Fairly Wicked Tales (42 page)

On the first day of September Ash Maid was able to perform the second phase of her revenge. She was polishing Cordelia’s bedroom mirror, when she noticed the tears glistening on her fat stepsister’s cheeks.

“What is the matter, sister?” Ash Maid asked, feigning tenderness.

“Mother said the dress will not fit me. She said I had to watch what I ate, to lose some weight so I could put it on in time for the ball, but I know there won’t be time. The prince surely won’t want a woman as loathsomely large as me!” Cordelia wept and Ash Maid felt sickened at the sight of her. She forced a smile and cooed:

“Is that so? Well then, maybe I have just the thing for you, sister!” And with well-rehearsed motions, Ash Maid took out the too-tight corset she’d hidden in her room. She presented it to Cordelia, whose face lit up like a firefly’s belly at the sight.

“A corset? You brought me a corset?”

“Not just any corset, dear sister, but my mother’s own. It was a gift from her father—a whaler of some renown. It was put together by the finest craftsman in the land.”

“Well what are you waiting for? Help me put it on!” she exclaimed with hands outstretched, chin held high.

Ash Maid did just that. She put on the corset and tugged at the strings until the corset stretched round Cordelia’s loose and loathsome flesh, encompassing her belly all the way up to her breasts, until the flaps of the corset met in the end, the whalebone frame creaking. Cordelia let out a soft pained moan, thinking the torment over as she felt her lungs pressing against her ribcage.

“Are you quite done?” she said, gasping for air.

“Just let me tie the straps, sister.” Ash Maid reassured her. She tugged the corset one final time, knotting the strings. The whalebone frame made a horrible creaking sound as it pressed down into Cordelia’s ribs and organs and squeezed them with terrible force. Ash Maid could picture Cordelia’s lungs frantically scrambling up to her neck, her belly descending all the way down to her toes. She watched delightedly as the loose flesh stuck out of the fabric, already swollen and inflamed.

“It hurts …”

“No pain, dear sister, no gain.” Ash Maid reassured her, grinning all the while. “Have faith. The prince will definitely fall for you in that dress.”

“Will I look thin? Will I look lithe?”

“As light as a jungle cat and as thin as a peacock’s neck. And twice as pretty!” Ash Maid said. She made sure to embrace Cordelia as tightly as she could, rejoicing at the pained moan that escaped her lips.

By the first week of September Stepmother was straining to keep her eyes open even after a good night’s sleep. Her speech slurred, her breathing heavy, and the readiness in her posture was long since gone. Ash Maid watched with joy as her stepmother struggled to swallow her poisoned broth, the spoon in her hands shaking, her once long and dexterous fingers now nearly impotent.

Dolores, who was the favorite by far, found her mother’s fatigue debilitating. Without her mother to direct and pamper her she was lost in the midst of preparations for the ball. Ash Maid found her in a state of near-hysteria, as Dolores tried to find an appropriate evening dress. She said:

“What is the matter, sister?”

“You mean what isn’t the matter!” Dolores squealed. “I cannot pick a proper dress for the ball and mother is hardly any good anymore.”

“I can help you pick a proper dress, sister.”

“You? Help me pick a dress? You don’t know the first thing about being proper!”

“I do not,” Ash Maid said very politely, the venom in her voice deftly concealed. “but I have spoken with the cobbler’s wife and I know the palace maids and they know what colors and dresses the prince likes on a woman.”

“Then get on with it. Show me.”

So Ash Maid put on a show, picking and choosing the gowns and making Dolores pose before the mirror again and again, delighting in her misery. But for all her dresses (which otherwise fit Dolores perfectly) she would make an excuse:

“This one is too short. This one shows too much of your elbows. This one’s the wrong color. This one’s too frilled.” She went on and on and on, until finally, as Dolores was on the verge of tears, she said: “This one’s just right!”

Ash Maid held out the long purple gown to Dolores, which was the longest and most garish. She urged her to put the dress on.

“I cannot fill this. I’m going to be dragging the hem in the mud the entire night.” Dolores moaned.

