The Price of Glass Slippers

   "You know, I heard from Miss Margret at the bakery, you know the oneon forth avenue, this morning, that the king is sending out knights,and his two sons to find her!" A chatty kitchen maid squealed with excitement, telling her story to Kira-Lynn the next morning. For once, Kira-Lynn seemed to actually care what she was saying, though it made no difference, that poor maid will talk to a wall if you drew ears on it. "I wonder if she's as beautiful as they say! Oh I hope so! Can't  be having the most beautiful kingdom in the country be under the reign of an ugly queen, now can we?"

  Kira-Lynn sighed. "Looks aren't everything, now Miss Marianne. It'd be best to hope she's smart and self thinking, and can reign on her own, should need be." The head cook looked at me when she said it, handing Marianne a plate to take out to the table to serve to Camille.

"Your right! We need a queen that won't have no man push her around! We need--" Marianne was cut off by Kira-Lynn pointing to the doors that divided the kitchen from the dining room. "Right away ma'am."

I took my everyday seat at the table in the kitchen, as Kira-Lynn prepared my plate and place it in front of me and, as always, flashed me a smile that said 'Don't worry, today will be much better than the  day before!' but, we both knew it wouldn't be. How could it be? Two princes both head over heels for a mysterious young beauty, who happened to be me, an average young maid, with an annoying accent, and tattered clothes.

    "Ohoho! That foolish Lady Gertrude! Ohoho!" Another young woman, my fellow maid, Arissa, laughed, shutting the door and placing the dishes  in the bucket of soapy water, for me to wash.  "If that girl puffs out  her chest any more with pride, her corset might burst! Says the prince is coming this mornin' to pick her up and carry her to the castle!"

    "Likely!" I laughed. "He couldn't lift'er offa the chair!"

    "Aye! Ell's right! That big arse of hers may crush him! If not that, her ego surely will!" A tall brunette with a thick Irish accent 
laughed, standing behind me, clearing away my plates.

    "Molly, now don't be rude! It ain't Ms Gertrude's fault she thinks she's a looker!" Molly's shorter, older sister Kallie-Ann said in a fakely sweet tone, hinting that she believed the opposite.

    "Now now, you'd best not insult the Geroes. What you say may be true, but they pay you, and could easily stop." Kira-Lynn warned. "Now get to work. There are beds to be made, and you aren't being paid to just lazily gossip all day!"

    "Yes'm." They both squeaked, sneaking away.

    Kira-Lynn then turned to me, taking the stool opposite my own. "So, how was last night? I got so caught up in your back story, I forgot to ask about it."

    "Wonderful. Darien, he's perfect! Absolutely perfect! Oh, Kira, I've neve' had such a night." I stopped to sigh happily, and rested my cheek on my hand. "I wish I'd held on ta those shoes though. They were just lovely."

    I couldn't describe the look Kira-Lynn gave me after saying that. It was a bizarre combination of shock, horror, and confusion.

    "You didn't... keep one?" She asked weakly. "This is bad, this is bad..."

    "Why?" I asked. "What'd I do wrong?"

    "You were supposed to keep one! So he could compare the shoe he has to yours!" Kira-Lynn began pacing. "What to do, what to do, what to do?"

    I shrugged, rather nonchalant about the whole situation. "It'll all work out for the best Kira, now stop that worryin'. I'm off ta 
scrub the floors."

    I probably should have been more concerned, but I had more important things to worry about than a shoe. The floors needed 
scrubbing, the stairs need sweeping, everything else needed to be done. After all, we couldn't have two princes coming to our home when it wasn't utterly spotless, now could we?

    I could get the majority of the chores done pretty quickly. After seven years of doing them each and every day, I had become quite a professional. Within an hour, I completely finished cleaning the upper floor of the house. While Camille and the girls were upstairs preparing  themselves for the princes' arrival, I began to scrub the floors floors in the main entryway, to ensure that I'd be in the room when the Chesswoods arrived.

    Back and forth, back and forth, I pushed the small, damp brush around on the wooden floor. It was almost hypnotic. The way the water swirled on the floor, and the way the bubbles slowly drifted upwards, like tiny little lazy fairies, before popping and plummeting to the wooden floor below.

    Before even ten minutes had passed, someone began rapping on the front door. Gertrude heavily made her way down the stairs, rushed to the door, paused to adjust her appearance, and with all her might, swung open the doors. She batted her short eyelashes flirtatiously at the men standing outside the door. Two escorts, and the two princes. In Darien's hands was a small box, no bigger than a book. He seemed to be guarding it with his life. A plain leather satchel was slung of Demetri's shoulder.

    Carefully, I snuck out of site, behind the table, so I could still see everything but no one could see me.

