Whatever Happened to Cinderella’s Slipper?, Page 3

  *

  ‘Delicious!’

  Belinda likes the taste of my finger; she munches on it hungrily before tossing what little remains of it to the impatiently waiting cat.

  Belinda.

  The cat’s also called Belinda, I realise.

  They’re both enjoying eating my finger; they each grin gleefully.

  It’s the same grin.

  Because, of course, Belinda and Belinda are really just different aspects of the same person.

  A witch and her familiar.

  ‘Ber!’ I yell out as a leap to my feet and withdraw my sword. ‘Cer! Us!’

  *

  With a flowing curl of my sword, I take off the witch’s hand, one of the surest ways there is to limit the ability to cast spells.

  As Cer barges in through the doorway, he follows his own diligently instilled training, leaping on and riving apart the familiar until it’s little more than a bloodied ball of black fur.

  Ber and Us don’t bother with the door. They flow in through the cottage’s wall, as if the walls weren’t really there as far as they’re concerned. They launch themselves upon the bewildered Belinda, bringing her down by their combined weight alone, their snapping jaws also playing their part in preventing any complicated spells being cast.

  Belinda’s supposed beauty is no more; she’s fighting for her life, and such enchantments are nothing more than a waste of her energy.

  She incredibly ancient, ridiculously filthy; it’s hard to say how long she must have been living out here.

  On the table, the orange flame flickers, granting the already bloody scene a tinge of the hellish. It flames all the brighter, all the more hungrily, as thousands of moths rise up from the dying witch. Rising and swirling en masse towards the table, the moths extinguish themselves with the sounds of quenched desires in the candle’s fire.

  It’s only a small candle, I notice for the first time. It appears slender and angled only because it’s been pinioned upon a curiously leaning candlestick that narrows to almost nothing at its peak; a candlestick made of the clearest glass, glass that glows the orange of an evening sun.

  There’s an irate mumbling coming from the room’s corner.

  Apsara is laid out upon the floor, frenziedly yet fruitlessly writhing as she attempts to free her tightly bound wrists and ankles, to release her gagged mouth.

  ‘Apsara!’ I cry out unnecessarily as I rush towards her to help free her. ‘Are you all right?’

  It’s quicker to use a knife to cut through the gag rather that trying to undo the knot or pull it painfully away from her mouth. Soon as I’ve done it, however, I wish I’d taken a slower course of action.

  ‘No thanks to you!’ she snaps furiously. ‘I thought you were going to join her in eating me!’

  ‘You looked like a cow–’

  ‘A cow?’

  Opps; that wasn’t the best thing to say, was it?

  My knife easily slices through the old ropes the witch had used to bind Apsara. I suspect these ropes have been used many times for similar, equally sickening acts.

  ‘I mean the witch must’ve enchanted me…’ I explain to the still glowering Apsara.

  Her brow creases as she considers this. Then she sees my hand, with its missing finger.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, taking my hand gently in hers. ‘Do you have anything we can – oh, it’s already stopped bleeding.’

  ‘Family trait,’ I lie, not wishing to go into any explanation. ‘It’s a good job she cut it off and ate it, I suppose,’ I add brightly, aiming to stop her from probing any further.

  ‘A good job?’ She pouts in disbelief. ‘How’s having a finger severed a “good job”?’

  ‘Well, I’m not quite sure how it happened, or why: but when the witch and her familiar were eating my finger, it somehow dawned on me that they were really just one and the same person – a witch and her familiar.’

  Ber, Cer and Us pad quietly over towards us, lie down licking their lips, even yawn a little.

  The witch looks like nothing more than a low, tangled pile of old, discarded clothes.

  ‘We should take the candlestick,’ Apsara announces determinedly as she picks herself up off the floor.

  Nonchalantly stepping past my dogs, she heads towards the table.

  ‘Oh no; not something else for your shop?’ I wail in frustration.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she replies confidently, picking up the candlestick without any care that she might cause the candle to fall and start a fire, ‘I’ll use it to replace the one I have in my bag, so we’re not carrying any extra weight.’

