Roses and Black Glass: a dark Cinderella tale (15 page)

She wiped some
of her tears and blood away, pulling herself off the floor to search the desk
for the drawer key.  Quickly locating it, she fit the teeth in the lock and
pulled out the drawer, carefully reaching out for the box inside.  Opening it,
the lantern light danced across another piece of folded paper. 
Curious…
 
She lifted the note and unfolded it, reading the carefully written words
inside.  

Cindy,

I’m deeply
sorry for these events that will fall upon you, but my end is near, I’m afraid.

Do not give
up or hesitate after my death. 

You have
been touched by a dark force, Cindy.  People will tell you that your soul is
condemned but you must not listen.  Find the one that smells the dead bouquet
and there, you will find your true soul.  You need a bond of blood.  Wrap the
sheet around these two things I have left here and wait until the morning. 
Then you will have the tool you need.

Cindy, the
object you will be left with is a magical item, but it will not bring powerful
results just by wearing it.  But, like an ordinary item, when placed within the
right obsession, even the unthinkable can happen.

Use what I
have given you wisely, Cindy.  I think you will know the best way to use it. 

The
sacrifice has been made for you. It’s what you see in your dreams. I wish you
luck,

Amanda

Cindy’s tears
had stopped falling and a smile was beginning to cross her face
.
 She
closed her eyes and considered her dream.  It made sense – all of it.  In her
dream, her mother sank to hell because she had sold her soul for protection,
while her father floated to heaven and he could not look at her – he had been
protected.  The demon told her not to be afraid because the sacrifice had
already been made for her.  The roses were the symbol of her mother’s promise –
the symbol of a dark force.

 Find the
one that smells the dead bouquet and there you will find your true soul.
  
Her mind was full of thoughts, but one came through her mind clearly now
. 
Christian. 
He was the one who smelled the bouquet.  She had to see him. 
There was something that needed to be done.

Rising up and
heading for the door, Cindy passed before a dirty mirror.  Gazing at herself,
she could see that she looked a wreck.  There were dark circles under her eyes
and the nasty cut on her face looked angrily back at her.  Dried blood covered
her skin and flooded across her neck.  Her eyes were bloodshot and the tears
smeared the blood and dirt on her face.  She was quite a sight.

Through all of
this, resting in the middle of her face was a little smile.  Many thoughts had
been stirred within her.  Pulling her short hair over her right eye and cheek,
Cindy turned from the mirror and walked upstairs.  For the first time in her
life, she truly felt wicked.

1

Isabella stared
across the room, hardly aware that her feet were moving her toward that which had
her affixed.  Christian was standing there with a young woman he hardly knew,
ignoring the one he should have been with. 
Her
.  He would learn.  He
would learn soon enough that he could not escape her. 

It was not
Christian who Isabella watched so intently, but the girl with him, plump as a
cherub, wrapped in a mink stole and holding a slender glass of champagne. 
Isabella was intent on her downfall, though she knew nothing about her. 

This is the
way it must be
, she told herself
.  Sacrifices must be made.

Christian had
noticed her, but Isabella did not regard him.  When she was only a few inches
away, Isabella lurched forward as if she had tripped, falling into the girl
named Morgana, who had recently become her enemy.  Isabella’s hand slipped into
the fur shawl that the girl had wrapped around her, and with another little
stumble, she pulled it from her shoulders.  It fell to the floor.

Morgana looked
up to her, flustered, not even noticing Isabella until they had collided.  The
brown-haired girl then looked down toward her fallen ornament.

“Oh!  I’m so
clumsy!” Isabella said, putting a gloved hand to her lips.  “I apologize.”

Isabella
stooped down to pick up the fur, handing it back to the girl with an apologetic
smile. 

"Quite
alright," Morgana said good-naturedly, unsuspecting.  She moved to take it
back, but then remembered she had a drink in her hand and couldn’t very well
put the shawl back on without setting it down. 

“Allow me,”
Isabella said, taking the drink from Morgana’s hand.

“Thank you,”
the brunette said softly, assembling herself once again.

Isabella dared
to look at Christian, finding that his eyes bored deep holes into hers, but she
tried to counter it, pleading for mercy with her own eyes.  It did little good,
and then Morgana was done.  Isabella gave her back her drink.

“I just wanted
to be sportsmanlike and wish the both of you good luck,” Isabella said.  “Knowing
Christian as I do, you’re going to need it.”

Isabella said
it as if to be a joke, but Morgana wasn’t quite sure how to take the comment. 
Christian, however, knew exactly.

“We appreciate
that, Isabella,” he said.  “So good to see that you can accept defeat so
graciously.”

Isabella’s
little smile became a deep scowl.  She averted her eyes and then turned away,
looking defeated, but secretly feeling triumphant.

