Ever After Happily

Ever After Happily

Devra G, Class of 2025

“Dear child,” said a voice from right nearby, “what is troubling you?”

Cinderella blinked her eyes open from where she’d closed them, sitting under the blossoming cherry tree. It took a moment for the image before her to register; it was her fairy godmother, who she remembered as though from another life when she was young and naïve and her problems so small. But this woman was just the same: short, and old and plump, with lavender robes and white hair. In her hand, she held a long white wand. Her eyes were kind.

“What is troubling you?”

Cinderella took a deep breath, trying to clear her head of the restlessness that had so recently taken up residence there. “I made a mistake,” she said aloud. Her voice was dull and dry, so it hurt to speak. She was not a child anymore, not even a young woman. It was funny how it happened like that, days soaking into nights and nights bleeding into days. The kind of funny that wasn’t funny at all.

Her fairy godmother looked at her, gaze unreadable. She didn’t speak, waiting instead for Cinderella to elaborate. Cinderella glanced away from her godmother’s poring gaze, eyes flickering towards the palace instead. She’d been trying to avoid glancing at it, instead focusing on the sweet petals swirling around her.

The palace was deceptive, just like most things in her life now. It was attention-grabbing, large, and full of turrets and peaks. It would have been a fine place to spend a day perhaps, as you could certainly take much interest in exploring each corridor, and picnic at night with your lover in the shade of the handsome, blossoming tree out back. And it was a fine place to live at first when all you could focus on was the fact that you were there, and you had married the prince, and all of your troubles were over. But once the novelty began to wear off, the palace was still there, and it was huge, and cold, and impersonal, and nothing at all like a home truly should be.

The prince was like that, too. He was wonderful to spend a day with–charming, gallant, and a tad witty, although his jokes were never as funny as he made them out to be. And he was handsome, of course, with his dark hair, muscular build, and regal chin. His greatest skill, though, was making a girl feel special. Feel wanted. He’d kiss her, with passion, and sometimes on the neck, which always made her gasp. At first, that was all she thought she needed.

But he was reckless, and he drank too much, and he was lazy. For so many years, Cinderella had tried to convince herself that she was being picky. It was only sitting there, in the shade of the tree, that she realized how absolutely peaceful it was with the prince away. Oh, he’d be back from his business trip soon enough—he always was. Still, the lack of him gave the air an intangible sort of relief to it, like the whole world was exhaling. It was maybe a little bit of a terrible thing to think, but she thought it nonetheless.

“I made a mistake.” Cinderella opened her mouth and continued:

“Years and years ago when I wished to go to the ball. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have waited it out; I was almost grown, really, and then I could have married a nice poor baker’s boy or someone like that and lived alright. I thought I was being enslaved, but it was nothing compared to this. This is my life being sucked away, my soul being drained from me, every second of every day.”

Maybe she’d be able to tolerate it if she didn’t see that his eyes were always roaming. Even when he was sitting next to her at dinner, servants rushing to chop their steak and fill their glasses and tend to their every need, he would let his eyes feast over the young maids.

She’d cry, late in the night. Usually, he wasn’t even there.

Her godmother nodded, and she looked to be thoughtful. “Choices are our downfall,” she said softly, and then she let out a long sigh. “I thought it was the wrong choice, Cinderella, I did. When you wished to go to the ball, I thought it wouldn’t come to anything good.”

Cinderella began to cry, quietly.

All the years—passing faster than the blink of an eye. Her soft blonde hair getting coarser, her skin less smooth. The prince cursing at her, calling her worthless because a son wouldn’t come. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “You should have told me.”

“Oh, Cinderella,” her godmother sighed. She shook her head mournfully. “You were young and hopeful, and so I let you go. ‘What harm could it do?’ I told myself.”

“So much,” Cinderella said, and her voice was choked with tears. “Godmother, I want to go back. I want to stay at home and let my stepsisters laugh at me, let them be cruel so that I can get myself to be mine again. I want to be normal, not some princess in a palace. Is that… can you do that?”

Her godmother let out a long sigh, and she clutched her white wand tightly. She’d always had it, and she realized with a shock that she truly hated it. She eased her grip on it and it slid out of her fingers. It fluttered in the breeze a little and then it flew away. She let it go.

“I can erase this,” she said finally. “I can erase everything that’s happened since the night at the ball. I can never reveal myself to you, and you can miss the ball. And you won’t remember any of this. You won’t remember the servants or the prince or the palace or… me.”

And Cinderella leaped up, and her tears were joyful now. The thought of escape. The thought of escape, after resigning herself, deep inside, to stay in this life forever. “Really? You can do that?”

Her godmother looked at her. “I can.” She let out a long breath. “You can find another ending. I cannot guarantee that you’ll be happy. Maybe I will see you again, crying because your baker is dead, and you’re poor, forlorn and you think you have made the wrong choice, so you decide to go to the ball and live this life. Maybe this will happen another ten times over, and maybe it already has. You’ll never know, Cinderella. I’m the only one who will.”

But Cinderella didn’t hear her. She never did, and she never would. All she heard were the first two words: “I can,” and her heart was leaping in her chest and she wanted to sing. “Thank you!” she said, and she was laughing and crying. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Her godmother’s white wand tumbled back into her hand. It always did, and it always would. She closed her eyes and she wished with all her heart that this time, this time it would work.

Cinderella stood. Her hair flowed back behind her head, blonde and gleaming, and she was young again, and changing, and moving, and going.

Cinderella married the prince and lived happily ever after, happily ever after, happily ever—

Once upon a time, a girl named Cinderella lived with her wicked stepmother and stepsisters in a little house where they forced her to do all of the work.

Not even she knew where she would go from there.

Kaleo A Class of 2025