Ashes in the hearth

By Laura L. Jaworski

"Cinta? Tell me a story, Cinta."

"No. I told you a story last night."

But the thin-lipped girl closed her book with a sigh, and picked the little curly-headed child up into her lap.

"Tell me how you got to be Princess."

"I'm not a princess. I'm a lady-in-waiting."

"It's the same thing."

"No, it's not." Cinta smiled, a bit sourly, unwillingly. No matter how often she tried to say it, Percy wouldn't believe her. Percy was a wriggler, a restless stinky little girl who always had dirty hands and couldn't understand why her name was a boy's.

How could one tell dirty, hopeful little Percy that it was because nobody really wanted her? They had wanted a boy--the scrubwoman and her man--someone to pull them up by tough little bootstraps. One couldn't say that. Percy wore boots too, when she could get them.

Cinta couldn't say it, at least. Percy was too much like her younger self--neglected, unwanted--though she had never been so insatiably curious, nor had she laughed as much. Precious little there was for any child to laugh about. She could not remember her laughter, in any event.

"Tell me about getting to be it anyway."

"But it's boring," she whined, cuddling Percy closer, burying her nose in the bronzy hair that smelled of grease and dander.

"You always say that."

"I do not always."

Percy dug her heels into the meat of Cinta's thigh, pushing her face up under Cinta's chin like a kitten. "Tell," demanded the muffled voice.

Cinta reflected that there was very little difference between the imperious order of a prince and that of a scrubber's child. She did not smile at this. It was not a matter to smile over.

"Well, once upon a time when the devil's great-grandma was still in didies..."

"That's not how it starts!" A wide gray eye accused her from under an unchildishly shaggy brow.

"Oh, it's not?" She needed to spin the story out as long as possible, hopefully until Percy fell asleep. The little thing's father was on a spree again, and Cinta wanted to keep her for the night. Percy hadn't yet learned to stay out of drunk men's ways, and Cinta didn't want to see any more bruises on the child. There was nothing she could do, she knew, short of killing half the men of the manor, to keep Percy safe--any more than she could keep herself safe. At least she could keep the girl from coming to harm by her own kin's hands. Except, of course, the nights she was summoned. Percy had to look after herself then. There was no hero large enough to protect them both.

"Mother," she whispered, unthinking.

"That's not how it starts either." Percy pulled her ear, as she often did when she thought Cinta was being particularly ridiculous.

"Why not? It could start there this time."

This thought clearly bewildered Percy. She really wasn't a smart child, as Cinta sometimes thought. She didn't know enough to wipe her own nose when it ran. "But it already happened, didn't it? How can it change?"

"Magic." She tried to make her voice thrilling. "Because I'm telling it and I'm magic. For you," she added, kissing the little girl's head fiercely.

"Only for me?" Percy was a jealous creature, demanding exclusive attention much as a suckling pig demands sup.

"Yes," she replied, a certain grimness touching her eyes that made her seem older than her fourteen years. I wish it were so, she thought, I wish it.

"Oh. That's right, then." With Percy, answers were sometimes blissfully easy.

"You see, my sadness began when my mother died."

"Lots of mothers die." It took her by surprise when Percy got that wise look on her face. Not smart, perhaps, but she knew more of the way of life than some. Probably wished her own shiftless, vicious mother dead by times.

"Yes, but you see, they aren't all like my mama. No one was. She was the prettiest, sweetest, softest thing. Everyone said so, and loved her." In truth, she couldn't remember her mother at all, which was probably why she thought of her so fondly, and so frequently.

"What did she look like? Was she prettier than you?" The voice was hopeful, the little fingers entwined with Cinta's raven-dark hair. Percy cherished a not-so-secret grudge that Cinta's hair wasn't golden and her eyes not blue. She thought her rather a beauty otherwise.

"Oh, much." She shifted the sturdy body, bringing her arm to support the neck. Perhaps someday--some far day--she would have a babe of her own, small enough to need the support rather than just crave it. Percy's breath smelled of fish and old cheese, of some sweet rot, as well. She would have to remind the girl to rinse her mouth.

"She had lovely hair, not like this bushy dark mess. It fell in feather-soft curls down past her waist. She always wore it down, too, swinging like a cloud around her."

"Even when she was cleaning house?"

"Yes. She polished the silver with it. It was strong as well as beautiful."

Percy looked injured. "She did not. That's not real."

"You're right. She only used it to clean the good china."

"Did not!" Percy squealed as Cinta, forgetful for the moment that she was trying to put her to bed for the night, tickled her sides. "I bet she had a million servants to do it for her and sat on a velvet cushion and had a little bell to ring, all gold--so there."

It was something Cinta had learned to accept. Although the girl was of servants herself, she thought it perfectly right that great ladies should have others toil for them. Just wait till she has to wipe the royal arse, she thought, or worse. Not that she wanted that for Percy, but she could see no way to prevent it from happening. The girl would be lovely when she grew older and cleaner, and wasn't it better than the back-crippling work of her dam? Surely it was.

"You're right, of course," Cinta said absently, thinking of Percy receiving the night summons. How long would they wait? Please let her be at least a woman first. "But she was a wise woman, and treated them well, and her cushion was only plain woolen, not of velvet." Seeing Percy frown at this removal of luxury, she went on quickly, "Did I tell you of her eyes? No? They were blue as cornflowers, blue as the piece of sky over the well. Remember?"

