Sunset in a Gilded Frame

Scipio Smith

I

Glass Release from an Iron Cage

The slipper fit.

The glass was cool on Cinderella's skin, encompassing her foot with a deceptive perfection - after all, if they were such a perfect fit then the other would not have fallen off her foot.

Or perhaps it would have? Who could tell when magic was involved?

As the Grand Duke whooped with joy in a thoroughly undignified manner, Cinderella closed her eyes and allowed herself a smile of happiness. After so many years, after so many humiliations, after all the indignities piled upon her shoulders, she was finally free.

She might have wept for joy, but she did not want that to be His Grace's first impression of her.

On the stairs, Cinderella could hear her dear friends, her mice and her birds, jumping up and down in happiness for her, expressing on her behalf the exultation she could feel rising within her breast. She looked up at them, her eyes sparkling as a smile spread across her face in silent thanks for all that they had done on her behalf.

The Grand Duke recovered somewhat his composure and rose to his feet, offering Cinderella an elaborate and courtly bow. "My dear. Would you do me the honour of accompanying me to the palace?"

Should I say that I would be delighted, or that I would be honoured? Cinderella considered the question as she stood up, slowly and gracefully. "Thank you, your grace," she said, taking off the glass slipper and sliding her foot delicately into her black working slipper. "I would be delighted." Perhaps she should have said honoured, but she had decided to express how she felt on this one occasion.

She felt...she felt as though her heart would burst from joy. She felt as though every time she opened her mouth a glad song would surge forth. She felt as though she could dance all the way to the palace. She felt as though she had stepped out of the darkness and into the light. She felt as though a new and golden world was waiting for her.

None of this she showed to anyone, unless the most perceptive of them saw it in her eyes. Cinderella had learnt from a young age to keep her feelings, the good and the bad, concealed from all except those closest to her heart. A lady's armour was her grace and courtesy, and passion was the death of both. And if people knew how you felt then they would use your feelings against you. Her stepmother had taught her that lesson early enough. Weeping for what she had lost had only cost her more, and it was only when Cinderella had stopped showing how every fresh deprivation hurt her that the deprivations had ceased while she still had a few treasures left to hold on to.

Yet at this precise point her stepmother appeared to have lost the composure which she normally upheld so well. Her jaw was slack, her mouth agape, her eyes wide. Anastasia and Drusilla were scarcely better. They all looked poleaxed with shock. It suited them better than their usual supercilious scowling.

"Stepmother," Cinderella said, meeting Lady Tremaine's gaze without flinching. "Since this may be our last meeting for a while I would like to thank you, before I leave, for all of your many kindnesses to me."

Cinderella had little doubt that Lady Tremaine was intelligent enough to understand the hidden meaning behind her words, even if her daughters were not: This will be our last meeting for a while because you needn't have any illusions I will show you any favour.

Anger flared in Lady Tremaine's eyes, and only her eyes, as her face recovered its usual expression: stoic as a cliff face. Her lips twisted into one of the faux-smiles that Cinderella knew well enough, though not so well that even she could not be taken in once in a while, if she wanted badly enough to be deceived.

"You are very gracious, Cinderella," Lady Tremaine said. "And far too kind to thank me so. I hope that you will not completely forget about us."

"I'm sure that I will not," Cinderella said quietly. She turned to the Grand Duke, and hoped he did not understand the volleys being exchanged between the two of them. "Your Grace, may I collect my things before we leave? I don't have much, so it shouldn't take me very long."

"Of course, my dear, of course," the Duke said. "Shall I send my man to help you?"

"No, your grace, I will be quite alright," Cinderella said. She sensed that her new life would not be one greatly conducive to solitude, and she felt the need for one last quiet moment. Besides, she needed to talk to the mice.

She turned away, walking quickly - she wanted to skip, but this was the next best thing - towards the stairs.

Lady Tremaine spoke just as Cinderella's foot touched the staircase. "I suppose, Cinderella that you will be wanting your dog and your horse as well."

Cinderella looked back. "Is something wrong, stepmother?"

"With the hound? No," Lady Tremaine said. "But the horse does a lot of work on the estate. If you take him then I feel entitled to compensation."

Cinderella was still and silent for a moment. Money. Her stepmother wanted money, either that or a chance to see Cinderella lose her composure when she exclaimed that Major had never done any work on the estate because her stepmother had never been interested in managing the estate.

"Your grace," Cinderella murmured. "Would it be too much to ask the crown to pay my stepmother a consideration for my horse. It belonged to my father and has been a companion of mine since I was a girl; I wouldn't like to part with him."

"I do not see the trouble, young lady, provided the price is reasonable," the Grand Duke said.

Cinderella curtsied. "Thank you, Your Grace. You are very kind."

His Grace smiled fondly. "You are most welcome, my dear."

