Cinderella's stepmother, Lady De Leon, was standing at the front of the watching crowd that had congregated once more around the prince, who was currently dancing with a beaming stepsister #1, while a sulking stepsister #2 glared at the couple from her mother's side. I gave a nod to Jack and Erik, who sprang into action; Erik heading towards the doorway to the nearest hall, and Jack dashed off to direct a passing servant carrying a tray of white wine in my direction.
I didn't waste any time. I headed straight for De Leon, forcing my way through the dense crowd of women with a judicious application of elbows.
I broke through the ranks of doe-eyed ladies, and came up right beside the stepmother, turning abruptly so I shoulder-checked her hard enough to spill my entire glass of red wine down the front of her dress.
She gave a cry of surprise and pulled away from me, staring in horror down at the dark, wet stain spreading across her bodice.
"Oh my gosh!" I cried, clapping my free hand over my mouth in shock. "Oh, I can't believe I just did that! I'm so sorry! Someone just bumped me from behind, and my drink went flying—"
Lady De Leon finally tore her eyes aware from the damage to her gown to see that the culprit was none other than little old me, and her eyes narrowed into slits. "You," she hissed through her barred teeth. "I warned you—"
I pulled out a handkerchief from my sleeve—thank you, fairy godmother—before she could continue, and made a pathetic attempt at patting the wine on her dress dry. "Gosh, I', sorry, it really was a complete accident, I didn't even see you standing there!"
She tried to pull away from me, as if even my touch was a stain on her dignity, but the woman
around us were packed in so tightly in order to get a good look at the prince that there was nowhere for her to go. "Just get away from me, you little—" she began, but at the moment, I spotted the servant Jack had sent my way, having told him that the young lady in the light blue dress wanted some white wine.
"Ah—here we go," I said quickly just as the servant spotted me and opened his mouth, cutting him off before he could reveal that he was looking for me specifically. "Thank you so much, good sir, that will all—my dear lady, let me apologize again; that wine is going to stain terribly, but it happens that I know exactly how to get out a red wine stain from fabric. Please, if you'll just let me help, I can fix it before it sets."
De Leon hesitated, clearly torn between telling me to get stuffed, and wanting to know my secret for saving her dress.
"We have to deal with it right now, before it has a chance to dry," I press, trying to look wide eyed and sincere. "It's such a beautiful dress, it would be a pity for it to be ruined forever."
"This dress was new," she snarled at me. Then she drew herself up to her full height—and a fairly impressive height it was, too—and, with her nose in the air, just to drive home the point that she was still better than me, wine-stained dress or no, she said, "Fine. You have one chance to save my dress, otherwise I'll make sure you pay for it—one way or another."
The way she said that made a shiver run down my spine, but I forced an apologetic smile onto my face, and led her through the crowd towards the nearest hallway.
As we approached, Erik turned away slightly to conceal his face, and Lady De Leon didn't even glance at him as we passed by. I opened the door to let her through, and then followed after. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have noticed that the door didn't swing back shut quite all the way, stopped open just a crack by the toe of Erik's door, so he could listen in on the proceedings.
But Lady De Leon wasn't paying attention, she was absorbed in the drama that was her soiled dress. She rounded upon me once we were in the privacy of the hallway. "This gown cost my husband thirty sovereigns! Have you ever even seen a single sovereign in your life you... you... you peasant girl!"
I hadn't, but I had a real gold filling in one of my molars that I was going to rip out and stuff down her throat if she didn't change her tone.
But I only smiled sweetly. "If it's really worth so much, we'd better get it fixed up as soon as possible!" I raised the glass of white wine and started towards De Leon.
She scuttled back from me, almost running up against the wall. "What are you doing? Get away from me with that! Is this some kind of pathetic attempt at revenge for what I said—"
I sighed. "No, not at all." Well, yeah, a little. "You can't exactly take your dress off and wash it here at the castle, can you? And you're probably so far from your own home that the stain would dry by the time you got there. If you spill red wine on yourself, the fastest way to get it out is to neutralize it with white wine."
Lady De Leon looked at me as if I had just suggested spitting on the stain to remove it, but she didn't demand that I get away from her again. I inched a little closer, raising my handkerchief questioningly. She heaved a shaky sigh, obviously struggle to keep in control of her temper, and said, "Fine. Attempt it. If it doesn't work, or if I find that you are intentionally tricking me, you will be very sorry."