  ‘We’re not carrying any extra weight?’ I say doubtfully as I follow her to the table. ‘I wasn’t carrying any extra weight at all until you showed up.’

  She’s already picked up her bag, from where it had been stored under the table. I hadn’t noticed it there, of course.

  Placing the bag on the table, she quickly searches inside it for the candlestick she’d bought earlier, disinterestedly handing it to me once she’s found it. Then she begins to place the new candlestick in the bag without bothering to douse the flame.

  ‘Er, just call me a natural worrier, if you want,’ I say to her, ‘but don’t you think you should put the candle out…’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Oh, it won’t burn anything unimportant like a bag,’ she declares assuredly.

  Just to prove her point, she holds the flame against the inside of the bag.

  Thankfully, nothing else bursts into flame.

  ‘How did you know it would do that?’ I ask.

  ‘The book,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d have read all those sorts of tales?’

  ‘A long time ago…’

  I’m trying to remember any of the stories I read in the book that referred to a witch who charms you into thinking you’re married to her then calmly sets about eating you alive.

  Nope; I’m sure that if I’d read that I would’ve been a child who didn’t sleep very well.

  Then again, maybe my mind’s just deliberately wiped all memory of it clean away.

  ‘It’s the Flame of Love,’ Apsara calmly informs me as, closing her bag, she lifts it off the table and begins to head for the door, the hounds closely loping behind her as if they’ve already become accustomed to her. ‘That’s why it devours all your memories of less important things than your love for someone.’

  ‘The Flame of Love?’ I chuckle, amazed once again at her innocence. ‘It doesn’t really exist; well, not physically, least ways. It’s just a term used to describe …well, I suppose the ecstasy and anguish you go through when you’re in love with someone.’

  Apsara pulls a dissatisfied face.

  ‘So where do you think that term came from?’ she retorts. ‘This is the original Flame of Love: the love of the Sun for his sister the Moon.’

  ‘Brother and sister? Isn’t that, well, you know…just a tiny bit…’ Now it’s my turn to pull a disgusted expression.

  ‘Oh, it happens all the time in these legends,’ Apsara says dismissively.

  ‘But… it’s not exactly a legend, is it? I mean, if you’re saying this Flame of Love actually exists…’

  ‘Well, some bits of these legends have been made up, obviously!’ she snorts, but with little conviction.

  ‘But why would it be here, in this forest; and why wouldn’t more people know more about it?’

  ‘Maybe because they didn’t read the book carefully enough?’

  ‘I was told it was a pretty rare book…’

  It dawns on me that I’m still holding the candlestick Apsara had handed me. Now that we’ve passed out into the house’s garden, I’m loath to simply toss into the greenery.

  It’s the first time I’ve really inspected the candlestick. It’s familiar; very familiar – I used to have one just like it.

  ‘Hey, I used to have one just like this!’ I exclaim with pleasant surprise, recalling how I used to enjoy the responsibility of lighting th
e way for my sister and me as we headed to bed.

  ‘You did? But you said it was junk,’ Apsara casually points out.

  ‘Well, I mean, I thought it was when I didn’t realise it was something so full of pleasant memories.’

  ‘Do you want to put it back in my bag?’ Apsara offers, kindly coming to a halt and opening up her bag for me to place the candlestick alongside all the other items.

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s really worth saving…’ I admit unsurely. ‘Just extra, unnecessary baggage really–’

  In the light of the Flame of Love, I can quite clearly see the other objects. I reach in excitedly, bringing some of them out into the light of day. (Well, what passes for the light of day around here, anyway.)

  ‘Hey, I had a cup just like that, too! Me and my sister, we used to– And that mirror! I can remember when we– That vase! That’s like one we used to place–’

  Each time I recognise an object, I elatedly withdraw it, securing the last one I’d taken in the crock of my other arm until I’m just about weighed under by what I’d previously pronounced to be useless items.

  ‘Wait a minute! All these things are mine, aren’t they?’ I eventually declare accusingly at Apsara.