“I have just the thing for you,” Ash Maid told her, and from her room she brought the shoes she’d had the cobbler’s apprentice make. She watched as Dolores struggled to put them on, wincing as she tried to fit her tender feet even as the jagged copper bit into her flesh.

“They hurt my feet …”

“That’s because you haven’t broken them in yet. But look!” Ash Maid said, making Dolores glance at her reflection in the mirror. “Look how much taller you seem now. The prince likes tall women.”

“Is that so?” Dolores asked, the glint in her eyes outshining the agony on her features.

“I know so.”

Ash Maid embraced Dolores, leaning down on her to make sure her feet would be driven into the jagged edges, delighting at the horrified expression on her stepsister’s face.

And so Ash Maid watched the days pass joyfully by, with her stepsisters trapped inside her instruments of torture and Stepmother rendered helpless and useless. She kept up the façade of service, pretending to still care for the house and their meals, to divert any unnecessary attention.

When the time came, at last, for the Prince’s ball, Ash Maid watched her sisters proudly strut around the house, posing as future queens. Cordelia looked like a court jester with lips coated in layers of lipstick to hide the suffocated purple of their hue. She marveled at Dolores who maintained her composure even though her skin had long since turned pale and her eyes were wide with constant agony.

Ash Maid helped her stepmother dress for the ball as she swerved and swayed and bobbed like a ragdoll in her arms, her hair disheveled.

“Oh, sweet mother,” Ash Maid said. “Your hair is a mess. Here, let me help you.”

With the hairpin she’d taken from the cobbler’s apprentice (that she’d dipped in the venom for the final time), Ash Maid tied the stepmother’s hair in a bundle and drove it in. She saw the old woman jump as the serrated edge grazed her scalp.

“Pretty as a flower, mother.” Ash Maid whispered in her ear.

As soon as they had gone, Ash Maid set her own plan in motion:

She went to Cordelia’s room and used her cosmetics, then visited Dolores’ room and picked her finest dress. From her stepmother’s bedroom, she stole her set of pearls.

By the time Ash Maid was done she didn’t just look like a woman of royal bearing; she was exactly the woman the Prince would desire.

She made her way to the palace at a steady, certain gait. When she was there, she demanded entrance like a woman of great bearing. The guard, stunned by her beauty and accustomed to being ordered about by royalty, let her in immediately.

As Ash Maid reached the palace proper, she studied the gathered crowd of women locked in subtle combat. The small crowd of noblemen and officers walking among them seemed too uneasy, knowing their role here was auxiliary, their purpose merely to pick at the scraps the Prince would leave behind after choosing his bride.

Ash Maid caught a glance of Cordelia standing with her back against the wall, bug-eyed and out of breath. Stepmother stood beside her; a silent, pale thing that seemed barely alive and breathing. An officer of the royal army, his suit a-jangle with medals and references to his honor and skill in the field of battle, was busy trying to hold Dolores up on her feet, unaware of the blood she trailed behind her with every step.

She made her way through the crowd and saw the prince on his throne. She gave him the secret, sultry kind of smile the palace maids would give him, when they wanted his attention. The Prince responded as expected, asking for a dance.

What happened next was not magical to Ash Maid. If anything, the way the prince took her hand so delicately in his and kissed it seemed ordinary, planned out, expertly choreographed three years ahead of time.

He held her by her waist, led her to the center of the ball, and they danced to every step without fail.

“Who are you?” the prince asked, and Ash Maid told him her name. As expected, it sounded magical to him.

And so it went that they danced and they courted and Ash Maid was promised to be wed to him that night. Halfway through the celebrations, Cordelia let out a long gasp and spat blood before collapsing on the floor. The royal physician rushed to the scene, but he found Cordelia to have perished. Her insides had been crushed by the corset. Splinters from her ribcage pierced her lungs. Dolores fell to her knees a moment later, her feet long since torn and cut by the jagged edges inside her shoes. Dolores’s shoes were removed and the physician exclaimed that she suffered from severe infection, progressed beyond treatment. Maiming was the only possible way to save her life. It did not happen right away, of course. As per Ash Maid’s request (who had not yet become Queen but her word was already law), Dolores was treated until the day of the wedding, when the operation was to take place.