“What did she mean
by all that?” she heard Morgana ask to Christian.

"You must
know how jealousy goes, my dear,” he replied.

2

Stepping
through the rain outside, Cindy’s hazel eyes rested on the Charming house. 
There were several carriages out front, but everyone was inside to avoid the
weather.  She could see their shadows playing about the windows.  Would she be
able to get inside unnoticed, even with so many guests?  Somehow, she was
feeling confidant. 

Cindy picked
up her feet and moved on through the mud.

3

So it was that
the house was full of women again on this night.  Christian’s fiancé had
arrived that morning, bringing a smiling face a cheerful heart.  Already, he
had spent his whole day with her, flanked by his mother and hers.  She was a well-bred,
wealthy farm girl, lovely too look upon with a round face and blue eyes.  Her
long brown hair hung in perfect curls from underneath her bonnet.  The girl
reminded Christian of a doll – the kind that sat in the store window downtown
with painted cheeks of rose and delicate little smiles.

He supposed
she would do.  He wasn’t feeling so picky anymore, now that his dreams had been
smashed.  The wedding would be in three weeks, and no matter who he married, it
would be the same.  Morgana seemed nice enough, and perhaps over time she would
be able to ease some of his pain, yet he doubted she even knew what she was
getting herself into by marrying him.  What’s more, he could not believe he was
actually accepting marriage to
try and be
happy
.  He’d never
tried for any such thing in his life.

Still, Christian
felt sick of all the women gathered here.  They were of all ages, but Morgana
knew none of them, and Christian knew they had only come to see who she was and
compare themselves to her.  He had stayed downstairs for a while, giving
Morgana all sorts of adoration, until finally he had excused himself.

He had noticed
Beatrice across the room, a strange look upon her face.  She was jealous –
jealous of her own cousin.  It would seem that the woman had wanted him to
begin with, yet when he'd met Beatrice again and refused her proposal, she had
hardly spoken a word, only continued to stare at him longingly with a scowl. 
He remembered her face when he had asked for her cousin. 

How sad…

Then there had
been Isabella.  The nerve of her!  But he’d put her in her place as well.  Was
there no end to her harassment? 

On this night,
they all continued to look at him as if he had not been claimed.  Did they
think that he would change his mind?  Not many of them spoke to him, but some
did offer a polite ‘hello’.  Christian found it amusing that even the youngest
of girls there – eight to ten – stopped to stare at him when he walked past. 
He offered a word to a few of the small girls, thinking they would be much
better to talk to than the older ones, but already he could see their influence
on the children.  They were already in training, and he could hardly tolerate
it.  That was what had eventually turned him upstairs, leaving Morgana to fend
for herself.

Now, he
entered his dark room and closed the door.  He sucked some of the cold air into
his lungs; winter was settling in on this place.  Bolting the lock on the door
so that no one would disturb him, Christian stepped back and pulled off his
coat.  As he hung up the garment, a strange smell drifted past his nose.  It
smelled of blood – and roses.

Turning his
head slowly, his eyes fell upon a small, dark figure standing in front of his
book shelves on the far wall.  It was a thin woman, and she was running her
finger across the spines of the anatomy books he had there.  Her back was to
him, but she must have been aware of his presence, for she spoke up in a
cracked voice.

“Some of these
are my father’s books…”

A cold chill
ran up his spine at the sound.

“Cindy?” he
asked, one half of him confused and angry, and the other thrilled that she had
come.  How in the world, with all the guests roaming all over the house, had
she gotten up here without being seen?  He wanted to ask, but knew it didn’t
matter – only that she was here.

“Yes,” he said
instead.  “Anna was more than happy to sell them to me after he passed.” 

Cindy lifted
one of them off the shelf, flipping through some of the pages until she paused
and lifted something from between them.  He saw her hold it up.  It was a dried
flower, and she twirled it absently between her fingers.  She still would not
turn to look at him, but he heard her sob once before she swallowed it, and
then she wrapped herself around the book at her chest as if it would hold her
in return. 

He turned up
the light, took a few steps closer to see her more clearly.  She was wearing a
dirty and wet green dress.  There were blood drops browning on the front of
it.  Her hair was dripping from the rain, spiraling in wet tendrils around her
shoulders.  She had cut it.

“Your hair,”
he said, unable to understand.  What had happened to her?  Why had she come
here?

His anger
faded.  He moved closer toward her, wanting to embrace her – wanting to protect
her from whatever demons had ravaged her.

She stopped
him with words. 

“When were you
in my room?” she asked abruptly.

“What?”

“You told me
the other night that you had been in my room,” she said. “How is that
possible?”

Christian
sighed out.  He didn’t know what this had to do with anything.  If she had come
to him now to confess her love, that was a different matter.  Now though, he
didn’t think that was what she was here for.