  ‘Possibly,’ she admits. ‘I did say I’d bought them, didn’t I?’

  ‘Mum and Dad would never sell these…these reminders of the childhood of me and my sister!’

  ‘Maybe they…well, it was a sort of coachhouse sale. Once you’d left, maybe they just saw it all as so much clutter–’

  ‘Clutter? We lived in a castle!’

  Apsara shrugs.

  ‘They did love you, right?’ she asks suspiciously.

  ‘Of course they loved me!’

  ‘But your step dad–’

  ‘He wasn’t my step dad! That’s another lie in the story! Mum and Dad were happily married; and they loved both me and my sister!’

  ‘Yet you left home…’

  ‘To set matters straight! To show that whole Cinderella thing is just a fairytale!’

  ‘But the slipper’s real – right?’ She peers intently into my eyes, like she’s yet another Fish of Truth.’

  So, she might have been a calf back in the witch’s house, but it obviously hadn’t affected her hearing.

  I nod.

  ‘Yeah, some bits of it are true, obviously!’

  ‘But how will finding the slipper help you show the story isn’t entirely true?’

  She already knows more than I’d like her to know; I might as well let her know a little bit more.

  ‘Because I think the Glass Slipper doesn't just refract light – it refracts time!’

  *

  Chapter 8

  ‘It’s an odd thing to believe, don’t you think? Apsara declares with uncharacteristic confidence as we mount up onto our horses. ‘That the slipper can alter time; that is what you’re saying, yes?’

  I shrug.

  I have no real proof that the Glass Slipper is capable of this. Not any more.

  I look at my hand, the gap were my severed finger used to be.

  Perhaps I’ll have some form of proof soon enough, if she’s prepared to accept my interpretation of what I think it means.

  Then again, why am I so intent on proving it to this young girl?

  To prove to myself that I’m not crazy, I suppose.

  ‘You took it for granted that that candlestick you picked up was really the Flame of Love,’ I point out defensively.

  Now she’s the one who shrugs.

  ‘The difference is, you still have to find the slipper; do you think it’s possible?’

  ‘If anyone can do it, it’s me,’ I reply confidently.

  Apsara studies me doubtfully.

  ‘Isn’t it all a little dangerous for a gir–’

  ‘For a girl, you mean?’ I snap irritably. ‘I was never interested in tapestries, all that sort of thing a girl’s supposed to learn. My father’s men were glad that I wanted to learn how to fight: they’d thought their skills would go to waste with no master’s son to train.’

  ‘I was going to say “for a girl who seems to have forgotten her legends”,’ Apsara calmly explains.

  ‘What use are legends?’

  She’s opened up and reached into her bag. For some reason, she’s withdrawn the Flame of Love.

  She holds out the glass candlestick towards me, but tips it up, so it’s now upside down, the flame seeping up its length yet causing her no harm.

  ‘Legends make us look afresh at the everyday things around us,’ she says.

  I look at the glass candlestick, narrowing almost to nothing at its lower end.

  It’s not a candlestick anymore.

  It’s the high heel of an elegant shoe.

  The heel of a Glass Slipper.

  *

  A flurry of moths suddenly gather about the orange flame, each instantly flickering out of existence as it draws too close.

  From the undergrowth, there comes a pained groaning, an urgent whispering.

  Ber, Cer and Us abruptly lurch towards the sounds, vanishing into the thick bushes as if they, too, have been uncharacteristically surprised by the presence of whoever’s been shadowing us.

  The undergrowth trembles violently as, in a mingling of the hounds’ furious snarling and the squealing of their prey, what appears to be two foxes are dragged out into the relatively clearer area of the path we’re taking.

  ‘No, no! Please don’t hurt us!’

  ‘We didn’t mean any harm!’

  ‘We were only following orders to keep track of you!’

  They’re the strangest foxes I’ve ever seen. Not only do they talk, and in the clear voices of a young man and woman too, but at first I take them to be curiously armoured until it dawns on me that they’re more machine that animal, being mainly constructions of metal and wood.

