Twisted Tales

On The Prowl

It was decided that splitting up was the best idea, and that we would each try to canvas as much ground as possible.

Finding the stepmother in a crowd of this size was daunting, but we had a couple of things in our favor. For one, most of the women attending the ball were young, under thirty. The number of woman old enough to be Cindy's stepmother was limited; though actually finding them in such a large crowd in the first place wouldn't be easy. Still, we wouldn't have to interrogate every single person we saw, just the ones over about forty-five. 

And it was likely that she would be doing her best to keep near the prince, in order to ensure that her daughters were able to vie for his attention. What we would do once we actually found her... well, one step at a time.

Erik, Jack and I split up, all heading in the general direction of where the Prince was dancing in turns with an endless line of jostling women, each of us approaching from a different side.The crowd surrounding the prince was thick, and the women making it up were unyielding. There were the ones who were prepared to tight tooth and nail for a chance at catching the prince's eye, and I received more than one elbow to the ribs as I tried to force my way closer to where he danced with some moony-eyed girl.

Ah—there was someone: an older woman, in her fifties maybe, with hair caught somewhere between ash-blonde and grey, wearing a fine dress of dove gray silk. She was lingering near the edge of that crowd surrounding the dancing prince, watching with a blissful smile on her face.I sidled up next to her, and pretended to be watching the two dancers as well.

"That young lady dances beautifully," I said to her in a casual tone after a moment. I knew jack all about dancing, so I had no idea if that was an accurate statement or not, but thankfully the woman nodded and her smile grew wider.

"She does, does she not? I taught her everything I know."

"Oh—are you her mother?" I asked, a little too eagerly.
She only beamed with pride. "Yes, that's my daughter, Celeste. And she's dancing with the prince!" She gave a giggle that was surprisingly girlish for her age.
"That's very exciting," I said, though I couldn't help thinking that the prince was looking at Celeste as if she was about as interesting as a flatworm. "How fortunate for her! Do you think it's going well?"
"Of course!" the woman crooned. "My Celeste is a darling—her needlework is exquisite, her lute playing is divine, her dancing is extraordinary, she speaks three different languages—"I hastily interrupted before she could go on listing Celeste's many accomplishments. "Oh my, she certainly is a treasure, isn't she? Do you have any other daughters? Are they as accomplished as Celeste?"
"Other daughters? No, only a son," the woman replied, shaking her head. She glanced over towards the far wall, where a young man barely out of his teens was leaning against the wall, looking nearly as bored at the prince.
I felt the hope drain out of me. "Ah. Well, that's nice too," I said vaguely, and I detached myself from the conversation by letting a pushy girl come between me and the older woman as she fought for a closer place to view the prince. I started circling the crowd again, passing by Erik as I went.
"It's not the older lady in the gray silk," I told him as I passed.
"Not the redhead in purple either," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder as a woman in her late forties. A moment later he disappeared from view, vanishing back into the crowd.
Two down, a hundred to go.
I found a plump woman with piles of glossy black hair piled atop her head in an extremely low cut green gown, who looked to be somewhere in her mid-forties. She was sitting in one of the chairs that lined the wall for weary dancers to rest their feet, talking animatedly to a tall, skeletally thin woman with iron grey hair in a conservative black dress that even I could tell was about twenty years out of date. Two for one. I edged close enough to listen in on their conversation under the pretext of grabbing a glass of wine from a passing servant, and sipped it while pretending to stare off vaguely at a spot just a little to their right.
"An' then I says to 'er, I says: [i]'You can't be wearing that to ball, Alice, the prince will think you're no more than a common milkmaid!'[/i] O' course, she [i]is[/i] no more than a common milkmaid, mind you, but we can't 'ave the prince knowing that, now can we?" the plump woman in green chattered on. I noticed her cheeks were rather flushed, and she held an empty wine glass on each hand.
"Hm," said the severe looking woman, gazing down her long nose disapprovingly at the other woman.
"Now, we can't be affording such lordly clothes as all these courtly ladies 'ave got," continued the woman in green, waving around one of her wine glasses at the finely dressed women surrounding us, "But I'm a fine hand at sewing meself, and I was able to take me mum's old church dress and the curtain in the kitchen, an' came up with something that would suit the queen 'erself! My Alice looks a right pearl in that dress, let me tell you! Look, there she is, my Alice; right over there. Halloo, Alice, my pet!" She waved enthusiastically with her other hand, the wine glass flopping around precariously, at a group of girls who stood together in a little clump, all giggling and chatting amongst themselves.

