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CHAPTER 1

You may think you know my story. But I want to say none of it happened the way you've been told. The facts have been stretched and twisted, braided together the way a maiden's hair is plaited. The story has been shared and shared again so many times the true details are lost. In most instances, the tellers made it the tale they wanted it to be.

If you want the truth, though, I will tell it now — once — while still I can. I am an old woman and not sure how many winters remain to me.

So listen and hear it well.

In those stories told over and over again, they describe me as being relegated to the status of servant by a wicked stepmother who favored her natural daughters over me.

I acted as servant, true, the lowest of the low — the shunned — but that took place in my mother's house. I never had a stepmother; my own blood cast me off. A fiercely elegant woman of high position in our town, Mother enjoyed the prestige of her position and took great pride in her appearance.

And that of her daughters.

She had three daughters in all, I being the youngest, but she would tell you she had only two. She had a fine son also, first born. You never hear about him in any of the stories, but Robin acted kindly toward me, always.

Robin — handsome as my older two sisters were beautiful — stood tall and strongly made. Overtopping our father in height, he had brown hair and grave, dark eyes. You may wonder about my father and why he never interfered in any of the terrible things that occurred. Father, a busy man who served as mayor of our town as well as ran a thriving textile business, could rarely be found at home. Also, wholly besotted with my mother, he tended to let her have her way in all things.

My sisters, Bethessa and Nelissa, followed my mother's lead; I truly can't fault them in anything that occurred. Three and five years my elders respectively, and quite young when I was born, they learned to treat me as they saw me treated, no more.

I have heard many accounts of the morning I was born. Some have been whispered, overheard as gossip, some spoken when the speaker believed I could not hear. Some were even delivered in my mother's dry, matter-of-fact voice. Over the years I have examined, sifted, and distilled them. I can tell you what I believe.

My mother, fully gratified in the three beautiful children she'd already brought into the world, went confidently into delivering me. She had her brown-haired son, then nearly six, and her two golden-headed cherubs. She expected to bear another angel. But things did not go according to plan.

Her first three deliveries had been easy. This one — with me — had her groaning and crying out betimes. A second midwife was called in and, after many hours, a physician. He gave the opinion I would not be born alive.

"Breech, and with a shoulder wedged," he pronounced, "and likely already dead."

My father was then summoned to make a decision. Should my life — given I still lived — be sacrificed for that of my mother? Or should I be delivered at any cost to her?

I will never understand why my father made the choice he did. He adored his wife and, though proud of his children, he did not believe they compared to her in importance. Nevertheless, he asked the physician to try to deliver me whole — dead or alive.

I was hauled into the world to the sound of my mother's screams — shoulder broken, mewling weakly, ugly and deformed.

I do not believe Mother ever forgave Father for the choice he made. She took it out on me henceforth, and they never had another child. Was that because she never again let him near her in their marriage bed, or because of their mutual horror at what they had produced?

The features that mark me now are in large part the same as those that marked me as an infant. Shoulders too wide, hands too big, head long and domed in back like an egg and covered with mousy brown hair, not hair glossy and shiny with health like Robin's or golden and gleaming like my sisters'. My eyes, like Robin's, were dark. As far as such a thing could be regarded, I took after Father, just as did Robin.

But features that look well enough on a young boy prove less appropriate on a small girl. And mine were exaggerated — the nose and chin too long, the cheekbones askew, one more prominent than the other.

I have often wondered at mother's exact reaction when I issued from her — living after all, yet so hideous. I have wished to be a fly on that wall, but perhaps it would be entirely too painful to know.

I do know — because I heard our old nurse speak of it much later — that Mother refused to hold me. She declared herself too weak and ill. But she put me from her and never picked me up later, not once.

They had chosen a name for their child should it be a girl — Cindra. And they named me that regardless of my appearance. I recovered from my traumatic birth without my mother's attention and came by my other name by the grace of my sister Bethessa, who reportedly said when she first beheld me, "She's not Cindra. She's Cinder-Ugly."

You must understand, I grew up under the blight of my ugliness and never knew anything different. Nurse fed and washed me and rocked my cradle when I cried. She also looked after both my sisters, who regularly had supper with my parents, especially when company came to the house and my mother wished to show them off. No one celebrated my achievements — holding a spoon, sitting up on my own, or taking my first steps. Nurse, kind but busy, made no fuss of me, perhaps believing that if I received little special notice I would not crave it.

In this, though, she erred. My oldest memory is that of wishing not so much for attention as for love. I did not spend a lot of time alone, strictly speaking, since I slept in a little closet off the nursery where my sisters dwelt. But nevertheless, my loneliness went deep.