"That blue?"

"That blue. She had a sweet little nose, like yours."

"I don't have a sweet nose." The girl was indignant again. "I want to have a nose just like yours."

Cinta laughed now, relishing the mixed compliment. Laughter did come now, despite all. Perhaps it was the food in her belly and the fine clothes. Perhaps it was the horrid little child in her arms, loving her so.

"She brushed my hair every night, and I missed most her gentle hands on my head after she was gone." She who had never had gentle hands upon her at all.

"Didn't your papa do it?"

"Fathers don't do such things." More shortly spoken than she intended.

"What about the million servants?"

"Oh, but don't you know? We had to let them all go. My father could no longer afford them." What a laugh that was, if anything was. Servants were the last thing they would have ever had. Much use of servants in a poor-man's hovel. "Yes, after poor father married again we couldn't afford them. Do you want to know why?" She felt she had to prompt Percy's questions if they were too long in the coming. Too much silence from the child--when awake--troubled her.

"I do know why already. It was because your stepmama was a selfish wolf bitch who ate up all the money."

What Cinta didn't do was reprimand her for the language. It was better, in the girl's kind of life, to be coarse and forceful of speech. It made one strong and foul and, somehow, one survived. It was the only way to survive such a childhood, and she wanted very little to take it from her. There would be time later, when the royals would be polishing her tongue to make her a fitting companion, if that was to be so. She knew she would have call to curse, whether they did or did not take her. Many times Cinta had cursed the gods, after she had cursed all others she could lay her mouth on, must put her mouth on. For didn't they curse her too, with their bodies and ways...

"Cinta, isn't that right?"

She turned back to Percy, her eyes bright and cold. One must hate. "Yes, and she was the most wretched woman that lived. The Good Folk themselves spit all on her cradle bed. They touched her with wicked waxen dead fingers, and she was suckled on cobwebs soaked in piss."

Percy wrinkled her nose, delighted, and settled her head more comfortably. She recognized by Cinta's voice that the story was moving now in earnest. The little whelp was quick and canny by times, Cinta had to think, though she was dim enough at others. Dirty thing. She brushed her hands softly over the child's cheek and, finding it chill, turned the chair more toward the fire.

"She had no daughters of her own, being barren, but only two lap dogs that she fed meats from the table. She took those meats from my mouth to feed her round hideous creatures. They were so stuffed full of rich food that they ran streams of liver from their mouths. And Herself, she gorged until she could no longer move from her chair alone, and soiled it if unassisted."

Cinta clenched her hands, moving them away from Percy and knocking them together softly. She piled all the maledictions as she could upon the woman, in her mind an obese noble such as of the manor. All the while wanting to cry, There was no stepmama, Percy. There were no dogs. I didn't sleep in the ashed-out fire because I could not chance to sleep inside with my brute of a papa. I wish you were mine!

But she could not say it. She must speak to the girl as she always had. Children had a way, sometimes, of seeing only what they wanted to make out of words. A way of seeing rescues in things that experience told were only softer traps. They still crushed your body beneath theirs. It was only clad in silk, no longer rags.

"What about the cinders, and the fairy, and the ball?" Percy yawned, breathing her rancid scent and curling her pink tongue like a fox pup. They had seen a vixen one rare day in the gardens, carrying a vole to her waiting littles.

Cinta wished her body covered in thick red pelt; she wished her face narrow and sharp, her flight announced by the belling of hounds. She would know to run then, herding her kits in front of her. Ugly and cruel, too, with her sharp white teeth. She wished she had never put a fairy into the story at all. Fairies would do Percy no good, past giving her the sweet dent between her nose and lip, which would in turn do her nothing but ill. The sick and senseless compliments that degrade, the stroke before the kick.

Better to have spoken of a resourceful washerwoman, or a kindly whore who sat with her by the fire and held warmth into her scrawny body. Better yet to have told the truth. That there had been no one, that one can't afford to be weak enough to need. Even without the need, one is weak enough.

"Hush." She brought her hands back to the child's brow, eased their tremoring, continued. "Don’t speak of the Good People so brazenly. They're like as not to cause mischief for you if you do." Noting Percy's dropping eyelids, she softened her voice, changed tacks in her telling. "And you know all of it well enough to tell it yourself, I'd wager."

"Yes," said Percy drowsily, pink-cheeked as she was with sleep. "You had a beautiful dress and a shoe, and then the prince kissed you." She tucked her curled-up hands in her armpits in the way she had of doing. She was so silent for a moment that Cinta watched her sides to move with breath. She sighed. "Then you came here to love me."

Cinta sat very quietly, unblinking, eyes fixed on the sleeping child. That was the ending to her story, this was what the child saw of her life? She was someone to love Percy.

She thought of the King's guardsman pulling her to her feet from where she scrunched in the doorway stoop of the tavern, checking her teeth and the lustre of her eyes, checking for else under her skirt. The line of girls to be chosen by the Prince. He liked the big eyes and the fear, the tangled hair. How simply he felt their necks, hands dipped into the tops of dresses to feel for sturdiness as if they were stock.

She leaned forward in the chair, rocking gently to her feet to lay the small warmed body on the bed. They were most of them dismissed, not all in the condition they arrived, she knew.

She dropped to her knees and laid her head near to the girl, shivering as she heard the quiet knock at the door.