Sinful Cinderella

“CinderelLAH!”

“Yes, Loon – Lunilla?”

“This is the dress I want.” She points to a page in an illustrated book of fashions and my head wants to explode. Outrageously puffed sleeves and a wide skirt with so many ruffles it’ll take ten miles of fabric. Ruffles are torture to sew. Pinch and stitch, pinch and stitch, over and over and over, until you feel trapped and panicky, sentenced to sew for eternity. And I still have to make Moody’s dress. And then my own. In two and a half days.

I’m going to die.

I look at Loony. She’s a big girl, big all over – chest, hands, nose, teeth – with wild hair, orange as carrots. She likes to wear cherry red and other blazing hues that clash against her hair. Which is why I bought garish purple for her gown. It looked like something she’d wear.

And I was right. Both Loony and Moody liked their fabrics. I know because they said nothing. When they don’t like what I do, they snarl and yap like nasty little lapdogs. But when I do something right, I get silence. A trick they learned from their mother.

“Don’t you think a dressmaker could do it better?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate.

“Undoubtedly. But you’re cheaper, at least that’s what Mother says. And it better be good and not fall apart while I’m dancing!”

That’s a fun image. Loony losing her dress while dancing with the prince. If it weren’t for that darn white magic I could arrange it.

I sigh. “What about you, Melodie? Which dress?”

Moody sits on the white couch, looking eternally bored. She resembles Stepmother, brown-haired and blah-faced. She smiles, on average, about once a year.

Moody shrugs her thin shoulders. “Don’t care. Don’t really want to go.” Her voice is as flat as her hair.

“Why don’t you stay home?” I say hopefully. If I can be spared one ball gown, so much the better.

“Mother won’t let me.”

“Of course not, don’t you get it? This is a chance to be queen,” Loony says.

“He’s too old,” Moody drones. Her hand dangles off the arm of the couch, swaying lazily.

“No he’s not, he’s thirty!” Loony fluffs down on the couch beside her sister. I remember making the corn-yellow dress she’s wearing and that took a week. Somebody save me.

“That’s ten years older than you,” Moody says. “Twelve years older than me and Cindy. It’s creepy.”

I don’t think it’s creepy. Quite honestly, I’ve always had a thing for older men. The lords and dukes and barons of this town, they all like me. They like me very well. Especially when their wives are away. But I soon discovered that such behavior lost me large quantities of white magic, so the men had to go. But they remember and I remember. Like Lord Burton who I passed on the street today, shrinking when I smiled at him. Silly brute, it was only one night.

“I’m just glad he’s getting married again,” Loony says. “I thought he’d never get over the first wife.”

“But there’s the daughter,” Moody says. “A rotten little apple, I hear. Sorry, but I don’t want to be her mother.”

“Stepmother,” I correct her. I forgot about the daughter. How old would she be now, seven or eight? I don’t even know her name.

Our prince, you see, was married before. He had a sweet, smiling wife with shiny black hair and I hated her. And then she did the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me: she dropped dead. Clunk, just like that. No one seems to know what caused it. But it didn’t matter because the prince – and my chance to be queen – became available again.

And you never know. The daughter might be just as nice and follow her mother’s example. After all, children can have accidents too.