One of them, who couldn't have been more than sixteen, turned around at the call, and waved back at her mother. She had her mother's jet black hair, and cheeks that were so pink that either a flushed complexion was genetic, or she was a drunk at her mother. She was a pretty girl, but very much still a teenager, slightly gawky, and far too young, in my opinion, to be pursuing marriage prospects. The dress she wore was blue and white, and to her mother's credit, it did look quite nice, flattering the girl's not-quite grown-up figure.
Well, the woman in green wasn't the stepmother. But the haughty woman she was speaking to still could be; she certainly looked like the evil-stepmother type, with her cold eyes and her mouth puckered up in a manner that left no one with any doubt that she was thoroughly judging the woman in green.
"My daughter," said the woman in black, "Is over there." She gestured in a stately manner to a young woman that was surrounded by a small crowd of men. Her hair was a rich shade of auburn and fell loose down her back. She stood taller than half of the men around her, and wore a dress in tones of jewel blue and gold. Despite the eager male attention that was being bestowed upon her, the expression she wore was as aloof as her mother's. As I watched, I saw her wave a hand at one of the men, and he and three others scurried off to fetch her a drink from a passing servant.
The woman in green saw this young woman, and her face fell slightly. "That's your daughter? Aye—she's a pretty lass. Though it seems as though she's got enough prospects that you may not be needin' a prince, eh? It wouldn't hurt to let the other girls have a chance, now would it?"
"No other girls stand a chance," sneered the woman in black, and she rose to her feet and swept away. I immediately followed after, staying as close as possible as she strode over to her daughter, grabbed the young woman by the arm, and dragged her away from the crowd of fawning men.
"Rowena, what are you doing?" the mother snapped. Her daughter, Rowena, pulled her arm out of her mother's grasp.
"I'm talking," she replied, with that same haughty expression she had wore while conversing with the men.
"To men who are not worth a moment of your time!" her mother scolded. "You should be talking with no one but the prince!"
"I did talk to the prince," Rowena protested coldly. "And I didn't like him. I don't believe he cared very much for me either."
Her mother spluttered. "You... you didn't like him? What does 'liking' have to do with anything? He's a prince! He's only going to be your husband, you don't have to like him!"
"He bored me," her daughter replied, glancing down at her perfectly shaped fingernails. "I don't want to marry someone who bores me. I've spent my whole life being bored by people, I think I'll go mad if I have to marry someone boring as well."
"This isn't you you, Rowena!" her mother hissed. "You are my only child, and after the disgrace of your father, I am replying on you to make a good marriage! If you don't marry into royalty and regain our social standing—"
"Can't I just marry a courtier?" Rowena sighed. "A duke or a count; maybe a baron."
"Well—yes, that would be acceptable if we have no other choice, but a prince—"
"A prince is just a duke with more people who want to assassinate him," Rowena interrupted, rolling her eyes. Behind her still-spluttering mother, just in my line of vision, a man walked past, and he caught both my and Rowena's eyes immediately. He was bizarrely out of place; he wore the clothes of a soldier, but not one of this country. They were worn and tattered and covered in dust from the road. His jaw was unshaven, and he carried a sack on his back, over one shoulder. He was looking around in a slight daze, as if unsure how he had come to be there.
Rowena's face split into a wide smile, and she waved a dismissive hand at her mother. "Enjoy the party mother, and do try to have a little fun for once in your life. I'm going to mingle." She swept past her mother, who stared after her recalcitrant daughter, open mouthed.
Nope. Rowena and her mother weren't Cinderella's stepmother and stepsister. I left the mother still standing there, aghast, to resume my search. I passed by Rowena and the strange man as I went, and overheard a snippet of their conversation.
"I'm a soldier from Alberny recently retired. I only arrived this night, and when I heard about the ball, I thought it would do me no harm to attend."
"All the way from Alberny? My, you have traveled such a long way!""All in search of my fortune—and I've had many an adventure along the way. This sack I carry on my back was a gift from a witch who I carried across a deep river on my back. Trapped inside are the four winds, and when I am in dire peril, I may release one to help save me."
"Oh, how fascinating! What sort of peril? Have you been on many adventures? Tell me all about them!"
I briefly considered telling Rowena about all my perils; maybe she'd take over this quest for me in order to quench her apparent thirst for excitement.
But no—success seemed to hinge in a large part to my particular knowledge of the fairy tale realm. Let Rowena find her adventure in the retired soldier.
I soused out and investigated three other women who fit the bill for Cinderella's stepmother in the next half hour, but not one of them ended up actually being her.
Eventually I crossed paths with Erik again, seeing him from behind as a couple of dancers swept passed me. I came up behind him and grabbed his shoulder to get his attention, and to my surprise, he jumped near a foot in the air and whirled around, raising his hands as if to ward me off.