Cinderella walked quickly up the stairs, gesturing with one hand for the mice and the birds to follow her up into the tower. The mice climbed through their secret ways while Cinderella took the rather more rickety staircase up into her tower room. The mice clustered at her feet, offering their congratulations, but Cinderella said nothing to them at first. She walked slowly to the window, the same window from which she had looked out at the palace so many times, and leaned with her elbows on the windowsill and her chin resting in her hands.

The mice and the birds fell silent. Out of the corner of one eye Cinderella saw Jaq scurry up onto the windowsill beside her.

"Long way down," he said, looking down at the drop out of the window. He looked up at her. "Cinderelly, you alright? Something wrong?"

Cinderella looked at him. She remembered when he had first turned up in her house - not that it had been her house for many a year, not really - cold and hungry and wet. She had fed him up, clothed him because he looked so cold, talked to him because she had no one else to talk to. She had been surprised when he started talking back, and at first she had thought she was going mad, but mostly she had been glad of the opportunity to rest her voice while exercising her ears for hearing something other than peremptory commands.

She had never imagined that he would stay with her. She had expected him to leave once his strength returned. When he had told that he wanted to stay, in spite of Lucifer, her first thought was that she had let slip her selfish desire for company. It was only later that she understood that he had been every bit as lonely as she had.

Cinderella smiled. "I'm going to be living there, Jaq. Soon I'll be looking out of my window and seeing this house instead of that palace. And it's wonderful, or at least I think it is, but...everything is going to change."

She turned around, looking down at all the mice and then up at the gathering birds, her true and faithful friends.

"First of all: thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything. Not just for today, not just for last night. For everything, for all these years. I wouldn't be here without you."

"It isn't nothing, Cinderelly," Jaq said.

Cinderella's smile widened. "No, you're quite, Jaq. It is not nothing. It's everything. But, the fact is, I don't know what this will mean to us. I don't know what the palace will be like. I want you all to come with me, of course I do, but I need you to understand that we might not be able to see each other any more. I don't know. I just...don't know."

"We'll be okay, Cinderelly," Jaq declared. "If this is goodbye, I'll take care of everybody!"

"I know you will," Cinderella said. "But let's hope it doesn't come to that. And now I'd better start getting my things together before the Grand Duke starts to worry about me."

Progress was swift, mostly because she did not have very many things to collect: a nightgown, a few ribbons for her hair, a hairbrush and comb, a pair of headscarves. She would have had her mother's dress, but that had been destroyed the night before; Cinderella had swept up the tattered remains when she got home from the ball. A few books were all that was left to go into the chest, which Cinderella closed and locked, feeling the weight of it experimentally. It was very light, to contain a life.

"I suppose I ought to congratulate you, Cinderella."

Cinderella started, turning around to see her stepmother standing in the doorway.

"Calm down, child, I'm not going to lock you in again," Lady Tremaine said, walking into the room. "What would be the point? His Grace has already seen you, attempting to keep you away from the palace now would be futile, and would only hurt me. The same could be said of pushing you out of the window." She laughed, but that gave Cinderella no comfort.

"Why are you here, Stepmother?" Cinderella asked.

"I told His Grace I was going to see if you needed my help," Lady Tremaine said. "He is a very trusting man."

"He is an honest man," Cinderella said.

"Is there a difference?" Lady Tremaine asked. "As I said, I suppose I must congratulate you, Cinderella, you have won. Though I would like to know how."

"I imagine that you would," Cinderella replied.

Lady Tremaine studied her for a moment. "I see. I imagine that you will make a good queen, though you may not like the fact."

Cinderella blinked. "I don't understand."

"Your mask is very good, but I see around the edges," Lady Tremaine said. "You want to be kind, to be good, to be sweet and even innocent. You want to be a font of virtue and free of vice, and look down on all of us who only have our good points. But you are not. I have heard you sniggering at my daughters, I have seen the way you look at them out of the corner of your eye - not often, but you do. A queen cannot be free of vice, any more than a great lady can. You will have to dissemble, lie, deceive and manipulate, and you will be good at all of those things and it will rip you apart."

Cinderella kept her face frozen, showing no sign of how much her stepmother's words riled her. "You will ruin this, stepmother. This time, you will not take my happiness from me."

"Of course not, was that my intention?" Lady Tremaine smiled. "Shall we go down?"

"One question, please stepmother," Cinderella said.

"Go on."

"Why?" Cinderella asked.

Lady Tremaine was silent for a moment. "Because you are as I was, once, but better," she said. "I had to stop you from becoming as I am now, only better, lest I should have to fear you."

"You could have made a friend of me," Cinderella said.

Lady Tremaine's smile was cold. "You have so much to learn. Come, now, Cinderella. You don't want to keep His Grace - still less His Highness - waiting, do you?"

A/N: This story is something of an experiment for me, but I hope that I pull it off well enough to make the experience enjoyable for you all.