Also per Ash Maid’s request, she was present during the operation. The elation she felt at the sight of the bone-saw cutting through the diseased flesh and separating the bone was indescribable, nearly divine.

But what of the stepmother?
You will ask. For her, Ash Maid had a special little torture planned. For her poor stepmother had long since been rendered helpless by the subtle venom of the apothecary. She watched, helplessly, as her youngest daughter died and her favorite was maimed. Ash Maid decreed that her Stepmother would receive the best possible care the realm could offer. Stepmother would live to a ripe old age, her heart filled with misery.

Ash Maid made sure of this herself. She healed her stepmother of her affliction and had the royal physician himself care for her, to restore her strength and send her home with her lame daughter, there to live out their days together; destroyed by the girl they’d abused her entire life.

Ash Maid, of course, lived happily ever after.

About the Author

Konstantine Paradias
is a jeweler by profession and a writer by choice. His short stories have been published in Third FlatIron’s
Lost Worlds
anthology,
Unidentified Funny Objects! 2
and the
Battle Royal Slambook
by Haikasoru. People tell him he has a writing problem but he can stop like, whenever he wants, man. His short story, “How You Ruined Everything” has been included in Tangent Online’s 2013 recommended SF reading list and his short story “The Grim” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Gingerbread

What happened after “Hansel and Gretel”

Hal Bodner

She basted the baby with a ladle of cider. A little of the amber liquid trickled down the side of the infant’s body and missed the pan she’d placed underneath to catch the drippings. The cider sizzled on the coals and the air filled with the tangy scent of burnt apples mingling with another smell, redolent of plump partridge set to grill.

The child’s skin was developing a lovely golden hue. The fingers and toes were beginning to crisp, but she’d found some charring couldn’t be avoided. Cookery books could only help so much so she’d been forced to experiment. Babies, she’d discovered, needed to be roasted much like chickens until the juices ran clear, otherwise the under-cooked meat would make a person quite ill. It had taken her awhile but she’d finally mastered the timing of the thing. Roughly half an hour before serving the infant, she’d snip off the blackened hands and feet and sever the tiny toes and fingers for salting. They made lovely snacks on those hot summer days when the forest air grew close and humid and when firing up the oven would make the entire house stifling and hot.

The younger the child, the more acid she found she needed to use in the mixture. At first, she tried honey but the result was far too sweet and sweetness was the
last
thing she wanted in a meal after having lived in
this
house for so long. Plentiful jars of cinnamon and other spices crowded in the cupboard but the prospect of releasing their scent into the air made her shudder; she’d had more than her fill of gingerbread! Savory herbs mixed with wine would probably have been delicious. She might easily pluck the herbs from the garden, but the making of spirits was beyond her ability and frankly, she was uncomfortable at being seen to buy wine in public. People already looked at her strangely on the rare occasions when she journeyed into town; she was embarrassed they might think she drank to excess as well.

Besides, the nearest marketplace lay several days journey away and she no longer liked to leave her brother alone in the house for that long. Eventually, she’d have to leave him unattended again when supplies ran low. For now, she was slowly working her way through the contents of the rather large pantry. Several months would pass before the dry goods would need to be replenished. Re-filling the larder, on the other hand, posed little problem. She could almost always manage to find meat.

Before she’d left home, for all the time she’d spent scrubbing and mending, chopping wood and hauling water, she’d never before been really involved with the arts of the kitchen. She’d taken up cooking only as a necessity after they’d come to this house and found, much to her surprise and delight, she had a talent for it. Sadly though, her poor dear brother did not seem to share her passion for the results.

A small smile danced on her lips at the thought of him in his cage in the other room. How dearly she loved him! Even though he was several years younger than she, he had always taken on the role of his big sister’s protector, keeping her safe from Stepmother’s capricious anger and from Father’s heavy hand. Many a time he’d interfered and distracted Stepmother when she seemed set on scratching or pinching her adopted daughter to the point of drawing blood. Even now, with the events years in the past, she shuddered at the memory of her sweet younger brother, beaten bloody by Father’s birch rods, bravely enduring a punishment which, but for his willingness to take the blame on her behalf, would have been hers.