  Yet there are undoubted animalistic qualities to them other than their shapes and fur: there are segments of sinew, of flesh. I suspect, too, that the eyes must once have been more fully alive.

  There is so little of the original creature left, however, that I’m sure there would be little in the way of scent for my hounds to detect.

  ‘Whose orders?’ I demand fiercely, while ordering my hounds to back off and leave the foxes alone.

  ‘The Man of Bronze, who made us what we are.’

  ‘We were once man and wife: but our memories had become clouded. We’d almost forgotten how much in love we’d once been!’

  ‘You were humans?’ I gasp in horror.

  They nod their heads. Tears weep from those eyes that I now know for sure are their original ones.

  ‘We wer–’

  The female fox’s comment is interrupted as another creature bursts from the undergrowth just ahead of us. This is a horse, however, not a fox, and seemingly chiefly made of bronze.

  As such, it puts on an amazing spurt of speed, and is soon galloping away from us.

  ‘That’s him!’ one of the foxes yells. ‘There’s the Man of Bronze!’

  *

  Chapter 9

  The bronze horse glitters like a flashing sun as we pursue it through the forest.

  Even the thin rays of sunlight that manage to penetrate the roof of the forest are reflected back as flames of gold.

  The mechanical steed moves far smoother and at an even faster pace than our natural horses. He’s also shrewdly avoiding any possible obstacles, displaying at least an obviously animalistic astuteness, perhaps even a human intelligence. He’s leaving us almost effortlessly behind.

  ‘I don’t see why they call him a man!’ I yell out to Apsara. ‘All I see is a horse of bronze!’

  ‘We just can’t see him yet: he’s just invisible for the moment, that’s all!’ Apsara yells back curiously: for surely she must have realised the horse is most likely a hybrid of man and beast, like the foxes?

  The ground begins to incline upwards, making the going harder and more tiresome. And yet the bronze horse h
ardly seems to have slowed at all.

  Neither has Bess, or the hounds, of course. But Apsara’s mount is naturally tiring.

  We’re in a part of the forest that runs around the base of a mountain, a mountain that frequently erupts from the surrounding shrouds of dark trees like sheer, towering white walls.

  If the bronze horse is heading towards one of these soaring cliffs, then he’ll be trapped, or at the very least be forced to take a sharp turn in his course.

  Ber, Cer and Us are keeping pace with Apsara and myself as we urge our mounts into struggling up the increasingly steep slope, but the foxes have dropped far behind. At least the tangled branches of the bushes are no longer whipping at our legs, or the flanks of Apsara’s mount, as they aren’t growing so densely here. The ground is rockier, and long-ago displaced and fallen boulders lie everywhere about us.

  Through the growing number of openings in what had previously been packed woodland I begin to detect what I at first believe is the bright white glow of daylight. The closer we draw towards this ‘light’, however, the more I realise it is reflected light: the sun’s rays echoed and intensified by a sheer chalk cliff face.

  The bronze horse doesn’t slow its pace or hesitate in any way that I can detect.

  Rather, it hurtles straight towards the cliff, as if its intention is to shatter its own, determinedly lowered head against the hard rock.

  *

  The clatter of the hooves on the hard rock is magnified by the solid cliff face.

  It’s almost thunderous in its intensity.

  The ground itself seems to be shaking, adding to the rolling crashes of heavy thunder: our mounts begin to whinny in fear as their tread becomes increasingly unsteady upon the ground. Ber, Cer and Us appear bewildered by what they’re experiencing, their eyes white and globular, resenting at least their growing sense of uncertainty and insecurity, if not actually fearing it.

  A dark thread appears within the otherwise pure white of the cliff face, running up from the ground directly in front of the charging bronze horse. It ascends rapidly, expanding equally as swiftly, a dark crack apparently determined to completely split the cliff apart.

  Yet it only rises so far, only extends so far too, forming the entrance to what could be a cave.

  With a last spark of bronze in the sunlight, the mechanical horse sweeps into the darkness of the cave.