1 Ella It isn't that Ella likes sleeping in the fireplace. And she knows that it only gives her stepsisters, Fiona and Marie--although mostly Fiona--more reasons to pick on her and pull her hair and leave her only charred bits of oats for breakfast, saying if she likes the cinders so much, she might as well eat them. It's just that when Ella lies at the bottom of the chimney and stares up, she can see the stars, and onto each of them she imagines an adventure: that she is a prima donna in Apfel, a queen of thieves, or even a toymaker. And sometimes she imagines for so long that she falls asleep and wakes up to the clink-clunk of her stepmother's tin bell, or Fiona kicking her and calling her "Cinderella." Except today, Ella isn't in the fireplace. She's in a bed. A soft bed. Early-morning sunlight scatters over a small, mostly untouched room. The ceiling slopes over her head like the inside of a globe, a few stacks of leather-bound journals totter in the corners, and there's a brassy nautical spyglass on a wobbly desk. Ella bolts up, shoving a blue quilt off her. A pang shoots through her glass leg, and confusion shoots through the rest of her. This isn't right. This isn't Marie's room, which always has plates etched with the dried remains of chocolate cake, or Fiona's, littered with the odds and ends she demands that her mother buy her from the market. And this is certainly not her stepmother's room, where everything smells like her cloying perfume and pipe smoke. If this is one of her stepsisters' jokes, then--well, then they're a little more clever than Ella gave them credit for. All Ella knows is that she needs to get out of here before Simone realizes she's gone; her stepmother doesn't take kindly to her breakfast being late. Not that Ella cares if Simone gets her toast or not, but she does care about the extra chores that will be forced upon her if Simone gets into one of her moods. Ella limps over to the window, the knee above her glass leg aching. And she gasps. Ella's expecting the pink stone buildings of Miravale, one of the five capital cities of Reverie's five kingdoms. She expects the busy cobblestoned streets, the distant spire of the royal castle. This is-- Sheep. Green hills tumble past the window, dotted with woolly bodies, a few oak trees. Ella's not just not home. She's very, very far from home. It seems Simone's toast will be late after all. And Ella . . . Ella has no idea how she got here. Or who brought her. Still. Escape first. Worry second. Ella shoves the window up, the smell of fresh grass and clover riding the summer breeze. But she pauses once more; a little square clock is propped on the windowsill, its sides painted with roses. Ella's fingers twitch. The time is wrong--it can't be that late in the morning--but it reminds her of a picture her father showed her once, and she stuffs it into her pocket. With everything that reminds her of her father, she feels an almost irrational desire to hold it close, like a person can be put back together with mementos. Ella swings her good leg over the windowsill, wincing at the pain in her left knee. Below the knee is a glass leg. She's had it since she was younger, but it's been hurting more and more recently. Someone coughs. "What are--who are--why are you--" A man with a whirlwind of white hair splutters in the doorway. His eyes widen as he takes in her half-successful window escape. "There are stairs, you know." "Who are you?" Ella demands. "Why did you bring me here?" The man runs his hands through his hair until it sticks up even more. Ella's heart thumps. Had Fiona found out about Ella's friendship with Amir? Had she plotted all this out of jealousy because the prince liked Ella and not her? "You?" the man cries. "You? I don't know you! Where's Belle? How did you get here?" Ella swings her leg back over the sill so she's planted firmly in the room. She places her hands on her hips. This is all too strange for her to feel frightened, at least not yet. "You didn't bring me here?" Ella demands. "This isn't . . . This isn't a prank?" "A pr-- Oh no," he whispers. "Oh no. I'm afraid I may have made a terrible mistake." 