A child does not recall much before the age of four or five. Even then the memories come in bits and pieces, some of which stand out bright and clear.

I remember my sisters once getting dressed up for some special occasion — a party, I believe it was, there in the house. I must have been about four at the time, which would make them seven and nine. My parents loved to hold dinner parties, but even in my isolation I sensed this as something far grander.

My sisters' excitement testified to it, as did the way Nurse fussed over them with the help of a maid.

I remember Nurse calling them to her so she could inspect them before the maid led them downstairs. Visions they were, and no mistake, one dressed all in pink and one in aqua blue — the very colors delighted my eyes. They shone from their yellow curls, threaded with ribbons, to their polished slippers, and wore identical, self-satisfied expressions.

Looking at them, I began to wail. Nurse had dressed me in my usual brown pinafore that day — brown because it tended to hide dirt — and had not had time to so much as comb my hair. I wanted the pretty colors with a longing that burned at the center of my being, and I reached out to touch the ruffle on the bottom of Nelissa's skirt.

Nurse slapped my hand away, no doubt harder than she intended. I must give Nurse some credit; she was not a particularly cruel woman; she had not the imagination for cruelty, a thing for which my sisters more than compensated.

"No," Nurse snapped, "you will get it dirty."

Nelissa smirked. "She is very dirty, isn't she? Look at her. Dirty as well as ugly. No wonder she has to be hidden away."

I didn't know what "hidden away" meant, not then. I just wanted a pretty dress and ribbons. I started to wail in earnest.

"Be quiet, Cindra," Nurse told me.

Bethessa laughed. "Yes, be quiet, Cinder-Ugly. You will have your supper here while we get tarts and pies and bonbons."

Nelissa leaned down to speak into my face. "Bonbons," she reiterated. "That means 'good-good,' because they're the best thing you'll never taste."

Nurse told the maid to take my sisters downstairs. I wept harder, truly inconsolable now, and Nurse, no doubt exhausted and overwrought, turned to me as soon as the door closed behind them.

"Be still, for goodness sake!" she hissed and boxed my ears soundly. "Go play with your cat."

My cat was not the flesh-and-blood kind. No, though I would have loved that, real cats made Nelissa sneeze. Instead, my "cat" was a shapeless relic that had come to me one Christmas, now so worn with cuddling Nurse had mended it many times.

Still weeping and with my ears burning, I crept off to hold it in my arms and attempt to console myself. I could faintly hear the sounds drifting up from downstairs — music and laughter, excited voices. I knew how the big sitting room looked — I'd been there once or twice. But I couldn't imagine it full of flowers and candlelight, and people.

I wanted a bonbon — just one — so much it hurt. My sisters could easily have brought me one. But I fell asleep long before they returned to the nursery, and anyway, they never did bring me back treats from any of the parties, not then or later.

My mother, try as she might, could not keep me hidden in the nursery forever. Eventually we outgrew the nursery, my sisters sooner than I. Despite their myriad petty cruelties, it felt lonely after they migrated to rooms of their own on the floor below, having achieved the status of young ladies. That left just Nurse and me, and the world I could see from the nursery windows.

No one else, except the servants, slept on the top floor of the tall, narrow house. My father being an important man in the town of Salster, the house had many comings and goings, but until I reached eight or so, they meant little to me.

Nobody ever said there was anything wrong with my wits. My sisters had a tutor who taught them, and he also included me in the lessons. I learned to read with lightning speed and soaked up knowledge in a manner that impressed even Master Groat — maybe because I had no distractions. While my sisters worried about properly manicured nails, snags in their silk stockings, and whether their curls fell correctly onto their shoulders, I concentrated on the work itself. In fact, in many ways it saved me.

As soon as I could read, books became treasured companions. I had only a few but didn't hesitate to steal them from the schoolroom. I kept them under the cot where I slept. The characters in those books spoke to me; they were warm, funny, clever, or devious. They taught me how to be.

I must have been eight when, as I say, my parents planned another grand party. From what Nurse said, I gathered they would celebrate an important anniversary — their fifteenth, perhaps, since Robin would have been fourteen by then. I know there was much planning, bustle, and commotion, and I determined I would see it all.

Had I been half as clever as I thought, I'd have realized the truth. Most of the townsfolk must, by then, have forgotten my existence. After all, my mother trotted my brother and sisters out at every available opportunity, but I was never seen. If the family attended an event or function, they went without me. I'd become a detail swept under the rug.

Yet, living in my own head, I forgot that. I merely wanted to see my sisters in their finery — they seldom came up to the nursery anymore. I wanted to behold all the guests arriving in their gilded carriages, and the heaps of food. I wished to hear the music and perhaps dance to it, just once.