“It was a
couple of nights ago,” he said.  “I was in the house–  Well, I might as well be
honest about it; Isabella invited me to come to the house in the night.  I was
there, but I never went to see her.”

The girl
nodded solemnly.  Christian fell silent.  He remembered that night clearly, but
he’d tried to put it behind him.  He remembered the voice he'd heard that told
him he shouldn’t have come there.  He remembered the woman he had followed up
the stairs - how she had simply vanished into thin air.  Had he been crazy? 
Was he crazy now?       

“I saw
something
going up the stairs,” he continued finally.  “I thought it was you.  I
followed, and I found your room, but I guess what I saw wasn’t you, because
there was no one there when I reached it.  I knew then that you hadn’t really
gone away like they said, and so I couldn’t go through with what I'd come there
for.  I went home.”

Cindy said
nothing.  She didn’t move.

“Still, I
swear I heard you say my name in that room.”  He shook his head, averting his
eyes from her.  Did he feel shame for admitting what he’d seen?  What he
knew
he’d seen?  But what he didn’t know was that she had heard him call her name as
well when she had been sitting at her mother’s grave.

“Funny…” she
commented.

“What is?”

“Nothing.”

He closed his
eyes to gather his patience.  He’d certainly had a trying day, and this girl
was confusing him. 

“Is this what
you came here for?  To ask me that?”

She didn’t
respond.

“What do you
want from me, Cindy?  You come to the party, and unlike everyone else there,
you’re not trying to get me to marry you.  You took my ring, and it’s as if
that’s all you came for.  You leave me with a kiss that exclaims more than
passion and tell me we won’t see each other again.  It’s been a
day
. 
Here you are again.”

“I came
because I need you,” she said, finally turning around toward him. “Isn’t that
what you told me to do?”

She reached
her hand up to touch her hair.  Drawing back the locks from her face, she
revealed the cut Isabella’s knife had made.  Her face had begun to swell and
there was still a trail of dry blood leading from the clotting wound. 
Christian moved to her and gently took her face in his hands, examining
whatever he could see in the dimness.  She was still.

“My God… What
happened?” he asked, tilting her head a bit.

“Lots of
things,” she said quietly.

“None of
this,” he said. “I have too many things on my mind without having to worry
about you in that house.  Tell me what’s happened.”

She took a
deep breath.  With a straight face, she told him everything.  She told him that
after her father’s death, she was made into a servant and that Cindy Madison
didn’t exist here anymore.  She told him of how her step-mother and sisters had
been running a scandal for the longest time and how they had murdered her
mother, father, and several others.  She told him about Amanda and what the
woman had done for her.  She then told him about the prophecies and the strange
illness and her mother’s ghost and the dreams – then the cut on her face.

He sat back
without words while she spoke, simply taking it all in.  When she stopped, she
directed her eyes to him and acted as though she hadn’t just told him all those
horrible things, focusing on the problem at hand.

“So, what
about my face?  Do you think you could stitch it up for me?”

Christian was
shocked by all that she’d said and how quickly she had dismissed it when she
was done.  He did not, however, think she was insane for speaking of such
outlandish things.  He believed every word.

He gave a
small nod to her request and got up to walk across the room to the desk where
his bag of tools sat.  The items were expensive – if he was going to be a surgeon,
his parents were going to make sure he did not disgrace their name.  Pulling
the proper elements from the bag, Christian walked back over to the girl.

“You’ll have
to lie back on the bed and not move,” he instructed putting some alcohol from a
bottle on a clean white rag. “This will clean the cut, but it will sting a
bit.”

Cindy obeyed
and laid her head back against the pillow and Christian set to work sanitizing
the cut.  He knew the substance stung her, but she said nothing for the
discomfort.

“I can’t
believe she did this to you,” he said.

“She had
wanted to before.  She was only using a defensive guise as an excuse.”

“What should
be done about it?” he asked.

“What do you
mean?”

He stopped his
work.  “I figure you to want my help in whatever you’re planning – revenge or
escape.  That’s why you’re here.”

“Why do you
think I’m planning something?” she asked.

“Of course you
are,” he said.  “From what you told me, and of the things that woman, Amanda,
meant for you, there must be more to come.  All the deaths…  You said yourself
that you’ve been touched by dark magic.”

“As have you,”
she said.  “You’re right there with me.”

He smiled,
somehow liking the idea that she acknowledged their connection.

“I know you
smell the roses,” she went on. “The ever-budding roses of the dead – you smell
them.”

He sat back in
thought for a moment.  How could she know?

“It only took
me a moment to think of,” Cindy began. “But Amanda had mentioned it in her
letter.  As soon as I read it, I knew it must be you.  My dress was made from
the petals of enchanted roses.  You had to be the one to smell them.”