2 Belle A year ago Belle was kidnapped by the Narrow Sea Pirates. It wasn't as big a deal as it sounds. This type of thing wasn't entirely surprising when your father trades in the rarest, strangest, most extraordinary of magical goods. And they were nice enough, as far as pirates went, and offered her mulberry cider as they waited for Belle's father. They even gave her a brass spyglass to take home. It really boiled down to a misunderstanding and was easily resolved over tea and Henrik's ginger biscuits. Which is why Belle knows that she shouldn't be worried now when she wakes to find herself in a fireplace, with a woman and two girls staring down at her. One of them kicks her shins. This means that it worked. Belle's plan worked. Belle pushes herself up, adjusting the sleeves of her shirt and shoving a few unruly locks of brown hair behind her ears, and gives them her biggest grin. She can't believe--well, she should believe, because it was such a good idea, but still--it worked. "See," demands the shin-kicker. "I told you this wasn't Cinderella." The woman kneels down next to Belle, a thin pipe between her fingers, smoldering with lemon-smelling smoke. Her hair is brilliantly red with a white stripe on one side, her skin is pale, and even this early in the morning, she shimmers with jewelry: chunks of rubies around her neck, globs of emeralds hanging from her ears, dollops of sapphires on her fingers. A few spidery lines spark outward from the edges of her eyes and pull down the corners of her lips. Belle stands, shaking out her legs, which are starting to fall asleep. She's in a small cellar where murky light tumbles through a tiny window, like the four of them are deep underwater. "Where am I?" Belle asks, and then remembers herself. Politeness is always the best sort of diplomacy, either because it makes people happy or because it catches them off guard. "Good morning, by the way." The woman looks a bit startled but recovers quickly. "You're in Miravale, my dear. In my cellar." Then she adds, like this should matter to Belle, "I'm Lady Simone Steinem." It takes all Belle's willpower not to gasp out loud. What she cares about is "Miravale." Hundreds of miles from Belle's home. The city of pink stone, perched above Reverie's northwest coast, where the Revel of Spectacles will take place in ten days' time. So Belle's plan 100 percent, absolutely, truly worked. She fiddles with her locket. It helps her think better, as it always does. It sits warm between her collarbones; it's nearly an extension of her. "It's a lovely cellar," Belle says, because sometimes being polite requires lying. "But why am I here?" "I believe that's my question," Lady Simone Steinem says, breathing in smoke from her pipe. "Along with, Who are you?" The woman's two daughters hover behind her, glaring at Belle suspiciously, and Belle mostly ignores them. Sharing Simone's vibrant red hair and wearing billowy nightgowns, they are less tattooed and far less fearsome than pirates. Belle's question: Why is she in a cellar? The enchantment she used to travel was supposed to plop her in Miravale's market square. Unless . . . Unless something has gone wrong. "Where's Ella?" One of the girls chimes in, with something that looks like chocolate crusted around her mouth. Her hair is a riot of red curls, ineffectively restrained by some ribbons. "Finally made good on her promise to run away, it seems," Simone sniffs. "And good riddance to that little brat." "She was a brat," says the daughter with long shiny hair and a long narrow nose. "She never put enough honey in my milk, even when I told her to." "Maybe the beast of the woods got her!" the other daughter exclaims. "Quiet, Marie. She'd probably terrorize the beast anyway," Simone snaps. "Now. Where were--" "What are we going to do without a maid?" The shiny-haired girl wails, as though she's been told the world is ending. "Well . . ." Simone's eyes narrow, reminding Belle of a wolf she had seen back home, standing on the edge of a lamb pasture. Belle twirls her locket to calm her nerves. "I should be going," Belle says quickly. "But my father's a very successful trader. Henrik Villeneuve? Of Villeneuve Trading? To make up for the inconvenience of me showing up in your cellar, he'll be happy to find you . . ." She doesn't like the look in Simone's eyes. "Any--anything you want." "Anything I want?" Simone echoes. "I might want a lot of things." "Anything," Belle whispers, because Henrik is--was--capable of granting that, even if bad luck has been plaguing them. With his fleet destroyed so he can't ship goods from elsewhere, and his caravan wrecked so he can't find them himself, maybe anything is pushing it a bit far. But Belle's plan will make sure that their next bout of luck is only good. "Girls." Simone's voice is so saccharine, it makes Belle's jaw ache. "Go upstairs." Grumbling, the two girls climb up a set of stairs and out of the cellar, and Belle studies the woman again. Her jewels are almost-convincing fakes, but Belle's traveled a lot and learned a lot, which means that Belle knows a lot, even though it sometimes never seems like enough. "Jewels," Belle blurts. "He could give you a real set of jewels." Immediately, she knows she's said the wrong thing. The woman's smile tightens, and she takes a long drag from her thin pipe. "You think you're quite clever, don't you?" The woman's lips peel back. "But what good are jewels going to do me when I don't even have a maid before the Revel of Spectacles?" No. No. Belle