A different ending

I’m participating in Story A Day May (as I talked about on April 30.) It has been going well, so I thought I would share one of the short stories I wrote.

Every day I get a prompt in my email, which I then make my own. The prompt for this story involved changing a fairy tale by setting it in a new culture or reversing the genders. I decided to rewrite the ending of Cinderella. I hope you enjoy.

The Wrong Foot

Ella, who as a child had slept too close to the hearth, and ended up with an unfortunate name that she disliked greatly, stood at the top of the stairs and watched her step-sister attempt to cram her size-eight foot into a size-four shoe, a shoe made of glass, that just hours before had given Ella blisters as she danced with a handsome prince.

It had not been her wish to dance for hours on end. She had wanted to try the exotic food and talk to other girls her age, something she never got to do at her remote manor far from the hub of the kingdom. But no, the prince had declared her perfect and insisted that he loved her. It had been heady to hear him say that at the time, with the serenading strings and romantic lighting.

And now, the poor duke, who had been forced to examine untold girls’ bunioned feet while looking for the one the prince thought he loved, declared the current girl’s oversized foot not fit for the shoe and thus not fit for the prince. She burst into tears and ran barefoot out of the parlor.

Smiling, Ella’s other step-sister sat on the stool in front of the Duke. She stuck out her foot, and Ella saw with horror that the half-crazed girl had cut off her big toe just to be a princess. Ella shook her head. This mutilation was their mother’s fault. She had fed her children the lie that they were nothing if they did not marry a prince. Ella figured her step-sisters would both be dead by nightfall, unable to live with their failure. A pity.

The duke seemed so repulsed by the girl’s bloody appendage that he wouldn’t let the shoe touch it. He just held the pump next to the foot and declared that she was not the right one. Also in tears, the wretched girl hobbled out of the room. The pale man turned to the mistress of the house and asked if there were any other eligible girls in residence.

“No, my lord.”

Ella let out her breath and silently thanked her stepmother. For the first time ever, the evil woman had done Ella a favor. She had no desire to try on the shoe. She knew the prince would never recognize her in her servant attire. He had admired the fancy dress, the jewels, and the gracefulness. He had not seen the girl with dreams of her own, dreams that involved freedom, something Ella now knew she would never find in the castle. She would just be trading one form of slavery for another.

The duke thanked her stepmother for her time, and the noblewoman escorted him from the parlor, never glancing up the stairs at the locked room where she had tossed Ella when the duke had arrived. She never noticed that the resourceful girl kept keys to most of the doors in the manor that was rightfully hers.

But no more. For too long, Ella’s dead father’s home had been her prison, and she was done being its prisoner. Picking up the bag that sat at her feet, she walked down the stairs, headed through the kitchen with it’s hated hearth, and out the door to the stables. She had her plan, and it did not include princes. Instead, it involved an old woman who had granted Ella a wish and offered her a job in a hamlet far from an evil stepmother and demanding royalty.

Ella wished an unknown girl with a size-four foot good luck. May she and the prince live happily ever after.