I got down on my knees in front of her, and used half of the handkerchief to continue to blot up the wettest parts of the stain on the front of her dress. Then a poured a liberal application of the white wine from my glass onto the handkerchief, and her eyes widened in surprise as the red stains melted away, dripping off into a small puddle on the floor. I wiped at her dress, gradually lifting a little more of the stain with every dab. It was slow going, and would have been more effective if I'd just poured the entirety of the glass over the original stain, but apart from the fact that I was sure she wouldn't take kindly to being doused again, I actually had a goal in cleaning her up like I was some kind of ladies maid.
As I patted away all over her bodice and hips, I was feeling for something long, thin, and hard that did not mean she was happy to see me, but was, in fact, Rumpelstiltskin's wand.
I started on her right side and gradually made my way to her left, making sure I was feeling around enough that I wouldn't miss it in passing. As a result, my attempts at cleaning the stain ended up appearing a lot more like the blatant frisking it actually was, and it was clear that the stepmother was uncomfortable. But it was working, and slowly the dark red wine stain was being lifted, so she kept any biting remarks to herself, at least for the moment.
And then, tucked into the waist of her underskirt, concealed by the high waist of the dress she wore, I felt it. The wand, right there, right under my fingertips, only separated by a layer or two of fabric. I was already on my knees. It would be a fraction of a moment to lift her skirt and pull it out. She would probably be too busy freaking out about why I was suddenly trying to undress her to realize that I was going for the wand and wouldn't think to defend it; and once I had it, I'd be running back out the door into the ballroom, Erik and Jack hot on my heels. We'd be out the door and sprinting all the way to the cemetery before she even had time to realize what I'd done, and Cinderella and her prince would be reunited within the hour.
I drew my hands away, getting ready to grab the hem of De Leon's skirt.
But she had the point of the wand dig into her rib when I put pressure on it, and before I could make my move, she suddenly drew away from me, fear and suspicion flashing in her eyes.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
"Just getting this side," I insisted, scooting closer to her on my knees, my heart beating a little faster.
"There's no stain on that side, there was no reason to be touching me there!"
I kept a smile on my face, but I could feel it growing more forced. "I'm just trying to help. Look how much better the stain already is, I just need to get a little more—"
"I don't need your help, I can do it myself now." Lady De Leon swept past me, giving me a wide berth, and she began backing away towards the door, without taking her eyes off of me. Her hand flew to her left side, almost unconsciously, and rested against her waist. "Thank you for your help," she said stiffly. "I hope—for your sake—that our paths do not cross again."
And then she pushed the door open, hurrying back out into the ballroom even as I struggled to my feet.
She was already out of sight by the time I followed her into the ballroom and I swore, spinning on the spot, searching in vain for a glimpse of her through the throng.
Erik caught me by the arm, his brow furrowed in concern. "What happened? I was nearly knocked flat when that door was thrown open, and the next thing I know, I see De Leon rushing off. Did you get it? Did you get the wand?"
I groaned. "No, I didn't get it! But I felt it, I know she has it on her. It's under her dress, on her left side. She got spooked when I touched it and took off. Damn, damn, damn! She's not going to let me get close to her again!"
"Jack or I could—" Erik began, but I shook my head before he even finished.
"She knows you're with me, remember? She'll be just as suspicious of either of you approach her."
Jack had noticed that neither Erik nor I had gone sprinting for the castle doors as had been the plan, and he came over find us.
"What's going on? Did it not work?"
"No."
"What now, then?"
"We could tell one of a guards she has a weapon, that she was making threats to the prince because he refused to chose her daughters," I suggested tentatively. "They might frisk her, take the wand, and then—"
"And then we'd have to find a way to get the wand from a bunch of armed guard instead of an unarmed middle aged lady," Erik finished for me. "And she might decided to use the wand against them, if she felt like she was in danger of losing it. God knows what damage she'd do."
"Well, what else then?" I demanded.
"Plan C?" Erik suggested, hopefully. "Jump them in the garden?"
"Too risky," I replied. "We'll never get one of the stepdaughters to come with us now that they've seen us, and the gardens aren't as deserted as we'd thought they'd be. If someone sees us..."
"Uh, guys?" Jack interrupted us, and we both turned to look at him. He was frowning up at the huge, ornate cuckoo (a classy one with little people that came out and rang bells with hammers, not the cheesy kind with the bird) clock that hung above the royal thrones, and our gazes followed his.
