Copyright Karen Ullo. All rights reserved.
She should have known. She should have heard the wind shrieking through the hazel boughs above her mother’s grave, heavy with new-born sorrow. But the maiden had cried the same tears too long to believe that any part of her heart remained unbroken.
A cloud cast a shadow across the sunny sky, a puff of smoke the shape of a cocoon. Its misty threads tore as if along a seam, pushed open by a pair of silver-bright wings. The glittering creature fluttered toward the maiden, raining tears. She crossed herself and gripped the soft grass upon the grave.
“Enough!” She staggered backward into the sunlight, though she knew that without that fallen soldier’s smile, even the sunlight would darken.
“Forgive me.” Then the creature sang in a language Allia had never heard. The grass and the grave and the hazel boughs returned.
“You should have been more.” Then the fairy told the story the way it has been told at every child’s cradle-side since fairies first appeared. The maiden recognized with wonder the beginning of the tale; she had long ago succumbed to her stepmother’s cruelty. For eight years, the nobleman’s daughter had scoured away happiness until her bare soul glistened, as wretchedly clean as the hearth on which she slept. Allia de Camesbry had slowly shriveled into Cinder Allia, silent and forgotten like the dust.
Now her fairy godmother had arrived. But, alas, the prince was dead.