opposite. Of course, Cinderella acted that way. Of course! Like the ants, Cinderella also had a nature. Cinderella, like the ants, also had a right to act the way she did.

A knot she didn’t know existed unravels in her chest. Cinderella doesn’t need to sit quietly when an injustice is being done to her or others. She doesn’t need to make excuses for the aggressor or understand their motives. She can act. She can defend. She can protect herself.

(It was never about the ants at all.)

Cinderella clears her throat. “Yes.” Thank you. She can’t bring herself to say the words. “I’d like to wear the blue dress tonight.”

“We had to rush getting ready last night,” Helga says. She reaches across the table to place her hand on top of Cinderella’s. It’s cooler than the sunlight but warms Cinderella all the same. “Why don’t we take out time getting ready, hm?”

“I’d like that,” Cinderella says.

——–

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