    My hippopotamus of a stepsister bent her knees and pulled out her skirt to each side. I think it was an attempt to curtsy, but I 
couldn't tell for sure. All I did know was her rear end was blocking my view of Darien. "Your majesties," she greeted, "I welcome you to our humble abode! Come in, come in!"

    The princes both nodded at her, simply an attempt to be polite. They then turned to greet Camille and Millie respectively. Millie's pale face began to glow with a soft blush as the elder prince kissed her hand. By the way he leaned closer and whispered something in her ear, it seemed as if they knew each other, but to my knowledge at the time, they'd never met.

    One of the knights produced a scroll from his satchel and proudly began reading aloud. "His royal majesty King Philip Abraham Chesswood the Seventh of has requested all young woman of age--"

    "Gerald, please, just allow us to explain." Demetri said, cutting off the knight. He opened his mouth to begin explaining, but was cut off by his elder brother.

    "Dear brother, allow me." Darien insisted, once again using his taunting tone of voice, removing the cover of the box. With 
painstaking care, he lifted a small glass object. A shoe. My shoe. "The young woman I intend to marry came and left as quick as a breeze, but left a lasting impression on my heart."

    Demetri rolled his eyes, and mumbled a few words I couldn't understand.

    Darien took no mind of him. "Such a dainty delicate shoe would only fit one."

    Demetri rubbed the back of his neck. "To be honest," he said, "He's right. It's only going to fit the one girl. I expected it to fit several girls, but we've gone to every home and inn in the kingdom, and it hasn't so much as slipped on anyone's foot properly. It's always too big or too small, and on the rare occasion it almost fits, the girl looks nothing like the one last night." I could tell by the way his glance shifted to Gertrude that the last line was referring to her.

   Gertrude pulled a chair over to the princes, took a seat and slipped of her brown pumps. "Oh, it's most definitely surely mine! Oh, I wish I hadn't misplaced those." She stopped to giggle and dark eyelashes again. I wished she would spot, it was far from being as attractive as she wished it to be. "Actually, it's quite lucky I left it behind, isn't it darling?"

   Both boys looked at each other and mirrored the others confused expression. Demetri whispered something along the lines of "Just humour her and have her try it on."

   Darien wasn't impressed, but he attempted to slip the shoe on her foot anyway. Four of her five toes slipped in, but before Darien could even see that it was too small, Gertrude jumped up, cheered, "It fits!" and under the pressure she'd put on the shoe, it shattered into a million piece. Once again, Gertrude ruined my chances of happiness.

   She hadn't only ruined mine, she had destroyed Darien's. He was still kneeling down, and was staring at the broken pieces of glass. "Oh my prince, I'm so sorry!" She gasped, once realizing what she'd done. She payed little attention to her bleeding foot.
 
   "That's it. Demi, we are never going to find her." Darien said, letting his head hang, and feeling utterly defeated.

   "Don't be so sure." Demetri assured. He was about to say something else, but I cut him off.

   "What'd this girl look like anyway?" I asked, as I dropped my scrubber and stood up. Demetri stared at me for a moment, but then shook his head. I'm just going to take a wild guess what he was thinking. I'm pretty sure you could figure it out for yourself.

   "She was a young girl, with brown hair." Darien explained.

   Gertrude shot back up at this glimmer of hope. "Like me?"

    Demetri shook his head, his eyes still locked on me. "Lighter brown, quite similar to--"

   "Yours?" I asked. Just to bring more attention to the subject, I let some of my hair fall out of it's bun. 

   "Yes, and these green eyes... Like the colour of moss..." He was starting to clue in. "Actually, almost identical to yours..."

    "Demetri, you are absolutely fo-- right. That maid... Is it her?" If Darien was mildly confused before, he was full out lost by now. 

    Demetri reached into his satchel and pulled out the remaining glass slipper. "We'd better try this on, you know, as a formality." 

   "You've had this the whole time?" His brother asked, as he pulled the shoe from Demetri's hand.

    "Of course. She left behind both shoes, and well, since I figured you'd try something like this, I grabbed the other one, just in case something like this happened." Demetri explained, and pointed to the shattered glass. 

   As you can guess, it fit perfect, as if it were molded to my foot. 

   The love-struck expression I'd seen on Darien's face the night. "Miss--

   "Eleanor."

   "Pardon?"

    "My name is Eleanor. That is what you were going to ask, right?"

   He nodded. "Yes, Miss Eleanor. Will you do me the honour of becoming my princess?"

   A natural reaction would have been to squeal the word 'yes,' but I couldn't force the  words out of my mouth, not after seeing a sad face across the room. Millie's sad face. If she really did know the prince like she appeared to, she would be heartbroken to see him married off to a girl he met the night before. Because of my sisterly love for Millie,  I had to force out the hardest eight words of my life. 
 
   "I can't marry you just yet, your Majesty."