The Cinderella Theorem (29 page)

I
looked through the window. Ella still sat in the middle of the room. I eased
the door open and we slipped in; Calo held my hand tightly. Ella’s eyes widened
and she stopped crying.

Calo
nodded to me, smiling encouragingly. I rubbed us visible. Ella’s eyes exploded
in width, “What—”

“Quietly,
if you please, my lady.” Calo shushed her and went to stand by the door.

“What
are you doing here, Lily?” Ella offered me her stool.

I
shook my head to decline the offer and said. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

She
gave me a weak smile. “Lily–I–I can’t be rescued. It’s hopeless.”

“It’s
not hopeless.” I sat on the floor beside her stool–trying to ignore the
unmathematical filth everywhere. “Ella–you and I have both messed some things
up. We created this equation.”

“That’s
not helpful or cheerful, Lily. You Happiologists usually just talk to me about
cleaning or birds.” She looked to Calo in confusion.

I
nodded. “And that never made you lastingly happy. Today we’re going to.”

Ella
glanced again at Calo. He nodded and continued watching for the guard. Ella sat
back on the stool.

“So,”
I took a deep breath. “I have a confession to make. I don’t really understand
the fairytale world. I like math. I like things that make sense
every single
time
. I like knowing how to solve an equation.” I swallowed. “I don’t
understand portaling through a bathtub. I can’t understand the logic of this
world. I just decided it was all abnormal. And I had to make it normal.” I
looked at Ella. “I gave you advice that I thought would make you normal. I
encouraged you to paint and to get out more and I went out of my way to be
friendly to you just to make sure you were becoming normal.”

“I
don’t understand, Lily. What do you mean?”

“I
ruined your life, Ella. I made you unhappy.” Inexplicably, tears were forming
in my eyes. My descent into unmathematicalness was complete–crying about a
fairy tale. “But while I pretended to be your friend, I really became your
friend, and I’m so sorry. You have to come back, Ella. Aven needs you. The
world needs your story.”

Ella
slipped off the stool and sank down beside me, wrapping me in her arms. “Lily,
you didn’t ruin my life.”

“Yes,
it was
all
me. You were better off before. The whole kingdom was better
off before I came.” I sobbed.

“I
may not have
vanished
before, but I still wasn’t Happy. Your suggestions
were not harmful.
I
chose to burn Aven’s maps.
I
made my husband,
my true love, Unhappy.
That’s
why I vanished. I made myself Unhappy.”

We
were silent for a moment. Calo rushed over to become invisible with me. Ella
scrambled up onto her stool. After the guard passed, Calo made the straw-dummy.

“I’ve
been unfair to Aven,” Ella whispered. “I blamed him for leaving me behind all
the time. But he always asked me to come with him.”

“Why
did you never go? You hate being left behind.”

“I
felt a real princess shouldn’t go traipsing about the countryside. A real
princess should stay at home and wait for her prince to come back. I hate that.
I like to clean, but I felt I shouldn’t as a princess. I love Aven, but since
we married, I’ve been so unhappy.”

I
thought a moment and carefully examined the advice I was about to give. I was
sure it was good advice and wouldn’t make matters worse. “Ella, don’t focus on
what you think a real princess would do. You
are
a real princess.
Whatever
you
do is what a real princess does. Ella, you’ve got to take
control of your happiness. Paint your paintings, go with Aven on his trips,
clean the castle yourself. Be the person Aven fell in love with. That’s the
princess in you.” The last words were a little hard to get out, since they were
somewhat illogical, but this day wasn’t exactly a shining example of
mathematical reason.

But
strangely, I
could
see the math. In Ella’s situation,

1
prince charming + 1 misused girl did not = happily ever after.

Ella
only had to alter something about the equation, the situation it occurred in or
the parameters of the misused girl….

“Lily?”
Ella touched my arm.

“Sorry!”
I snapped out of my calculations. “I got distracted. What were you saying?”

“I
think I’d like to talk to Aven. Can you take me to him?”

I
smiled. “We can do that.”

~~~

Calo
and I stood near the door, invisible and a little away from Aven and Ella. They
were talking quietly. We’d already made the straw-dummy and now we served as
the lookouts. I estimated it would take us two seconds to get to them if the
guard came.

“You
did a good job with Ella,” Calo whispered.

“Yeah,”
I nodded. “I did an excellent job of solving my unbalanced equation.”

“Lily.”
Calo tilted my face up so I had to look at him. “You will be a good Happiologist.
Look what you did today.
You
saved
The Candlemaker’s Daughter
and
you’ve almost saved
Cinderella
. You
are
good at this. You used
your math to get us in and out of the cells. Your calculations kept us one step
ahead of the guard this whole time. Our kingdom needs you as its Protector.
All
of you, even your logical, mathematical side.” He paused. “You should really
take your own advice, Lily.”

“About?”

“Don’t
try to make yourself into the princess you think Smythe’s SFL needs. Be the
princess that Smythe’s SFL has. You
are
a princess. Be who you are.”

“Thank
you, Calo.” His praise equaled a warm feeling inside of me.

“Excuse
me, Princess, Calo?” Aven was looking in our direction. “I think we’re about to
leave. Thank you for all you’ve done. I hope you two will be able to find your
way back.”

“Don’t
worry about us,” Calo answered. “We have a plan.”

“Oh,
good,” Ella smiled at us, took Aven’s hand, and they both disappeared.

“So,
what exactly
is
our plan?” I asked Calo.

“To
get home, of course.”

“How?”

“That’s
open for discussion. I didn’t actually think we’d make it this far.”

I
laughed a little. “It is pretty amazing, isn’t it? We rescued everyone.” I
smiled. “Should we try to make each other happy?”

“I
don’t think that would work. You’ve got to start living Happily Ever After, not
just get to Happy. I think we should try to stay invisible and sneak out of the
dungeon.”