But I spent most of my time locked in the nursery. When Nurse went out for any length of time, she took the key with her. On this occasion, with her called to help my sisters dress, I spent most of that day locked in, frustrated and unhappy.

But when Nurse — no longer so young as she had been — returned, she looked exhausted. We ate the cold supper she'd brought — the kitchen had no time to waste on niceties — and put her feet up in her chair, where she soon fell asleep.

She had left the key in the bowl on the table, perhaps never expecting deviousness from me. But I knew an opportunity when I saw one.

When I think now of the pitiful preparations I took, it makes me shudder. I brushed my brown hair carefully and dressed it with plain slides, as I had no ribbons. I could do nothing about my dingy dress or my slippers — my sisters' castoffs. But I borrowed a bobbled shawl left hanging on the back of the door and covered what I could.

Then I peered into the wavy, speckled mirror. Did I look all right? Never having owned any finery, the shawl looked very grand to me. I imagined myself fitting in, slipping between the guests unnoticed, at liberty to listen to the music and sample the food.

I nabbed the key from the bowl and let myself out of the nursery. In the dusty hallway beyond, I stood for a moment breathing deeply, heart racing in my chest. From here, all the sounds intensified — the music flowed up the stairs at me and the laughter tinkled like metal chimes.

I crept down the stairs — the rear stairs, these were, not the grand front set — holding hard to the balustrade. I slid like a shadow through the hallway at the bottom, past the door of the kitchen which heaved with frenetic activity. No one noticed me, and I went on, drawn to the light and beauty like a moth to flame.

Beauty. No one can estimate its importance until deprived of it. I did not mind so much myself being ugly — well, I lie. Perhaps I did mind, but I had at least grown accustomed to it. But I missed color and brightness, even the sight of my sisters in all their finery.

Now I stepped into the grand sitting room, assaulted by it all. A rush of sound, heat, and more color than my senses could quite assimilate.

Guests crowded the room, dancing, laughing, and chattering. Everything glittered, from the jewels they wore to the crystals on the chandeliers. The music seemed to glitter also, to cascade like broken glass.

I paused just inside the doorway as if struck across the face. Whatever I might have imagined while shut away upstairs, this surpassed it. I stood as if rooted, my breath caught in my chest. For several precious moments no one noticed me. Waiters threaded their way among the joyous guests; I might have been invisible.

I could not see my parents anywhere. I think I had some mad notion that I would find them and they would see how well I looked in my borrowed costume and realize how mistaken they'd been in failing to include me all this while.

It didn't happen that way, though. Instead, one of the nearby guests noticed me. He drew his companion's attention to me and they both laughed.

Let me reiterate: for all my other failings, I was not a stupid child. Even though I didn't want to believe it, I knew at that instant that they laughed at and not with me. Their faces jeered at me, and in an effort to get away from them I stumbled farther into the room.

Face after face swiveled toward me. Laugh after laugh sounded. The decibel level in the room seemed to drop till I heard only laughter.

Of the members of my family, Robin saw me first. He hurried over, a look of consternation on his face, and knelt down to take me in his arms.

I still remember how that felt — so seldom was I held by anyone — and how welcome the sense of shelter seemed. But my brother, at fourteen, could in truth do little to shelter me. And next to hurry up, to my everlasting regret, came my mother. She loomed above me and Robin, quite possibly the most sublimely beautiful of all the women present, and began to screech.

"Ah! What is she doing here? Russel! Russel!"

My father, thus summoned, hurried up also. He wore his fancy black suit with the mayor's sash fastened across his chest, and his expression lent me no reassurance. Father had been known to strap Robin and paddle my sisters — though, granted, only for grave offenses.

It came to me I had indeed committed a grave offense.

He and I stared at one another out of almost identical eyes.

"Erikka," he told Mother, "I am sure she merely heard the music and wished to see —"

Mother, in no mood to be appeased, spat at him, "Get her out of here. Where is that nurse, to let her get away? I will strike the woman off!"

I switched my gaze from my father's face to my mother's — flushed dark, it appeared almost purple, and for the first time ever she did not look beautiful. Her emotions had twisted her image into one almost as ugly as mine.

Robin straightened, still holding me in his arms. He pushed my head into his shoulder, exchanged one look with Father, and walked straight from the drawing room.

By the time we got upstairs, I wept with disappointment, with fear, and with the creeping humiliation that on some level always accompanied me. Robin roused Nurse, who swatted me soundly for my escape. Father soon followed and spoke to Nurse in a fierce, low tone, some of which I overheard.

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Excerpted from "Cinder-Ugly"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Laura Strickland.
Excerpted by permission of The Wild Rose Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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