3 Wishes

Chapter VI: The Wicked Stepmother & The Ugly Stepsisters

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After the flash from Cherly's magic wand subsided and I could see again, I turned in a slow circle around the room. Rough-hewn stones made up the floor and walls. A limp and dirty mattress with straw sticking out of each side lay at my feet, and a wooden chest sat underneath a narrow, glassless window. Nothing else occupied the room.

"Oh no," I said, and then louder, "That wasn't what I meant!" I turned around the room, looking for a telltale sparkler of light that would let me know she was here. I saw nothing. I called her name—even her full name—but Cherly didn't materialize.

Finally I pushed open a heavy wooden door and stepped out into a kitchen. Oddly enough, I could see the room in as much detail as if I were wearing my contacts. Perhaps since Cinderella had good eyesight, I did too.

A huge fireplace occupied the wall, with pot hanging on a hook over a fire. Whatever was inside crackled and steamed, making the room smell good. A rickety cupboard pressed up against another wall. I could see dishes and pots stacked unevenly on its shelves. A plump woman pounded a lump of bread dough on a wooden table in the center of the kitchen. Her hair, assuming she had any, was hidden under a dirty kerchief.

I walked into the room cautiously, my bare feet hardly making a sound against the cold stone floor. I had no idea what to say.

The woman looked at me. Her face had so many wrinkles and jowl lines that it gave the impression her face was melting off her body. She turned her attention back to the bread dough, smacking it into the table. "You're up late. And a poor day you chose for it too. The mistress is in foul mood."

I realized, with a mixture of relief and disappointment, that the woman knew me, or at least the person she thought I was: Cinderella.

I tried to guess who the woman at the table was. She was too old and shabbily dressed to be an ugly stepsister, and yet she wasn't the mistress either. Perhaps this was one of those pumpkin-into-bloated-walrus mistakes and Cherly had transported me into an entirely wrong fairy tale?

"Don't stand there dawdling, child. Are you waiting for the cow to come calling on you? Get the bucket and go."

Apparently I needed to milk a cow. It would have been helpful to know certain things, like how to milk a cow and where the bucket was. You'd think that Cherly might have helped me out with a few of those details before she sent me off to the Middle Ages. But no.

"Um, there's been a mistake," I said. "I'm not really supposed to be here doing this—"

"I know, I know. 'Twas your father's mistake in marrying that she-wolf, but there's no time now for regretting what the dead have done. If our lady doesn't have milk with her breakfast we'll both see her fangs."

Okay, so probably this was the right fairy tale since my father had married a wicked stepmother and so did Hansel and Gretel. Come to think of it, fairy tales just brimmed with the wreckage of men who'd chosen the wrong women. Which went to show you that men hadn't changed over the centuries. Hunter. Humph.

Still, I needed to know what I was up against. When I met this stepmother was she going to work me to the bone or try to kill me?

I noticed a bucket hanging on the peg by a door and walked over to it. "Um...would you mind answering a couple questions for me? Do I happen to have a brother named Hansel?"