~~~

Sneaking
out was easier than we thought. We waited until the guard was well past the
area, and since we had seen no other guards in the dungeon, we simply opened
the door and traveled along a passageway for four and a half minutes looking
for the stairs to the main floor of the fortress. Then we came to a figurative
fork in the road. The passage split into two hallways.

“I
think we should go right,” Calo whispered.

“I
think we should go left,” I whispered back. It’s not mathematical, but if I truly
don’t know which way to go, I like to go left.

“You
just want to go left because
left
and
Lily
start with the same
letter.”

I
made a face. “And you just want to go right because
right
and
Redmond
both start with an
R
.”

Calo
sighed. “I really dislike that name.”

I
laughed a little. “We really need to pick a way to go.”

“Yes,
you do,” said a greasy voice behind us.

I
sucked in my breath and spun around. Levi had a smirk on his face and a dozen
guards behind him. Calo grabbed my hand, and then we witnessed Newton’s third
law of motion.

Newton
found that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For
instance, when we step out of a boat onto the shore, the boat tends to move in
the opposite direction. And when Calo grabbed my left hand, I was so surprised
that I dropped my marble from my right hand.

“Oh
no,” I breathed, watching it roll away, leaving us visible.

Calo’s
eyes went wide.

We
both moved to grab the marble.

“Looking
for this?” Levi held my blue–the color of the April sky–marble in his greasy
fingers.

“That’s
my marble. Give it back,” I said stupidly.

“Tsk,
tsk, tsk, tsk.” Levi shook his head. “There’s magic associated with this marble
beyond its obvious power of invisibility.”

“Give
it back, Levi.”

Calo
touched my arm. “Um, Lily. I think we should go,” he whispered.

“Not
without my marble!”

“Princess!”
Levi looked at me in mock surprise. “I’m so shocked! Who let you take your key
out of the castle?”

“That’s
your key?” Calo nearly shouted.

I
nodded. “I didn’t want my parents to know I was here, well there. I skipped
school, you know.”

Levi
laughed loudly.

I
threw him a disdainful look. “Why are you laughing?”

“It’s
all too entertaining. The heir to the throne, trapped in my lord’s castle and
even if you do escape, you’re trapped in your kingdom. Without your silly
marble, you’ll never be able to go home.”

“What?
Is that true? Never?” I turned to Calo.

He
nodded slightly.

“They
can’t just issue another one, like a new passport or driver’s license?”

Calo
shook his head. “Magic is a bit more black and white than that. You only get
one key.”

“Give
it back, Levi!” I tried to snatch the marble from his greasy hand, but he held
it high out of my reach.

“Let’s
see: what happens if I rub it three times to the left?” Levi rubbed the marble
and he disappeared.

“Run!”
Calo grabbed my hand and took off to the right. We could hear Levi laughing
behind us.

As
we ran, the updates we’d been ignoring began jabbing even more painfully into
my foot. That really should have been factored into the equation when I agreed
to turn my shoe into a magical mailbox.

We
passed door after door. Calo didn’t seem interested in any of them. I wasn’t
interested either. My foot was in serious pain.

“Do
you know where we’re going?” I asked him, panting.

“Not
a clue.” Calo ran faster.

Soon
there weren’t any more doorways, but Calo kept running. I kept running and the
updates kept hurting. Finally (and thankfully), my foot stopped hurting. Of
course, I realized, five strides later, my shoe had come off.

“Calo,
I lost my shoe.”

He
didn’t acknowledge my words. He just kept running. Running with only one shoe
is a seriously unbalanced equation. I had to stop. When I stopped, Calo jerked
back because his momentum had kept him going. (We were still holding hands.)

“Why
did you stop?” he hissed.

“Shh.”
I put my hand on his mouth. “Listen!”

Levi
was laughing. “It’s a dead end, you know. I’ll just wait for you to come back
when you’re ready.”

Calo
sighed. “What are the odds that we would pick the dead end?”

“50%.”

He
looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“There
were two ways to go, so 50%. Although, if both passages lead to a dead end it
would be 100%.”

Calo
sighed again.

“You
were asking a rhetorical question, weren’t you?”

He
nodded.

“I
really don’t like rhetorical questions.”

Calo
leaned against a wall, trying to catch his breath. I stood there off balance
because of my shoe. It’s very unsettling and unmathematical to be off balance.
“I need my shoe,” I said to myself.

“What?”

“My
shoe. I lost it while we were running. Now I’m off balance–like a scale with a
badly placed fulcrum.”

Calo
rolled his eyes again. “I’ll go find it.”

I
used the time he was gone to count by eights. I was at one-hundred sixty-eight
when he came back.

“Give
me your foot,” he said, knocking out several shoe updates. I leaned against the
wall and stuck my foot out. “It fell off because it wasn’t tied, Lily. The next
time we run for our lives, please have the courtesy to tie your shoes
properly.” Calo slipped my sneaker on. Then he looked up at me. “Just like in
Cinderella
.
That might work. It would just need one of us.”

“Um,
Calo.” He was still holding my foot, so I shook it a little to remind him.

He
released my foot slowly and stood up. “Look, Lily. I think I’ve found a way to
get us home. I’m not sure it will work, but we have to try.”