doesn't like where Simone is going with this. "My father . . . ," she begins. Simone nods like she's humoring her. "If your father, miracle man that he is, shows up at our doorstep with all you've promised, then you're welcome to leave. But it seems that I'm short some help. And here you are, sitting in her place." Belle blinks and rubs her locket. It's so preposterous that she thinks she must have misheard. "You . . . You want me to be your maid? Why would I do that?" "Oh, I'm sure a smart girl like you can think of one reason." Simone snatches Belle's locket, ripping it off before Belle can react. She clasps it around her own neck, straightening. The locket, usually a warm gold, looks faded and flat on Simone's skin. "What are you doing?" Belle gasps. She can't lose the locket. It's the only piece she has of her mother, dead the day Belle was born. "Being practical," Simone says. "I need a servant until the end of the Revel. You need this." She prods the locket and Belle shivers, like Simone's prodding her. "You can't do that," Belle retorts, aghast. Belle is used to being called odd, head-in-the-clouds, which is why she's worked hard to be nice, and to prove she's practical and sharp, and to be taken seriously. Not to be trapped in someone's cellar. "You can't force me to be your servant." "I suppose I have no need for new jewels now, do I?" Simone says, as if Belle hasn't spoken. The locket is not just a locket. Circular, plain, the gold scratched with age, and looking like nothing special, it possesses a magic so powerful, Belle has been instructed to never ever open it, not unless it's the most important reason in the world. "You can't do this," Belle chokes out. That locket--it's her family's future. "All I'm doing is making my own fate. It's a lesson perhaps you should learn." Simone's smile is calm, almost friendly, the way a poisonous flower can seem beautiful. "But you're right. I'll be a little kinder." Simone kicks over a pail of lentils, scattering them in the fireplace where they mix with the cinders and ash. Belle gapes. "If you can pick out all the lentils before the clock strikes twelve, I'll give you back your little locket and let you leave." Simone smirks. "Good luck." Simone strides up the stairs. The cellar door shuts and locks behind her. 3 Ella Before this man's terrible mistake, and before Ella's father died, and before he married that horrible Simone with her two horrible daughters, Ella used to spend her days beside her father in Miravale's royal library, an enormous underground cavern where fairy lights flickered gold over bookshelves and you could hear the distant whisper of the sea. Her father, Redmond, was once the royal librarian, and Ella would curl up with old maps as he showed her: there, where oceans brewed with sea monsters and sea witches. Or there, where doors grew inside trees. When she would demand to see such a place herself, he would sit beside her as they traced out their own maps. Walking home, he would point at the night sky, saying that anyone bold enough to tug on a star would arrive in a place beyond imagination. Before, Ella had long pale-blond hair that swung like her mother's used to, Redmond had said. No one minded too much that her left leg ended below the knee and that the calf and foot below it were made of glass. It was an enchanted gift her father had searched all of Reverie for, had traded his antique watch, a family heirloom, for. But then things changed. Redmond married Simone, and things soured at home. A year later, the horrible Miravalian princess made her father lose his post at the library, and coin ran low. And when he fell sick, Ella stayed at his bedside as summer grew heavy, and the fever consumed him. And when grief and panic turned her cold stepmother cruel, and when Fiona started to taunt her, threatening to cut her hair off, Ella grabbed the shears herself. She learned how to sharpen her tongue and cheer herself up by imagining cockroaches in Simone's oats. But they couldn't take away the one thing she treasured most: the maps that wound through her head. The possibility of adventure. After Redmond died, Fiona took her bedroom, and Ella moved into the cellar, and Simone filled the house with fake antiques until it was unrecognizable, and the garden shriveled, and Ella was forced to grind the wheat into flour and knead the flour into dough and bake the dough into loaves that were never quite right, wash the towels and hang the sheets on the line and dig dirty socks out from under beds. She scoured the pans and scrubbed the pots, wiped the floors and sudsed the windows, bruised her knuckles and made the knee above her glass leg ache. Excerpted from Cinderella and the Beast (or, Beauty and the Glass Slipper) by Kim Bussing All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