"What?" My mouth dropped open. "What the hell?! It's already eleven? When did that happen! I swear to God, it was only nine-thirty like, ten minutes ago!"
"This is taking longer than we thought it would," Erik said grimly. "We don't have time to try a half a dozen random plans in the hopes that we'll get lucky with one. We need to act, now."
"Maybe we could just grab the stepmother, hold her down, take the wand, and run?" Jack suggested, but without much conviction.
"And get ourselves arrested? There's a dozen guards stationed all over this room, no way."
"We don't even know where she went, and I doubt she'd let us get close to her again."
"It doesn't matter—we have to find her, we don't have any other choice." I started looking around, hoping to spot her somewhere in the crowd.
But then Jack put out a hand to grab my arm. I glanced over at him, and saw he was looking towards the crowd of women that was gathered around the prince, watching him dancing and impatiently awaiting their turn. "We might have to just get the prince involved."
"And do what? Tell him the girl of his dreams is turned into a tree and he has to arrest and strip search the stepmother?" I shook my head. "I doubt he'd actually do that just based on our word, even if he did believe us. He doesn't know us from Adam, and we're all lowly peasants or whatever; while she's the wife of a wealthy merchant. It's not gonna happen. Certainly not in enough time to allow us to get back to the graveyard, disenchanted Cindy, and bring her all the way back here."
"We could bring the prince to her," Jack protested.
"But he's not going to listen to what we—" I trailed off mid-sentence, because a thought suddenly occurred to me.
"Er, Rikki?" Erik asked, staring in concern at my face, which had gone rather slack. "Are you okay?"
"We probably can't get the wand, and we can't afford to waste time trying and failing," I said, slowly, still trying to put the pieces of the idea together in my mind as I explained it aloud for the boys. "But we might not need the wand at all."
"But the fairy said—" began Jack.
"That you would need magic as strong as Rumpelstiltskin's wand to undo the spell. And there's one thing... it's not exactly magic, but I know it breaks spells, even powerful ones."
"What?" Erik asked in shock. "What is it? Why didn't you mention it before?"
"Because I'm an idiot, and I didn't even think of it until now. It's not my fault! It's not in the original version at all, which is what I've been working off of!"
"What is it, and how do we get it?" Jack pressed me.
"True Love's Kiss. Or maybe just a kiss from royalty; I don't know exactly how it works. But I'm willing to bet my life—Cinderella's life actually, I guess—that a kiss from Prince Charming will break the spell on her."
"A kiss?" Jack looked eager. "We can do that! That's easy! Are you sure it will work?"
"Even if she is sure, it won't be easy," Erik said darkly before I could respond. "We have to get the prince away from this ball—a ball being thrown specifically in his honor, where he perpetually has the eyes of hundreds of women on him at all times; convince him to follow us to a graveyard, alone, at night; and then talk him into going around and kissing all of the trees in it until one of them turns into a girl."
I groaned in exasperation. "Well, when you say it like that!"
"How else would you say it?" he shot back.
"Look, we just have to get him alone," I pointed out. "If we can get him to slip away from the ball again, just like he did before, we can tell him everything, and I'm sure he'll come along! He's already crazy about Cinderella, I'm sure he'll be willing to kiss a few trees in return for rescuing her. Don't princes love rescuing things?"
"And how exactly are we supposed to get him alone while he's the center of attention? Do you have anything more interesting than a prince to distract all these women with?"
"Leave that to me," Jack cut in, and before either Erik or I could ask what he meant by that, he was off, heading towards the throng that surrounded the prince.
Erik gave me a hard look. "I sincerely hope you're right about this. If we give up trying to get the wand now, we won't have another chance. If this kiss idea doesn't work—"
"It will," I assured him, though if I was being completely truthful, it was really myself I was trying to assure. He was right—we'd be putting all of our eggs in this basket, and for all I knew, there was a great big hole in the bottom.
Okay, everything is back up to speed! If you've been reading prior to the time this chapter was published, go back to chapter 22. I accidentally posted chapter 23 by mistake, skipping over the real chapter 22 entirely. So go read chapter 22, "On the Prowl", and then come back here to chapter 24.
Actually, if you're reading this author's note, then you've already read this chapter.
Damn.
Oh well, I think there are only like, three people reading this, so I guess that damage isn't that bad. That's what I get for not keeping better track of which chapters I've already uploaded. Blegh.